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Well, tried some of the suggestions and here are the results:
First, I renamed the AVI to AVI_back and the results, the game Hoi and Victoria CTD after 5 minutes. Reboot PC and again the same thing. So I tried the anlogx cach app it still CTD short time later. Tried the mem boost same thing CTD right away after playing the game for few minutes.
So what i did next tried with the above changes is reset my screen resolution to 800x600 16 bit and again CTD.
I renamed the AVI back to its orignal name and kept the screeen settings above and no CTD, but did receive the ddhelp error again but after a few hours of play. Upgraded my video driver and again ddhelp error some hours later.
I starting to think that I might have to rebuild my harddrive and the only thing original in my pc is the motherboard and when you ask for bios version and so-on, it shows bios version compaq. I believe thats my one of my problems and the my pc is about 4-5 years old so the AGP is a x1 not sure if its a x2. My ram is only 512! Thought I had double that and I know thats one problem. How much would suggest like 2048mb?
I've replaced all hardware in this pc except for the MB. I going to replace anyway just because of my experience with compag and its low-end hardware crap they stick in it. Just give an example on how cheap the hardware was the sound card was a Asound I think and compaq sent a replacement card which was SB and that was so cheap low-end card I tossed and bought a very fine SB sound card.
Never buy a pre-built again, will build my own like always have. But some the questions you asked on my system specs, not sure about a couple of them on what you mean. Sidebanding? , fast writes? AGP aperture size?
Question: Is there a website that explains on how to use OpenGL and when?
aliasing? z-buffering? The online manual isn't the greatest and I've heard of games using GL and turn off analizing if this. I still just don't fully understand 3D video cards.
I really appreciate your input and your help on this, Thanks a bunch.
Ray
First, I renamed the AVI to AVI_back and the results, the game Hoi and Victoria CTD after 5 minutes. Reboot PC and again the same thing. So I tried the anlogx cach app it still CTD short time later. Tried the mem boost same thing CTD right away after playing the game for few minutes.
So what i did next tried with the above changes is reset my screen resolution to 800x600 16 bit and again CTD.
I renamed the AVI back to its orignal name and kept the screeen settings above and no CTD, but did receive the ddhelp error again but after a few hours of play. Upgraded my video driver and again ddhelp error some hours later.
I starting to think that I might have to rebuild my harddrive and the only thing original in my pc is the motherboard and when you ask for bios version and so-on, it shows bios version compaq. I believe thats my one of my problems and the my pc is about 4-5 years old so the AGP is a x1 not sure if its a x2. My ram is only 512! Thought I had double that and I know thats one problem. How much would suggest like 2048mb?
I've replaced all hardware in this pc except for the MB. I going to replace anyway just because of my experience with compag and its low-end hardware crap they stick in it. Just give an example on how cheap the hardware was the sound card was a Asound I think and compaq sent a replacement card which was SB and that was so cheap low-end card I tossed and bought a very fine SB sound card.
Never buy a pre-built again, will build my own like always have. But some the questions you asked on my system specs, not sure about a couple of them on what you mean. Sidebanding? , fast writes? AGP aperture size?
Question: Is there a website that explains on how to use OpenGL and when?
aliasing? z-buffering? The online manual isn't the greatest and I've heard of games using GL and turn off analizing if this. I still just don't fully understand 3D video cards.
I really appreciate your input and your help on this, Thanks a bunch.
Ray
Are you sure you have 512MB? That could be the problem. Win98 & WinME need some tweaking to handle that much properly. I believe you need to add to your system.ini file:
[Vcache]
MaxFileCache=65,536
The largest value you should use is 524,288 even if you have 1-2GB RAM.
See here for more info.
EDIT: The above link is now dead. Here is another good reference.
[Vcache]
MaxFileCache=65,536
The largest value you should use is 524,288 even if you have 1-2GB RAM.
See here for more info.
EDIT: The above link is now dead. Here is another good reference.
Last edited:
Sidebanding and fast writes are hardware techniques to increase communication performance between the chipset and the video board, but are known to cause problems in some cases. The first advice you get in tracing AGP related errors is to disable both.meerkatt said:
AGP aperture size is also an important (BIOS) setting. It controls to how much main memory the AGP video board can have direct access to without going through the video driver and the main processor. This feature was introduced in the original AGP specifications to allow the video processor to use more memory than the AGP card itself has installed. Back then, AGP cards typically had 2 or 4 MB of RAM.
A side effect of this feature is that it restrics the memory manager of Windows itself. Because the video card can access any location within the AGP aperture at any time, Windows itself cannot touch any location within it, and thus this reserved memory is unavailable to Windows itself. If you run on relative low memory configurations, you must reduce the aperture in size. Typical sizes for use with recent video boards are 16 or 32 MB. Never go below 16 MB though, as Windows itself (oddly enough) cannot deal with that, and will crash.
