Hard Crashes

[MarsRobert]

I'm playing the Great Mithridatic War as Rome, and twice now I've experienced hard crashes where my system completely locks up and I have to reboot. I'm truly bummed though as I was actually managing to keep that dratted Sertorius at bay.

Anyway, what happens is that everything freezes, and instead of the sound/music stopping, I get sort of a buzz sound, like the sound or music goes in to an infinite loop on one note.

FYI, after the first crash I turned on the error logging, but I can't seem to find it. I looked at all three logs in the AJE folder and none of them are showing anything other than normal game events. Tell me where the log is and I will send. Also, I did try turning off the AV but it made no difference.

Here's what the Windows log is telling me:

Description
A problem caused this program to stop interacting with Windows.
Faulting Application Path: C:\CGames\Alea Jacta Est\Alea Jacta Est\AJE.exe

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: AppHangB1
Application Name: AJE.exe
Application Version: 1.0.0.0
Application Timestamp: 2a425e19
Hang Signature: d6bc
Hang Type: 6144
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Hang Signature 1: d6bcbbc45a2d62c28996e46dfaa35e52
Additional Hang Signature 2: b383
Additional Hang Signature 3: b383161f52bef3821aa79e647cf65675
Additional Hang Signature 4: d6bc
Additional Hang Signature 5: d6bcbbc45a2d62c28996e46dfaa35e52
Additional Hang Signature 6: b383
Additional Hang Signature 7: b383161f52bef3821aa79e647cf65675


Here are my system stats:

Falcon Talon
Intel i5-2500K CPU
3.30GHZ
64 bit
AMD Radeon HD 6900
No separate sound card; sound is integrated in motherboard

Anyway, my system is under a year old and is still reasonably middle-high end. I have no trouble at all running very multimedia intensive games like Bethesda's SKyrim, so I'm scratching my head as to what could be interfering with AJE?

John

[MarsRobert]

Here is the main log anyway, on the outside chance it may be helpful to you: [ATTACH]20498[/ATTACH]

Also, I forgot to mention in my system stats that I have 8 Gb of RAM.

BTW, if I were just experiencing a soft crash to desktop every ten turns or so I could probably live with that, at least for a while. Clearly, however, a hard crash/reboot after only 1-2 turns is a different matter entirely.

[Pocus]

Really sorry about this sour experience... This don't look super good what's more, as I believe this is a compatibility problem between your sound driver and our sound library. Would it be possible you check if there is a new sound driver available... because there is no new version of our sound library anyway.
Fallback solutions I would see would be either to try playing without sounds or a refunding, but that would be a failure.

[MarsRobert]

Thanks for the response Philippe, especially since it's a weekend. Didn't expect to hear anything before Monday. OK, I'll see if I can update the sound drivers on my system. Failing that, I'll just play without sound. I could always play the Spartacus soundtrack on my DVD player! lol No, there's no way I would ask for a refund. I've waited too long for this game to give up on it. You were very gracious to offer though. Anyway, I'll let you know how things turn out. You guys are the best.

[MarsRobert]

I'm extremely sorry to report that I still experienced a hard crash, even with both the sound and the music turned off. I am truly bummed. Oh well, the only things I can think of at this point are to uninstall/reinstall, wait for the first patch, or wait until I get Win8.

BTW Philippe, I checked. Both my sound drivers (RealTek and AMD HDMI) are up to date. Anyway, if anyone has any other suggestions I would love to hear them. Again, I don't want a refund.

[Franciscus]

Hi, Mars.

Sorry to hear about your problem.
It seems to exist in other games as well, related apparently to having both Realtek audio AND video card HDMI audio drivers installed.

BF3 specially seems to be prone to this. Check this thread:

http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/forum/threadview/2832654624735327865/

Long thread, worth reading carefully

According to this, a temporary solution would be to "Uninstall your REALTEK drivers and disable the AZALIA CODEC in the BIOS. Play without sound". But that will disable all sound in your PC...

I would also try first to disable Realtek audio and/or disable ATI HDMI on windows device manager, then if it does not work make a clean reinstall of ATI latest drivers but disable the option of installing any HDMI drivers at all...


Hope it helps

[MarsRobert]

Hi, Mars.

