Are Others Out There Experiencing Frequent Crashes
CanadianWolverine
Join Date: 2003-02-07 Member: 13249Members
Join Date: 2003-02-07 Member: 13249Members
in Tech Support
<div class="IPBDescription">NS Crashes, Freezes, BSoD, etc.</div> <!--emo&::asrifle::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/asrifle.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='asrifle.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&:0--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wow.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wow.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::gorge::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/pudgy.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='pudgy.gif'><!--endemo-->
Here's my specs:
AMD Athlon 1.5GHz
256 MB DDR RAM
Direct X v9.0
Windows 98 SE
NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS/GeForce2 Pro (64 MB)
>>Driver: nvdisp.drv V4.13.0001.4109 (English)
Creative Sound Blaster Live! (WDM Series)
>>Driver: emu10k1f.sys V5.12.0001.3227 (English)
Realtek RTL8139/810X Family PCI Fast Ethernet NIC
I like to play the Half-Life MOD Natural Selection, but it frequently crashes on me. Here are the types of crashes I experience:
->Blue Screen of Death; almost always results in the game dropping to desktop, sometimes seems to spawn infinite other BSoD, and at other times it stops some sounds in NS, which I just exit the game and click on resume game and the sounds come back.
->Repeating Sound and the computer freezes up.
->The game crashes to desktop, and if I try to start the game up again, then join a server, it says I am not recognized as a WON.net user.
->The game crashes to desktop and all of the colors of my desktop are a lighter shade, kinda like pastel.
->The game crashes back to the menu/desktop, but the menu/desktop is all bigger, so I don't see the start button/task bar. Sometimes the computer freezes here.
What makes this really interesting, is that at first I suspected I did not have up to date drivers, so I downloaded all the latest driver for my system specs and then tried it again, but NS still frequently crashed. I thought maybe I had a hardware issue, so I ran diagnostic checks but nothing turned up there. I got annoyed at this point so I played other games, and other Half-Life MODs, but they rarely crashed, especially compared to the frequency of the NS crashes. So, I tackled the problem again and went searching for a solution online. After many hours in forum after forum, and trying all sorts of suggested hardware settings tweaks, but with no change in the frequency of the crashes, I decided to post this message. I will try to post this message on other boards too, and see what comes of it.
Do you have any suggestions? Have you had similar problems with Natural Selection?
Here's my specs:
AMD Athlon 1.5GHz
256 MB DDR RAM
Direct X v9.0
Windows 98 SE
NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS/GeForce2 Pro (64 MB)
>>Driver: nvdisp.drv V4.13.0001.4109 (English)
Creative Sound Blaster Live! (WDM Series)
>>Driver: emu10k1f.sys V5.12.0001.3227 (English)
Realtek RTL8139/810X Family PCI Fast Ethernet NIC
I like to play the Half-Life MOD Natural Selection, but it frequently crashes on me. Here are the types of crashes I experience:
->Blue Screen of Death; almost always results in the game dropping to desktop, sometimes seems to spawn infinite other BSoD, and at other times it stops some sounds in NS, which I just exit the game and click on resume game and the sounds come back.
->Repeating Sound and the computer freezes up.
->The game crashes to desktop, and if I try to start the game up again, then join a server, it says I am not recognized as a WON.net user.
->The game crashes to desktop and all of the colors of my desktop are a lighter shade, kinda like pastel.
->The game crashes back to the menu/desktop, but the menu/desktop is all bigger, so I don't see the start button/task bar. Sometimes the computer freezes here.
What makes this really interesting, is that at first I suspected I did not have up to date drivers, so I downloaded all the latest driver for my system specs and then tried it again, but NS still frequently crashed. I thought maybe I had a hardware issue, so I ran diagnostic checks but nothing turned up there. I got annoyed at this point so I played other games, and other Half-Life MODs, but they rarely crashed, especially compared to the frequency of the NS crashes. So, I tackled the problem again and went searching for a solution online. After many hours in forum after forum, and trying all sorts of suggested hardware settings tweaks, but with no change in the frequency of the crashes, I decided to post this message. I will try to post this message on other boards too, and see what comes of it.
Do you have any suggestions? Have you had similar problems with Natural Selection?
