Game Crashes and flashing screens

[DRG]

There have been a number of reports of crashes and brief instances of "flashing" on the screen and now one where some screens appear as almost a negative image. It's already getting difficult to find all the comments about this as more and more posts come into the forum so I'm starting a new one and we'll pick up from here

QUESTIONS

For those of you that have had cases of the game crashing at some point have you been running in both Windowed and Full screen mode when this happened or only Full screen?

Has anyone who has seen the screen " flash" briefly ever seen this in windowed mode

We ARE trying to fix this genetlemen but we have to find the problem first. The more info we get the quicker this gets solved

[MarkSheppard]

Has anyone who has seen the screen " flash" briefly ever seen this in windowed mode



No. Only in Full Screen.


We ARE trying to fix this genetlemen but we have to find the problem first. The more info we get the quicker this gets solved



Don't worry too much guys; every game has these annoying
bugs which only show up when it's been released; Silent
Hunter 3 shipped with bugs that made the rain not show
up, for example.

[Vitez]

I have occasionally screen flashes only in Full Screen mode. But that is a minor problem because it doesn't affect the gameplay.
The major problem are crashes with soundFX turned on (as already described in the "Game crashes with XP" thread).
That happens in both full screen and windowed, DirectX and GDI, 640x480 and 800x600, mouse clicks on and off, win98 compatibility mode on and off. I even tried turning hardware acceleration and all audio codecs except the MP3 one off, but without positive result..

hope this could help

[MadSlob]

I have had the flashing screen syndrome today in full windows mode but more than that even when the game has been closed down i still get the screen flashing at times which doesn't seem to recurr after a reboot..Anyone else had this problem???Have attached sys info etc... best regards MD

[Mobhack]

MadSlob said:
I have had the flashing screen syndrome today in full windows mode but more than that even when the game has been closed down i still get the screen flashing at times which doesn't seem to recurr after a reboot..Anyone else had this problem???Have attached sys info etc... best regards MD



Your DirectShow filters have this section, that mine do not

WDM Streaming VBI Codecs:
NABTS/FEC VBI Codec,0x00200000,2,1,,5.03.0000.0900
CC Decoder,0x00200000,2,1,,5.03.0000.0900
WST Codec,0x00200000,1,1,,5.03.0000.0900

A quck google gives
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/directshow/htm/nabtsfecvbicodecfilter.asp
wher it states "The NABTS/FEC VBI codec decodes NABTS (North American Broadcast Teletext Specification) teletext from data in the vertical blanking interval (VBI). It also accepts hardware-decoded NABTS data. The codec delivers forward-error-corrected (FEC) SLIP packets."

So - this thing is a possibility. You may find that removing whatever application is updating your clock (??) may resolve this?.

After all - according to the blurb, it is intercepting the video refresh and you are getting periodic flashes on the screen?

Does this application do things to (say) a on-screen clock? - or some other graphical output? - in which case it may be writing directly to (or be affected by our) direct use of the hardware palette on the video card.

Teletext? - some sort of TV function on your card is enabled?

Cheers
Andy

[MarkSheppard]

Hmm it might be a bug with the latest NVIDIA drivers; I found
that video playback of any kind Windows Media PLayer, or
WinDVD were completely hosed and washed out until I disabled
DirectDraw....

[Stirling]

Here is a list of my video codecs (attachment).

[MadSlob]

Thanks for the reply...Dunno how you figured it all out...the problem is that i haven't a clue about these filters...I will roll back my nvidia drivers and see if this makes a difference..As i have said it doesn't affect gameplay nor my enjoyment of the game but we know what perfectionists you all are and so it was worth mentioning.... best regards MD http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[MarkSheppard]

I had a bunch of DirectShow filters installed on my computer,
so I decided to wipe my windows installation and start from
scratch; I'll try out WinMBT with this fresh install and let
you know if it's the DirectShow filters that are causing
the problems.

[MarkSheppard]

Direct Show filters might be the reason for the screen flashes...because I haven't had any flashes on screen since I wiped my HDD and reinstalled fresh after removing my useless
video capture card.

[DRG]

MarkSheppard said:
Direct Show filters might be the reason for the screen flashes...because I haven't had any flashes on screen since I wiped my HDD and reinstalled fresh after removing my useless
video capture card.



If anyone can duplicate this without having to wipe their windows installation and start from scratch please let me know. This sounds promising but with a full new installation of Windows it could be a combination of things

Don

[MarkSheppard]

It's not related to the direct show filters; I can still see the screen flashing. This is a very odd bug; it doesn't show up right away all the time, which is why I was misled earlier.

