D17S

Thanks for the heads up. My 350 Enermax might be gettin a little stressed with these big cards I've been throwing at it lately. Hey, you took one for the team, You da man!

You have enough hardware to run LOMAC. The CPU will keep some in-game settings down, but the Vcard is plenty. This is not a 'lack of Vcard" issue. (maybe a broken Vcard, but a 9600XT is fine for LOMAC). If the hardware is otherwise healthy it is, very likely, Not a hardware issue. “2. Sometimes when the game returns from a replay or training, the game just does not respond to the mouse click anymore. For example, if I clicked on some of buttons (e.g. exit), the game just does not respond or go to a different screen. I still see the same screen. I have to reboot the machine to regain control. Is this a know problem ?” Your second problem is exactly what I had at one point and very related to the troubleshoot we have going on over here: http://forum.lockon.ru/showthread.php?t=8879 I fixed this on my rig, but I’m really hoping we can come up with something much simpler than what I had to go through . . . but nothing easy or universal is turning up yet. There’s several intermediate things to try before resorting to the thermonuclear option that finally worked for me. What’s that? . . . Come on over.

This is very interesting. Is this at least one of the factors at the heart of why LOMAC is so CPU intensive? I've heard the term LOD but could someone define it for me? I noticed that simplying slewing my in-cockpit view around can cause a huge difference in frame rates . . .especially when I'm headed for the AO. I'm assuming this frame rate slow down is because one view is trying to render huge tank battles (ie, a bunch of objects) that are completely beyond my view. If so, this is clearly an inefficient use of CPU horsepower. Is this what the mod is working to correct? Is this mod available for 1.02? Or, if this idea is tracking, is there a .cfg or .lua or a .something file that this mod tweeked . . . that we can get into and tweek ourselves? I see that the mod is an .exe file. Has anyone cracked it open to see what's in there. By the way, how do you crack open an .exe file. Darn, I should have numbered these questions! I think a big Vcard won't solve this one. Is this the basic CPU, "not enough horsepower" issue. Might this be a direction to continue that might help the game run more smoothly?

Not yet. I'm so happy to finally have it running stable that sometimes all I do is jump in my F-15 and valley run. This game has so much depth . . . .well, I don't want to eat my dessert all at once!

I had a TI4200 for a while and whenever I “escaped” out of a mission, LOMAC would lockup tight. Task Mgr (Ctl-Alt-Del), showed LOMAC not responding. So, as you are having to do, I closed it out in TM, reloaded LOMAC and continued on with the next mission. Not a good solution. I solved it, but it was a big deal. We’re working a similar progam freeze problem over here: http://forum.lockon.ru/showthread.php?t=8879 I’m really hoping we can come up with something simpler . . .but nothing easy or universal is turning up yet. But there’s several intermediate things before resorting to the thermonuclear option that finally worked for me. What’s that? . . . Come on over.

I settled on a 6600GT as a good match for my P4 / 3.2. I also get a flicker and flash once in a while. In my case it is not related to freezes or re-boots. So, at least by observing my own system, I don’t think fixing the crash/re-boot problem is necessarily related to the flickering. I wouldn’t recommend a disk rebuild to solve the flickering problem. About volts. Great suggestion about AGP volts. Just a notch though. While you’re there turn up your Ram volts from 2.6 to 2.7. Probably, leave the CPU volts alone. You will have another screen somewhere back there in the BIOS setup that will tell you what your voltages actually are. These are your ‘rails’ . . . or buss voltages. Make notes about these voltages. These are voltages at ‘Idle’. The Prime 95 drill will tell the story about any voltage problem. The problem that occurs is a power supply might be OK at idle, but drops voltages under load. Readings at idle are not enough so you want to test the voltages under a load. Prime 95 is that load. Mother Board Monitor will record all the voltages at whatever interval you want. I went every 15 seconds for that 12 hours of the Prime 95 test. (Heck, why not!?) You will get a log 10 feet long. Just scroll down the voltage column. Look for a drop. This is your power supply’s ability to do its job . . . ie, you want to observe its ability to maintain a voltage level to its “rails” (busses) under load. A economy 450 watt PS will not be able to maintain volts under a circumstance where a good 350 watt PS will. But it’s the errors that might show up during a Prime 95 run that are the ‘real-time’ deal. If these errors occur, your system is not stable right now. . .for some reason. You can then troubleshoot with the voltage logs in MBM. If you see volts that dropped, well there you go! If you see volts dip but no errors, this is an early warning of impending problems. So far you system is handling the low volts, but its heading down the wrong trail. Here you can fix it (get a new power supply) before it starts causing problems. Or if the volts are OK, start swapping out ram sticks and run the test again. (actually, once I started getting errors, they would pop up within 10 minutes. No real need for another 12 hour run until you get the errors to stop within the first 10 minutes!) Time for a Prime 95 run! Hey Blade . . .what’s this. “Find out if you are using US or USWC (that's off the top of my head - may be different) on the AGP slot. The option may not appear in the BIOS.” You’ve piqued my interest . . .always interested in something new to try. .

