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Crashes and Freezes: Strange behaviour

S

Sulan

Codelubber
Storm Modder
1. Reproduceable problem on my PC: Started main quest, after the "French invasion to Oxbay"-video, it returns to world map and freezes. Only F1 works, but none of the load/save etc. buttons. Strangely this does NOT happen, if I use Swiftshader. However, if I use Swiftshader it crashes quite often when going to sea or fast-travelling to my ship. Any clues?

2. Browsing through the saved games in the load game screen takes ages. Selecting the next save-game will very, veeery slowly move the slider to the next save game (around 20 seconds until it is there). This does NOT happen with Swiftshader. However ... (see above)

What's wrong?

- running Windows 7 64-bit
- installed game to C:\Games\Strategy\POTC\
- Intel i7 CPU, 8 GB RAM, Nvidia GForce GTX 470
- running POTC in Windowed mode (for modding)
 
Eh? It freezes every time at the same place? Do you have logs enabled?

As I understand it, Swiftshader disables your video card and uses the motherboard Intel graphics. Unless you don't have Intel graphics..........

Your computer is better than mine, and mine breezes along just fine, so I'm going to say it is not a hardware problem but a software conflict. Lessee..........What patch are you running? Patch 6 has a rename.bat that needs to be run.

Could it be a bad download or install, or could another program be interfering with POTC? You might want to try IOBit Game Booster. It works like Enditall2 but better.
 
It has nothing to do with the patch level. I experience this behaviour ever since I am running that computer (didn't try stock POTC, though ...).

It's really quite odd. I have logs enabled, but there's nothing useful in there. The game just freezes (does not react to keyboard or mouse). Apparently it goes a lot better, if running the game full screen. But I have never seen any complaints from anyone else about windowed mode.
 
Ok, here are two more things you can try if you want. :8q


Thagarr suggested to someone else not long a go to install DX9. I tried it and POTC runs better plus the windows performance rating went up 0.2.

My most common ctd is caused by my Nvidia video card drivers. For years now every once in a while they will momentarily crash and then recover. In other programs there is a little stutter and then it is ok. POTC hangs for a while with the sound looping and then the screen goes black. In fullscreen mode the easiest way out is alt-F4. Long story short Nvidia told me to use the 186.18 drivers for my GTX275. They still crash, but rarely.
I'm currently trying the 280.26 drivers. They crash more often but give better framerate. Anyway, food for thought.
 
Nvidia video cards seem to interfere with this game from what I heard, I can tell you that an ATI radieon video card works fine with the game if you're willing to switch around video cards.
 
but if it was a problem with the nvidia, wouldn't I have this problem also if running fullscreen?

I only have these problems with windowed mode (for whatever reason???), in fullscreen everything is fine.

:modding
 
could still be the video card, but still, why would you run the game in windowed mode anyways?
 
Ok, I will start a new game in windowed mode to see what happens.


Windowed mode can be quite useful.
 
tommy61157 said:
could still be the video card, but still, why would you run the game in windowed mode anyways?
Click to expand...

modding, for example. Alt tab to the source, edit something, execute it in game. You can't do that in fullscreen (at least on my machine, I get a CTD once I try to go back to the game with Alt-Tab)
 
Well, I started a new game in windowed mode and the first thing I noticed is that it turns off vertical synch. When it was indoors it seems to run a little slow. Outdoors seemed ok. When I sailed from port the movie played and there was no ctd. Sorry.
 
I run in windowed mode also:

[from engine.ini]
Fullscreen = 0
screen_x = 1920
screen_y = 1200

I use DirextX 9.0c( i think the latest/last version of DX 9?) as i mostly play older games and this gives the best performance i find in my games, and as i have an older Nvidia 9600GT card, and since owning a 7600GT, I learn't that using the newest nvidia drivers is not always the best idea, you have to select them based on your card(when it came out etc) and which are the most stable, best performing for that card.

Currently i run 196.21 drivers for that card, but i could have stayed on 191.07 as that is considered the most stable for my card. But yeah, Nvidia's drivers have been poor and getting worse over the last 5 years or so(they had some realy big mess ups around cooling fans being turned OFF on the 8600's iirc etc!), so i never as a rule of thumb use the latest - they are just too untested to risk imho. Aim for the ones that came out around the time of your cards release, and go a few releases down the line, google for what dirvers work best with your card etc. You can find the best choice doing that normally.