[The Black Captain]

Full screens both crashes and flashing screen until I shut off Sound Fx.

[DRG]

The Black Captain said:
Full screens both crashes and flashing screen until I shut off Sound Fx.




??????

Are you saying the occasional screen flash on full screen mode goes away for you when you shut off the Sound FX??

Don

[junk2drive]

I have had all sound off since day one.
I get a rare blip of brightness (not me, the screen) that I think is related to things that I am running in the background. JMHO.

[DRG]

junk2drive said:
I have had all sound off since day one.
I get a rare blip of brightness (not me, the screen) that I think is related to things that I am running in the background. JMHO.



OK, but what I'm trying to deterimine is if "Black Captain"s crashes AND flashes went away once he turned off the sound.



Don

[Vitez]

??????

Are you saying the occasional screen flash on full screen mode goes away for you when you shut off the Sound FX??

Don

[/quote]

Andy you were right about third party codecs...
Uninstalling the SLD codec-pack solved all my sound and instability problems! And the screen flashes don't show up any more.
I can't say which codec exactly produced the problem, just uninstalled the whole thing and now is everything extremely well. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[IvanPolkov]

I've experienced no problems so far.
Notice the "flash" between turns
when the turn goes
from the ai's back to my turn

[BigJim]

I do not get the flashing screen in full mode but the game does minimize by itself from time to time. I wonder it the flashes are related to that and on these flashing machines the game just doesn't get the minimize done but flashes in the attempt???

[The Black Captain]

the crashes went. The flashes are still with me periodically, when the program ends the AI movement; so it's not a huge issue for me.

[Stirling]

My screen flashing seems to have stopped since I deleted a very old version of MS Works I had installed to open some files from an old computer. It appears that it had an update function that was constantly running.

Probably not much help to others with this problem, though.

Still get the end turn flashes sometimes.

[Shadowcougar]

I get some white flashing form time to time. I also have the map go black for a second when the AI moves. the rest of the screen stays normal.

..full screen mode BTW

[DRG]

Shadowcougar said:
I also have the map go black for a second when the AI moves. the rest of the screen stays normal.

..full screen mode BTW



The screen going black between the AI and your turns for a brief moment is normal

Don

[Shadowcougar]

OK just doesn't happen all the time. didn't think it was a problem.

[DzrtFox]

I've had a problem with crashing in both Full and Windowed mode. It seems to happen less often in Windowed mode, but still happens. In Full mode, the crash seems to lock up my whole system but in Windowed mode I can escape out of it.

I am running Win98SE, 256MB of RAM, 64MB Geforce4 video (which I've tried rolling back the drivers on), using DirectX 9.0c.

Please let me know if you guys need any more information or come up with anything -- I'm dying to get into this game but it's just too frustrating having to reboot so often.

[DRG]

DzrtFox said:
I've had a problem with crashing in both Full and Windowed mode. It seems to happen less often in Windowed mode, but still happens. In Full mode, the crash seems to lock up my whole system but in Windowed mode I can escape out of it.

I am running Win98SE, 256MB of RAM, 64MB Geforce4 video (which I've tried rolling back the drivers on), using DirectX 9.0c.

Please let me know if you guys need any more information or come up with anything -- I'm dying to get into this game but it's just too frustrating having to reboot so often.




Press the START button then RUN then type DXdiag and check every tab for conflicts. If there are none turn off as many background programs as you can. The game requires a great deal from your CPU. If there are an abundance of programs running before you start up the game a sudden increase in requirements from the game during play can push you over and cause a crash. ( NOTE: There may be things running in the background that you don't even know about )

You didn't tell us what sound card you are using either. Try running the game with sound off in Preferences for awhile. If that solves the problem then that points in a different direction

Don

[DzrtFox]

OK I checked all tabs (and ran all tests) using DXDiag and no conflicts or problems were found. I had already checked background tasks and closed everything except for Explorer and Systray before running it.

I'm using an on-board sound chip, looking in my device manager it just says "Via AC '97 Audio Controller". All DirectSound tests run fine in DXDiag.

I will try running with sound off for a little while and see if it helps. I guess I should've clarified earlier that I am usually able to play a few turns before the freeze-up happens. It generally seems to happen after I've played 3 or 4 turns, but it has also happened 3 separate times when trying to play a single PBEM turn...

[DzrtFox]

I'm not 100% sure yet but it looks like turning sound off has fixed the problem. I even went back to full-screen mode (which seemed to freeze more frequently) and so far have made it about 20 turns into a battle with no problem. I will follow up if the problem reoccurs, but for now it appears the problem is sound-related. I know I have the latest driver for this chip, as one hasn't been released in quite awhile...