Comments
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Hmm, okay the next time I get a BSoD, though the crash to desktop is significantly more common, I will write it down on a peice of paper and post it here.
What I've done is go to C:\seirra\half-life\ns\ , then I opened up the file config.cfg file with notepad, then scrolled down until I found this:
s_eax "0.000000"
s_a3d "0.000000"
I hope that sheds some light on this.
The red text came up in the top right corner of the screen saying there was a connection problem, so I hit the ESC key to exit to the menu and close the program to see if I might find another server to play on. I clicked on quit and then this BSoD came up that looked something like this:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Windows
A fatal exception error OE has occurred at 0028:FF079B61 in VXD
emu10k1f (01) + 00003441. The current application will be terminated.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Then I hit the ENTER key, and the blue screen went away and the screen was white with the mouse symbol. On a geuss, I hit the WINDOWS key and clicked on Shut Down, then selected restart from the Shut Down window. At this point, a End Task window poped up for Natural Selection, so I clicked on the end task button. Then a End Task window for Half-Life poped up, which I also clicked on end task, then it was a End Task window for IDE Server and that I clicked on end task too. Then the screen didn't change for several minutes but the mouse pointer symbol changed to a resize mouse symbol, the one where a line is vertical and an arrow on top and an arrow on bottom. Then I manually restarted my computer.
There you go, one of my BSoD things, though I say things because they always seem to be different everytime. I'll probably have more for ya before you know it. I wouldn't be surprised if there is some funky driver issue or hardware issue with this computer, but I have updated the drivers to the latest available on official websites of my hardware manufactures and taken my under warranty PC into the computer shop several times to have the hardware checked out thoroughly. I sure hope this sheds some more light on what may be the root cause(s) of these crashes/freezes/BSoDs/etc.
<b>In response to Kamikazi,</b> I had hoped I had already addressed this, as I hope this quote from a previous post shows. So, no, I do not get this problem on any other HL MOD or game on my PC. If it weren't for the exceptional game play, which from stuff I have read on this board only promises to get better, and the incredible community that is growing up around this, I would not even both trying to solve why this problem is happening with the HL MOD Natural Selection on my computer. The end result of this I would hope would be a better version of NS or technical issues made aware to those of us having problems like this. Feel free to ask me any questions at all, they all help, I hope.
In you config file, change
s_eax "0.000000"
to
s_eax "1"
Then reboot the PC and play again. Let me know if you're still crashing out.
In you config file, change
s_eax "0.000000"
to
s_eax "1"
Then reboot the PC and play again. Let me know if you're still crashing out. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
To change that, I just open up my my config file with notepad and save it as config.cfg when I change it, right? I will backup that file just in case, for that a copy/paste to some other temporary folder should work fine, I geuss.
Oh, and here is my latest BSoD when I was exiting a game by pressing the ESC key, then this came up:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A fatal exception error OE has occurred at 0028:C0008294 in VXD
VMM(01) + 00007294. The current application will be terminated.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Then when I hit the ENTER key, the screen went to my desktop, but all the icons were larger then they should be and I couldn't see the start button. So I pressed the WINDOWS key and clicked on shut down, then clicked on restart the computer and then the shut down button in that window, then the computer shut down and restarted with no extra problems.
Well, off to backup and change my config.cfg file. I'll let you know how it goes, sooner if it doesn't, later if it does, I hope you understand.
Am I the only one having these kinds of problems?
Yes. And backing it up is a swell idea. Ensure it's the config.cfg in your NS directory (which you already knew, I'm guessing).
After the modification and the restart, I joined redphive #1 server and played for a bit. The sound quality had definitely changed, it could be described as like listening to the games sounds through a pipe or perhaps underwater. Also noteably, there was (I'm geussing) a half a second to a full second delay between actions (that others and I took) on my screen and the corresponding sound in my headphones. This proved to be all very disorientating in the game setting. The whole effect gave the feeling the sounds were distant, muffled and that opponents were moving faster then the sounds they made. Then the game crashed to desktop, no error message to be seen.
So I replaced the modified config.cfg file with the backup, restarted the computer, and posted this report for your consideration.