I do get a bit of stutter in the item menu screen sometimes(when scrolling left/right with the scroll arrows), and sometimes in a busy town(like Port Royale) i get a little stutter also, but otherwise the game runs fine, even at my resoultion in windowed mode.

Why you get a reproducable crash after the 'Port Oxbay' video when in windowed mode i've no idea, have you tried direct sailing from Speightstown to La Granada(a good first stop) which also will trigger that movie as you get the 'land ho!' message? See if you get the crash doing that? And if you don't love direct sailing in real time you can always use the time increase buttons(R and G).
 
yeah, true, I use cheats to test things normally, but it probably is easier to run the console...
 
Well thanks everyone for your suggestions. I tried updating my Nvidia drivers etc. but no luck.

I have Directx 9 installed, but how can I make sure that the corrct Directx version is used?

The even stranger thing is the load game menu, where browsing the save game files takes ages in windowed mode, while it runs pretty fast in fullscreen mode ...

As the topic says: Strange behaviour :shrug
 
Sulan said:
Well thanks everyone for your suggestions. I tried updating my Nvidia drivers etc. but no luck.

I have Directx 9 installed, but how can I make sure that the corrct Directx version is used?

The even stranger thing is the load game menu, where browsing the save game files takes ages in windowed mode, while it runs pretty fast in fullscreen mode ...

As the topic says: Strange behaviour :shrug
Click to expand...

Here's a bunch of threads to help with the situ, it seems a few of them mention older games having issues on these newer Nvidia cards and Drivers. But maybe you can look around these and find what might be the best option to solve your issue?

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=166243

http://www.overclock.net/nvidia-drivers-overclocking-software/990235-best-gtx-470-drivers.html

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=328865&highlight=driver

http://www.sb-innovation.de/f70/gtx-470-problem-freeze-bsod-error-nvidia-driver-21564/

I included that last link as it mentions what you should do when you update drivers(use Drivesweeper to clean out the old ones first etc)to avoid an issues. More info on that here:

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=306922

To find out version of DirectX you are running you need to go into the windows>search function(varies on windows version, but normally you go into the menu system('Start'>Run or the windows logo in bottom left of taskbar) and type Dxdiag; this will find the program that when run will tell you all the info on your DirectX installation etc.

The other thing to try is to go into your video card settings(NVIDIA control panel) by right clicking on the desktop and looking for it there(either as it's own link or within Properties>Settings>Advanced>GeForce tab).

Good luck and tell us how you get on, if you can sort it out(the CTD should be possible to fix, it shouldn't be doing that!).
 
I just tried dxdiag and it says I'm using DX11. I know I installed DX9 separately and it does improve performance.

Did you know that you can create a separate profile for POTC? It runs as CossacksII for some reason, but it works. Here are my current settings. I'm still experimenting but you should be able to run with max AA & AF and quality settings.

When changing drivers it is a good idea to do it in safe mode too. I use Driver Sweeper. Have you tried Rivatuner? It has more settings to tweak, plus it has one that keeps your video card running in 3d mode all the time. Some games aren't recognized properly and the card drops into 2d mode, which causes lots of problems.
 
Solved.

I tried out every little trigger today - and now I found the source of the problem. In Config.exe under "Sound" the checkbox "Safe mode" was enabled - disabling this one solved the problem.

Quite disturbing that there are checkboxes like those, which screw up the whole game.

Thanks anyway to everyone for their input.

Sulan
 
Runs and checks the three installs................and finds that checked in the installl that is having lots of glitches and ctds. That is the one that I put all of the new addons in as soon as they come out. :facepalm

Good detective work! Is Config.exe even needed anymore?
 
Hylie Pistoff said:
Runs and checks the three installs................and finds that checked in the installl that is having lots of glitches and ctds. That is the one that I put all of the new addons in as soon as they come out. :facepalm

Good detective work! Is Config.exe even needed anymore?
Click to expand...

Well, I use it to flip between FullScreen and Windowed Mode. I think many people will use it for such purpose as setting screen resolution as well - not everyone likes editing ini-files.

Maybe we should add this "check for safe-mode in config.exe" to the FAQ, if it causes problems for other people than myself as well?
 
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