Multiple Game Problems - My System

[GMicek]

Ok, my turn for a cry of help, this is so very frustrating. Since my birthday is on Tuesday of next week I got a bunch of new games from people this week, but I can't get any of them to work the way they should. Here's a breakdown:

Battlefield Vietnam: Multiplayer works fine. Single player against bots locks hard as soon as enemy bots are about to be visibiel on the screen. Friendly AI is ok.

Farcry: Multiplayer works fine. Game locks hard when the campaign is about to load. Game loads but then I get a strange dark blue line across the top of the screen.

UT'04 DVD: (yes, finally!) Locks hard with bots as soon as the game has loaded up. Multiplayer works fine.

It's worth mentioning that other games such as Freespace and H&D2 work perfectly fine.

Here are my system specs:

Athlon XP 1800+
EPOX EP-8KHA+ motherboard w/ latest drivers installed
SB Live!
GeForce 4 Ti4600 w/ 4.14.10.5656 drivers that I got from the BFV disks.
30+ gigs of hard drive space free
512meg swap file
Win 98SE
DirectX 9b

It's interesting to note that in the Farcry log file there is this entry at the very end:

"ERROR: Cannot transform file name shaders\<stencil>.ext to absolute path, resorting to desparate measures!
Removing lights ...
Deleting visareas ...
Deleting terrain ...
ObjManager shutdown ...
Initializing Script Bindings"

Not sure if that means anything.

I made sure that acceleration is turned up all the way windows. I turned sound acceleration down to second from lowest per EA's suggestion for BFV. I'm running the games in the same bit depth (32) and resolution (1024x768) as my desktop. I've changed the sound settings in-game to either safe more or lowest quality.

Any suggestions? Is there something painfully obvious here that I'm missing?

[Tom Chick]

The first thing I'd try is to install nVidia's slightly more recent Forceware drivers (56.72) and then reinstall DirectX.

I'd also either make the swap file bigger or just let Windows manage it. I've had problems in the past from trying to set a specific swap file size that wasn't big enough for certain games.

-Tom

[steve]

I'd almost wonder if it's a heat issue with either your videocard or CPU. Multiplayer consumes WAY fewer CPU cycles than a 'botmatch in Vietnam, so it's not inconceivable that your proecessor is overheating.

Or it could be a memory issue. The multiplayer may take less RAM, so your system is hard locking when it hits some piece of RAM it normally doesn't.

In either case, you might want to try downloading Prime95 and running it in torture mode to see if it locks your machine.

Have you cleaned out the interior lately? If it's full of dust, that could be causing a heat issue.

[steve]

And for the love of God, be afraid when Tom Chick is giving you computer advice. (Not that what we said was bad advice, mind you.)

[Tom Chick]

And for the love of God, be afraid when Tom Chick is giving you computer advice.

So true. In other words, Your Computer is Screwed.

-Tom

[GMicek]

Thanks for the help guys, it's really appreciated! I ran Prime95 and it errored out after 6 minutes. I turned on my external fan and it went ok. Games still froze though, even with the external fan. CPU and system temperature are around 100 with the external fan, so no problems there.

I patched my NVidia drivers to 56.64 because the newest ones say they're for XP. Also set windows to manage my swap space and reinstalled DirectX.

Dust isn't the issue this time around because I just reformatted a few weeks ago and took the cards out and blasted them pretty well, looks like a brand new system inside.

So, after all that I took Voltaic's suggestion and downloaded MemTest 86. He said he remembered some threads about it on here back when he read the forums. I ran through the tests for about 6 hours and found that my memory was failing on test 7. Had a huge number of errors in fact. So, it looks like it was bad ram afterall. Just need to get my hands on another 512meg DDR stick and I'll be in good shape. In the mean time I'm going to install Voltaic's 512 stick of pc133 and verify that everything works fine with it.

Well, looks like the problem is solved. In no time I should be very happy playing through Farcry, BF:V, and UT'04. In the mean time I've got Freespace to keep me more than happy!

