My occasional crashes are really starting to bug me. I'm just curious to know if anyone else has this problem, and if anyone can speculate on a possible cause or even a solution. I would also be curious to know what it looks like from the outside when I crash--do you guys get a "R. Kurtz Dmitriyev is losing connection" warning? Is my body killable?
The symptoms:
(1) The game just freezes in the middle of the action. No movement of any kind on the screen.
(2) No yellow or red box is visible in the bottom right, and there's no error message or warning, as usually happens with connection problems. The whole computer is completely stuck.
(3) The sound stutters for both the game and Teamspeak. (the same short clip of sound is repeated over and over again).
(4) It remains frozen for an indeterminate amount of time (anywhere from around 30 seconds to 5 minutes
(5) The computer restarts and seems to function normally. Of course, I can't get back in the game. :'(
Additional info:
(a) The first two times, after restarting, Windows XP said that my disks needed to be "checked for consistency," but not this last time.
(b) I suspected a virtual memory problem after the second crash, because I looked and only 500MB were left on my main hard disk! (It was an old, small hard drive and also was partitioned between several OS). However, I had 1.5GB available for this last game. My RAM is 1GB.
© This has never happened with single player OFP.
(d) It's always been after at least an hour of play, but I'm not sure if that's significant or just dumb luck.
(e) Only programs running are Flashpoint, Teamspeak, firewall, antivirus, and other small system programs. I'm not uploading or downloading anything, and neither was anyone else on my house's router.
(f) System specs are:
2.7 Ghz Dual Core Processor AMD Athlon X2
1 GB DDR2 RAM
GeForce 6150 video card
Windows XP
AT&T DSL internet
Hey, I is po' foke. ;D
I would suspect a driver problem, probably graphic card driver. As far as I have understood there is a problem with the latest driver from nVidia, at least in ArmA2.
There can also be related to low disk space, Windows don't like working on disks over 2/3 full, no matter disk size... Set your swap-file (virtual memory) to fixed size, don't let windows try to manage it. The size should be around 1,5 times your ram amount.
check your heat sinks, problems could be caused by overheating, i had similar problem was sorted by buying some thermal compound putting it on the CPU then putting the heatsinks back
Hi, Koortz!
I'm poor, too! Fortunately, we don't have to be rich to have great experiences with this game, with these guys.
I don't remember getting a disconnection message the last time I played with you. If I'm remembering correctly, though, it's happened a few times earlier, when you were first starting to play with us. I believe your body has been killable; I don't think you've been killed (FF) in that state, though.
Here are a few things I can think of that I'm pretty sure can help.
First, the basics, involving letting automatic updates run, regularly. Given that you have multiple OSs installed, I guess you already know this.
Second, uninstall any malware protection that doesn't come from MS, including firewall (if that's what you have running). I'd run the built-in Windows firewall and
MS Security Essentials for anti-malware. MS SE is free and will not hit your system resources like other products (I've run through a bunch of the free anti-malware programs available over the years - AVG, ZoneAlarm, Spybot, etc. . . - and settled on MS's OneCare, same engine as MS SE, I couldn't be happier).
Third, regarding what OL said, keep the page file a static size. If you have another hard drive, put it there, instead of only keeping it in a different partition. OFP would thrash my hard drive constantly before I put the page file in its own partition in a second hard drive (static size). Aside from occasional CTDs, things run smoothly for me, now. cf. this article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314482.
Fourth, hopefully this is not an issue, but it could be the case your power supply might be failing. I had system instability due to a faulty PS (I could smell some electrical burning and checked there - replaced PS and things went to stable).
Fifth, check you graphic card fan and see if it's spinning. I get freezes on an older computer when running opengl games (Linux box) - the vid. card fan sometimes gets stuck.
Good luck, man!
For me it is a problem with your graphic card for sure.
But it shouldn't be case of drivers but probably trouble with too high temperature of chipset.
If temperature is getting too hot u will have a results like u discribed - scratching, stopped, lowest FPS and freezing graphic during game and at last restart of system.
So i recommend u to check your cooler (fan) on GFX card - maybe it is broken or u need larger/ more effective one - and to monitoring temperature of graphic card by some software (this way u can see if temperature is growing up to point of restart).
Getting too hot on your GFX card could be also result of broken RAM in a GFX card.
BTW u didn't write how many RAM in your graphic card u have.
Before checking it all u can try to play ofp with lowest details and with open r computer case  ;D
but it should really helps.
LOL thanks for the help guys. (though if anyone else wants to share their opinion, please do!)
Lowest terrain detail would be a good idea. I can hardly tell the difference, anyway. For most islands, it's basically different shades of vomit color.
And my video card RAM is 256MB. If it's a graphics card problem, I'm still puzzled as to why it's never happened with singleplayer OFP, but what do I know.
Now the funny thing is that I haven't had actual connection problems (yellow and red boxes, massive stuttering) for a while. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, I guess. :
(11-24-2009, 02:42 PM)RKDmitriyev link Wrote: [ -> ]Lowest terrain detail would be a good idea. I can hardly tell the difference, anyway. For most islands, it's basically different shades of vomit color.
