Wed May 17, 2006 4:58 am
strange crash to desktop problem
I've been having this problem where one second I'm flying along firing at an enemy, next second I'm looking at the desktop. Here's the story so far.
A couple of days ago I loaded FLMM, Hostile Universe mod and OpenSP mod and started a new game. I've been playing this game for 3 or 4 hours with no sign of any problem. I just traded my Snub LF for a StarFury LF. I take a mission to kill the ships at the waypoint from Fort Bush BBS. When I get to the waypoint (about 10 klicks SW of Planet Manhattan) I kill the first 2 Snubs and get told to go to the next waypoint about 5 klicks away. I go to the waypoint and go after the 2 Snubs there. As soon as the next (third) ship dies - bing - CTD. Bizarre.
I have reloaded the autosave and tried again. CTD at the same point, as soon as I kill the third ship.
I have tried this about 8 times and it always crashes at this exact point (when I kill the third ship). I have tried a few things to see if they make any difference:
* tried mission 3 times before fiddling with the settings below to try and isolate a game-type problem
* rebooted (cold boot)
* restarted (warm boot)
* Disabled 3D sound
* Not used the tractor
* Not used strafe (the StarFury has an insane strafing ability)
* Undocked from Fort Bush and instead of going straight to the waypoints, take a detour to Planet Pittsburgh, dock, buy some stuff, undock and proceed to do mission as I should - CTD when third ship dies
* Undocked from Fort Bush, docked at Baltimore Shipyard and changed the StarFury for a Snub, do mission as expected and CTD when third ship dies
* checked Event Viewer / Applications, this shows an "error" at the time each CTD occurs but doesn't give any info apart from some hex type garbage that doesn't look like anything in particular
* checked Task Manager - nothing unusual, same number of processes running before and after loading FL through FLMM
I tried each of the above scenarios independently to try and see if the problem only occurs in a particular set of circumstances like when I fly a StarFury, or after an elapsed period of time, etc.
I've lost about 20k in free base memory but this is accounted for by explorer and svchost using a bit more than normal. I have a listing of all the processes and their normal (average) memory usage on my machine when no apps are running, so I would know straight away if there were any rogue apps or services running.
The only service that I looked up on the net was SPBBCSvc, as I didn't recognise it and sorting event viewer shows that it is starting up when I boot and has only been on my machine for about 2 weeks. It's part of Norton Antivirus - I wish these bozos would tell you when there are going to install new services, etc on yr. machine (through live update).
I've been running FL through FLMM with these 2 mods for a couple of days now without any sign of a problem.
I completely stumped. Any ideas? I've been trying all these things to bypass the CTD as I haven't saved since yesterday and the autosave will lose me several hours flying, etc.
I have saved the game before undocking so I can replicate it at will. I guess that I'll have to go to my last good save and have another go.
If anyone has any suggestions on either a fix if this is known problem, or things to try to isolate the cause - either in game or running some utility program, I would like to hear.
cheers
A couple of days ago I loaded FLMM, Hostile Universe mod and OpenSP mod and started a new game. I've been playing this game for 3 or 4 hours with no sign of any problem. I just traded my Snub LF for a StarFury LF. I take a mission to kill the ships at the waypoint from Fort Bush BBS. When I get to the waypoint (about 10 klicks SW of Planet Manhattan) I kill the first 2 Snubs and get told to go to the next waypoint about 5 klicks away. I go to the waypoint and go after the 2 Snubs there. As soon as the next (third) ship dies - bing - CTD. Bizarre.
I have reloaded the autosave and tried again. CTD at the same point, as soon as I kill the third ship.
I have tried this about 8 times and it always crashes at this exact point (when I kill the third ship). I have tried a few things to see if they make any difference:
* tried mission 3 times before fiddling with the settings below to try and isolate a game-type problem
* rebooted (cold boot)
* restarted (warm boot)
* Disabled 3D sound
* Not used the tractor
* Not used strafe (the StarFury has an insane strafing ability)
* Undocked from Fort Bush and instead of going straight to the waypoints, take a detour to Planet Pittsburgh, dock, buy some stuff, undock and proceed to do mission as I should - CTD when third ship dies
* Undocked from Fort Bush, docked at Baltimore Shipyard and changed the StarFury for a Snub, do mission as expected and CTD when third ship dies
* checked Event Viewer / Applications, this shows an "error" at the time each CTD occurs but doesn't give any info apart from some hex type garbage that doesn't look like anything in particular
* checked Task Manager - nothing unusual, same number of processes running before and after loading FL through FLMM
I tried each of the above scenarios independently to try and see if the problem only occurs in a particular set of circumstances like when I fly a StarFury, or after an elapsed period of time, etc.
I've lost about 20k in free base memory but this is accounted for by explorer and svchost using a bit more than normal. I have a listing of all the processes and their normal (average) memory usage on my machine when no apps are running, so I would know straight away if there were any rogue apps or services running.
The only service that I looked up on the net was SPBBCSvc, as I didn't recognise it and sorting event viewer shows that it is starting up when I boot and has only been on my machine for about 2 weeks. It's part of Norton Antivirus - I wish these bozos would tell you when there are going to install new services, etc on yr. machine (through live update).
I've been running FL through FLMM with these 2 mods for a couple of days now without any sign of a problem.
I completely stumped. Any ideas? I've been trying all these things to bypass the CTD as I haven't saved since yesterday and the autosave will lose me several hours flying, etc.
I have saved the game before undocking so I can replicate it at will. I guess that I'll have to go to my last good save and have another go.
If anyone has any suggestions on either a fix if this is known problem, or things to try to isolate the cause - either in game or running some utility program, I would like to hear.
cheers