Sorry to hear about your problem.
It seems to exist in other games as well, related apparently to having both Realtek audio AND video card HDMI audio drivers installed.

BF3 specially seems to be prone to this. Check this thread:

http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/forum/threadview/2832654624735327865/

Long thread, worth reading carefully

According to this, a temporary solution would be to "Uninstall your REALTEK drivers and disable the AZALIA CODEC in the BIOS. Play without sound". But that will disable all sound in your PC...

I would also try first to disable Realtek audio and/or disable ATI HDMI on windows device manager, then if it does not work make a clean reinstall of ATI latest drivers but disable the option of installing any HDMI drivers at all...


Hope it helps

Yes Franciscus, I think this may help immensely. In fact I was kind of wondering why I would have (or need) two different sound drivers (Realtek and the ATI HDMI) on my system, and if that might be causing the problem with AJE. I think I'm going to call my brother who does PC tech support and ask him about the two different sound drivers. Anyway, it sounds to me like your last solution is most likely the one I would want to try. Thanks for the post.

[Pocus]

This seems a very good option indeed, two sounds drivers may create interferences.

What ever the result, and I hope it will be positive, I would like to thank you Fransciscus to take the time searching over the Internet for a solution.

[MarsRobert]

I spoke to my brother in tech support, and he said that the AMD HDMI driver is for my big-widescreen monitor. Since I don't use the monitor speaker, he believes I can safely dispense with that sound driver. He also said that a complete driver uninstall/reinstall should not be necessary, and that all I need do is disable the driver(s) I don't want to use. Anyway, I sort of switched over to Skyrim at the moment (doing the Dawnguard and Hearthfire DLC's , but in a couple of days I will re-install AJE and disable one or both of the sound drivers and see what happens, and report back with the results.

[Pocus]

Ok, keep us posted then

[Franciscus]

Just to make clear a point:

AFAIK there's nothing wrong in having audio drivers for the audio motherboard chipset and drivers for the HDMI output of your video card, in fact most users will have them both without problems, and they perform different and specific functions.

But apparently there is a problem with SOME programs/games and SOME Realtek chips/drivers that makes this combination a possible source of problems. I am not sure of this, I was just searching for similar problems as MarsRobert.

(PS: Although Realtek drivers indeed cause some problems, I think they were the cause of my own sound problems with WW1 gold in my previous computer)

[MarsRobert]

OK, the fix appeared to be easier than I thought. I disabled the AMD HDMI driver, and I've gone ten turns now playing the Great Mithridatic War (with the sound and music both running) without any crashes at all. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that all's well that end's well. In any event with a Logitech 5.1 speaker system, I have absolutely no need to use the monitor speakers the AMD HDMI driver was enabling.

Thanks Fransicus for reinforcing my original vague hunch that having the two sound drivers running was maybe what was causing my hard crashes. I may not have proceeded with my troubleshooting along those lines (or at least not as soon) had you not brought it up.

One more thing. I would add that I'm also playing from a clean install of AJE, though I really think it was having the two drivers running that was causing the problem.

Great! Now I can purchase the Spartacus DLC.

[MarsRobert]

I guess I spoke too soon. Been playing it now for about 90 minutes, and have experienced two hard crashes in two gaming years. Not as many crashes as before, but again, hard crashes are much worse than CTD's. Guess the culprit must be the RealTek driver. I will now of course disable the RealkTek driver and enable the AMD HDMI driver and see what happens.

[MarsRobert]

OK, this time I really, really do think I have a workable situation. To make a long story short, I originally had four sound drivers active; AMD HDMI and three RealTek drivers (Speakers, Optical, and one other not labeled). I disabled all of them except the RealTek speaker driver. As a test I quickly went through a game without moving and just processed the turns (in any event it's the turn processing where the crashes occur), and I'm happy to report that I'm up to turn 18 and no crashes. This appears to be a situation I can live with, although I will probably need to figure out how to easily reinstall the other two RealTek drivers (when not playing AJE) should I need them for other games or applications. I suppose that's neither here nor there though. The big thing now is trying to figure out how to defeat that $%@ Sertorius!

[Pocus]

That's good and I'm relieved that you can justly focus on gameplay and not crashes!

And I think we learnt something about drivers here too.

