D3 Help, Again â?? Game Lock, Again!

[Arol]

Iâ??ve run into a curious glitch in running D3, and that is a certain points in the game, it suddenly locks. The curious aspect of this glitch is that it seems to be predicated upon game play; that is certain events occurring in the game environment itself.
The Windows error states: Excecution in WinMain() was stopped by an Access Violation.
This is the second installation where in that this problem has occurred.
In the first installation it first occurred at the end of the third level, but I was able to finish the level by going back to a previous game save and altering my response to unfolding events. But towards the end of the fourth level it started to occur again and I was unable to figure out any way to proceed. So decided to re-install the game. Made sure I had all the latest upgradings; both Windows and drivers. This second time everything went smoothly, until here towards the end of the fourth level where the same problem has started to occur again. I have succeeded in lengthening the time until the game locks, by altering my actions within the game scenario.
The nature of this glitch, seems to be at least partly influenced by the game itself, therefore maybe someone could point me to the proper Tech Support.
I did try a previous posting in this Forum (see under D3 â?? Game Lock) and Merlin did try to suggest various cures for this problem. But ended by suggesting reinstall, to which I concurred.
Hope that there is a solution as I was looking forward to getting back to the Descent Universe after a long absence.

[DigiJo]

hi arol, hmm got your hardware specs from the other thread, they are very low, even for a so old game like d3. what operation system are you running? if you have a windows os, what os? what is your directx version number then? 9.0b is the newest.

another question is, how big is your harddrive and how much free space do you have on the partition where d3 is installed?

i have played the d3 campaign and mercenary serveral times on d3 1.4 and i think it never crashed or locked up here.

me thinks your problem is your 128mb system memory. if you run windows xp you wont have enough memory free for a game like d3. and since this old computers mostly had small harddisks, probably your pagefile will become very hugh until diskspace is used up and d3 locks up or crashes.

you could test the following switches (put them into launcher->setup->misc->optional d3 commandline switches):

-lowmem

or

-superlowmem

that could help

[Krom]

It is also possible that he has bad memory and that is causing D3 to crash. I put my system under a lot of stress in less then ideal situations and D3 singleplayer does not crash, I would say it is something wrong with the hardware and not the software.

[Arol]

Hi Guys, thanks for trying to help.
Iâ??ve got XPH installed, and Iâ??ve got aprox., 9,5 GB., free space on the partition where D3 is installed and the 8,0 version of Direct X. I could download the 9.0 version from Microsoft. But will that mean that I would have to play the levels over again? Also Iâ??ll try the lowmem on the command switches.
I have been using this machine to play Civilization III game without problem. I could accept it being a hardware glitch, except for the almost weird way it seems dependant on gameplay. Anyway Iâ??ll give it a go â?? see what happens!

[Arol]

Hereâ??s a new twist.
I went back to a prev., game save, and am now further along in the game then before.
But if I turn on the headlights â?? the game locks. Leave them off â?? the game proceeds!
Go figure it???
No wonder I put a sign reading:
- Now Why Did It Do That? -
over the computer we use as a server where I work!

[Arol]

Hey it worked! Shut off the fast headlights in the - eye candy options - and the game continues! As said previously: Go figur It!!!