[DRG]

DzrtFox said:
I'm not 100% sure yet but it looks like turning sound off has fixed the problem. I even went back to full-screen mode (which seemed to freeze more frequently) and so far have made it about 20 turns into a battle with no problem. I will follow up if the problem reoccurs, but for now it appears the problem is sound-related. I know I have the latest driver for this chip, as one hasn't been released in quite awhile...



Play a few times with the sound off then save a game and turn the sound back on again. Remember if you do crash the autosave will catch the last full turn so you won't be losing your games completely. If you can establish that sound off = Good and sound on = Bad let us know. You may be one of the few who has a problem with the MP3 sound files. If that does indeed turn out to be the problem the patch ( which will be released in a couple of weeks ) has instructions on how to convert the MP3's in the game to WAV format. This may not sound like a great solution but a full set of WAV files in an equivalent sound quality would be an 80+ MB download so converting is quicker and easier for everyone all the way around

Don

[DzrtFox]

OK I'll let you know how it turns out...

Thanks for the help.

[DzrtFox]

OK I'm almost positive it's the sound now.

With SoundFX off I finished my last scenario and played the first several turns of another scenario with no problem. I turned SoundFX back on and the game froze up within two turns. I rebooted, turned SoundFX back off, loaded my Autosave and finished the rest of the scenario without problem.

[DRG]

While you were playing with sound ON did the sound FX appear to be playing normally up until the freeze up??

Don

[DRG]

Just before your game locks up with sound on did you notice if there was an intensive use of sound just before the crash ?? i.e. gun or tank battles where lots of things were happening at once and did the crashes occur during your turn or the AI's turn ( or both ...)???

Don

[DzrtFox]

Yes, sounds were working perfectly right up until the crash. I've noticed the crash happens on both my turns and the AI's. I don't think that there is anything really intense happening sound-wise when it happens, it seems like it will happen at some random point during the turn but it does seem to happen always like right when a vehicle starts moving. I will try to see if I can cause the error again and I'll try to notice what is going on when it happens...

[DRG]

DzrtFox said:
<snip>it seems like it will happen at some random point during the turn but it does seem to happen always like right when a vehicle starts moving. I will try to see if I can cause the error again and I'll try to notice what is going on when it happens...




If you can cause a repeatable error with a vehicle sound I will need the vehicle, the nation, the year. Then we'll see if anyone else that has had crashes like this can duplicate it

To test this correectly you need to save before moving then save each time you move. Then, after the crash go back and move that same one again. If it crashes three times in a row you've got a repeatable.
Once you establish that you have a repeatable crash try moving something else BEFORE moving the vehicle that cause the crash then try that vehicle again then let me know if that clears the problem or it continues on.

In the DOS version a bad sound file WOULD crash the game faster than you could say *crash*. However, all the old .MEL sounds and their code have been removed and neither Andy or I have had crashes like you describe but neither of us or our playtesters had integrated sound and as I recall someone else had this and solved it by buying a sound card. I'm hoping we can solve this some other way and we seem to have traced most of this to some sytems unable to handle multiple MP3. Other people have reported that converting to WAV has solved their problem but I'd like to follow up the theory that it may be one particular sound even if it's to eliminate that as a cuplrit

Don

[DzrtFox]

I will try that when I have time DRG, but I can tell you that most likely it isn't linked to one particular vehicle. The reason I'm guessing this is because I've had the crash playing as everyone from the Soviets in 1946 to the US in 2005 and a few other nations in between.

[DRG]

DzrtFox said:
I will try that when I have time DRG, but I can tell you that most likely it isn't linked to one particular vehicle. The reason I'm guessing this is because I've had the crash playing as everyone from the Soviets in 1946 to the US in 2005 and a few other nations in between.



Most ( if not all ) vehicle sounds are generic and apply to all nations equally

Don

[DzrtFox]

OK I'll test it out when I get a little free time and I'll let you know what I come up with.

[DRG]

OK, I'll have Andy check the thread. I'm going on vacation for 10 days starting tomorrow.

Don

[Flyboy]

New type of crash I haven't read about yet on this board:

-when in purchase screen for PBEM games, the game crashes everytime I click on 'previous' to navigate back and forth on the list of what I've purchased.

-doesn't happen when I click on 'first unit' or 'next', only 'previous'

It happened 4 times in a row yesterday.

Is this a known bug?

[Mobhack]

Flyboy said:
New type of crash I haven't read about yet on this board:

-when in purchase screen for PBEM games, the game crashes everytime I click on 'previous' to navigate back and forth on the list of what I've purchased.

-doesn't happen when I click on 'first unit' or 'next', only 'previous'

It happened 4 times in a row yesterday.