Set:
s_eax "1"
s_a3d "1"
I can't recall if your SB card will like the A3D settings or not, but let's see. If you still have wacky effects or crashes, set:
s_eax "0"
s_a3d "1"
Let me know what you get from that. When I get home I will parse through our config settings a bit more and perhaps offer some additional options. The first BSOD you posted was definitely related to your soundcard, and the second one referred to Win9X's virtual memory management drivers. In either case, the crashes are due to memory exceptions. We'll get to the bottom of this...
Welcome back i was just looking for updates and I saw MonsE posting! Now even tough this is really off topic sorry CanadianWolverine, when is rr.org comming back? <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
CW, I also was able to find versions of that driver SB which were much newer via a quick google search. Where did you get yours from?
<b>Latest BSoD while playing NS for silly CW</b>
I was playing on redphive #1 server, I don't recall the map name off the top of my head, but I was in the ready room. So then BAM! oughta nowhere this BSoD shows up...
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An exception OE has occured at 0028:C0031A54 in VxD ---. This was called from 0028:C00301F9 in VxD ---. It may be possible to continue normally.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So I hit the ENTER key, and it shows the console for NS and I notice at the bottom it says public slots changed to 14. Oh, okay, well that's no biggy, so I hit the ESC key to go to the NS menu but its not responding, so I hit the WINDOWS key and the start menu comes up and it looks bigger than normal, so I click on shut down, select restart from the menu and click on the shut down button in the window. So then up pops a end task window for Natural Selection and I click on the end task button. Then a new BSoD hits my screen:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An exception OE has occured at 0028:C000BD1D in VxD VMM(01) + 0000AD1D. This was called from 0028:C02A2A47 in VxD VWIN32(05) + 0000156F. It may be possible to continue normally.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So then I hit the ENTER key once, nothing seemed to happen, so I hit it again, but this time I noticed what looked like a line showed up for a split second in the BSoD message, so I hit the ENTER key a bunch more times (not sure how many), and then it changed into this BSoD:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A fatal exception error OE has occurred at 0028:C02A353A in VXD
VWIN32(05) + 00002062. The current application will be terminated.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So I hit the ENTER key once more and the BSoD changed again to this:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A fatal exception error OD has occurred at 00288:C000B28C in VXD
VMM(01) + 0000A28C. The current application will be terminated.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
At this point the computer no longer seemed to respond at all to any input, so I manually restarted the computer.
<b>Regarding Test/Plan B and Test/Plan C</b>
I'll get right on that, I'll take notes and let you know how that went for me.
<b>Regarding emailing MonsieurEvil config.cfg files</b>
Will Action Half-Life v5.6 be satisfactory? I'm not sure if my CS counts, because it is the retail version.
<b>Regarding SB Live driver versions</b>
I have to admit, in fact just before this last BSoD experience, my drivers may have changed since what I posted originally, because I hunted down the latest at the www.soundblaster.com and just installed those, being very careful to make sure I acquired the right ones and to the best of my knowledge I did. Here is what I see when I run the dxdiag command from Start>Run and view the Sound tab:
SB Live! Wave Device
Driver>
Name: emu10k1f.sys
Version: 5.12.0001.3227 (English)
[edit]I just looked at my original post, and by that it looks no different than what I just updated it with. Am I determining the driver's legitimacy properly?[/edit]
<b>Regarding NS Crashes in general</b>
The reason I keep asking if this happens to anyone else, because if it doesn't, that rules out that it may have anything to do with something we can fix and narrows it down to hardware failure (they sold me a lemon) or my ineptitude at finding the proper drivers for my hardware. So far, with lack of other people coming forth with similar problems with regards to NS, then that narrows it down to the last two causes, right?
The initial rhyme to the BSOD's seems to be slipping away, as I'm seeing crashes in a bunch of different subsystems. Do you ordinarily get many BSOD's (more than 1) during the course of a day when not playing games?
The CS retail config.cfg will be just fine, especially if you play it frequently. I'm looking to see differences in the hardware and driver settings basically, and if CS rarely/never crashes on you, this is the spot for us to shop. If necessary later (not yet), I may ask you to play CS for at least an hour and see if the same behavior occurs.
If that's what soundblaster.com is saying, we'll go with that driver for now. If you were running something NT-based like Win2000 or XP I'd ask for some extra info, but 98 will have a harder time giving it to us easily. We may come back to that.