Jan Peter
As far as I know, it was no problem upto and including 512 MB. Only above 512 MB gets Win9x into trouble. Heck, I have 512 MB myselfjdrou said:
Jan Peter
A couple of people here with Win98 reported their CTDs stopped after adding this tweak so it's worth trying. It's mostly a performance enhancer; as you've posted before you want to maximize the amount of RAM available to the game and that's what this does. The real problem is probably the game's memory usage and/or other processes running on their PCs taking up memory. I haven't used Win98/ME with more than 256MB myself but researched it a bit for a friend who was looking at upgrading to 512MB. If you have over 512MB then it seems to be required rather than just a tweak.jpd said:As far as I know, it was no problem upto and including 512 MB. Only above 512 MB gets Win9x into trouble. Heck, I have 512 MB myself
Jan Peter
512mb
I do have 512 ram and my video card GeForce4 has 128mb. I did a couple of tweaks to my video card. Switch from adapter default to optimal refresh rate. Have no idea how it got switch to adapter default and another tweak - played the game and no CTD or ddhelp error this time. Weird.
Going to add the cache file to sys.ini and see what happens.
I do have 512 ram and my video card GeForce4 has 128mb. I did a couple of tweaks to my video card. Switch from adapter default to optimal refresh rate. Have no idea how it got switch to adapter default and another tweak - played the game and no CTD or ddhelp error this time. Weird.
Going to add the cache file to sys.ini and see what happens.
Interesting. Changing the refresh rate and the DirectX problems with a Paradox game vanish. It looks similar to what I found out myself, documented here:meerkatt said:
http://www.europa-universalis.com/forum/showthread.php?t=122150
It sure looks like something in the interaction with DirectX, the game(s) and the video driver is screwed up somewhere. The only unexplainable thing is why it seems to be tied to monitor type/refresh rate.
Jan Peter
Just for the record, i have the DDhelp prob, too !
i reeinstalled HoI last week after severall weeks pause
and am now quite involved in the game again.
Tualatin 1,4 Celeron / 512MB Infineon pc133cl 2 / Seagate Baracuda 4 40GB (7200upm) + Seagate 7200.7 40GB / ATI8500 build by ATI / Asus TUSL2 c Board / SB-Live / SCSI Ricoh Brenner 6x/4x/20x / TEAC 40x / Audiowerk2 Audio / Sony Triniton 17" / Win98 / Mozilla 1.4
i will try the tipps you gave above.
btw: have reeinstalled directx, also the directx diagnostics say "no error", have scanned for viruses, AGP aperture size 64mb, sideband on, fast write off ( not supported by I815 chipset ), perhaps it runs with your tipps above.
i also had the ddhelp error sometimes, when i close my browser ( mozilla ). after this no game will start it seems, must reboot then.
my driver is 3.10 which caused me some trouble already ( windows doesn´t boot ), AGP only 2x instead 4x etc.. but i think i had the ddhelp error also with my old 3.7 driver......
i reeinstalled HoI last week after severall weeks pause
and am now quite involved in the game again.
Tualatin 1,4 Celeron / 512MB Infineon pc133cl 2 / Seagate Baracuda 4 40GB (7200upm) + Seagate 7200.7 40GB / ATI8500 build by ATI / Asus TUSL2 c Board / SB-Live / SCSI Ricoh Brenner 6x/4x/20x / TEAC 40x / Audiowerk2 Audio / Sony Triniton 17" / Win98 / Mozilla 1.4
i will try the tipps you gave above.
btw: have reeinstalled directx, also the directx diagnostics say "no error", have scanned for viruses, AGP aperture size 64mb, sideband on, fast write off ( not supported by I815 chipset ), perhaps it runs with your tipps above.
i also had the ddhelp error sometimes, when i close my browser ( mozilla ). after this no game will start it seems, must reboot then.
my driver is 3.10 which caused me some trouble already ( windows doesn´t boot ), AGP only 2x instead 4x etc.. but i think i had the ddhelp error also with my old 3.7 driver......
A crash inside DDHelp will effectively disable DirectX until a reboot. It's responsible for interacting with the AGP service, amongst other things. Given that in your case it's not just HoI, it is likely that something is not right with your config.Frank W. said:
There are a couple of things you could try/check. Lower Aperture size to 32 MB, disable sidebanding, and check the actual mobo voltage levels with your Asus probe tool. If either the 5V or 3.3V is more than 5% off, then your power supply isn't big enough. That simple fact can cause all sorts of problems with AGP video boards. Try to reduce to AGP x1 if that's the case.