Is this a known bug?



Fixed as part of the forthcoming patch:



4) A problem in XP which could cause a crash (and very rarely in Windows 98) when deleting formations on purchasing when the formation spanned 2 pages was fixed. Now when a formation is deleted, the entire list is recalculated.




Cheers
Andy

[LanceRunolfsson]

I'm tired so maybe I missed above somthing but I cant get past turn one before it crashe. Always when I try to advance the turn full screen mode no sound. running 98se

[DRG]

LanceRunolfsson said:
I'm tired so maybe I missed above somthing but I cant get past turn one before it crashe. Always when I try to advance the turn full screen mode no sound. running 98se



Try typing DXdiag after pressing Start then Run and see if your DX is working correctly. How much memory do you have in your machine and what speed is it? So this happens only when you end your turn?

Don

[Mobhack]

LanceRunolfsson said:
I'm tired so maybe I missed above somthing but I cant get past turn one before it crashe. Always when I try to advance the turn full screen mode no sound. running 98se



You may well have a bad coded, or one of the cards that cannot play multiple MP3 sound files siimultaneously.

Turn all sound off:
1) on the Game Options programme Misc tab - set mouse click to off.
2) Open the game and choose PREFERENCES and in there set Sound FX and Battle FX both to OFF.

Exit game to ensure preferences saved, then re-enter and try a quick test game. If your problems went away then you have either a bad audio codec installed, or a sound card which cannot hack multiple MP3 streams (the latter tend to be, but are not always, budget integrated sound chips).

A bad codec is up to you to find by checking your installed codecs through the usual windows utilities. (The name of the codec may be in the crash report - XP gives you one of these, not sure about Se. The crash report may report about a bad .vxd file for example).

If your sound card and/or codec cannot handle multiple MP3 files, there are instructions elsewhere (and these will be included in the patch) how to convert the sounds to WAV format, and to update the sounds.ini file to point to WAV files. Try searching the forum for "goldwave" (the conversion programme) to find these posts.

Cheers
Andy

[LanceRunolfsson]

All DX works right except 3d acceleration 9 not supported by hard ware.

Killing all sound seems to cure problem thanks Guys

[Caesar4]

I had the screen flashing when I was in "full screen mode". This game will just not work in that mode. Now I've changed it over to "windowed" mode it starts up but when I try to move my units, the game crashes with an error message reading: Error Signature Appname winspmbt.exe AC3audio.ax...can anyone help as I would love to play this game?!

Caesar4

[DRG]

First try playing with all the sound controls in the game preferences set to OFF

Then try pressing START and RUN and entering DXDIAG and check that your Direct X is working correctly.

Then read through the sound threads in this forum . There are a couple that are just dedicated to sound.

The game **will** work in full screen mode, lot's of people run it that way, It just won't run on your machine without some adjustments. First we have to run through the basics. The fact you are getting an audio error message leads me to think it's sound related and if you're game runs fine with sound off we can procedd from there

Don

[desh44]

I posted this as a separate thread but this might link in to this also

I was using the game in windows mode today for the first time and when I went to shut down the game the x in the upper corner of the main screen was greyed out. I closed using the menu bar(right click mouse..get popup menu and close.) the next time I tried to play the game I got to the main screen but when i hit the play button i went back to desktop and nothing further happened. When i rebooted it worked fine. I tried using windows mode again to see if it was a one time thing and the same thing happened. I thought you might like to know of this possible bug.

Tom D
I tried this on 3 separate computers with the same result

[Mobhack]

desh44 said:
I posted this as a separate thread but this might link in to this also

I was using the game in windows mode today for the first time and when I went to shut down the game the x in the upper corner of the main screen was greyed out. I closed using the menu bar(right click mouse..get popup menu and close.) the next time I tried to play the game I got to the main screen but when i hit the play button i went back to desktop and nothing further happened. When i rebooted it worked fine. I tried using windows mode again to see if it was a one time thing and the same thing happened. I thought you might like to know of this possible bug.

Tom D
I tried this on 3 separate computers with the same result



Same answer, the EXIT button on the main game screen exits the game, whatever windows mode you are in.

(Please don't ask the same question multiple times and in different threads as that can cause confusion.)

Cheers
Andy

[desh44]

Thanks Andy for the quick reply. Sorry about the multiple posts....was a bit tired at the time http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/redface.gif

[JohnHale]

Thanks to the sound advice contained in the V2 patch, I am now able to run WIN:SPMBT with sound on - without the game freezing after 5 or 6 moves. Hurrah!

Still get the flashes back to desktop when starting-up, but that's no big deal.

Thank you, Mr Gailey and the Team!