Good plan. I think I read somewhere that FC liked to be updated from a 1.00 LOMAC install. Worth a try anyway.

Totally agree. . . . but hey, LOMAC won't run here. Could it get any worse? Latest MB chipset drivers then run Prime 95. Then get the latest Cat drivers from the ATI site (but it sounded like you were already into that drill). Good plan.

If 1.02 was OK, your box is (or was) completely capable of running 1.1, FC. No sense running all that Prime 95 stuff. That leaves software or some change that occured. Did you load anything beween 1.02 and the 1.1 update. Anything. hardware, software? Anything. Think hard. Just to doublecheck if it's really only 1.1 related, you might want to completely de-install LOMAC. Then, as you are re-installing, stop over at your initial 1.00 for a bit. Fly around with just 1.00 installed. If it crashes, go to 1.02 (that's where you were before, right?). Make sure everything's rock solid at either 1.00 or 1.02. Then do the FC update drill from where ever you are. (Remember, start from scratch if you had to go to 1.02!) If the box was untouched and this thing runs at 1.00/1.02 then crashes at 1.1, this is something new . . .at least to me. Han . . . help!

Yea, those flickers almost sound like a Vcard problem. Do you know about Rivatuner? (again at Guru3d). It’s a Vcard tweeking utility. Normally it’s used to overclock a Vcard, but you can turn one down too. Get Rivatuner and turn your card clock (mem and core) down a notch. But this might Not address the crashing issue, just the flickering. The chipset idea is a great suggestion. Here’s how I went about checking the basic integrity of my board. I wanted to test my processor, memory and their communication channels (MB, chipset functions, etc). I have the Abit IS7 with the 865 chipset. I received a chipset driver disk with the MB, but one time I forgot to load those drivers. Everything ran fine. I finally loaded the drivers (months later) and I noticed no difference. That experience made me suspicious of those driver. Boy they sure sound important, but in my case, they became just one more potential problem child. The system ran fine without them and it still is running fine without them. (Note, this may be absolutely ‘Not the Case’ with your AMD setup, but keep this in mind.) The present state of my non-SP 2 install is still without the chipset drivers. LOMAC is bullet proof (other than the stutters and FPS issues and all the ‘normal’ stuff). Like I suggested, this may say very little about other MBs, but it might say just a little. But drivers or not, I just wanted to see what the end result was. Was my computer 'rock solid' stable? So I needed something to check my system’s basic integrity. This is what I found . . . . . . Do you know about Prime 95? It a system stress tester. (Google it, then get it. It’s free) For a P4, hyper-threaded processor you need to run two instances of the program. Install it once, then copy the whole directory to a second convenient location. Now you have 2 Prime 95 programs. Run both from individual shortcuts on the desktop. On one of the shortcut’s command line add “-A1” (no quotes). Now run em both and go way for 12 hours. If Prime 95 will run for 12 hours without errors, you can eliminate processor and memory (and so it might follow, chip set problems?) from your troubleshooting suspect list. (For you AMD guys, just one instance Prime 95 is the trick) Also I ran Mother Board Monitor in the background during the whole 12 hours. I was looking not only for temps, but volts. (Again google it, it’s free) Set MBM up to record a log of temps and all the voltages. In my case, my volts stayed OK through out the test. My processor temp stabilized and I had zero errors in 12 hours. Then I started overclocking and used this tool check for stability at increasing clocks. Just because it boots and runs, doesn’t mean things are 100% stable . . . so I found! But don’t start overclocking just yet. Hey, you gotta leave some fun for later! I agree 100%. Me too. There was no way I was going to go nuclear until had run out of other possibilities. You are right on track. Keep going!

I couldn't agree more, It's a great game and worth the trouble. One little quick thing . . .try shutting down 'ati2evxx' and 'atisgag' in task manager. I believe these gave me fits when I was using the ATI cards. This might end up being a tuff problem . . . So, if you have an old harddrive around, it might be worth a try to fresh install XP, then LOMAC. That way you will get to play while you troubleshoot. Enjoy the game while you slowly load things back in. When LOMAC frags, note the offender and tell us what it was! This really a team sport, even troubleshooting, so anyone with ideas , , , , Han are you there!

