help me obiwan kenubi......

[mid_Efour]

Ok this is a level 1 distress call to all PC bods, gurus and techies out there that read these forums...

I know a guy, lets call him "Bob" thats has terrible issues running planetside.

Bobs Pc will crash to desktop randomly while playing planetside, anywhere between 5 minutes and 30 minutes....

now i was talking to Bob and i told him its not going to be an OS problem, hes tried 98se, ME and is currently on 2ksp3..

now Bobs also tried direct X 8.1 and 9.0a
Bobs ASUS GF4200 has used default out the box drivers and latest dets from Nvidia...
Bob also has 512mb of 133mhz ram on a SIS chipset based mobo running a XP1600 cpu (this mobo has onboard LAN, SOUND, and AGP)
Bob is aware that his ram is a bit slow for a 266mhz fsb cpu but it worked fine with daoc.
Bob has also made sure the AGP>CPU bridge gart drivers were also installed.

Now technically theres nothing physically wrong bewteen software and hardware, its not the greatest equipment but should be ample to run PS.

Ok, ive run out of advice for Bob, and he is losing patientence formatting his machine multiple times with various combinations of the O/S, DX, and GFX drivers.

My last conclusins, are a Thermal or PSU issue.
I personaly have had problems with random crashes but mine manifested as a reset to boot screen never a drop to windows, i fixed this by upping agp voltage a touch (this was when upgrading from gf3 > gf4) and getting a very nice new PSU. ive never crashed since,
im thinking bobs generic shitty PSU and case bundle maybe having some promblems supplying the juice to a greedy AMD XP 1600 and a big fat GF4. But ive never seen this casuing a drop to desktop, where everything else just carrys on like normal...

HEAT issue? could the CPU GF4 simply become too hot and just crash out back to desktop, is this a possibility?

If anyone has had any experiance of this and can recomend a soloution, which dosnt require spending too much money id greatly appreciate it. This very system runs DAoC quite well, but crashes on PS..................


if u need more specific info dont be afraid to ask


(ps. im not bob )

 

[SilverHood]

welcome to my world

just log back in asap

and send crash logs of to the PS team

I sent about 30 a day during BETA... and once release came, I crashed about 10 times a day

just keep on sending them those crash logs

 

[mid_Efour]

but how can you play?

 

[SilverHood]

I just restart PS once the game crashes

sometimes I get good runs of about 50 mins to an hour and a half... other times I last 50 secs

I get used to it

 

[mid_Efour]

damn man lol sounds terrible

if my copy of PS aint here tommorow ill scream

 

[SilverHood]

you stay in your squad if you crash, so it isn't such a big hassle.. no 1 min timer like in daoc either... just log straight back in... maybe 15-20 secs gaming time lost after a crash.

Sometimes you die... respawning is easy enough, so no worries there

 

[mid_Efour]

ok scenario the guy flying the GAL goes LD what happens to me in the back?

 

[SilverHood]

the gal stays there for about 2 mins

once he goes LD, (disconected due to crash), you will be informed of this.

Then you pray that he gets back quickly

otherwise, you just bail out.. land on the ground and go by foot.

 

[bone_idle]

Its usually heat trouble if it just crashes back to desktop. I went the complete outrageous way and spent lots on a new case with 4 fans at the front, 1 on the side and 2 at the back. All controlled by small sensors at the front of the case showing me what temp is where. Game runs fine now.

Cpu runs at about 57oC and gfx card runs at around 65oC.

The hotter it gets inside my comp the more fans it switches on. Wasnt cheap though. cost me £160.
Used to have the same problem with daoc. but just took the side off of my old case. But its really noisey.

Try taking the side covers off and play to see if that cures it. Its the easiest option to go with first. My brother could only play DAoC with the cover off his comp.

 

[Cdr]

http://boards.station.sony.com/ubb/...ical+Support&number=6&DaysPrune=20&LastLogin=

Have a look there, you're not alone in your problems. Infact, I've given up totally on PS atm, unsubscribed and havent played it for a few days now.

I'll be waiting a few months until all the bugs are ironed out (as I cant actually last more than an hour before it hardlocks and I have to reboot).

And as the friendly local customer support rep basically said 'I havent a sodding clue why it aint working', there's not much I can do

 

[SilverHood]

nota heat issue

got 5 fans on my case, 2 on my PSU supply, CPU runs at 45 degrees C when playing PlanetSide

 

[Wile_E_Coyote]

Sounds like a heat issue aye. When the CPU starts too heat up you get processing errors which causes the application to crash. Had the same problem with my own comp. Couldn't find anything wrong with it, but it kept crashing and crashing the games I tried to play. When I went into the BIOS and turned on overheating alarm I quickly realised what it was. After ca 10 minutes of playing it would start beeping like mad. Haven't bought a new CPU fan yet, I just play with open cabinet and a tabletop fan on max cooling it. Works just fine since the heat was just slightly above danger level.

 

[Wile_E_Coyote]

Hmm I have a ASUS gfx card as well (GF4400). Maybe theres a connection?

