Sudden Crashes to Desktop

[Castellon]

How long can you play before the crash occurs?

Do you have any mods installed?

 

[Castellon]

Originally posted by Sobieski III
I seem to have the same crashing problem. Have version 1.07 atm but it's happened before. No mods installed either. It does seem to happen at random times, not at and specific times or events.

I have an athalon 1800+
Win XP
Geforce4 MX 420
768 SDRAM
Direct X8.1

Have you renamed your AVI folder to AVI_back?
Have you updated your Audio and Video drivers?

 

[Castellon]

dx9.0 was unstable, you should upgrade to the latest version.

 

[Castellon]

Do a fresh install following the directions listed in the self help thread.
See if you get the crashes with no mods installed.

 

[Castellon]

Hold on to it for now, in a seperate folder that is not in the EU2 folder structure.

 

[Castellon]

Originally posted by Dathon
Specs: AMD Athlon XP 2000+, Radeon 8500, SB Audigy, DX 9.0a, 512 MB RAM and about 10 - 15 gigabyte free space.

I'll ask my brother if he can put the latest update for DX on CD.

But i don't think this is the problem, cos it happend with 8.1 too.

Okay, you have an Athlon with an Audigy. Big problems with this combo!

Sorry I did not notice this before.

You need a different set of drivers.
Let me find a nice link for you that explains it better.

 

[Castellon]

Originally posted by jpd
AMD Athlon + VIA chipset + complete lockup = infinite loop.

Had to fight this problem myself early this year. It is caused by a faulty AGP driver from VIA.

Uninstall the VIA 4in1 driver set completely, and use the Microsoft stock IDE drivers and AGP drivers. Then the lockups should no longer happen.

A brief explanation maybe in order about what is going on:

The AGP portion of the northbridge maintains a command/data queue for pending transactions, which works both ways. AGP transactions are always 64 bits. The problem starts when the software initiates a transfer starting on an odd DWORD boundary. The transaction must be completed in two cycles instead of one.

When, after the first cycle is complete but before the second cycle starts, the AGP card itself also request a transfer transaction, and this transaction for some reason requires the one from the CPU to be completed first, both transactions deadlock each other.

The interrupted transaction can no longer complete, as the video card will reject it, pending completion of it's own transaction. The AGP card's transaction cannot complete either, as it requires completion of the one initiated from the CPU. Because of the bouncing of the second part of the split CPU transaction, Microsoft has named this problem 'infinite loop'. Because of the lockout in the northbridge of the chipset, the processor is permanently locked out of all memory access, and thus cannot execute any other instructions, nor can it respond to interrupts. This will cause a soundcard to repeat it's last loaded sound fragment ad infinitum, for example.

Intel has documented this particular sitiuation in it's official AGP specification, with an explicit warning to software/driver developers to make sure the above described situation is to be avoided at all times, as it will completely freeze the system. It can be avoided completely by assuring that software drivers initiate memory transfers on even DWORD boundaries only, as the AGP transaction will then only need one uninterruptable cycle and thus avoids the deadlock situation. Unfortunately, the VIA programmers haven't made sure their drivers follow this advice.

Jan Peter

 

[Castellon]

I think the VIA drivers are auto installed.

I PMed jpd, to take a look at this thread, hopefully he will drop by soon and give you further info.

 

[Castellon]

Another thing to try is to lower the acceleration of your sound and video cards, try the sound one at different settings first and see if that helps.

 

[Castellon]

Let us know.