Yes u are right but this is only half-measure for time when u fix your GFX card. Don't treat this as main solution :
You can't and i think u shouldn't even continue to play on this card untill u find reason of those problems. In other way u can have more problems only... and you can start to earn money for new GFX card also ;D
(11-24-2009, 02:42 PM)RKDmitriyev link Wrote: [ -> ]And my video card RAM is 256MB.
It's enough to play WGL/FDF multiplayer and if this RAM works good u shouldn't have this problem - but if this RAM is out of action u can have some problems like u discribe - OFP/ARMA games like to have large as possible RAM bufor on GFX card which manages the depth coordinates in 3D graphics, textures etc. So just check it! test it! is it run good or not, any memory modules are pimped up?
(11-24-2009, 02:42 PM)RKDmitriyev link Wrote: [ -> ]If it's a graphics card problem, I'm still puzzled as to why it's never happened with singleplayer OFP, but what do I know.
Cause in SP you don't load to your GFX so many things like in MP - it's normal situation - in whole games i think - not only in OFP - u can ask ppl in ARMA2 how big this diffrence between SP vs MP can be... some ppl can handle only SP game there on normal settings and play on lowest in Mulitplayer or even they can't play Multi at all ;D
Same situation is in other games for egzample in WiCÂ
I can put this game with highest settings in SP but it is impossible in MP of normal playing so to play MP i need to low a bit those settings :-\
but if you want to be 100% sure of it - that is possible also in SP - try to play some bigger SP mission on FFUR2007 mod - high textured unit - and try for example run across nogova's/Trinnity's forrest.
But after this don't blame me for burnt your video card or smthÂ
Well I didn't crash at all in today's game. Perhaps activating another fan in the computer case helped. (we had de-activated it a long time ago because it was too loud). I'll still look into some of the other things people suggested. Thanks again guys. 8)
Bah, I must have jinxed myself. Now it's crashed in single-player OFP. This time, I actually got an error message saying that my graphics driver had ceased to function properly. I can't be sure but I strongly suspect that this is the same problem as with my multiplayer crashes.
If I have broken video card RAM, is there a way that I can tell for sure?
That 6150 looks like it's integrated into your motherboard. In your BIOS, how much RAM have you allocated to it? If everything else with your computer runs fine, I don't think your RAM is failing.
(11-26-2009, 05:52 PM)mikka link Wrote: [ -> ]You can easy test it by 3DMark05 1.2.0
http://www.programosy.pl/program,3dmark-05.html
or by Video Memory Stress Test 1.7
http://www.eprogramy.net/eprogramy/program/4658
U can also  try to do it opticaly if u haven't got raidators on RAM  ;D
if they are burnt modules can be pumped up a little Â
I tried the second program, ran the "small" test set, and it claimed to find 187,768,832 errors. :o I'm not quite sure what that means. I had to disable the error log because it would never finish otherwise, but the parts that were logged all looked like this:
Error at [01C6DD5A]: must be 00FF, but found 0000 (bits: 0000000011111111)
or
Error at [01185920]: must be 00FF00FF, but found 00000000 (bits: 00000000111111110000000011111111)
Et cetera. I don't quite know what that all means. I'm a little suspicious that the card works at all if it allegedly had so many errors. Maybe I'll try running another test program.
BTW, despite having been able to play for 2 hours on MP on Wednesday, it crashed twice in singleplayer yesterday, and once while I was looking at the mission editor. Either something is very wrong with OFP or the graphics card really is biting the dust. (Or could it be that some other part of the hardware is malfunctioning?)
Oh, also, I've been using the NVidia control panel monitor to check the temperature of the card, and with this new fan, it hasn't gone up much further than 55*C. It's still crashing, though.
I actually think it could be your RAM, now, not your card - you've jogged my memory: I had major stability issues w/ some supposedly good, high performance RAM I bought off of Newegg a few years back (Windows would restart randomly, memtest returned tons of errors, . . .). I replaced those sticks with some standard, run-of-the-mill Buffalo RAM (cheaper than the stuff that gave me problems) and have had a steady system since then.
Based on this Wikipedia article,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_6_S...150_series, I think the stability issue might be with your RAM, b/c your "card" shares RAM with your system.
Good point Anguis, thanks for the heads up.
Well, it looks like no matter what, some new hardware is in order. If I get new RAM I should probably get a new harddrive while I'm at it, to make room for moar virtual memory.
It feels like I should know this, but--when you get disconnected in OFP, what happens to your character in-game? Does an AI take over? From what I remember, your character just sort of jogs in place and won't die if he gets shot, but I don't think that was supposed to happen. (That's what happened to you and Overlord in that one Pilot Down mission)
Yes it could be RAM as well but broken RAM will give u this kind of problems in many others programs too (not only in OFP) including even WORLD!
At last u won't be able to start your system even with this broken RAM.
I'm still thinking about your video card as oart from where this problems are comming out. Now with bigger fan your temperature is fine but who knows what level of temperature it had before... but usually RAM on Video card is out of action because of too high voltage.
Have u ever overclocked your Video card? or seen some strange sighns, textures in your games?