[d64]

It seems now after patching to 2.0-cd I am having sound crashes again. I had these before but they were cured by converting the mp3 files to wav. I noticed that after the patch I had to replace the sound ini file again, but that did not help. I even moved all the mp3 files away to make sure the game is not playing them..

The crash is as follows, and it always occurs a few mins into the game, when I push a button, usually, or when some other sound is supposed to be played:

AppName: winspmbt.exe AppVer: 1.0.3.5 ModName: mmswitch.ax
ModVer: 0.9.9.0 Offset: 00001b30

[Stian]

It seems most of the problems relating to sound are caused by 'bad' or incompatible codecs installed, usually through a pack or a third-party player, with that codec taking over the playing of MP3 through DirectSound. This is probably also why playing WAVs instead works.

You could try unregistering this mmswitch.ax file by typing the following in Start Senu > Run:
regsvr32 /u mmswitch.ax

Also here's what a quick google on this came up with:
http://www.inmatrix.com/zplayer/faq/faq_entry0027.shtml
http://forums.designtechnica.com/archive/index.php/t-1399.html
http://forums.divx.com/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/931101651/m/622103981

I've been playing around with codecs and A/V splitter files lately so I know this can sometimes be a real pain to fix http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Hope this helps,
Stian

[d64]

Yes, it seems disabling or removing the file does stop the crashes. Too bad since I installed the software (Morgan stream switcher) for a reason. I haven't noticed it giving me problems in any other app or game.

[morpheusfilm]

My game only flashes in full screen mode but it is kind of a pulsating glitch like possibly a HZ problem? Also it doesn't pulse in the menu screens before the actual battlefield screen. I'm running XP on an older Sony Viao laptop using AC not battery. Any idea about the way to fix?

[morpheusfilm]

No haven't seen it- only full screen

[Mobhack]

morpheusfilm said:
My game only flashes in full screen mode but it is kind of a pulsating glitch like possibly a HZ problem? Also it doesn't pulse in the menu screens before the actual battlefield screen. I'm running XP on an older Sony Viao laptop using AC not battery. Any idea about the way to fix?



"using AC not battery" - does that mean that you do not get a problem when running on batteries then?. If so - possibly as a wild guess, something to do with power saving features, or some other lap-top specific power widget thingy?.

Cheers
Andy

[Stonefire]

Hi

I can't get winspmbt to run stable on my PC.

Have any one here had the same type of crash as I have?

The screen turns almost purple, and then it is divided into 4 sections all showing the game screen (still most purple).

(No I have not been drinking or eating any funny mushrooms)

Some times it just crashes ordinary with a black screen.

I guess it is a graphic issue (I have turned the sound completely off)

I run the game on a PC with Win ME with a RADEON 9550 card.

Regards

Stonefire

[DRG]

I'm running Win ME but not with that card although that card should work.

Here are two things to try first

1] Make sure you have the latest driver for your card

2] Click on START then RUN then type in dxdiag and press OK and see if there are problems with your machine using Direct X

Don

[Stonefire]

Hi Don Thank YOU :-))

Right on spot

I ran dxdiag and the screen froze in one of the tests.

It turned out that a new driver was released in September.
I got that.

And so far it seems that the game runs smoothly now.

Regards

Stonefire

[21sec]

I just got the CD version, and am having a problem. When I get to the main menu screen I can try and select anything and when I click on say editor nothing happens. I've waited a couple of minutes and still nothing happens. When I do the task master it has [not responding] next to WinSPMBT. This has happened in both windowed and full screen. Occasionally this does not happen, but 9 out of 10 times it does. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

BTW I'm running Windows 98, PIII 550mHz

[Mobhack]

21sec said:
I just got the CD version, and am having a problem. When I get to the main menu screen I can try and select anything and when I click on say editor nothing happens. I've waited a couple of minutes and still nothing happens. When I do the task master it has [not responding] next to WinSPMBT. This has happened in both windowed and full screen. Occasionally this does not happen, but 9 out of 10 times it does. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

BTW I'm running Windows 98, PIII 550mHz



I'll assume the download version game ran fine, sound and all?

[If you did not try out the download game first - then try running with all sound off, including the interface click (page 2 of game options). I'll assume you have DirectX installed, but even so - start->run and entering dxdiag as the program to run there to test your DirectX settings may help]

Then I would try deinstalling, then reinstalling the CD version.

If this still keeps happening then
1) Deinstall, and then run the windows scandisk utily to defragment the drive, it will also find any lost clusters. Reinstall. Retry.

2) Same again - but this time try a surface check on the drive for any bad disk clusters. That test can take overnight to run, and on modern drives it is rare to find bad clusters.