Well, that’s a start. The 9600Xt is plenty of card for LOMAC. I had the same thing happening with a 9600XT, then a x800XL then a 6800XT. At that point, I decided it wasn’t the card. Has this always happened with the game, or did it used to work OK and this trouble just start? If the program had been OK, then just started to act up, look to some change you made to your box. It’s an obvious suggestion except the change doesn’t have to make sense relative to its effect on LOMAC (at least to a lay person). It seems LOMAC is very sensitive to an assortment of mysterious things. On most adequately modern XP boxes, it runs OK . . . on some it is just a train wreck. If it has always been glitchy, look carefully at your Vcard driver install. As you know, when updating a driver remove the driver 1st with Add/Remove programs then use a driver cleaner (Driver Cleaner Pro at Guru3d). Only then install the new driver. Also, there’s a readme out there somewhere that LOMAC doesn’t like CDRW drives. Try unplugging it. I have a strong suspicion there is a service or process (or combination thereof) that LOMAC gets completely tangled up with. This ‘background software’ is almost completely out of sight for the normal user. Why do I think so? Here’s my experience. My system would not run LOMAC. Same problem you’re having. I ghosted my C drive over to a backup harddrive. I then hit that same C drive with an Fdisk/format. I then loaded the same pre-Service Pack 2 XP Pro disk that I have always used and installed the op system . . . but I did not update anything. The effect was immediate and so far, lasting. LOMAC runs fine there. No lockups At All. Same box, same harddrive, same plug in the same wall. Only the ‘software set’ is different. Something in my old C drive ‘software set’ had LOMAC completely freaked out . . . but FarCry / UT2004 / DOOM3 / MSFS2002/2004 / Call of Duty . . . and virtually every modern game for the last 2 years . . .had been running flawlessly on my old C drive. Everything on my system worked perfectly (P4 3.2/800fsb/1gig duel channel/6600gt). The problem had been totally unique to LOMAC. So, there is one thing that will work for sure . . . But this is the nuclear option. I’m still loading programs and waiting to see what takes out LOMAC. In other words, I really don’t know what’s going on . . . YET! If you’re curious, go 'Start', rt click 'My Computer', 'Manage', 'Services and Applications', 'Services'. Yikes , , , See all that stuff. Careful! One wrong click might do you in! . . . but this is where I think the problem is. If you’re really interested, google BlackViper and check out his site. He has a registry mod that will shutoff every thing except the minimum to run a game. When I finally get LOMAC to go goofy, that’s the tool I’ll use to know it’s back here. So try the easy stuff first and don’t give up. ED did a spectacular job on this game and it’s worth the effort.

That’s a good suggestion. Here’s another interesting thing to try . . . Do you know about Prime 95? It a system stress tester. (Google it, then get it. It’s free) For a P4, hyper-threaded processor you need to run two instances of the program. Install it once, then copy the whole directory to a second convenient location. Now you have 2 Prime 95 programs. Run both from individual shortcuts on the desktop. On one of the shortcut’s command line add “-A1” (no quotes). Now run em both and go way for 12 hours. If Prime 95 will run for 12 hours without errors, you can eliminate processor and memory from your troubleshooting suspect list. (For you AMD guys, just one instance Prime 95 is the trick) You have a couple of intense first person shooters (FarCry, Doom3, UT2004, or thereabouts) and those (and everything else on you system) is running OK, right? Well, then a memory/CPU problem is a long shot but well worth a try. Actually, it sounds to me like a good place to start might be to look at the possibility of a corrupted existing installation. The next suggestion might be to fully de-install then reinstall carefully following these guidelines. This is the v1.1, FC drill . . . http://forum.lockon.ru/showthread.php?t=8112 Is this your first time with LOMAC? Did this just start after LOMAC had been running OK for a while? Does it have a history? Are you running v1.1, FC? I was wondering if FC would solve any of the bug-e-ness that the original LOMAC had. If so, are you seeing the same basic ‘character’ in v1.1 that you saw in v1.02?

Did you reinstall LOMAC prior to updating to v1.1? Why do I ask? It sounds like the install got corrupted somehow. The first suggestion would be to fully de-install then reinstall carefully following these guidelines . . . . http://forum.lockon.ru/showthread.php?t=8112 I was wondering if FC would solve any of the bug-e-ness that the original LOMAC had on 'select' boxes. I'm still curious. Are you seeing the same basic ‘character’ in v1.1 that you saw in v1.02? By the way, you have the hardware.This can be fixed.