Why does ET constantly crash??!??!?!

(adec) #1

It’s getting pretty tiresome, even if the game came for free, these constant crashes at random times.

  • Almost always after downloading maps
  • During gameplay for no particular reason (standard and custom maps)
    … often in the same spots in the maps

Sometimes the game crashes totally with a black screen and a terrible sound, making a forced reboot necessary (sometimes I even get 4 beeps, indicating memory failure when rebooting, and then have to reboot once again).

Sometimes it crashes, but only partially so that I don’t have to reboot my computer. The screen however becomes really bleak in colors and a reboot is necessary to recover the full colors of the screen.

I suspect this has to do with Video and/or Sound drivers, but I’m not exactly on an obsolete machine, so I would think this could be alleviated somehow.

Setup:

Intel PIV 2.8 mhz
Ram 1 gB
Asus NVIDIA Geforce FX 5600 256mb (Drivers 5.3.0.3)
Soundblaster SB Live! (Drivers 5.12.2.290)

(h0nd) #2

I think you should go back to the last known Detonator drivers for your Geforce, I had those same problems, but now I installed the 4x.x version of the nVidia drivers, and everything worked fine once again.

(DG) #3
  • if you have multiple sticks of RAM in there, try one at a time.
  • try pre-5x.x series detonators (or just wait for next ones which should be coming soon, beta of them at guru3d but aviod if you play ut2004 demo)
  • fart about with Live! drivers, that card is teh bestest evar at screwing up systems, and drivers are even worse. Infact may be easier to just take the card out to test wether it suddenly all goes ok.
(senator) #4

Delete all unnecessarry .pk3 (for example all old campaign files or maps you never play) from your etmain folder. Problem solved.

(Sick Boy) #5

I have an old detonator, I keep my ET folder clean from unwanted pk3’s and have a very stable system that never crashes on anything…

But it does crash on ET (mostly after downloads, sometimes when joining a map and sometimes in the middle of a game). Usually a ctrl-alt-del, end task and restart ET does the trick though, and I never crash during wars so guess I’m lucky :slight_smile:

(Kendle) #6

ET’s never crashed on me. :wink:

(dime1622) #7

“why does ET crash?” is like one of those questions theres no good answer for.

sorta like “why did the dinosaurs die out?”

“cause you touch yourself at night”

ok sorry stayed up too late reformatting the comp then it got hit w/ the W32.pinfi virus and 225 files were infected in 45 minutes. really takes the life outta you.

honestly though, ET’s never crashed on me. but i just updated to the ATI catalyst 3.10 drivers and since nothings been moderately stable since the 3.7 drivers, who knows?

(adec) #8

.and honestly, I never had a virus in any of my computers, but I HAVE gotten some advice much better than you were able to give on my initial post.

(RocketGrrl [SWE]) #9

The game always crashes when you have downloaded a new map, you have some time though to shut the game down and start it again to avoid the crash. I don’t know if decreasing the number of pk3 files in /Main will prevent this crash. However, it will enable you to host without ET crashing. Other than those types I have not experienced any crashing on my end, servers I have been on have crashed once in a while though.

(Toker) #10

Lemme ask this: What OS?

All q3a engine games (except CoD) crash in windows (both XP and 98SE) for me. ALL THE TIME! I’ve re-formatted, changed all the hardware (except drives,) just about everything possible… Both SP (Quake & RtCW) and MP.

I now run Linux for [Id] games (THANK GOD FOR THE LINUX PORT!!!) and don’t crash at all anymore. I actually decided to learn *nix just for the [Id] games. Glad I did now!

(Lekdevil.NL) #11

No, it won’t. But the crashing-after-downloading does seem to be a true ET bug, although the exact cause remains somewhat vague. I’ve experimented with a couple of potential workarounds (changing webserver MIME types, changing sv_wwwDlDisconnected), but it really looks like it’s a problem with the client download code.

If anyone were to release a real ET patch, fixing this would be at the top of my list (along with the gruesome “Server Disconnected for Unknown Reason” message bug).

(Vetinari) #12

sometimes I get a segfault… but when this happens server is also down when I try to connect again (~10-15 secs later)
the only time I know it was not like this, was when the fan of my GF died :expressionless:

(DG) #13
  • server crash exploit (top of list imo)
  • pak pickup bug
  • lightweapons 4 to spec at mapchange bug
  • random classchange bug
  • seperation of heavy weapons restriction from support fire
  • fix all cheat-protected and should-be-cheat-protected cvars in code, where possible (overly optimistic)
  • whatever other stuff, usually fixed in etpro…
(SCDS_reyalP) #14

FWIW, my ET doesn’t crash very often. Aside from the download bug (which only happens some of the time) I very rarely get random crashes in gameplay. win2k, gf3 + 43.45 drivers, athlon xp.

Mine would be:
merge etpro -> etmain
fix .pk3 bug
fix above mentioned dl bug.
fix crash protextion so you can choose to start in safe mode (resetting all ‘unsafe’ cvars) rather than the current system.
make campaigns not require a .pk3 download.

:moo:

Yeah, I know. Dream on :banana:

(Domipheus) #15

ET has never crashed here in game,

u cant really blame the game for driver problems - and dont say “et should account forevery crap driver out there”

make sure you have the latest STABLE releases, that you dont have any conflicting programs running that interfere with either driver or et, and basically, experiment to the extreme, im talking bios settings, soundcard in different pci slots, etc - cos its bound to be that and nothing else.