Why does ET encounter so many of these problems?
It’s crashing every 10-20 mins. Always. I haven’t changed any settings, it just started acting like shit yesterday. Was fine for ages before this. Haven’t even connected to any different servers (just Nexus) than usual. No strange pk3s downloaded, nothing. Just likes to crash.
ARGH.
Now it’s got much worse, instead of every 10-20 mins it’s every 10 SECONDS. I start ET, connect to server, choose my team, and it crashes. Repeat.
In the console and the startup window it lists some technobabble and says things like "r_com: unsafe: crashed’ and so on for about 20 lines. Why me.
Reinstall what though? My whole operating system?
I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled new Catalyst drivers. No difference. I’ve also done a new install of ET in a new dir, which is now my third one on this comp, and all 3 have the same crashing problem. This time a few days ago everything was fine =/
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If the Spyware/Trojan Horse is removed, sometimes Internet access is affected.
Go to http://www.safer-networking.org/ you will be suprised how many things it finds.
SH
I dont want to blame anyone, but I suspect this is related to ETPro. From time to time ET crashes during map load and it always was an ETPro server I was trying to connect to. Esp. when I got a broken download/wrong checksum message (even if the download seemed to be ok) and then hit the reconnect button ET will crash. But when I then restart ET and connect to the same server again - it starts w/o any error and w/o any new downloads.
The "r_com: unsafe: crashed’ is a bug, explained in a few threads. the round up :
Remove profile.pid from all your profile directories.
etmain/profiles/~name
etpro/profiles/~name
shrub/profiles/~name
etc
You should make a batch file which deletesl the profile.pid in each directory and then starts ET.
That will solve the “r_com crashed: unsafe” error
@TFate, Oral B, =ABS= SparhawK:
I don’t have any trojans or spyware installed. I regularly run Adaware & Spybot anyway, and also keep a program running called WinPatrol that trakcs (most) unwanted changes to registry etc. I know not to use broken software such as Outlook or Internet Explorer, and am very careful to keep my system free of that kind of junk. I did another scan with Spybot and Adaware just to make 100% sure, and they didn’t find anything except some harmless cookies. Thanks anyway 
@Ragnar_40k:
I’ve tried deleting the ETPro folder, and have reinstalled a fresh version of ET twice, but no change.
@$pence:
Tried this too, disabling PB has no effect.
@chr0nicles:
This sounds like it would have worked, thanks! But, unfortunately my problems have ‘evolved’. Now things are much worse…
When I start ET now, things are OK for a few seconds but then ET freezes up. It will play a 1 second loop of whatever audio was playing at the time, and lock up just the way it does whenever it crashes, only this time it doesn’t crash and after about 20 seconds it kicks into action again for about 5 seconds, and then locks up again.
I’ve noticed two strange things, in Task Manager my processor usage goes right up to the maximum which is probably the reason for ET freezing (it’s an XP3200+ so shouldn’t be getting anywhere near maximum), and also if I click to another window and leave ET as the inactive window then it runs in the background fine (I can see the text scrolling or the timer moving, it doesn’t freeze) but then the moment I click back to ET and make it the active window, it will freeze again.
So I have no more crashes, but cannot play ET for even 1 second anymore. As I’ve said the following things make no difference at all: changing my graphics drivers, reinstalling ET (even deleting all trace of the old one), disabling PB, using ET 1.00 and 1.02, etc.
I’m starting to think my Radeon is broken 
(this is the only thing I can think of, although my friends and I were playing Pro Evolution Soccer 3 for the whole of last night and didn’t have a single problem).
next step: Completely remove all videocard drivers from ATI, reboot the system make sure windows XP uses his default driver, then download the newest ATI driver + Control panel do not asume you have them already, really download the newest drivers.
Install in this order: ATI driver > Reboot > Ati Control Panel > Reboot and try again.
If it still crashes, could you send me a complete process list?
Good luck.
Yep, that’s what I always do when updating drivers (it lists those steps in the installation instructions). Here’s a list of the running processes:
crss.exe
explorer.exe (have tried switching this task off)
lsass.exe
services.exe
smss.exe
svchost.exe (x3)
System
System Idle Process
winlogon.exe
AFAIK I’m down to the bare minimum needed for XP to run, is that right?
Looking fine there, though i am missing taskmgr 
what antivirus software are you running?
try installing an older ATI driver and see if that helps. or try a driver listed at www.omegacorner.com
For AV I usually run AVG 6.0 Free Edition, but have closed it along with every other prog while I’m trying to sort this out.
I’ll try some of my older drivers (I have from about 3.3 on a disc somewhere), if that doesn’t work I’m going to reinstall XP. I’ve just started having some crashing problems with Far Cry as well now, so I’m thinking I have something seriously wrong with XP or I have a hardware problem =/ Thanks for the help chr0nicles 
I’m off out now, will report tommorrow if it worked or not…
Actually forgot to mention to check your cpu/system temperature after it crashes…
That’s a good point, I have Asus Probe which monitors all that but haven’t run it in so long I forgot about that. Had overheating probs in the past with other computers so not sure why that didn’t occur to me!?
But anyway, guess what? The problem has (for now?) fixed itself. I was running Far Cry earlier, showing it to my mate, and it crashed after a while and upon reboot my settings had all been reset… back to 800x600, even my screensaver had been turned on to the default XP one, I thought it was odd and put the settings back how I like them. Then my mate asks to play ET, I tell him it doesn’t work and to prove it I started it up… and it bloody WORKED! Played for around 40 mins, not a single problem, nothing. I don’t understand, but I’m happy it works!
Of course I’ve probably jinxed it by saying it works and next time it’ll be dead again…
It’s crashing again
Not in the same way as I described a couple posts above, this time it’s back to a regular crash with the standard XP error reporting dialog. It occurs about once every 20-30 mins.
I’ve tried:
-Uninstalled, deleted files & reinstalled ET
-Removed display drivers & tried installing different drivers
-Closed all non-essential running tasks
-Scanned system for spyware/adware/viruses/trojans
-Defragged drives
-Reduced hardware acceleration in ATI Control Panel
-Disabled Fast Write in ATI Control Panel
-Disabled Punkbuster
…and prolly lots more I don’t remember.
What else? Is there anything else that could be causing the crashing that I should try, before I go and format/reinstall XP?
You mean trying older ones? Tried that. Just tried the new 4.4’s too.
Oh BTW my ‘Brightness’ control no longer works in ET. I don’t know if it’s related, but a reinstall never fixes that problem either. I do remember at one point the Brightness worked, but that was a long time ago now…