(CTD/freeze/BSOD/crashes) Poss Solutions UPDATED 19/04/05

Steel Magpie™ · Post by **Steel Magpie™** » Tue, 20. Apr 04, 18:01

I have to agree with above post.... Having spent last (however long its been) looking for updated drivers for my sound card... Well I haven't found any newer than those installed already so I officially give up... I may even uninstall this game until patch 1.4 arrives with the hopes that the issuses involving sound , drivers and crashes may be ironed out...

Steel Magpie™
Not prepared to risk PC damage for one pesky game..

(yes I am annoyed... I paid good money for this game in good faith but each shut down risks damage to hard drives.. EGOSOFT look to your product!)

edit after calming down a bit.. I will try the game again (I have updated/ re-installed all divers for DirectX, Nvidia graphics and re-install of latest sound drivers.... I do like this game... I do want to play it but cannot afford to replace my hard drives(more importantly the data they contain) if they fail.Steel Magpie™

SPINNER · Post by **SPINNER** » Tue, 20. Apr 04, 18:07

Thanks for the vote of support "peterhill".
It seems that customer relations isnt at the top of Egosofts agenda.

When I first starting experiencing problems a phoned Germany and got the brush off. They said there was no one available to talk to on technical issues and try find a solution of the tech support forum.

I find this extradanary relationship marketing (A subject I have a degree in).

The hardware that was crashing was an AMD A7333 motherboard with the sound card on the motherboard. I belive they use Nvida sound chips and I was running the latest Bios and driers for the Motherboard. as well as the latest sound drivers. Figure that.

Id like to see someone to take some responsibility. Not excuses that there are so many products in the market that we cant support everything.

Post by **CBJ** » Tue, 20. Apr 04, 18:09

A game cannot fix problems in the underlying drivers and codecs, no matter how much the developers would like it to. If developers are able to reproduce the problem (which is often very difficult) they may sometimes be able to work around it, but this is often not possible either. If PCs were all alike, like consoles, then they might have some chance, but with literally millions of possible combinations of hardware and software, it is simply not possible to guarantee a game will work on all of them.

Battle Pope · Post by **Battle Pope** » Tue, 20. Apr 04, 18:51

I've done some research on onboard sound, and as it turns out, you can not use a worse device in a gaming computer. onboard sound "borrows" from the main CPU to do its sound processing, so in a CPU-laden game environment it can place a lot of strain on components and cause rampant instability. This is why I ordered a soundcard, which should be here within the next few days.

Even a cheap PCI sound card will help - it's usually not a question of drivers or hardware with onboard sound, it's just the simple fact of how it works... or doesn't work..

peterhill1972 · Post by **peterhill1972** » Tue, 20. Apr 04, 19:36

I appreciate the above comments about different problems with various PC configurations, all software doubtless gets published with numerous small bugs but it would be very nice if someone at Egosoft would look into reproducing this 'certain systems not working' bug. The hardware I'm getting this problem on is pretty much the target 'recommended' machine surely?

I'm surprised more people aren't suffering it. Also, what is X2 doing to cause a CTD when I don't experience it in other titles?

Well, I've updated my Audigy 2 drivers. Still no joy I'm afraid.

Battle Pope · Post by **Battle Pope** » Tue, 20. Apr 04, 19:54

I got lessened CTDs by downloading the latest WMP version from Microshaft...

My onboard sound (as I said, soon to be replaced) is still making major hits on my CPU though.

peterhill1972 · Post by **peterhill1972** » Wed, 21. Apr 04, 16:14

Well, i've managed to stop getting the solar system specific CTDs to stop. After all that fiddling with drivers, installing Media Player 9 etc. I've found out a workaround.

Turn off the music!

Or rather, set the music volume to 0% in X2. Now I can merrily jump back and forth to those troublesome systems, such as Ore Belt and President's End.

