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Author Topic: AaaaaAAAAAARRrrgGGGHhhhHH!!!!!!!  (Read 6644 times)

Switchblade

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« on: 02 Mar 2005, 12:31 »

I paid £30 for KOTOR 2 on Monday. I promptly installed it.

My PC is a very new machine. These are the specs:

I use a Pentium 4 processor with a speed of 3.4Ghz. The system has 1024Mb of Ram, 190Gb of free hard drive space. The video card is a 256Mb Radeon X300. I'm running DirectX 9c and Windows XP Home edition.

The game simply won't bloody WORK

everything checks out. EVERYTHING. My specs leave the game's requirements in the dust, I've had no trouble installing it, and the game even starts up properly. I can watch the opening screens, use the menu, configure the options, and start a new game. I can even create a character to my satisfaction, start the game, and watch the opening movie (complete with Star Wars music and scrolling yellow letters)

the moment the FMV ends, and the game is due to start - nothing. The screen goes black, the game freezes and stops responding, and I have to reboot my system, Because even if I C-A-D out of whatever mess is going on, the blue bar with the start button on it is no longer present on the screen.

I've done everything I can think of. I've defragged, uninstalled, reinstalled, swore at it, hit it (gently), and left it running for seven hours straight hoping it sorts itself out naturally. All to no avail. Anybody have any suggestions, or am I going to have to take it back to the shop?
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GNI

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« Reply #1 on: 02 Mar 2005, 12:35 »

ANy idea what sort of temperature your system operates at normally / under load / during crashing ?
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Switchblade

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« Reply #2 on: 02 Mar 2005, 13:08 »

No clue. How would I go about finding out?

Now you mention it, incidentally, the fan has been kicking up to high speed a lot during the last week or so, but I've checked, and the back's easily clear enough to let plenty of air in. Care to elaborate on what theory you may be formulating?
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Trinary

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« Reply #3 on: 02 Mar 2005, 15:06 »

Lots of weird spontaneous or intermittent problems can be traced back to heat.  Try turning off the system for a while, then opening up the case and pointing a room fan at its innards while trying to run the game again.  Might help to get a can of compressed air and blow out all the ducts, fans, power supply, etc...dust can be a thermal transfer killer.  If it works with the mega-ventilation going on, you can be sure it's a heat issue.

Also, are your video/sound/mobo chipset drivers all up to snuff?  Is it absolutely free of spyware and crap?  DirectX version (I'm assuming KOTOR2 is a DX game)?  Is there anything in the system event log that corresponds to these crashes?
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« Reply #4 on: 02 Mar 2005, 15:12 »

As Trinary says, a rig of those specs is gonna chuck out a fair bit of heat, as the fan whirring up suggests... too hot causes problems. If you are running with the supplied cooling, things may be getting a bit on the hot side.

Try running with the side off as a temporary measure, to see if that solves anything.

Some graphics card drivers let you check their temperature, as may some mobo chipset drivers. Apart from that, you might be able to check the CPU temp by rebooting and looking at the diagnostics either before POST or in the BIOS.

The only other thing i can think of that you havent mentioned is power supply? I assume with a rig of those specs that you have a fairly large wattage one, but that may also cause problems under load if its not up to the job.
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c1utch

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« Reply #5 on: 02 Mar 2005, 20:23 »

if its not the comp, its most likely kotor2.

Damn, did they take a shit in a box and ship it out when it was released on xbox

about 25% of xboxes couldn't run it.  consoles are the easiest not to have bugs for because they're ALL BLOODY THE SAME.

Frankly, I'm not suprised they didn't fix a damn thing for PC

My Xbox copy also black screened, and froze randomly.

Try it on a friends machine, if its still a no go, try another copy and return the one you have.

Go find a video card driver cleaner, then install the newest ones.  a format may do it, but thats not somthing thats fun to do.
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wraithzero

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« Reply #6 on: 03 Mar 2005, 00:56 »

Quote from: c1utch
if its not the comp, its most likely kotor2.

Damn, did they take a shit in a box and ship it out when it was released on xbox

about 25% of xboxes couldn't run it.  consoles are the easiest not to have bugs for because they're ALL BLOODY THE SAME.


Not true with the Xbox, different versions have different size hard drives, cd drives, and other componants as they get cheaper to make.

I haven't had a problem with the game on PC, it sounds like a graphics card issue to me, since it runs fine until it tries to show the actually game engine.

Check the readme to see if there are any known issues with your card (I'm running a GF 5900XT, and it goes fine), and see if you have the right drivers.

Also, like  c1utch says, try it on a different spec machine if you can.
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Jiperly

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« Reply #7 on: 03 Mar 2005, 10:53 »

I love Freelancer- Adore it- and it runs on my old baby pretty smoothy......except...

she freezes up for about 10 seconds everyone once in a while.

