first sound fading, then screen freeze

[splashman]

Hi,

 

i have some problems when i play missions.

First everything is fine, then somteime in the mission my sound fades. Sometimes i can go in outside view and then i hear sounds again.

 

If that happens (sound fading), almost allways some time after that the screen freezes. I can press ESC and ENTER, this will close the mission and opens the debrief screen.

 

Sometimes i have crash logs, sometimes not. But today i have at least an error log, which indicates sound related memory problems.

Task manager shows ~1.2 G total memory usage during play, system is equipped with 2GB.

 

I'm using on board sound AC97.

 

This happens in nine out of ten missions i fly. :(

 

Perhaps someone has an idea?

 

 

Edit:

 

some additional info. I have seen, that a track of the last mission is in the temp folder.

Watching the track (after program restart) the sound fading happens even earlier and the screen freeze happens at exactly the same moment (firing cannon ).

 

Edit2, 05.02.2009:

:huh: Read about someone else problem which started after he overclocked his system. Well, my system was overclocked as well. I restored the default settings and started flying. First mission was my simple test mission, which until now produces screen freezes (almost) every time.

This time sound fadings and helicopter turning transparent in outside view as well. after trying to pop a colour marker a crash, but this time a real crash with crashlog. That was clearly a different behaviour.

Then i continued the started campaign, where i was stuck at the 'Alarm' mission with constant screen freezes.

 

:thumbup: Not a single hickup, no sound fadings and no screen freeze. Flew the mission three times to check. After that flew the next two missions in the campaign, from which i had to repeat the night mission two times, also not a single problem!

So this is 6-7 missions in a row without a problem, looks promising.

 

I have no clue why i now can run all the missions without problems as the overclocked system ran flawlessly with all other applications i normally use.

 

Now i can enjoy this great product as well, thx.

 

 

Edit3, 07.02.2009

:( Back to square one, freezes reappeared. So at least overclocking had nothing to do with it. It appears that it is totally random, but comes in blocks. Either i have a freeze in (nearly) every mission or i can play several missions without problems. Perhaps i'll download it again and make a reinstall with the new download. If that doesn't work, well there's a patch coming and if that doesn't work either, perhaps Oleg will release his baby late this year and then i'll buy a new system.

 

 

<snip DXDiag output>

Errors.zip

Edited February 7, 2009 by splashman
additional info

[splashman]

hi all,

 

still no joy :(

 

i even bought a sound card to get rid of the onboard sound but it didn't help much.

Perhaps now the sound fades a little bit later.

 

I installed the latest drivers for the graphics card as well.

 

Whenever the screen freezes i have problems with a shader, like:

"CreatePixelShader("Bazar\Effects\RenderEffects\Shaders\FlareTrail.psh"), D3DERR_INVALIDCALL."

 

But the concrete shader varies.

 

Still hoping for help.

 

thx

Error.zip

[TheMoose]

Your on Xp, humm this makes it a bit difficult to isolate the issue, since I never had issues with Xp. Under vista, well, I would have recommended, if you’re new sound card is a creative lab, to make sure DCS is inside your alchemy creative application. That has solved lots of sounds bugs for me.

 

Your error logs points to lots of memory issues.

 

 

Your issues sounds a bit ''freaky'' have you done a memory test?

 

You can try this free legit app to test your memory;

http://www.memtest.org/

 

Who knows maybe a faulty module could be the culprit...

Edited January 29, 2009 by TheMoose

[TheMoose]

Another suggestion would be to verify if your motherboard has BIOS upgrades available. It might be a hardware bug…:huh:

 

EDIT: I have to admit, your hardware specs are minimal by today’s standards, hopefully you will be able to isolate the issue. Report back, will try too assist you more if possible…

 

Process of elimination, is the way in troubleshooting anything PC wise :smilewink:

 

I might suggest you post your dxdiag.txt, complete as a attachment. Allowing us to get a real picture of your system.

 

Another tip, ensure your DirectX is up2date, sometimes libraries gets conflicted, I always run a directx update after any new game installation. You can get this here;

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=2da43d38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3&displaylang=en.