Jan Peter
don´t know what ´s wrong.
i don´t have crashes of this kind with other games.
i play mostly steel panther WAW and MOHAA. also
sometimes harpoon and silent service 2. all these games
work without any crashes. also demos of call of duty and
others....
i remember i had CTD with HOI older versions and thought with
the newest patch this is solved but seems not so.
in my before crashes there were no error messages or something
also my OS worked okay after the crash, just HOI ended without
any warning and sent me to the windows desktop.
o think setting the hardware acceleration ledger far to
the left in the system configuration prevents the crash
with my current HOI, but all is quite slow now.... at least
i have played without crash for 3-4 hours.
i don´t have crashes of this kind with other games.
i play mostly steel panther WAW and MOHAA. also
sometimes harpoon and silent service 2. all these games
work without any crashes. also demos of call of duty and
others....
i remember i had CTD with HOI older versions and thought with
the newest patch this is solved but seems not so.
in my before crashes there were no error messages or something
also my OS worked okay after the crash, just HOI ended without
any warning and sent me to the windows desktop.
o think setting the hardware acceleration ledger far to
the left in the system configuration prevents the crash
with my current HOI, but all is quite slow now.... at least
i have played without crash for 3-4 hours.
You may want to lower the refresh rate as well. You can also set the DirectX refresh rate to match the desktop.
If nothing else works you may want to look into the Vcache setting I have posted before since you have Win98 with 512MB. Since HoI is very memory-intensive (and possibly leaking) it may help. (I posted it on the first page of this thread on Jan 7.) BTW, another reason this setting may help could be because of HoI's use of large numbers of small files (leader/minister pictures).
This definately suggests that under normal settings your AGP subsystem is overstretched. Lowering the accelleration in effect disables certain features of the GPU, and possibly the AGP speed and addressing modes (like fast write and sidebanding, that's up to the driver). Besides making your system slower, it vastly reduces it's power consumption, and with it heat dissipation.Frank W. said:
You really should use your Asus probe tool to monitor the 3.3 and 5 volt power rails of your mobo, when running HoI under full accelleration. If these are more than 5% off the mark, you definately have a serious problem. Also, if you have it for your ATI board, monitor the temperature. Excessive heat can also cause an AGP video board to malfunction.
And regarding your other games. While it doesn't look that way, games like EU2 and HoI place a huge stress on the GPU and AGP, far exceeding all but the most sophisticated 3D first person shooters. They produce a high frame rate, but the GPU doesn't handle as much data as in a game like HoI.
Jan Peter
I am also having a simular/exact problem
The error I get is this "Ddhelp has caused an error in <unknown> Ddhelp will now close" Sometimes I will also get this error after the first one "<unknown> has caused an error in <unknown> <unknown> will now close" I am using a (AGP 4X) Connect3D Radeon Powered By ATI dual head video card and also have an (PCI) ATI TV Wonder VE running on ME with 768 Mb RAM 320Gb Hd space 50Gb free Athlon 1.1 Ghz AMD. The only games in my PC are GTA: Vice City and Diablo 2 with LOD installed. This is the first time I have ever encountered this problem and have had my PC for three years. I have searched google and no help their (that's how I found this forum) The first error message always happens when I am using a web browser (IE, NetScape, Mozzila, Opera) also has happened when a program is downloading form web. I have swept for spyware/adware and viruses and came up clean (all deep scans). I think it's a Windows ME thing as my 98SE P2 don't have any issues. But, this one has me baffeled.
The error I get is this "Ddhelp has caused an error in <unknown> Ddhelp will now close" Sometimes I will also get this error after the first one "<unknown> has caused an error in <unknown> <unknown> will now close" I am using a (AGP 4X) Connect3D Radeon Powered By ATI dual head video card and also have an (PCI) ATI TV Wonder VE running on ME with 768 Mb RAM 320Gb Hd space 50Gb free Athlon 1.1 Ghz AMD. The only games in my PC are GTA: Vice City and Diablo 2 with LOD installed. This is the first time I have ever encountered this problem and have had my PC for three years. I have searched google and no help their (that's how I found this forum) The first error message always happens when I am using a web browser (IE, NetScape, Mozzila, Opera) also has happened when a program is downloading form web. I have swept for spyware/adware and viruses and came up clean (all deep scans). I think it's a Windows ME thing as my 98SE P2 don't have any issues. But, this one has me baffeled.
While it does not completely match your particular error message, it nevertheless applies to your system's specs.
Look here http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;253912&Product=winme on how to properly configure a PC running Windows 9x (ie. 95, 98, 98SE or ME) with more than 512 MB RAM installed.
Try the suggestions, and check if it clears up your errors.
Jan Peter
Look here http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;253912&Product=winme on how to properly configure a PC running Windows 9x (ie. 95, 98, 98SE or ME) with more than 512 MB RAM installed.
Try the suggestions, and check if it clears up your errors.
Jan Peter
Thanks for the suggestions but no that did not solve the ddhelp issue. I have reason to believe that it may be a codec issue or a DX issue. I will find the solution and post back here.