Something i freezes up and doesn't do it again for hours.

other times it freezes up over and over again for 20 minutes, accounting for about a minute of gameplay. My god that is annoying!

Multiplayer? Forget about it- basically, when this happens, i disappear in multiplayer games, then reappear- the game doesn't go on without me, because when it happens, the enemy ships i could be fighting just go away(this doesn't happen in single player, thank god)- so if i'm a trader and 4 other players are escorting me for a cut in my deep cargo vaults, and i freeze up, i literally disappear- so much escort. Ditto goes if i'm a fighter- doing kick ass? in ten seconds, i'll go from sending 10 Mollies running to alone in the void....

Of course, that doesn't stop me- it just makes me want to play FPSers for some disturbed and scary reason....
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will: wanton sex god

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« Reply #8 on: 03 Mar 2005, 11:39 »

sounds like videocard issues

has any friend tried to overclock your video card?  i found out one of my did randomly and i had to set it back, becuase it couldnt keep up witht the clock speed.
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Jiperly

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« Reply #9 on: 03 Mar 2005, 14:59 »

Naw.

I'm pretty sure i screw it up too- back in the day when XP came to town, i decided "hey- ME is screwing up loads- lets switch to XP halfway through the stream!

The result? It wouldn't let me deleted ME, and XP was installed overtop of it. So i lost about half my harddrive to a operating system i cannot get ahold of.

But then again, considering i screwed it up so badly that i almost didn't get XP to work, i refused to ever try it again, until this system is replaced and thus is...well....replacable....

Also, don't you have to install something for your Video Card? Cause i didn't.
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Switchblade

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« Reply #10 on: 08 Mar 2005, 13:01 »

Quote from: Trinary
Lots of weird spontaneous or intermittent problems can be traced back to heat.  Try turning off the system for a while, then opening up the case and pointing a room fan at its innards while trying to run the game again.  Might help to get a can of compressed air and blow out all the ducts, fans, power supply, etc...dust can be a thermal transfer killer.  If it works with the mega-ventilation going on, you can be sure it's a heat issue.

Also, are your video/sound/mobo chipset drivers all up to snuff?  Is it absolutely free of spyware and crap?  DirectX version (I'm assuming KOTOR2 is a DX game)?  Is there anything in the system event log that corresponds to these crashes?


DirectX Version 9c. It came with the game. I'm now reasonably certain that the problem was the game (which has now been uninstalled, and the memory it was taking up overwritten.) Unfortunately, I seem to have a lingering problem. Upon trying to boot the system up, I will, in a succesful boot, get the following:

Compaq logo screen with BIOS and system options access. Then  the blinking underscore prompt. Then the Windows XP loading screen, then my desktop.

The whole boot sequence takes about twenty or thirty seconds. The thing is that, more often than not, when I turn it, the system will only show screens one and two (the Compaq screen, and the blinking prompt) and then freeze on the prompt screen. All hard drive noise will cease, and I'll be left with just the underscore prompt until I turn the machine off and on again. normally, the same thing will happen again. The system will generally refuse to start at all until it's been theoretically running for five minutes or so, which suggests that the problem is heat-related, although why it would refuse to boot properly when cold is beyond me.

As far as drivers and that are concerned - the PC's less than three months old, and I've been making sure it stays updated. I've checked, and apparently everything's completely up-to-date.

I run McAfee security centre, which I have a good deal of faith in. as I type this, it just finished updating and scanning my hard drive, and came up negative on any hostile software.

As far as I can tell, the temp inside the case is nominal. The air flow in there could be better I guess, and I could probably do with installing a better fan and some round cables, but I see nothing particularly obstructive. The room it's in is quite cool (I have a window permanently open) and there's plenty of space around the back, and not too many cables.

The thing is that the problem began almost immediately after I came back from a holiday trip. The PC had been completely inactive for nine days in an unheated room. The first thing I did upon getting back was a full course of updates, a complete scan of the hard drive, and a complete defrag of same. Later this week I'm going to back everything up to DVD-RW, and then I'm going to format and run my recovery disk. If that fails, I'm going to take it in to the workshop at my local PC world. The warranty will cover everything.

Quote
sounds like videocard issues

has any friend tried to overclock your video card? i found out one of my did randomly and i had to set it back, becuase it couldnt keep up witht the clock speed


Actually, I'd be quite capable of overclocking it myself if I wanted. I squeezed an extra few months out of my old computer that way. I haven't done it to this one because A) I don't need to and B) it would invalidate my warranty, and I'd rather not pay to get the damn thing fixed.

I've checked, and my graphics card simply isn't the issue. as far as I can tell, there really shouldn't be anything going wrong at all. everything should be perfect. So I'm going with the "somebody shit in the case" theory. Shame it's too late to return it.... and my spending budget for the month is gone too. Oh well.
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