Now, the toughter question is WHY? Why should the music be such a problem in certain systems only. I would recommend that Egosoft look into this. I would like the music back, really. Flying around in absolute silence is pretty boring. I'm using a Creative Audigy 2, with the latest drivers, natch. Windows Media Player 9 and XP Pro. Tell me this is one of the 'thousands of possible PC setups'. Are you suggesting that its too much for Egosoft to test using a Creative soundcard?

Having EAX on or off makes no difference.

So, what's with the music in those systems? What's the difference between the solar systems mentioned earlier and others that always worked, such as Red Light and Argon Prime?

Now that I've narrowed the bug down for Egosoft, perhaps they might like to put it on their 'to do' list.

Spinner, I hope this helps... Cheers. P

Battle Pope · Post by **Battle Pope** » Wed, 21. Apr 04, 17:17

I've read in other threads that some of the music files are encoded in 22KHz as opposed to 44KHz, and this causes some hardware combinations to "freak out", crashing the program/machine. The most effective solution I have seen is to find the 22KHz files and resample them to 44KHz. Hope it helps

peterhill1972 · Post by **peterhill1972** » Wed, 21. Apr 04, 20:14

Thanks for that, BP. i've heard that too. Well, I might try that now.

peterhill1972 · Post by **peterhill1972** » Sat, 24. Apr 04, 17:14

Just to let you all know that Battle Pope's solution worked! By converting and resaving all the MP3 files to 44.1kHz the CTDs stopped and I can have the music running.

Begging the question, why were they in a mixture of formats in the first place?

Nailo · Post by **Nailo** » Sun, 25. Apr 04, 18:51

Agreed, why would i want to turn off AA, Auto save, eax and check every damn file in the game when they should have made a game that just works, period.

The game itself looks very very good, they did a real nice job and i sure couldn't do better, but it works as well as running on wet soap. They've got some real issues to work out, just read how many many bug reports there are.
Other than that, nice job on possible fixes to crashes, but none of them worked here... still get CTD's and i'm burying my copy of X² in the backyard now, cause after so much fuss... i'll be damned if i ever open the lid on it again.

SebulbaUK · Post by **SebulbaUK** » Wed, 26. May 04, 20:42

I have tried everything on here and it still doesnt work. The game crashes b4 it gets to the main menu in the game, however now and again it will get to the menu and when u try and start the game it loads for about a minute then crashes to the desktop again (no error messages which signifies that this is a problem within the game... or windows would tell me other wise). I have tried 2 diff copies 1 legal 1 not. Every other game i have works fine.. far cry... BF vietnam etc.. so there is no problem with this PC. i have a 3ghz P4 1 gig ram, Asus ATI 9800 XT GC. 200gig free space and very pretty blue neon light. Can someone pls pls pls help as i am a huge fan of the old elite series and if this is a patch on them this should be amazin.

Help pls.....

capirex · Post by **capirex** » Fri, 4. Jun 04, 23:28

The solution to my ctd's was to turn the force feedback from adult to child (i don't even have a f f joystick!)
I bought the game, and couldn't get past the "quote of the day screen", it'd ctd. Lucky i stumbled on this solution as i was almost going to return it to the shops...

twilight_echoes · Post by **twilight_echoes** » Sat, 12. Jun 04, 07:28

24.Power supply (Grendle says) It may be that the power supply wattage could be inadequate. If its 250-300w everything in your comp burns power (obviously). Your processor is probably eating about 30-40 watts, drives maybe 20-30 each, and the biggie: your graphics card might be burning 70 or more watts. There's other stuff eats power as well (Fans,CD/DVD etc). For a gaming rig, it is probably wise to have at LEAST 350w, preferably 400 or 450. You'd be amazed what having a bigger PS does for stability. No power sags when your drives have a swapping going on.

also worth checking the output capacity of your UPS esp. if you have just upgraded your system.

