Originally posted by Patric
Thank you!
We will take a look at it!
Patric
I was also having a constant crash problem playing 1.08 NA whenever I tried a diplo annex of Lorraine (my first diplo annex). The annex went fine but the next time I pressed the PAUSE key to stop the game it would crash to the desktop. This would happen even after I rebooted and reloaded. If I didn't diplo annex Lorraine, the PAUSE key wouldn't cause a crash to the desktop. I decided to experiment a little so I removed ALL of my background programs (with the exception of explorer and systray) and the game worked fine. Haven't had a problem with it since and its been decades and I have done another diplo annex - no problem. The background programs I removed were:
Norton Antivirus (removed it completely, not just disabled it)
AOL instant messenger
DiscDetect - detects when you put in a new CD/DVD in the drive
Various monitoring programs that run in the background - these install automatically with various pieces of hardware that I have :
ATI All-In Wonder 128 Pro (installation automatically detected my DVD-ROM (12x) drive and loaded proper drivers for it)
Creative Soundblaster Live! X-Gamer 5.1
Creative CDRW drive
My OS is Win98 SE - P3/933 with 256MB RAM. MB is an ASUS CUV4X - it uses the VIA Apollo Pro 133Z chipset. Hard drive is a 45 gig IBM ATA/100.
I also have a 3COM NIC card for my internet T1 connection, but that doesn't seem to load any background programs I can remove - and it doesn't seem to affect the game at all.
I still get this periodic weird out-of-range message from my monitor when I start or end the program. It doesn't happen all the time. It's telling me that the signal it is receiving from the video card is out of the range of the monitor (it's a brand new 19" Hitachi). Usually, if I turn off the monitor, wait a few seconds and then turn it back on, the video is working fine.
Do you guys have problems with the ATI 128 Rage chipsets? I know Baldur's Gate II had problems with ATI cards. I have another machine with an nVidia GeForce Ultra card (the one from Creative) - would that work better? However, that machine is a lot flakier - it seems to crash every time I install a new program. And while BGII works fine on it, SHogun: Total War won't play on it so I have loaded it on my ATI machine. You know, I hate the thought of Microsoft ruling the gaming world with X-box, but a standardised platform would seem to solve a lot of these compatability issues.
