BIG ET CRASHING ACCADIMIC

(Zigge) #1

This is getting bad! OK my ET crashes about 5mins into playing all of a sudden the last sound gets looped and then the Error Report thing comes up then you got to close the game. Well I have done everything Check, Updates, PUpdates, Reinstall, CPU temp putting it into windows 98 compatibility mode. That didn’t work so I search the internet for “Wolfenstein - Enemy Territory Game Crashing” I found 100’s of forums and site with people having the same problem as me and they all tried what I did so SOMEBODY HAS GOT TO DO SOMTHING about this!!! I love ET but I am getting pissed off and so are tons of others PLEASE HELP SPLASH. :angry:

(Zigge) #2

AMD ATHOLN XP 1800+
1.5 ghz
256 MB Ram
Radon 9700 SE 128MB
Windows XP Home with SP1

(ExpressO) #3

ACCADIMIC?

Not a word :slight_smile:

*Epidemic

And that happens to me sometimes.Deal with it.

(Zigge) #4

ya well its not very fun to play for 15mins then crash and do it over agian I just think this should be fixed.

(Oral B) #5

maybe some more details would help…such as when did this start (or has this happened ever since you first played ET?). Maybe you need more RAM or you need to add more to your hunkmegs…maybe something you installed or got installed is conflicting? Spyware? I dunno, could be something really lame. You did try playing with the case cover off right?

EDIT: I can’t imagine your computer being fast with 256MB of RAM running Windows XP. I would suggest ATLEAST 512MB. PLUS, if your computer is manufactured by a company such as Compaq, they load a ton of crap that slows the computer down even more.

(CM..Punk) #6

I’ve had this problem about 473 times on all different computers. It goes away itself after a while. You can try other video card drivers, reinstalling ET, reinstalling XP, etc, but who knows what causes or fixes it.

(Karrde) #7

My et always crashes once or twice after downloading/installing a new etpro version :expressionless: Besides that et is pretty stable here.

(Depth_Charge) #8

That is a common bug heh I think there are like 4 other threads that have something about this in them in this page or the next

(MADDOG) #9

First off you are running a ok cpu, but 256mb is the minimum XP runs at( and creats lag for your cpu even if you dont know it, it is strongly suggested that you have 512 mb of ram on your cpu when running XP unless your cpu is modified to run at 256 on a XP!

Also my comp had probs all the time, i was playing a long time ago when i first got this game and my game crashed on me all the time i kept getting Kernell 32.dll errors or ET caused error in unknown! This i thought was because of the 256 mb of RDram i had and my poor graphic card! But when i went to look up my system specs it was alot better then i thought my RD ram was like 512 mb of ram was proccessing alot faster then standerd 256 ram was! So i sent emaisl to Activision for support on this but they did not help me! SO over time ET started to get used to running on my comp and i have not had any probs sense! Just see what it says when it crashes then go to google and look up the error, like what does it mean, etc! That should give you more of an understanding then of what your pc lacks to do or has trouble proccesing!

ET uses up alot of energy from a cpu it sucks the life out of it, even if you have a ok computer! You need to spend like $3 g’s on a good computer or build one yourself for under a 1,000. But i give you no garentees shit messes up! If you want i can give you my specs of the cpu i am building it’s like 1,000 only and it kicks ass on a alien ware cpu for $4+ g’s!

(CM..Punk) #10

You need to spend like $3 g’s on a good computer or build one yourself for under a 1,000. But i give you no garentees shit messes up! If you want i can give you my specs of the cpu i am building it’s like 1,000 only and it kicks ass on a alien ware cpu for $4+ g’s!

What the hell!?

(evilsock) #11

Zigge - use the search facility. This issue is not a new one and there are a few things to try.

http://www.splashdamage.com/index.php?name=pnPHPbb2&file=viewtopic&t=8186&highlight=sound+loop
http://www.splashdamage.com/index.php?name=pnPHPbb2&file=viewtopic&t=3575&highlight=sound+loop
etc…

I used the the following search criteria;

sound AND loop

As a general rule, ignore comments (especially technical ones) made by IRONMAN - he’s here to spread FUD around the forum. Things ppl have tried;

Overheating? Have you any software installed to check the temperature of your CPU and mainboard? If it’s a VIA based board you can use VCool. OK operating temperatures are’

approx 37 degrees for normal operation
approx 47 degrees for gaming

Try taking the side casing off or even add additional cooling if this proves to be a problem.

Have you completely removed ET from your machine and installed as new?
Latest stable Motherboard Drivers ?
Latest stable GPU drivers?

Are you using an inbuilt soundcard? They are known to cause some issues.

What background applications do you run? Which can you disable?

That kind of approach will get you closer to the source of your problem.

Hope that helps.

(Oral B) #12

MADDOG, IRONMAN, OXYGEN, SSMITH, NOT_CHICAGO, JIMBO99 or any other name you use…

Seek Professional help son…

(Rain) #13

FWIW, sound looping is a bad indication of anything except that ET is in limbo.

ET, like many other things, plays audio by writing to a DMA buffer, which the card (or drivers) will read when playing the audio. To explain, basically, a fixed portion of memory (say 64k, since I think that’s what ET uses) is allocated, and the sound is continually written to and read from that in a circular fashion. If ET freezes, for whatever reason (hardware problems, driver problems, infinite loop), it will stop writing to this buffer, but the sound card may keep playing it, resulting in the looped audio.

Bad ASCII Illustration

                             R
|XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX|
                               W
 -------------------------------> -------------------------------
W = write position, R = read position

Normally, ET mixes audio and writes it to memory as above, looping around to the beginning when it hits the end. Normally, the sound card (or drivers, if your sound card really bites) reads audio in the same way, ideally at exactly the point that was just written (although it can be a bit behind, causing delayed sound, or a bit ahead, causing really nasty sound; I’m pretty sure this is what s_mixahead calibrates.)

If ET hangs for any reason, it (obviously) stops writing audio to the buffer—however, the read cursor will keep on moving, playing whatever is on the buffer over and over again, regardless of whether it’s been changed. Assuming 22050hz sound, that 64k buffer would be 65536 / (22050hz * 16 bits * 2 channels) ≅ 0.74 seconds, which is right about on the mark. The result is the “looping soundâ€? that everyone mentions when they’re having nasty problems, although it’s not really indicative of much.

Since most of you are using Win32, you can get a better (animated) bad ASCII art representation of this process in Winamp >= 2.x by viewing the ‘Status’ tab in the configuration for the DirectSound output plugin. (Obviously, that’ll only work if you’re using that output plugin. :P)