 

Also before installing new drivers you might try a driver cleaner, to clean up old files, preventing conflicting issues...

 

You might want to try http://downloads.guru3d.com/Guru3D---Driver-Sweeper-(Setup)_d1655.html Driver Sweeper...

 

Good Luck

 

Regards,

 

The Real ''Moose'' ;)

Edited January 29, 2009 by TheMoose

[splashman]

Thx,

 

i'll try the memory test. I'm not sure if i was ever in the region of 1.3GB memory usage.

Might be that the system specs are a little bit low, but my system at work is Intel E6850@3GHz / 3GB / Vista and this one beats the work system at least in some apps ( eg. compile time ).

Until now i had no stability problems, gamewise mostly IL2 and a short period of Crysis.

 

Don't know why but it looks like some missions are more likely to crash than others. Yesterday i tried the Command Center 2 mission. This one brings my system to the low tenth in fps (10-15). But i could play for nearly an hour until a different type of crash occured. This time with crash logs.

 

IIRC everytime the system crashed i used a weapon, mostly the gun.

At the weekend i'll try to do some test if i can simply fly for a longer time, if i don't touch the SHKVAL or the weapons.

 

Edit:

oh, btw. might be that the sound problems and the freezes are unrelated. I also had a freeze ( Shader-Error) without any previous sound issues.

 

Thanks for your help.

Edited January 29, 2009 by splashman
additional info

[splashman]

new info, it is somehow related to the weather.

Same mission, only weather changes:

- autumn with clouds & fog crashes

- summer with clouds is OK

- summer with clouds & heavy fog is OK

 

Have to check with same fog settings summer & autumn.

First thought it was the fog but now seems more like it is autumn?!?

 

Will make more tests at the weekend.

[splashman]

newest info:

 

assumption about weather was wrong. The summer mission that yesterday allways run throug crashed today while i was still starting up the helo.

Tried it three times with three crashes before liftoff. :(

This is a mini mission i created myself, perhaps the mission is bugged, so i switched over to the first campaign. First two missions ran through without a glitch, third (and fourth?!?) crashed once, after mission restart i was able to complete the mission.

Then the night mission, ALARM, no joy. Tried it five times, five crashes. Two crashes short of touchdown, nearly on the ground. I used the NVG in this mission, so that was at least one big difference.

After that i tried the battle mission out of the mission folder, two runs each about 30mins, no problem ( only low fps, but that's ok, my system is not so good ).

 

Soo, what gives:

- still have sound problems, but i also have missions where i fly just for an hour, sound going and coming, and i'm able to terminate the mission normally

- some missions crash constantly

- some missions sometimes work/ sometimes crash

- some missions crash never (fingers crossed)

 

What i'd like to know is, is there a known problem with sound? And is there a known problem related to the " Create Pixel Shader (D3ERR_INVALIDCALL) " error ?!?

 

Or is it realy only my system an no one else is having similar problems?

 

Please let me know, if there are people out there, which have also such problems.

 

Thx in advance

[splashman]

Last bump from my side

 

Running out of ideas.

No memory problems discovered.

I reinstalled DirectX, installed different graphic driver (back to Catalyst 7.11 ), removed second monitor, reduced resolution to 1280 x 768 and finally set desktop resolution to this value as well.

Still random screen freezes, mostly with previous sound fadings.

I don't think it is related to mission complexity, as already said, i played the battle.miz twice without freezes, although i had some of the described sound issues.

I made a different mission in the northern part of the map, around the inland lakes. Some flights and some friendly ground units. Mainly navigation in this mission but also some shooting at some tank targets. I flew for about 1h 40mins with refueling, lost the sound three or four times completely, even in outside view. Late in the mission my helicopter turned transparent but recovered before landing. Flashing panels and other graphic artefacts, but the mission ran through, no freezes. Track file was ~10-12 MB.

 

Last try:

- is there anybody with similar problems out there?

- is there anybody with a ATI X1950Pro AGP card running this game without problems?

 

Thanks in advance.