[Enidigm]

You have almost exactly the same system that im running. I just can't bring myself to 'off my quirky but mostly stable ECS K7S5a mb and 1700xp. I was planning on a whole new round of upgrades but rumor has it with some 3rd party bios i can run a mobile Athlon 2600 w/ 266 fsb, so i might just keep the old boy around a while longer :). And damn, i bought the ECS board almost 3 years ago (wow has it been that long) and its still selling for only about 20$ less today :)

I've found that modern Direct X and Win 98 have between them little love. Almost every game i play has some completely avoidable quirk that if unattended will make things go crashy. For example, Flight Simulator 2004 will NOT run in hardware 3d if i run -any- other 3d game before it. So i play Ut2004, play FS, and i get software instead. Solution is reboot.

Active Desktop is indescribably the most unstable function my computer has. If i right-click save a picture from the web this WILL cause my computer to clusterfuck itself in the near future. Like near reformat problems. So no Active Desktop, ever.

And Open Office does a better job than MS Office in almost any web forum bbs for cut/paste editing. I'll move to Linux someday :).

I've never had bad memory before as Crucial has been dependable thus far for me, but i guess it can't hurt to try. 133 ram is getting extremely rare and actually more expensive than DDR however, and you may be better off just getting a new motherboard and some better RAM - check the newegg refurb sections for some decent VIA KT400 mb's that can run fsb 333/400 if you want something with legs.

[LarryLard]

It's interesting to note that in the Farcry log file there is this entry at the very end:

"ERROR: Cannot transform file name shaders\<stencil>.ext to absolute path, resorting to desparate measures!
Removing lights ...
Deleting visareas ...
Deleting terrain ...
ObjManager shutdown ...
Initializing Script Bindings"

Not sure if that means anything.


It means the Farcry dev team don't know how to spell 'desperate', for a start :)

Anyway, I would have said your symptoms (things go wrong as more is asked of the video system) point to either memory, or power supply. What are the specs of your power supply? Should be on a label on the unit itself.

[GMicek]

Well, went out and purchased some different memory today. Tested it using the same program and it was cool. Tried loading the games in question and had the same result unfortunately.

My next plan of action is to find some sort of testing utilities for my mobo and video card and see what happens with that. My roommate has a decent Radeon card so maybe I'll toss that in here and see what that does. I imagine it's possible that I have a bad video card somehow. but its strange that the games work with no bots.

Ohh, here's a really strange one. I loaded up the UT'04 demo and had a number of long matches against 16 or more bots and there were zero problems.

Erk.

[Jon R.]

About how old is your installation of 98?

[GMicek]

About how old is your installation of 98?

About 3 weeks or so.

[Enidigm]

If you can "get" it try WinXP. I can't bring myself to "get" it but neither pay 100 (which isn't that bad) for a real copy either, which is why 98 keeps puttering along. But i pretty much guarantee that 50%+ of your problems are due to 98 having some hidden compatability problems with some or another driver or dll.

Personally, if i were you, (and i've been thinking about doing this myself), and if i didn't mind the chance of getting a bad board and having to screw around with sending it back, i'd buy this refurbished Asus KT600 mb for 41$ shipped (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-131-470R&type=Refurbish).

Then i'd buy either this RAM thats highly rated but from an unknown manufacturer (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=20-144-305&depa=1) or this more expensive Crucial RAM if you want a pricier brand name product (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=20-146-541&depa=1). 512mb ram should be enough. RAM prices have gone up recently however - hopefully you can take yours back for a full refund.

Then "get" your copy of WinXP however you can, either here for 89 (http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=37-102-141&depa=6), or "there", whichever you conscious allows.

Nice thing about this setup is that you should be able to upgrade your CPU to ANY AMD cpu pre-64 bit later. So wait a year for those 400$ top of the line cpus to come down in price and pick one of them up, and you have yourself a nice 3000+ system.

[GMicek]

So, in case anyone is curious what happened with this (I know you are!), here's the skinny. I bought new ram but had the same problems. I installed Voltaic's ATI card and UT worked for five minutes, but none of the other games did.

So I said screw it, I bought a FX5600 w/ 256megs of ram on sale and a copy of WinXP. Everything is working perfectly now. I honestly think that some program I had jacked 98 enough to make some of my programs inoperable. So now I'm more or less happy. FarCry is nearly unplayable because my frame rate is around 1fps on even the lowest settings on the indoor levels.

Sigh, now for a new CPU and Mobo.