3)If that has not sorted the problem, I would suspect a bad CD - return to shrapnel for a replacement. [ You can skip straight to this test by trying the installlation on a different machine - a friend's say - and if it works there, your box is the problem, if it fails, then it is likely a bad CD ]


Cheers
Andy

[21sec]

The download version had the same problem, but not as frequently. I turned off mouse click and was able to load a scenerio, but it froze almost immediately. I have since turned the sound fx off, and have not had any problems. Time to break down and get a new system though http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Nerfix]

The game crashes so much it's practicaly unplayable...

It happens both on windowed and fullscreen mode and quite often in deployment mode, though I have seen the game irritatingly often crash mid-game.

[DRG]

Nerfix said:
The game crashes so much it's practicaly unplayable...

It happens both on windowed and fullscreen mode and quite often in deployment mode, though I have seen the game irritatingly often crash mid-game.



Read through all the posts in this thread and the "XP sound problems thread" and you should find the solution to your problem. The game is stable on 99% of the systems. You don't tell us what your OS is or your graphics card or if you are running it DirectX or GDI mode or even if you've tried any changes so we cannot help you beyond suggesting you read these threads to discover the solution. The first step would be press Start then Run then type DXDiag and see if there is a problem with Dx on your machine. Then check to see that you are using the most up to date driver for your graphics card. Those two suggestions have helped a lot of people get the game running

Don

[Grey_Wolf]

I had the game crash on my computer at home, but I swapped out the MP3's for WAV's and it's been rock solid ever since.

On another note, loaded the game onto my laptop and never had the game so much as flicker.

Cheers,
Wes

[Guderdian]

Downloaded WinSPMBT. Patched to 2.5. Managed to get it to work (XP). Can play scenarios without any problems. But when I want to go to the editor or play a battle the programm will crash to desktop. Before it crashes I very briefly can see the programm trying to build up a screen that is not the one it should be as shown in the game manual. (It includes a lever to select the type of battle instead of an arrow bar)

Anybody knows the problem and how to fix it?

Greetings

Guderdian

[Mobhack]

Guderdian said:
Downloaded WinSPMBT. Patched to 2.5. Managed to get it to work (XP). Can play scenarios without any problems. But when I want to go to the editor or play a battle the programm will crash to desktop. Before it crashes I very briefly can see the programm trying to build up a screen that is not the one it should be as shown in the game manual. (It includes a lever to select the type of battle instead of an arrow bar)

Anybody knows the problem and how to fix it?

Greetings

Guderdian



Never heard of that one, at all. There is no "lever" to select the battle type. (See the game manual, "scenario editor) link for the correct picture).

The only thing I can think of is that you have a corrupt download or that you have installed an old SHP file from some other SP-series game into yours?. Or that you have some disk file problems.
- try downloading the files once more
- but before that, run the scandisk utility on your hard drive to fix any lost clusters, etc and then try reinstalling from the zips you already have once it has fixed any disk errors.

What are your system specs?. What version of DirectX etc?.

Did you download using some sort of "download manager"?.
What file size (exact byte count) for the files? (I don't have the install packages on this machine, but Don does and can check these for correct size - wrong file size=a corrupted download, for sure).


Cheers
Andy

[Pepper]

I'll add my info to this thread...

I have 2 different hardware profiles set-up on my machine (running win xp sp2). The first is normal and it loads all the various services that run under Windows. The second profile is my "gaming" profile that turns off pretty much every unnecessary service (if you scroll down to the chart called "power user" here http://web.archive.org/web/20041128084144/www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm you will see which services I turn off).

When I play SPMBT under my gaming profile, it works like a charm, the only exception being an occasional blink that very infrequently sends me back to the desktop (but game is still running fine, must just hit the button again -- equivalent of alt-tabbing out).

However, if I play under my normal hardware profile, almost every time the game at some point flashes in a highly pixalated and weird color scheme. All smoke changes from the white/gray to colored pixels that look quite kaleidoscopic. Sometimes the entire screen changes to that state, sometimes it just remains the smoke, the text and the borders.

As noted above, I am using Win XP (Home) SP2. My vidcard is a Radeon X800 (AGP). My drivers and Direct X are all up to date and operate fine.

It appears quite strongly to me that the problem is one of these services that is running. While its not a problem for me (I simply reboot into my gaming profile), I would be willing to provide further information if you think it would help you troubleshoot the issue.

[Mobhack]

We already state in the manual to turn off unecessary programs and background tasks.

It may be useful though to figure out which common background tasks cause problems, if any.