[MarsRobert]

Yet again I spoke too soon. Sighs. I'm still getting hard crashes where I have to reboot my system. I can see no rhyme or reason to it. In some games I'll go thirty turns without a crash (and didn't have any in the Spartacus scenario), but in my latest (Severus) I've had two in fifteen minutes. In fact in the last crash when I rebooted and re-launched AJE, the Severus saves now seem to be completely gone. I had just started the third year of that scenario, so I guess it's three hours of gaming for naught.

I begin to wonder now if the problem is indeed the RealTek sound drivers? When I turn off the game sound and music it seems to make no difference, or as someone else noted, it may not crash as much, but crash it will.

The missing saves with the Severus scenario notwithstanding, if I only experienced the occasional CTD I wouldn't be worrying about it. Hard crash/lockups, however, where I have to reboot are extremely annoying as well as hard on my system.

I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a game so much but at the same time had such terrible stability issues with it. It was especially irritating because I thought the Severus scenario was the best one of the six. I am truly bummed.

[MarsRobert]

After a good night's sleep I'm feeling a little less ballistic this morning.

The bottom line is though that I after a little tweaking the crashes were infrequent enough that I was able to overlook them since I liked the game so much. I still think it is the best Roman game ever. I've never seen a game that's done a better job simulating the Empire in all its phases. That was so cool in the Severus scenario how you have the German tribes, the Parthians, and the Sarmatians all hovering on your borders waiting to pounce on you if you strip off your legions to fight in the Roman succession war. The trouble was, having to do two reboots in 15 minutes and then loosing all my Severus saves after three hours of game play was extremely annoying.

Anyway, if anyone has any other suggestions for fixing the crashes, I would love to hear them. Again, I would not even think it that big a deal if the crashes were CTD-only, but having to reboot is a major inconvenience as well as being hard on my system.

[Hobbes]

Hi Rob, it seems very odd that you lost all the saves. Did you install the game under C:\Games? Are you using W7?

Cheers,
Chris

[MarsRobert]

Hi Rob, it seems very odd that you lost all the saves. Did you install the game under C:\Games? Are you using W7?

Cheers,
Chris

Hey Chris, actually, I never use the C:\Games directory for any of my games. On my new machine I have a solid state drive (C) and a regular spinning drive (D). I at first had AJE on C:\CGames, but moved it recently to D:\DGames. Could this be a problem?

It is odd. I actually do see the saves in my DGames directory, but when I launch the game it doesn't see them. Also, this happened immediately after the last crash. I was restoring saves no problem before then.

Oh, and yes, I am running W7. I'm not in any big hurry to upgrade to W8, since from what I understand the main focus of W8 is touch screen functionality.

BTW, I was really upset about the crashes because the Severus scenario was getting extraordinarily interesting. As Severus I was in a close race for Rome with the guy from Gaul. Also, the AI pulled some very sneaky tricks. For one thing, the Gallic Imperator (can't remember his name) put a buffer of occupied provinces between me and Rome. I therefore can't march on Rome until I declare war on him, and I had been hoping to put that off for a while. Also, I built up a large fleet at great expense at Thessalonika, but forgot to put a garrison there, and darn! Pecennius Niger pulled a 'Majorian' on me. That is, he did an end run and destroyed my fleet with a land force. Those two events are what I call very clever AI work.

John

[Hobbes]

Hi John, very frustrating. All I can say is that I had a lot of problems (but not crashes) with games until I realised I should install any game under the C:\Games directory with W7. The permissions are less restrictive and save games are actually put into the directory you expect to see them in. When I installed under other directories saved games and other files often ended up in the C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Local\VirtualStore directory - a real pain until one understands this!

It might be worth trying a fresh install and patch under C:\Games and it sounds like you should be able to copy the Severus save directory from your DGames directory into the newly created AJE\Saves directory and continue the game. I'm wondering why you used \CGames originally rather than the regular \Games directory?

Cheers,
Chris

P.S. if you decide to try this and you still can't see the saves let me know and I'll PM you my email address so you can send the saves to me and I'll try to get it to work. If it works for me I can tell you exactly what I did.

[MarsRobert]

Thanks Chris, although I've ignored the C:\Games directory for years and have never had a problem in doing so, I will do as you suggest in the hope that I can recover my current game in progress.

