CTD issue

joegrundman · Post by **joegrundman** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 7:35 am

Hi

i just recently bought this game from slitherine, and i like it very much, but i'm plagued by CTD issues - they seem to be random but every time i start the game it ends because of a CTD.

I know from a forum search here and at matrix games that others have had this, but i am yet to find a clear solution.

The CTD usually (but not always) occurs in the AI turn and there is no error message. Often the CTD is on the first turn I play after loading, but sometimes i can play up to 25 mins or so before CTD.

I also had the issue with my Avira antivirus suite giving a false positive on the startup - i changed to Avast because of this, but after a couple of days, Avast also started detecting false positives - are these issues related? In order to play I have to disable the antivirus..

My system specs are well above recommended, XPSP3 2.8 ghz, 1.5 gig ram, 256MB nVidia graphics

Thanks

joe

dooya · Post by **dooya** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 7:54 am

Avira gives only 2 warnings during installation, but I never had any warnings while playing.

Redpossum · Post by **Redpossum** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 3:30 pm

dooya wrote:Avira gives only 2 warnings during installation, but I never had any warnings while playing.

Same here. I only get warnings when installing, or occasionally when browsing the directory. If you are getting virus warnings while playing, and crashing to desktop, there may actually be some malware at work

Post by **IainMcNeil** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 3:32 pm

Sorry you're having problems. If you can find any repeatable cases and send us a saved game we can investiagte but if we can't repeat it here it's very hard to fix as it must be some machine specific issue we could only guess at.

firepowerjohan · Post by **firepowerjohan** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 3:41 pm

If you get any error.log in the game directory pls mail it to me
firepowerjohan@gmail.com

rkr1958 · Post by **rkr1958** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 4:45 pm

Sorry for being so dense but what is "CTD"?

lordzimoa · Post by **lordzimoa** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 4:48 pm

Crash to desktop.

rkr1958 · Post by **rkr1958** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 8:37 pm

lordzimoa wrote:Crash to desktop.

Thanks. I guess that means the same thing as, "Return to the operating system", which is to distinguish this type of crash from a lockup or "blue screen of death". I've learned something today.

joegrundman · Post by **joegrundman** » Wed Oct 08, 2008 4:53 am

iainmcneil wrote:Sorry you're having problems. If you can find any repeatable cases and send us a saved game we can investiagte but if we can't repeat it here it's very hard to fix as it must be some machine specific issue we could only guess at.

they don't seem to be repeatable. in general i can reload after a crash using the autosave and the game will not crash a second time at the same point, but it always crashes sooner or later.

To clarify a previous point, I don't get virus warnings after the games has started, only at startup, as other users find.

joegrundman · Post by **joegrundman** » Wed Oct 08, 2008 7:59 am

firepowerjohan wrote:If you get any error.log in the game directory pls mail it to me
firepowerjohan@gmail.com

I sent it

hopefully it can be solved

joe

thelastrolo · Post by **thelastrolo** » Sat Oct 11, 2008 12:08 am

I have had a similar problem with my download except I receive no warnings it just crashes sometimes it will run for about half an hour then I restart it from the autosave and it runs for about fifteen minutes and then crashes again.

lordzimoa · Post by **lordzimoa** » Sat Oct 11, 2008 5:09 am

Send those save games to Johan, so he can have a look.

joegrundman · Post by **joegrundman** » Sat Oct 11, 2008 9:24 pm

thelastrolo wrote: I have had a similar problem with my download except I receive no warnings it just crashes sometimes it will run for about half an hour then I restart it from the autosave and it runs for about fifteen minutes and then crashes again.

i also do not get warnings before teh CTD. The false virus positive message appears to be a separate issue

i believe this is the same phenomenon, so whatever is causing the CTD on my machine is also causing it on yours

joegrundman · Post by **joegrundman** » Mon May 25, 2009 2:03 pm

So have we had any updates on this? I have since reinstalled both windows and ceaw, and still the random CTD issue persists

joegrundman · Post by **joegrundman** » Thu Jun 04, 2009 1:16 am

looking at the error log, i saw that the reports all seemed to report problems with a sound file:

C [jsound.dll+0x12386]

(see the larger sample shown below)

i don't know why this should be, and it is an event unique to this game. I installed patch 1.2 and the problem seemed to get worse, getting a CTD during most AI turns. But then i decided to see what happens if i stop all sounds by turning off music and sound FX in the options.

i did this: so far this has stabilised the game, ie so far no crashes in a year of play, which is a pleasure i've not had before

this could be just coincidence, but maybe this will help someone, somewhere

---------------------------------------------------------------# An unexpected error has been detected by HotSpot Virtual Machine:
#
# EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION (0xc0000005) at pc=0x03e62386, pid=3744, tid=2756
#
# Java VM: Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (1.4.2_16-b05 mixed mode)
# Problematic frame:
# C [jsound.dll+0x12386]
#

--------------- T H R E A D ---------------

Current thread (0x03269408): JavaThread "Headspace mixer frame proc thread" daemon [_thread_in_native, id=2756]

siginfo: ExceptionCode=0xc0000005, reading address 0x00190b52

Post by **IainMcNeil** » Thu Jun 04, 2009 9:23 am

I'll get Johan to have another look at this.

firepowerjohan · Post by **firepowerjohan** » Thu Jun 04, 2009 10:35 am

If you try

music OFF
sound effects ON

combo does that change anything?

joegrundman · Post by **joegrundman** » Sun Jun 07, 2009 12:46 pm

i've tried it with music OFF and sound fx ON. I've played for a little while in this confoguration, but so far no more CTDs. However i will test this again: i haven't played such a long stretch recently

joegrundman · Post by **joegrundman** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 1:32 am

I've played the game now for much longer with just the music off, and no more ctds. It appears the problem has been isolated. I'll let you know if things change

Post by **IainMcNeil** » Mon Jun 22, 2009 9:28 am

Great - there are some weird sound conflicts that can occur from time to time that can be very tricky to fix without access to the hardware.