A standard one that causes the game to go slow and jittery for me at least is Norton's sheduled weekly anti-virus scan. (the clue whn playing full screen is the hard disk starts chittering away like crazy http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif!. This anti-virus scan does NOT seem to realise that the end user is currently playing a full screen DirectX game (I have had it go off when playing e.g. the Sims2).

the other suspects I have is thewindows disk catalogue function (A worthless item one can turn off). This trolls your hard drive to make searching for items allegedly faster (though I have not noticed any speed decrease since I turned it off).
To turn off this catalogue function. Open explorer, find the drive and right click, under properties (General) is a check box for "Allow indexing service to ... for fast disk searching" - uncheck that, and you have better general performance, with only a slight (IMHO) slwdown in searching.

Xp tends to do these things in "idle" mode - and it seems to consider a full-screen DirectX game "idle mode" (it is blind to the process?), whereas 98 did not.

Cheers
Andy

[Yorick]

I've had the same problems as described in earlier posts, but the sound problem has been solved (deleted the mmswitch.ax).

The problem with the game going 'slow' might be solved by changing the delay time in the Misc options, at least it did for me!

Yorick
(New to this forum)

[RVPERTVS]

What kind of file is mmswitch.ax?

[Mobhack]

RVPERTVS said:
What kind of file is mmswitch.ax?



try a search of the forum on "mmswitch" - the main thread where this is mentioned is here post (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=wspmbt&Number=383675&F orum=f100,f171,f144,f145,f157,f147&Words=mmswitch& Searchpage=0&Limit=25&Main=361668&Search=true&wher e=bodysub&Name=&daterange=1&newerval=5&newertype=y &olderval=&oldertype=&bodyprev=#Post383675)

Cheers
Andy

[RVPERTVS]

Well, I´ve never experienced a single crash, though I have audio "hicups" now and then mostly during attacks, and sometimes the game seems like about to crash or freeze because of these, but it hasn´t yet. They appear about 1 time in every 6 or 7 attacks.

However I would like to fix these hicups but I don´t know a single thing about programing, codecs, drivers or whatever. Attached is my dxdiag print, I hope you Andy or someone could take a look at it and tell me if there´s something wrong or what can I do to improve my audio performance in order to fix the issue I´m talking about. I know I have the latest driver installed for my machine.

I would like to fix the issue without converting to WAV, because I know it must be a configuration issue only, because the game runs without this issue on my sisters, and I know my machine is better.

I tried turning off the mmswitch.ax thing but I got the "can´t find the module" window, meaning I don´t have that aplication.

Any help will be appreciated. Thanks in advance

[Mobhack]

"attacks" means what exactly - when your antivirus pops up a hacker warning?. When you shoot at something in the game?.

Hmmm (thinking cap on) does your sister's machine have Nero installed (it is mainly a CD burning package, but does all sorts of other things including audio and video playback now I think? - anyway there are loads of Nero items in that file that do not seem to me to be about simply CD-burning!!). If not - and you have the Nero installation CD to reinstall it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif! - maybe try uninstalling Nero and see what happens?

Myself - I would go the goldwave route, and convert to WAV as it is a Windows native format, even if it is larger in terms of disk space impact. MP3 on Windows seems to cause too much grief to bother, if one is using it for mult-voice sound streams, as several third party replacement CODECS (or some integrated or low end sound cards) seem to only handle single MP3 streams. Which is OK for watching a movie or playing a song, but not for games.

We issued WW2 with WAV format sound instead of MP3 because of this (and added 50 or so MB of bloat to a ~100 MB installer).

The WinSPMBT sound system will also handle any other windows standard sound format, so .wma, .mid etc should work fine if you have problems with WAV. But we have only had one report of problems with WAV - that person (WW2 user) solved it with conversion to .wma.

Cheers
Andy

[RVPERTVS]

Andy:

Attack means shooting at something or taking shots in the game. I have NOD32 virus protection, and I always disable it before playing.

Both laps (my sister and mine) have Nero installed and I don´t have the instalation CD. Is there any way to disable it just like I do with AV without unistalling? I just make sure it isn´t on the task manager, haven´t been able to find another way.

I didn´t know about ww2 sounds been relased in WAV format, I thought the extra size was because of the new scenarios, and now that you mention ww2 has been running smoothly.

[dita]

Playing WinSPMBT (the cd version) since it arrived. No crashes until today. Playing a email game, ended my turn and whilst watching the opponents artillery land (not fast artillery) get a windows error message "WinVFX8.dll" performed an illegal operaion! Send/not send to microsoft?

Unfortunately, I have no other info, I could attach my turn file to this post (Obviously, I`ll need to post the password for the file as well) I`ll happily do this is it helps.