We've really only had a handful of users (always Win98/ME) who had somewhat similar problems. Usually they updated drivers or made the suggested eax and a3d changes and were all set. This one is becoming more puzzling and, unfortunately for you, unique. Can you tell me more about the history of your PC? What brand, when you bought it, any upgrades you recently made? Did NS ever work fine for you for a long stretch before it started getting unstable, or has it always been this wacky?
Okay, I made a backup of config.cfg, opened it up with notepad, edited as MonsieurEvil suggested it for Plan B in his post, saved as the existing file - double clicking on it and it would ask me if I wanted to replace it. Next up I played Natural Selection on redphive from the time of the last post till now (which I really enjoyed despite the sounds <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo--> ), which is 4:20 PM PST by my watch, which is when it crashed to desktop, I closed down GameSpy Arcade and it poped up an error message for that in a window, so I closed that window and restarted the computer.
The quality of the sound coming out of my headphones could be best described by myself as "snap crackle pop", like a radio station that isn't coming in clearly, a sort of static quality but not quite full on static. This was very apparent when someone would try to use their microphone and talk.
Later I will replace the modified config.cfg with the backup and do the Test/Plan C, but right now I have to go make supper and what not.
<b>Regarding the BSoDs happening other than when I am playing NS</b>
I almost which it was, but no. If it was, I would definitely narrow it down to a hardware lemon, and get the guys I bought the computer from to fix it. The last time I called them up and described this sort of stuff to them, they waved it off as software related and told me about msconfig so I could utilize more of my computers resources while playing games (have less essential programs not running in the background, like BearShare and other stuff that try to always be running in the windows "background"). I did say that the BSoD that I had first posted was not as common as the just crashing to desktop scenario, if that makes a difference.
<b>Regarding which config.cfg files I will send you</b>
I'm going to go with the Action Half-Life one since I play that FAR more often than Counter-Strike, and rarely get a crash from that since learning of msconfig.
<b>Regarding the past use of my computer and Natural Selection</b>
When I started playing NS, server version 1.03 was the norm and version 1.04 came out not too much longer. That was in somewhere around the beginning of January, if I remember correctly. Ever since I started playing its been very unstable, but the dynamic gameplay kept me coming back. At first I thought maybe it was my mouse drivers, then my video drivers, then my sound card drivers. I first looked at everything there was on problems similar to mine and tried all the suggested fixes in the webbed thread Possible Crash Fix in this forum.
As far as my computer goes, I bought it in September 2001, my first year in college when I was trying to see if I had the stuff for 4 years of Computer Science. Computer Science basics were easy and adavanced classes were hell. Oh well. So, at first it seemed the mouse would never work properly in 3D games, eventually it would stop accepting any input from it. I solved this by getting the latest drivers for it from Logitech. It worked fine until in August 2002 it started acting funny, then basicly went on the complete fritz and had to go into the shop in October and stayed there for a month. They replaced almost all the parts, and then it worked fine. Then, around December, the computer started having trouble reading the harddrive upon bootup and the registry has been reset several times since. I took this into the shop again right at the start of the newyear for them to find the problem, and they said they could find nothing wrong with the hardware and said it was most likely a loose connection between the motherboard and harddrive. Since then, its worked fine other than this and UT2003 sometimes crashing for my girlfriend, which apparently are known issues with their software and they just need to patch it again <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--> . As far as what brand and what not, I would have to refer you back to the first post in this thread, as those are the same hardware specs I have had since I bought the computer, though when I suggested that I wanted to upgrade the GPU from the GeForce2 to a GeForce3 or GeForce4 or an ATI, the technician at the shop (Discovery Computers) said that the motherboard was incompatible with any upgrades and I would need a new motherboard to upgrade which means practicly everything else would too. Oy, I expressly made the request that the computer they build for me be upgradable, ****. Oh well, next time I'll spend another $500 and get the Pentium rig rather than the Athlon rig, which is kinda curious since most gamers reviews said an Athlon rig with Windows 98 SE was stable compared to Pentium or WinMe which were the thing in September 2001, I think WinXP had just come out then and was getting bad reviews from what I remember. Argh, I'm rambling, I should probably go and mutter angrily to myself now.
Well, hope this helps shed some light on the matter.
