Shutdown on Mission one north

[beergoggles]

I keep getting game shutdowns midway through mission one North -- no plane explosions cause it matter of fact shot down plenty of planes game runs fine (nice gamma flash) --I'm in the first village, she's cleared out and then "BAM" shutdown.
Is this an issue with the ATI cards? I have an 800 Pro.
I get a message that says' "memory could not be read"

[tosu]

I don't have an x800 card, but an older 9600xt. This is what I know:

I also get these "memory could not be read" messages from time to time. The gamma flash problem is the main reason though: 1. explosion --> 2. gamma flash --> 3. "memory could not be read". --> 4. Back to desktop. This was resolved with Adrian's "plane explode patch" in Barbarossa, but it doesn't work with Kursk for some reason.

Then there is the matter of units getting stuck in conditions that trigger direct CTD:s, with or without any warning messages. I get this sometimes when I kill a certain unit, the game will then CTD. I actually had this problem once in mission one north and had to restart the whole mission.

AGP 8x can often be a no no in Blitzkrieg. It will often cause lockups with my 9600xt. I set mine at 4x in BIOS. Also disabled fast writes in BIOS. I cannot confirm if increasing AGP aperture size to 256 will help in Blitzkrieg specifically, but I'm currently testing it.

Sound can be problematic. It can literally choke Blitzkrieg to death. I use the nforce2 MCP-T and Blitzkrieg is very sensitive to conflicts with things like USB & Mouse IRQ:s & PCI latency settings. By default I had USB IRQ:s sharing with the MCP-T audio controller. APIC often does this and reports no conflicts but it's there. In combination with Radeon AGP latency set by default at 255 or 248, and PCI latency in BIOS for audio set by default at 32, it choked Blitzkrieg for me.

So with all these issues what have I done?

1. Make sure everything is stable with Memtest and Prime95 (doh!) .
2. No driver conflicts etcetc (doh!) .
3. Set AGP to 4x and disable fastwrites in BIOS.
4. Set AGP aperture size to 256 in BIOS.
5. Set PCI audio latency to 64 in BIOS.
6. Set Radeon latency to 128 in Ati Tray Tools.
7. Check APIC IRQ allocation tables in device manager.
8. Reset Display Driver in Ati Tray Tools.
9. Use Adrian's plane explode patch (need one for Kursk too!)

Obviously I have accepted the fact that Blitzkrieg isn't the most stable piece of software around ;D. At least not on my configuration.

[BBFred]

I think Tosu covered it all in case the problem is related to your video card! Unfortunately, it's quite usual with brand new ATI cards to have to wait for several driver versions before the card becomes stable with most applications.

Another possibility that would cause a "Memory cannot be read" error is when you install a mod in the Blitzkrieg\Data directory. So in case you have recently downloaded & installed mods make sure the above folder is clean of non-original BK files.

HTH

[beergoggles]

Thank you -- an excellent answer -- could be any one of a number of things. I went back to earlier version of the mission and it played through fine --SOMETHING happened it did'nt like but it stopped.
I'm switching to the NVIDIA 7800 GTX card --I've had too many twitchy problems with the ATI's even at he 800 level they can be iffy. The Blitz is a bit scary at times you never know when she'll blow or what you did that caused it--I have 6 to 8 saves for every mission with saves every twenty seconds or so --at least I never lose much.
Thanks

[Adrian Taylor]

Its very strange thing with these ATI drivers. Although I have had problems with them before I now have an ATI 9600 256mb card and have no problems with Blitz. However, can't get American Conquest - FightBack to work at all

Adrian

[foxy]

Very strange that Adrian, as I have the same type card in, It works a treat.

Hmmm, maybe I am not up todate on drivers, I have not a clue why you cannot get that game from working.

Strange indeed.

[Adrian Taylor]

Well it works on my other network machine which has an ATI 9600 128mb card.


Adrian

[foxy]

Hmmm, so that exrta ram course's the problem, or maybe some upgrade.

Have Radeon RX 3D G PCI express on me other com, and that works fine to, that has 256 ram.

Not shure ,is that ATI as well.