Is more RAM what I need?

[Samurai99]

Hi,

In my current single-player game, there are some really huge battles between myself and the United Floral. Around 300 dreads and baseships for me, around 200 dreads and 100 loaded carriers for them.

The battle (strategic mode) goes fine, but when it's over and I click close, an error message comes up and the game freezes.

At least I think it freezes. I never have the patience to just let it sit there and see if the end-turn process goes forward.

I've got 128 MB of RAM now.

Would adding RAM help?

[Fyron]

Can you upload the savegame file so that we can see if it is not a bug causing it to crash? The game should not be crashing because of RAM at the end of the battle.

Also, are you running the latest patch (1.84 or 1.49, depending on whether you have Gold or not)?

[ July 03, 2003, 19:09: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Samurai99]

Thanks very much for your offer of help.

I'm extremely curious.

What would you look for? How does one detect a bug in this game?

[ July 08, 2003, 03:47: Message edited by: Samurai99 ]

[Fyron]

Finding a bug requires observing behavior that is abnormal. It is also good if you can reproduce the behaviour. If we can see the savegame, we can see if it crashes on our comps or not. If not, then the problem is with your computer. But if so, then there could be a bug or a glitch or something.

[Q]

What error message do you get?

I had similar problems and got "access violation at ....". The error was in my case not reproducible and if I repeated the turn from the Last savegame it usually didn't occur again. Therefore I did not report it to MM.
I am pretty sure that RAM has nothing to do with it (I have 288MB on my computer, which seems quite enough for Win98).

[dogscoff]

Even if it doesn't fix that particular problem, more ram is always good.

[dumbluck]

I thought that more RAM was the cure for every computer problem! Isn't it?

[Master Belisarius]

Originally posted by Q:
What error message do you get?

I had similar problems and got "access violation at ....". The error was in my case not reproducible and if I repeated the turn from the Last savegame it usually didn't occur again. Therefore I did not report it to MM.
I am pretty sure that RAM has nothing to do with it (I have 288MB on my computer, which seems quite enough for Win98).<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I had a similar (probably the same) problem but testing the Lastest Aquilaeian Version.
Really I don't know what happened... but playing Aquilaeian vs Narn, I got this kind of message around the turn 350.
The frist time believed that was a Win**** problem... then restarted and runned the turn manually, but the program crashed again.
Then, I restarted a new game between the same races, and got the problem around the turn 300.
I changed the Aquilaeian to human control, with all the AI ministers on. Runned the turn, but the game doesn't crashed! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
Then, I sent the savegame and an image with the error to Aaron. I know he had the time to see the report, because he asked me what MOD I was using.
Finally, must say that running the Aquilaeian with the Pyrochette, sometimes I had the problem but sometimes not...
Hope Aaraon will have time to fix it.

[Fyron]

Originally posted by dumbluck:
I thought that more RAM was the cure for every computer problem! Isn't it?<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">If only it were that simple. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Q]

Originally posted by dumbluck:
I thought that more RAM was the cure for every computer problem! Isn't it?<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">It is like money in your life: it solves a lot of problems but not some of the most important ones!
(Just had my philosophical 5 minutes of the day http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif )

[Thermodyne]

In the days of Win95 and systems that came with 8 or 16 megs of ram, more ram fixed a lot of things. But it is not the cure-all that some would have you think. Adding ram will speed up a system that is paging a lot, but it will hardly ever fix a machine that is generating error Messages. With Win98, a clean install followed by an install of the new 9x Version of the installer program followed by installing the remaining drivers and software will fix most problems.

[Samurai99]

Dear Thermodyne,

I don't suppose you would want to post a complete step-by-step walkthrough of this process. Or send one to me by email. Or tell me where on the Net I could find one.

[Thermodyne]

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&Fam ilyID=F1B7A5B0-611B-45A7-A06D-CADFF33E64DA (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=F1B7A5B0-611B-45A7-A06D-CADFF33E64DA)

The installer can be found at the addy above.

Do a clean install with a format. Only install the devices that windows installs on its own. Install chip set drivers. Install windows installer. Install remaining drivers. Install apps.

If your drive is bigger than 6 gigs (I would hope so) Whack out a c: partition that is about 4 gigs and put windows there. Use the rest of the drive for files and apps.

[ July 07, 2003, 23:00: Message edited by: Thermodyne ]

[Samurai99]

Thank you Thermodyne for your post. I'm afraid this might be too daunting for me, which is unfortunate because I think my computer could use it.

I hate to trouble you with this request, but is there a Web site that would contain a precise and simple-to-follow guide?

TIA

[raynor]

Here is a URL that came up after a Google search for: install windows howto

I skimmed the first few pages of this one, and it seems pretty thorough.

How to install from scratch (http://www.pcnineoneone.com/howto/clean1.html)

Hope this helps.