Oskkar III · Post by **Oskkar III** » Sun, 13. Jun 04, 15:56

I'm going mad...I bought the game 2 weeks ago and it worked perfectly until yesterday. Now everytime I try to run the game it crashes when I want to load my save game...according to the windows message it has to deal with the virtual memory...I tried the tip number 16 of this topic but it still doesn't work...does anyboby have an idea....please?

Mr Sage · Post by **Mr Sage** » Sun, 13. Jun 04, 16:09

Here's a CTD I found and a solution.

After upgrading my computer I needed to reinstall X2. After setting it up and launching the game it would crash to the desktop just after the ramdom quote (No error message or anything). I tried installing X2 again nothing. I went though and turned off EAX AA, enabled on Auto quality still crashed after the random quote.

Eventually I changed the custom logo i'd used to one of the pre loaded egosoft ones and this time it loaded up. I ended up copying the JPEG into the egosoft directory (I previously just linked it from another folder) and that worked to.

I'm sorry if i'm repeating something people already know - but I couldn't find this problem at the start of the thread.

Hope this is useful to someone.

Keir

veelad · Post by **veelad** » Mon, 14. Jun 04, 19:27

Mr Sage wrote:Here's a CTD I found and a solution.

After upgrading my computer I needed to reinstall X2. After setting it up and launching the game it would crash to the desktop just after the ramdom quote (No error message or anything). I tried installing X2 again nothing. I went though and turned off EAX AA, enabled on Auto quality still crashed after the random quote.

Eventually I changed the custom logo i'd used to one of the pre loaded egosoft ones and this time it loaded up. I ended up copying the JPEG into the egosoft directory (I previously just linked it from another folder) and that worked to.

I'm sorry if i'm repeating something people already know - but I couldn't find this problem at the start of the thread.

Hope this is useful to someone.

Keir

The solution to my ctd's was to turn the force feedback from adult to child (i don't even have a f f joystick!)
I bought the game, and couldn't get past the "quote of the day screen", it'd ctd. Lucky i stumbled on this solution as i was almost going to return it to the shops...

Nice tips

Post by **CBJ** » Tue, 15. Jun 04, 15:51

Oskkar III wrote:I'm going mad...I bought the game 2 weeks ago and it worked perfectly until yesterday. Now everytime I try to run the game it crashes when I want to load my save game...according to the windows message it has to deal with the virtual memory...I tried the tip number 16 of this topic but it still doesn't work...does anyboby have an idea....please?

Could you give us some more details please? Does it crash with older savegames? Have you patched up to version 1.3? Was the savegame an autosave or a manual save? Do you have any scripts installed? Had you changed any game settings or installed any other hardware or software in the meantime?

Post by **Xenon_Slayer** » Wed, 16. Jun 04, 10:50

I have just had my first CTD. It is rearly annoying, just as you guys said. This is what happened.

1. I was using my Vulture to break up asteroids in Ore belt.
2. I was Romotely flying
3. When my cargo was full I pressed. >Ship>Commands menu>Trade> Sell Ware>Ore Belt>Tera corp Crystal fab> Silicon.
4. As soon as I pressed silicon the game crashed. An Important thing to point out is that I was remote flying at the time with auto pilot off.

Thats all the info I can think of exept I had (particals, bumpmapping, Shadows and antialiasing off) and (automatic quality and cache 3D data on)

Im sure this bug cant be fixed by fidleing with my settings so Im wondering if it is a common bug.

Post by **CBJ** » Wed, 16. Jun 04, 14:35

If you can meet all of the following criteria...

1. You are running 1.3
2. You have no scripts or mods installed
3. You can give an exact sequence of events which always results in a CTD after loading a specific savegame

...then send the savegame to bugs@egosoft.com with precise instructions on how to get the CTD to occur.

If it happened just once and you can't reproduce it then I'm afraid it could be just about anything, quite possibly caused by something outside the game, and there is not much that can be done.

(CTD/freeze/BSOD/crashes) Poss Solutions UPDATED 19/04/05

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