Also, as regards the crashes, I was browsing the Matrix forums and found this: "I have had this happen as well (game freezes). To help, I reduced the amount of memory made available to the game view the options in the game, reduced to 25%. Since then, I have only seen it happen once, before it happened a lot. Hoping there is an eventual fix, but you might want to try this for now." I will try this as well and see if it doesn't eliminate the crashes or at least reduce them further.

John

[Ebbingford]

It is odd. I actually do see the saves in my DGames directory, but when I launch the game it doesn't see them. Also, this happened immediately after the last crash. I was restoring saves no problem before then.
John

If you take the .hst and .trn files out from the "Backup1" folder and put them in the same folder as all the other backup folders you should be able to load your old game again.

[Hobbes]

Let me know how it goes. I have had crashes with AJE as well and never with other AGEOD games like AACW or WIA - a bit strange why this should be as it is the same game engine.

Cheers,
Chris

[Franciscus]

Hi, Mars

Sorry to know that you are still experiencing system freezes.

I would say that the problem is really not of the game per se (that would IMHO give CTD or other problems but not system freezes) but something in the way your system (hardware/software) interacts with the game.

I can only provide further pieces of advice, namely some steps that over the years are known to solve some problems:

1. First, uninstall completely your game, deleting manually all the remaining AJE-related folders that stay behind after uninstall. If you want, first backup your saves.
2. Run a registry cleaner - I use CCleaner: safe, easy, free and effective
3. Inactivate your UAC - that solves many problems, really!
4. Reinstall your game - contrary to Hobbes, I never install any games on the Games directory , but in a specific folder created by me, and that never gave me problems. On the contrary, installing on the Programs(x86) folder is known to cause problems, specially with the save files
5. Be sure to exclude all the AJE game files and folders from your AV scanning. Norton specially is known as causing some problems
6. Apply the latest official patch.
7. In the system tab of the options menu there are some settings that may help (although most users are fine leaving everything as default):
- memory usage down to 50 or 25% - this may help a lot the stability of some systems, and in same cases even make things a bit faster, independently of the amount of RAM (or VRAM) you have
- Max. Texture Size down to medium or large textures. This can sometimes help, although it will make some of the larger (ocean) squares look weird
- No Winter map and no display borders may help speed up some systems with low end graphics, but should have no use in solving your problem,,,
- CPU sleep mode off may in some systems help - if for some reason your energy settings make your system go down while AJE is running. Try it.

Hope something helps you

[MarsRobert]

If you take the .hst and .trn files out from the "Backup1" folder and put them in the same folder as all the other backup folders you should be able to load your old game again.

Thanks man, that worked. OK, I'm assuming then that the last crash corrupted my primary save, and taking your suggestion of pulling the backup saves out of Folder 1 and over-writing the primary saves solved the problem.

Francisus - I already saw the suggestion about turning down the memory usage from someone at the Matrix forum, and plan on doing that. Also, I don't think it's my AV as I already tried that a week or so ago. I did, however, take your suggestion about turning off the UAC as well as doing a 'clean' install. I'm crossing my fingers then that one or more of these things will do the trick. If not, then I will see what else on your list would be worth trying. BTW, I hear what you're saying about the problem being in the way my system interacts with the game. However, as you may have noticed I'm not the only person that has experienced these freeze crashes with AJE. Anyway, as the Japanese say, fix the problem, not the blame.

The whole crash scenario was odd though. I mean, as you can see from my previous posts, twice before I went a while without any crashes and thought I had it licked, only to be surprised by crashes. And then getting two freeze/crashes within 10-15 minutes in the Severus scenario was the worst yet.

Hobbes - Yeah, like you, I tried ACW a year or so ago and it was completely stable. Never had a problem with it, though I did think that the Union AI was much more aggressive than they were historically.

[MarsRobert]

Ok, I started from a clean install, turned off the UAC, and reduced the game memory usage to 50%. I continued with the Severus scenario and about 15 turns later, just as I was starting to think that the problem was finally solved, I got two freeze/reboots in the space of about 10 minutes. About the best I can say is that I was finally able to finish that scenario. One thing I have noticed though is that when I reinstall the game I seem to go sometimes as much as 30 turns without a crash, but alas, the crashes always seem to return at some point.