[DRG]

I would suggest if this is the one and only time your computer has crashed while a game was in progress then perhaps it was something else running in combination with the game that caused a conflict which caused the crash. Computers are not bullet prove. Things happen. Once in awhile mine won't load all the background programs at start up and hangs up. It happens. There is nothing to debug unless this happens every single time you try to end your turn.

Don

[dita]

Thanks for the reply, thats what I was putting it down too, just an unfortunate series of events that led to the one off crash.

[Mobhack]

As it is WinVFX that crashed

a) It is an external library, that handles all the GFX. So I cannot debug or change it any. (I do have the source, but the main code is in Microsoft assembler, and the version of MASM is old, and seems no longer obtainable).

b) If it is WinVFX that is dying, that points to something to do with DirectX, or your video card etc. Possibly video RAM left locked by a previous game?

One point to mention with DirectX, is that it is often not a good idea to play game A, then attempt play game B in the same session without first rebooting your PC.

This is especialy true with any game that crashed - which I find a common occurence with Civilisation IV (or whatever the latest version is), it is crash city with ATI based cards it seems! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif. Even with a 128MB card, it crashes with a complaint about "insufficient video RAM". When it does so, it seems to have left all the video memory on the card locked, and so other games (or anything else wanting to use accelerated graphics) complain. Any save game will then load and usually play OK after a reboot of the PC, so I suspect a leak where parts of the VRAM (or off screen RAM used for video work ?) are being left locked, as this one appears towards the end of long sessions of play usually.

I also find that it is best to reboot the PC after a session of Sims2 as well, crash or no crash, if wanting to play another game.

Just as a matter of interest - had you done any graphics card intensive stuff or directX or video media (e.g. playing video will use DirectX or Directshow/play with e.g windows media Player thingy) in the same session (since reboot) before loading up that game that crashed?.

Any media players active in the background (Including say a streaming video web page)?. It is not the best of ideas to try any sort of directX game with a media player session (or web page with streaming stuff) in the background. They may well reserve VRAM even if "idle". So both applications will be "fighting" for the same resources most likely!. (and a streaming webpage will probably not be idle, even if minimised to the task bar). Possibly includes RSS feeds and so on.

Cheers
Andy

[astat]

ok i havent read all 6 pages, but i've tried the possible fix from the first posting of this thread:
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=361493&page=0&view=collap sed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1
...without success

like some other user(s) with sound problems, i too have an onboard soundcard (c-media).
the game plays allright without sound, but it will crash to desktop after a minute or so when sound is played. the 2.5 patch didnt help either..

[Mobhack]

then it is higly possible your sound card cannot play multiple MP3 sound streams.

We changed WW2 to use WAV format, because several low-spec cards seemed unable to handle multiple simultaneous MP3. Try downloading WW2, and see if the probem goes away. if so - you will need to convert the sound files to WAV, and convert the INI file as described elsewhere in here (do a forum search on goldwave).

Cheers
Andy

[dragon_blue]

well ppl i'll just say this in DirectX mode it flashes and goes negtive view. when i turn it to the GDI mode it works fine (on a side note i do got the lates DirectX.) just leting you know what works for me

[Mobhack]

Game guide, section "Tuning your Machine" , paragraph beginning "Unlike many full screen DirectX games, we allow you to ALT-TAB out to the desktop from Full Screen DirectX mode..." refers.

Cheers
Andy

[peter_hellman]

I have my winspmbt ver 2.51 crash during pbem. In scenario mode it works fine.
I have tried the most common "tricks" to get it to work, like turning sound and fx off, playing in windowed mode and changing the resolution, adjusting the mouse click etc.

The problem is, that I can start a turn normally, and then, usually when moving a unit, or targeting with a unit, is just crashes. I get this error message:
-----
error signature:

AppName: winspmbt.exe AppVer: 1.0.3.5 ModName: winvfx8.dll
ModVer: 0.0.0.0 Offset: 000089b4
-----
I'm using the same version as my opponent.

I'm using a Fujitsu Siemens 1510-13 (2 months old)laptop with an atiradeon 1100 graphics card.

I have been trying to solve this for a couple of weeks now, and I'm running out of ideas. I don't want to quit pbem:ing this game!!

Any ideas?

[DRG]

What operating system are you using ??

Have you turned of any screen savers , virus scanners etc etc that may be on your machine??

You report you are using version 2.51 which I assume is becasue of this PBEM that keeps failing. Have you tried playing after patching to 3.0 ??

Don

[peter_hellman]

I'm using WinXP. But thanks a lot, your advice solved the problem. I upgraded to 3.0 ver and it works like a dream. I'm so happy ;-)))