Natural Selection Crashes At Random
Banky
Join Date: 2004-01-30 Member: 25759Members
Join Date: 2004-01-30 Member: 25759Members
<div class="IPBDescription">I tried everything I could think of...</div> Hi,
it has been for around 1 month now that I experience weird crashes while playing Natural Selection. Usually after half to one hour of normal gameplay but sometimes even just 20 seconds after a reboot, NS just crashes and leaves me with a Dr. Watson Report. I hear the sound looping when Dr. Watson pops up. Before this started to happen, NS just ran fine since 1.04. Weird thing is that DoD and other mods run just fine, only NS crashes. I own a copy of Counterstrike stand-alone.
I run Natural Selection on
AMD XP 1800+
Gigabyte 7VRXP 2.0 MB with VIA KT333 Chipset
512 MB DDR
2*80 GB Western Digital HDD in Raid 1 mode
Radeon 8500LE with 64 MB
Soundblaster Live Value
Windows 2000 pro SP4, kept up to date
Nothing is overclocked, bios settings are standard. I am connected to the internet by DSL via a linux router and a Realtek RTL8029 NIC. I have latest drivers installed for all components. NS runs in OpenGL mode at 1024*768, 16 bit.
I already tried the following things to solve my problem:
- formatted HD and reinstalled windows
- reinstalled NS
- reinstalled Steam
- disabled the sound card and used the onboard unit
- ran an 8 hour memory check
- checked if any fans are not working
- installed drivers from 2 months ago for the VIA chipset, the graphics card and the NIC
- changed to D3D
- changed to 800x600 resolution
- update the virus scanner and ran a complete virus scan
- ran a complete spybot s&d scan
- disabled the resident virus scanner
Of course, nothing helped.
I really dont know what else I could do...
it has been for around 1 month now that I experience weird crashes while playing Natural Selection. Usually after half to one hour of normal gameplay but sometimes even just 20 seconds after a reboot, NS just crashes and leaves me with a Dr. Watson Report. I hear the sound looping when Dr. Watson pops up. Before this started to happen, NS just ran fine since 1.04. Weird thing is that DoD and other mods run just fine, only NS crashes. I own a copy of Counterstrike stand-alone.
I run Natural Selection on
AMD XP 1800+
Gigabyte 7VRXP 2.0 MB with VIA KT333 Chipset
512 MB DDR
2*80 GB Western Digital HDD in Raid 1 mode
Radeon 8500LE with 64 MB
Soundblaster Live Value
Windows 2000 pro SP4, kept up to date
Nothing is overclocked, bios settings are standard. I am connected to the internet by DSL via a linux router and a Realtek RTL8029 NIC. I have latest drivers installed for all components. NS runs in OpenGL mode at 1024*768, 16 bit.
I already tried the following things to solve my problem:
- formatted HD and reinstalled windows
- reinstalled NS
- reinstalled Steam
- disabled the sound card and used the onboard unit
- ran an 8 hour memory check
- checked if any fans are not working
- installed drivers from 2 months ago for the VIA chipset, the graphics card and the NIC
- changed to D3D
- changed to 800x600 resolution
- update the virus scanner and ran a complete virus scan
- ran a complete spybot s&d scan
- disabled the resident virus scanner
Of course, nothing helped.
I really dont know what else I could do...
Comments
Have you run any programs to clean the registry? I use NSW 2003 which comes with registry cleanup and you would be amazed how many problems that it found. After that first run it only finds an occasional one.
If you haven't tried, here is link to a program that looked like it got good reviews, but there are other programs. CNET.com is a good place for d-loads.
<a href='http://download.com.com/3000-2094-10238575.html' target='_blank'>http://download.com.com/3000-2094-10238575.html</a>
One very big caution!!! Be careful very careful screwing around with registry. You can make a boat anchor quickly. Make sure you have a backup of registry.
Good luck. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Maybe it's over heating?
Just a suggestion...
My first guess is that it's an always changing steam + beta NS problem.
Last time I was always crashing on exit, then steam updates and now I'm always crashing in game instead.
I assume that once both products mature some together, these types of bugs/errors will be ironed out. VALVe's lack of communication doesn't help much either. Give it a year or two.
You have the RAM, shoot for 128mb of Heap maybe?
Also make sure you have the latest drivers for your sound/video...
Also, in past I've heard problems, not with NS in particular.. but with SB Live cards in general and gaming ... depending on driver versions, etc.
I don't know, I've never had a problem with NS except on the quit locking up ...
But now I do a stopsound quit...
I'm running an AMD 2500XP+ Barton w/ASUS A7N8X Deluxe + ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128 and at 1600x1200 full detail/sound and NS runs smoothly and perfectly under Windows 2000 w/SP4 up2date...
I'd try a larger heapsize first, but personally I only have half a gig of RAM myself and I never have to do anything special for CS, NS, etc...
Next, I'd look at sound drivers IMO, as it's locking and looping sound?
Maybe even disable your sound and give it a run?
CPU/Case Temperature was 44/40 °C at most... so thats really not much.
@JViz: could you please post your specs? That way we could see if we have some device in common that could be responsible for the trouble...
btw, i also experienced those in game crashes only after the crashes at the map end didn't occur anymore...
I am going to try that heapsize thingy too, at 64 and 128 megs, as well as disabling sound.
and for me the crashes isnt random.. i getting crashes everytime a new map is started.. and my sound isnt looping its only very noisy!
i have been contacting support from where i bought my comp and if i get it to work thanks to them ill be sure to tell you =)
-right click My Computer and select properties.
-Select Advanced
-select performance options
-click on advanced tab
-click "change" in virtual memory
In the page file section select custom and set both to 3x your RAM. Example: I have 376 RAM so both Initial and Max are set to 1128.
See if that helps.
Also, it happens that often that if all people crashed as much as I do, nobody would be playing NS anymore I think.
But I agree that I believe the problem to be within NS or rather a combination of NS and my computer, because I can run 3dmark and even DoD for hours and never experience any crash.
update: I disabled the sound card in the hardware menu. Still crashes.
Concerning my crash problem, I've given up. Even changing the graphics card and RAM didn't help. Seems that's it between me and NS until I get a new computer <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' /><!--endemo-->
<a href='http://hcmotorsports.com/6/ubb.x?m=50770717&a=tpc&cdra=Y&s=19760511&f=36270416' target='_blank'>http://hcmotorsports.com/6/ubb.x?m=5077071...0511&f=36270416</a>
so heres what i learned, <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo--> messing with your virtual memory can fix the issue but even so if its a leak then at any moment the game can chrash and u should hear a bleep or another sound. depending on your software u will in some way get a message "halflife has caused an error in halflife and halflife will now close" basically its some fault in the game, meaning certain players will chrash out frequently.
go to RUN, msconfig. ok and select advanced or any tab to being up a menu, in this u should see your virtual memory amount windows has set. if u screw your PC up with this a boot in safe mode should allow u to alter any thing u did wrong.
another tip is that if your pc has a sleep button slam that 10 or so times and u may become unstuck. but as halflife has chrashed u will be booted outta halflife and very confused whatching your pc power up and down for a few moments. after this u should be able to rejoin NS and keep playing.
just hope the NS team know how to find memory leaks <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Nevertheless, thanks to everybody who tried to help me, I appreciate your efforts.
PS: I noticed that these crashes now occur in every half-life mod, even plain vanilla half-life. Just for the record.
I found a fix for what sounds like a similar problem. I hope that helps.