Here's the log: [ATTACH]20775[/ATTACH]

Anyway, I'm not giving up on the game, but now that I've played all six scenarios I'm going to give it a rest for a while. I'm still kind of perplexed though. I mean, I have an eight month old Falcon Talon that is designed specifically for running games. I've run games like Skyrim and Starwolves that are far more multimedia intensive than AJE without any issues, so I'm scratching my head as to why AJE has been so problematic for me.

BTW, I found this during my idle surfings of another forum: "Unfortunately my own copy has a tendency to crash and burn regularly. Hardlock and everything and even data corruption upon reboot. Memory issue, soundcard or plain nasty bug I dunno. Seen several people have similar problems on the forum and do hope Ageod figures it out. Anyway, already looking forward to more scenarios to be released. This game got me hooked. "

I think he pretty well sums up my own love/hate relationship with the game.

[Bohémond]

Ok, I started from a clean install, turned off the UAC, and reduced the game memory usage to 50%. I continued with the Severus scenario and about 15 turns later, just as I was starting to think that the problem was finally solved, I got two freeze/reboots in the space of about 10 minutes. About the best I can say is that I was finally able to finish that scenario. One thing I have noticed though is that when I reinstall the game I seem to go sometimes as much as 30 turns without a crash, but alas, the crashes always seem to return at some point.

Here's the log: [ATTACH]20775[/ATTACH]

Anyway, I'm not giving up on the game, but now that I've played all six scenarios I'm going to give it a rest for a while. I'm still kind of perplexed though. I mean, I have an eight month old Falcon Talon that is designed specifically for running games. I've run games like Skyrim and Starwolves that are far more multimedia intensive than AJE without any issues, so I'm scratching my head as to why AJE has been so problematic for me.

BTW, I found this during my idle surfings of another forum: "Unfortunately my own copy has a tendency to crash and burn regularly. Hardlock and everything and even data corruption upon reboot. Memory issue, soundcard or plain nasty bug I dunno. Seen several people have similar problems on the forum and do hope Ageod figures it out. Anyway, already looking forward to more scenarios to be released. This game got me hooked. "

I think he pretty well sums up my own love/hate relationship with the game.

Your mainlog does not show anything weird. It should be the one generate after the crash.

It looks that you are using max textures size. Could you try with medium ?

Regards

[Pocus]

MarsRobert: Really sorry for this long list of problems you got with AJE. I have a theory about this kind of problems, happening to a few (really unlucky) users and not to the vast majority... That's called retro compatibility, or more precisely lack of it ... AJE is using a rather old DirectX library (we plan to upgrade it for our next game) and so it is entirely possible that a few video drivers on some video cards are now not supporting it fully, so the random crash.

This is exactly the same problem when Vista / Windows 7 claimed they were fully retro compatible with old applications, but many users had to fetch on the internet missing system DLLs to get their games to run.

[MarsRobert]

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I will try lowering the texture sizes. Come to think of it, I do notice a moderate slow up in the frame rate when I zoom out. Missing DLL's? If the texture size suggestion doesn't do the trick, I may come back and ask for specifics on the DLL's.

Crashes notwithstanding, I did very much enjoy the Severus scenario. I loved how the Alemmani and Sarmatians were waiting on the fringes to pounce, should I pull off too many legions to fight in the civil war. Of course probably more than any other reason, this is why Rome fell. Also, it's interesting how you can recruit barbarian mercenaries, a practice that was symptomatic of the decreasing Roman manpower pool.

BTW, I wonder if there were any Amazons with the Sarmatians?? I know there are with the Sarmatian faction in Dominions 3.

[Hobbes]

I assume AACW and WIA are also using old DirectX libraries but they never crash (yet AJE does crash every so often for me using the same PC). The PC I have at the moment crashed with increasing frequency for the first year I had it (not with AGEOD games, just in general use). I even got round to sending it back and all the hassle there is with that to no avail. It crashed all the time for the first year and a half - I sent it back, discussed the problem on various forums and never got to the bottom of it. Thought I would just have to buy a new one and then no crashes for over a year now (apart from AJE - but this is probably due to something else). I did nothing - the crashes just stopped. That doesn't really help though does it.

Are you due for a new PC soon?

Cheers,
Chris