 

[mid_Efour]

well i agree on heat.... sorry silverhood heheh

well some pcs chipsets just dont like it also....


on a side note..

was speeking to a guy mate of mine. thats playing PS as NC and he said VS is just a zerg at the moment, camping the spawn points with 50 snipers and tanks. and that u guys own like 90% on the map


this sounds shit, i mean really shit..... i am quitting daoc cos of zerging boring PvP, is it that common in PS?

 

[bone_idle]

Originally posted by SilverHood
nota heat issue

got 5 fans on my case, 2 on my PSU supply, CPU runs at 45 degrees C when playing PlanetSide

I was talking about ' Bob '. Efours mate.

 

[Cdr]

There's so many things wrong with the game, its hard to put it down to a single thing.

If you ask me, its just bad coding on SOE's part.

People are crashing that didnt crash in the beta, people are crashing after a certain patch that didnt crash before that patch.

Just one of them games that wont be 'right' for a few months.

 

[bone_idle]

Originally posted by mid_Efour
was speeking to a guy mate of mine. thats playing PS as NC and he said VS is just a zerg at the moment, camping the spawn points with 50 snipers and tanks. and that u guys own like 90% on the map


this sounds shit, i mean really shit..... i am quitting daoc cos of zerging boring PvP, is it that common in PS?

It seems to vary at different times of the day. When looking at the bar graph on PS homepage :-

At 20:30 tonight NC had the most people on. The blue bar was nearly off the scale.

Looked at it again at 00:15 And TR's had the most with VS very close behind. NC was a very small line.

Does this prove that a lot of kids play NC and have gone to bed?.
Or it might say that a lot of the older players play TR & VS and so can play later.

 

[Saturnine]

All the classy folks play VS, thats what it's there for.

TR and NC are just kiddymagnets with their "highest dammage per hit" weapons and "max's with sheild generators".

 

[Wile_E_Coyote]

Originally posted by Saturnine


TR and NC are just kiddymagnets with their "highest dammage per hit" weapons and "max's with sheild generators".

You just described NC, TR has neither highest damage per hit or maxes with shield generators. We DO have a shitty tank thats not nearly as good as those horrible hover tanks, MAXes and infantry with gattling guns with which you couldn't hit the side of a barn unless on top of it. You pinkies also have those crazy jumpingjetting blaster MAXes thats every infantrymans worst nightmare. But do we complain? NO! Because we're not pinkwearing barbiedoll playing sissies!

See you on the battlefield you traitors of the Republic!

 

[Big-G-]

Hi, I am 'Bob'.

im a complete dunce relaly when it comes to pcs but i pretend i know what im doing

all this trouble really started once i got my gf4 started having random lockups, cursor freezes etc ctrl+alt+tab woudlnt respond so a general reset. ranodm web browsing or lookin thru windows would trigger it off tho 99% of the time, playing daoc was fine. tried format, different os's, dx/gf4 updates but still locked up

after a recent format tho i didnt lock up but was thrown out to windows with the program ending after 5seconds to half an hour of playing, truly random - this only happens in games tho and any d3d thing. running dxdiag and tested d3d and got chucked to windows, with dxdiag closing (a real quick crash). happens in daoc too i get thrown to desktop, and happened in planetside too first which is when i properly noticed it, which is why i thoguth PS was causing it

just done another format, runnign dx8.1, drivers that camne with my gf4, and win2k - fingers crossed tho, gonna patch PS again overnight for 7 hours - we all love 56k. we all love PS's friendliniess

any ideas with d3d tho? ill try removing case panels tomorrow if i still get boots (too tired now)

apologies for typos im proper tired

 

[[PS]Venom]

"Zerging" happens to everyone.

We (VS) Just got completely overrun on a base in Cyssor by the NC

 

[Wile_E_Coyote]

Sounds just like the problems I had which I found out was overheating. Did most of the things you describe too (different drivers and reformat) before I found out what it was. Dont know if it will help but you might be interested to know that I (which had all the problems you had and ASUS GF4400) are now using detonator 44.03 driver on directx 9.0a. The problems when browsing and random lockups I've also experienced since I got my ASUS card. Strangely enough this only happens on the first boot after the PC has been off for a long while. So now I've made a habit of doing a quick restart after windows is loaded every time the pc has been off for a long period. After doing this I have no problems. Pretty weird.

 

[Will]

As a professional nerd, the problem sounds like overheating, given the time delay and the multi-OSness of it.

You wouldn't be doing anything daft like having a card in PCI slot 1, would you?

 

[Big-G-]

nope nothing in the pci slots

but i r vary silleh!

just realised today, since ive been booted to desktop from d3d applications, i havent had the mobo agp drivers installed...
so today i did that and havent been kicked
BUT now i have these installed my crashing has reverted to random lockups doing anything, not just d3d stuff.

time to blame the mobo for being so tarded?

sis chipset btw

 

[Jupitus]

Given that it seems to be independant of the O/S how about taking a closer look at your BIOS settings, and possibly changing your AGP aperture size in the BIOS? I gather that this should typically be set to about half your system RAM, but it may be worth reducing it and trying....