CtD symptoms without actual CtD

[jpd]

Hi, the title may seem a bit weird, but it's the shortest way of describing what happened yesterday, three times.

What happened is the following. I had been playing a couple of hours in my 1.06 GC as Austria, after I had fixed my sound problems (see other thread). Suddenly, to my amazement, I see the regular Windows hourglass appear at the tip of the EU2 mouse cursor. It even moves when I move the mouse. This I had never seen before.

After 4 or 5 seconds, the screen goes black, and I get thrown back to the desktop. My first reaction was, 'hey a new type of CtD'.

So I double clicked the EU2 icon on the desktop to restart. CtD's, after all, are (alas) a fact of life in EU2

So far, nothing out of the ordinary. EU2 restarts without problem, and I load the autosave, as I had done so many times before (sigh).

Now, for the weird thing. Two game years had passed after the restart, and I wanted to check my BB value. So paused the game, Ctrl-ESCaped to the desktop, to open up the autosave to check the value. This is when I noticed the weird thing. EU2 appeared TWICE in the task bar. Being curious by nature, I clicked on the first one. It brought me back in the game I thought had crashed. It was still running, although the time had not progressed. The time started progressing, though, as I had reactivated it.

I surrendered this one, got back to the desktop with the resolution messed up (happens a lot on my system. According to the guys over at bug reporting, I must be almost the only one in the world to have that happen ). Well, I clicked on the second (and now only) EU2 on the taskbar, and this copy was unaffected by all this, and still running.

Well, I didn't trust it completely, so I saved and surrendered this one as well (this time with a correct reset of the desktop, go figure), and restarted. This was funny as well, as I could restart EU2 without a reboot. Normally, when the resolution is messed up after a surrender, EU2 (or any other DirectX game for that matter) cannot (re)start without a reboot, as DirectX hasn't been properly closed down. Appearantly, the second correct surrender has corrected the DirectX mess the first surrender would have created.

The mysterious appearance of the hourglas, followed by a TtD (throw to desktop, by lack of a better description) happened another two times yesterday, but now I was ready for it. Instead of restarting the game, I simply clicked on the taskbar button, and I got back in the game.

The best explanation I can come up with, is that for some as yet unexplained reason the screen saver has kicked in. I think that, because in all three cases I had been playing (or pausing) continuously for roughly the amount of time that is considered as idle by the screen saver, without switching back and forth to the desktop. Needless to say, upto now this has never happened, but then again, upto a few days ago I was playing with 1.05, not 1.06.

The one think I find mystifying in all this, is the fact that I was able to start EU2 twice at all. This is normally not possible with DirectX programs. As soon as one has initialized DirectX, a second game (or second copy) refuses to run, being unable to gain access to DirectX resources.

Jan Peter

 

[Castellon]

If you have not already done it, rename the AVI folder to AVI_back.
That may help with the resolution reset problem.

As for the other it sounds like some other program activated and the game reverted back to the main screen.
So you must have something else running in the background.

 

[jpd]

Yes, there are a few systray services running, but they are the same that have been running for months.

These are: ZoneAlarm, volume control, NVidia TwinView, Display properties and Creative MediaSource.

Other than that, there is nothing else active, apart from the screen saver.

I have done a few things since the last time I have played EU2 for hours continuously. These are, in chronological order:

Install EU2 1.06 patch (the UK, German combo)
Play Age of Mythology at a LAN party.
Reinstall the Audigy II drivers

As for the AVI folder, I will give that a try.

Jan Peter

 

[unmerged(6777)]

I don't suppose that you happen to have Windows Messenger active do you? I have run into this problem recently with that service running where someone sends me one of those pop-up broadcast spams and it behaves almost exactly like a ctd except that everything is still running and the "message" has just interupted my session. (I still haven't figured out how to change that either... ).

Anyway, if you aren't running Messenger then I wonder if ZoneAlarm might be at fault - or, as you say it could be your screen saver which you could test quite easily by turning it off while you're playing to see if you get any repetition of the problem.

I agree with you that I didn't think you could have two EU2 sessions running simultaneously but I just tried it and was able to duplicate your experience. I also got a bit of a laugh since the sound tracks were running for both games at the same time so I had dueling 15thC music.

Renaming the avi folder may, at least, solve your screen res on exit issue.

Keep us posted on the pseudo ctd issue.

 

[jpd]

I don't have the Messenger installed, unless Microsoft has found a subtle way to sneak that thing past me. In the Windows setup. I had unchecked the Messager before installing Windows.

I am running with the stock IE 5 that comes with Win98SE.

Anyway, even if that darned thing was running, it sure as hell is utterly incapable to receive anything, as it's incoming traffic would have to bypass both the firewall in my DSL router and ZoneAlarm. Both are configured to block, unless explicitly authorised.

As for ZoneAlarm itself, it is running unchanged for several months now, and it's alerts are configured as silent log only. Even so, if ZoneAlarm would have triggered a message, that box would have been visible when I got dumped to the desktop. There was no such message box, nor any other for that matter.

So it's either the patched EU2, the Audigy drivers or the screen saver. I will test the theory of the screen saver first.

Jan Peter

 

[AndrewT]

I logged a bug some time ago on the fact you can have have two instances of EU2 running at once, but I doubt it will ever be fixed.

 

[jpd]

I think I have nailed the cause.

It appears to be the Create logo, that gets inserted in the 'Run' registry key of Windows\CurrentVersion.

It seems that the darned thing does something else, besides showing an animated Creative logo upon starting windows.

Somehow, it messes around with my TCP/IP settings. I discovered this when I tried using the Internet Explorer. It started looking for proxy settings. In the past, it had never done so, so I checked my IP config. All of a sudden, I had an address starting with 169. This was rather weird, as my DHCP router is in the 10.0.0 range.

So I used the registry editor to kill that Creative thingy. After the reboot, my IP config is as usual, IE no longer searches for proxy settings, and, more importantly, I played over 3 hours last night without experiencing the TtD

Jan Peter

 

[unmerged(6777)]

Woohoo!

Wow...I really have to compliment you on your ability to not only come up with some rather interesting problems (TtD's ) but also your patience and methodical persistence in finding the solutions. It is very much appreciated!

 

[jpd]

Thanks.

I am a professional in the IT industry, and two of my main tasks are to keep the client's workstations and servers up and running, and to develop and debug software.

I guess some of the methodology needed to perform these tasks (especially when it comes to finding causes for errant behaviour) rubs off. For one thing, you develop a keen eye to notice even the slightest deviations from normal/expected behaviour.

Jan Peter

 

[unmerged(6777)]

Neato. You must have really loved pre-SP4 NT then.