Game crash on startup (help!)

jdougan1 · Post by **jdougan1** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 1:44 pm

I posted an earlier message about this a while back - at that time, I was just trying to uninstall. Here is an update.

The game crashes to Windows as soon as I click the "start new game" option. I briefly see a screen with "The world of darkness.... (I think - it is up less than 1 second) - then crash! Up comes windows again.

I have tried both with and without the patch - that isn't the issue.

I have a decent system - Pentium 4 at 2.2Ghz, 512 RAM, and a good video card (ATI Radion 9800 Pro w/128 DDR). I have about 11 gigs left on the hard drive AFTER install. This should put me well above minimum specs.

Anyone with ideas on what to do? The patch docs say I should let windows manage the swapfile - but I am not sure how to check. I haven't updated the drivers, but this video card is only about 3 months old and I doubt that is the problem.

Any suggestions?

Anyone know where I should go to make an official report?

Thanks!

-- Jim

showoffjp · Post by **showoffjp** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 2:33 pm

Actually...

Not getting all the latest drivers(espeacially your video card ones) can cause some pretty serious problems when trying to run games. This can cause overloads in you cpu/memory and other problems leading to crashing. My friend had a problem just like this(lnly with doom 3), and he had a Saphire Radeon 9800 Pro(same as yours, I presume). His was about 2 months old, but as soon as he updated all the drivers, everything worked great(he got the ATI system utility, drivers, etc). So try that out...hope it helps

http://www.ati.com/support/driver.html - ATI Drivers(get as many as you can relating to your system and what is compatible with what you have, espeacially the video card one)

PS: You might also want to try defragging your hard drvie...this can suprisingly also help a bunch if you havn't done it in a while(it's in the properties whe you right click your C drive, or whatever hardrive you are using)

jdougan1 · Post by **jdougan1** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 3:33 pm

Nope - that didn't do it. I updated all the drivers, and still the same problem. I THINK that the "World of Darkness...." screen was on a tad longer than with the old driver - but not a lot.

I still want to check this "Have windoes manage the swap file..." thing - but don't know how to do that. Does anyone know.

-- Jim

P.S. I did get an "unable to delete support file - access denied" message on install of the drivers. The install still seemed to occur, though, and the system manager shows the updated driver to be installed. Still, this might be related. Any ideas on how to avoid the "access denied" problem?

Maxinion · Post by **Maxinion** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 3:41 pm

Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Performance Settings -> Advanced, and there you are. Hit Change, and you reach a window. Click the "system managed file" to let Windows manage it. I think that's all you need to do.

jdougan1 · Post by **jdougan1** » Thu Dec 30, 2004 12:07 pm

OK - more frustration....

The virtual memory swapfile was indeed too small - but changing it does not seem to have had any effect. I still get the "world of darkness...." screen for about 1 second (a bit longer now than before I made the changes...) - then CRASH to windows.....

I will install the patch - though I don't think that will matter - I had the patch installed after my first install, and that didn't matter.

Quick question: What happens right after the "world of darkness..." screen? Is there a video? A choice screen? What is the computer doing at that point? It is a long shot, but it might help me diagnose the bug.

Thanks for all the help...

-- Jim

jdougan1 · Post by **jdougan1** » Mon Jan 03, 2005 12:23 am

No luck. Installing the latest drivers and the patch haven't done much more that give me an extra second or so before the crash.

Like I asked before - what happens right after starting a new game? That might help me diagnose the problem...

-- Jim