Okay, this one sounded the best so far, no noticable changes to the sounds when playing Natural Selection. And I played for about an hour on redphive #1 server before I had a crash to desktop with no error messages. Then I restarted the computer from Start>Shutdown just fine. Well, I'm off to go watch Smallville, later folks.
I played Natural Selection for a bunch, experiencing several crashes to desktop, of which some would change the colors of the desktop to a shade lighter, all had no error messages attached, and with all restarting the computer through Start>Shutdown worked just fine. Then this BSoD decided I was having it too easy or hard, however you take not getting error messages <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--> :
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An exception OE has occurred at 0028:C031CA8 in VxD ---. This was called from C028:C02DD534 in VxD ---. It may be possible to continue normally.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So I hit the ENTER key and the screen changed to all black except a dotted blue line along the top. Each dot was iregular in shape because it was made up of smaller blue rectangles, evident by the tiny spaces between them. I sorta looked like blue - - - across the top of a otherwise completely black screen. So, I hit the ESC key, just to see what might happen and this BSoD showed up since all the 1s and 0s seemed to be invited <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An exception OE has occurred at 0028:C031CA8 in VxD ---. This was called from C028:C005A243 in VxD ---. It may be possible to continue normally.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, I hit the ENTER key one more time and an almost identical black screen with a blue dotted line across the top. The variation seemed to be in the irregularily shaped blue dots, that were made up of smaller blue rectangles. So, I hit the ESC key one more time and the computer must've just said to itself "screw it" because it restarted right then and there.
Hope that helps some. I'd almost think I'm hosting a lil'party of NS problems on my computer, where as others just get a one or two to come and visit every once in a while <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--> . Well, I think I'll head off to bed soon, g'night digital world.
System specs:
AMD Athlon 1.2GHz
256 MB SDRAM
DirectX v8.1
Windows ME
NVIDIA GeForce2 MX100/200 (32 MB) (Driver Version 4.13.01.1290)
VIA PCI Audio Controller (Driver Version 4.05.1111)
I have previously had poblems with my sound card's MIDI device (always crashing a few seconds after joining a Half-Life internet game), so I disabled it.
I also sometimes get another error when playing NS online: NS crashes to desktop with an error message that says <i>something</i> like:
hl.exe has caused an error in ddhelp.exe
hl.exe will now terminate
After that error I have to restart my computer before I can play NS (or any other game) again.
CW, I compared the differences between your two files, and except for the NS vs. AHL-specific commands, they are nearly identical. Here's what you can do though to match them up in your NS config.cfg though:
(note that you should only set one of these values at a time and then test, or you will not know what fixed it)
cl_musicenabled "0"
cl_musicvolume "0"
cl_himodels "1"
cl_highdetail "0"
+jlook (remove this or place a ; in front of it)
These are real stretches, but let's just eliminate the possibilities. Your audio and other config settings seem to match up with AHL. Do you run both games at the same video resolution and with the same driver?
Do you run both games at the same video resolution and with the same driver? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Hehe, its Win98 SE, there's such a big difference <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
I check from the menu of each game, and yes I do. 600x800 Direct3D
Okay, now I'm off to try the cl_musicenabled "0" test first, mind you, I still haven't changed my config.cfg from the last Plan/Test C. Do you want me to go back to the original (s_a3d "0.000000"and do the tests or keep it with s_a3d "1"? I'll wait for your response before starting the next batch of tests.
Are you capable of running in opengl with the 3dfx minidriver? Or are you using D3D by choice?
It covers the same sort of problems you are having.
Are you capable of running in opengl with the 3dfx minidriver? Or are you using D3D by choice? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm not sure how you got the impression it improved stability, as it has still been crashing, but the only difference it had from Plan/Test A and B was that there was no noticable change in sound quality.
I do believe I did try the OpenGL, and it seemed to work ok, but I did notice the game seemed to lag more often, so by choice I went with the D3D, because to the best of my knowledge that is supported by DirectX and the GeForce2 GTS/GeForce2 Pro cards.
It covers the same sort of problems you are having. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes, and I tried out nearly all of the suggested fixes before starting this thread, as I didn't want to be redundant, or spam the forums with something I could've just read elsewhere.
Okay, well, I'm off to try Plan/Test D where s_a3d is set to value "1" and cl_musicenabled is set to value "0" in the config.cfg file in the ns folder. Later folks, I'll let you know how it goes.