Sudden crashes during dialog: possible solution

[dewuntou]

If you are crashing to the desktop at a specific point in some dialog everytime, check the crash log. If you see the error being something like

vampire caused an Access Violation (0xc0000005)
in module mssmp3.asi at 001b:26f05d86. (address could be different)

It could be because you listened to one of the mp3 with Windows Media player. There are some dialog mp3s that if you listen to them in their entirety, WMP will modify the file some how. I don't know exactly how but it adds about 4K worth of something. V:TM BL will crash if it plays that modified file.

It doesn't seem to apply to music, just dialog.

WinAmp doesn't seem to make the modification so if you just have to listen to them, try it with WinAmp.

You can tell which file is the error by looking in the stack. If the mod date on that file is after 10/18/2004, this is probably the issue.

Make a copy of your last Autosave. Uninstall, delete all the entire Vampire directory. (Not deleting the entire folder after uninstalling leaves some of the patched stuff in place. I deleted it all just to make the reinstall clean) Reinstall, repatch and copy your Autosave back into the Saves directory.


Hope this helps.

Thanks
Zach

[Maxinion]

Can anyone confirm this? If it really works, that would really help out a lot of people. I find it very strange, though, that WMP would do something like that... do you have an article or something from a reputable source that confirms this? I would most like to see it, because that sounds like a major bug in WMP.

[reivax]

I've never listened to any .mp3 files with my WMP or Winamp, but I still have frequent crashes during conversation; frequent as in "every time I play the game" frequent

[focused_letharg]

Dialogue crashes

I have played through the game once as a Tremere (5.04AT patch) with no
crashes. This go round, I'm 3/4 through as Nosferatu. I have to assume the game performance isn't more or less stable depending on what clan is chosen. So I was feeling stupid one night recently and started listening to the MP3 dialogue files with (yes) WMP.
So I went from 0 crashes last time to about 5 seperate ones this playthrough. It's not related to Obfuscate or anything like that; every one was from dialogue. The last split second of a dialogue response crashes the game like flipping a switch. Although the MP3 files look the same, the ones I listened to have definitely been altered.

On the bright side, at least these crashes can be identified. Thanks for the info here...1 lesson learned the hard way