Having some serious problems.... HELP!

[CaptNKILL]

Hey, I originaly posted my problem at the Battlefield 1942 forums, so heres the link.
http://boards.ea.com/messages?14@44.qlgFaC2eMZc.6@.efb2c6d

OK, the BASIC idea: One minute the game(BF1942) worked fine (although I had a problem with my mouse wheel), the next, it wouldnt even start up. I just get sent back to the desktop after the monitor "clicks" twice to change resolution. I get a similar problem in Arx Fatalis when I change resolution while the game is playing (if I do it before loading a game, it works fine).

For those of you who dont want to check that link, here is what the original creator of the thread wrote (this isnt me):
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900amd athlon - 256 mg ram - nvidia gforce II (updated drivers)- WinME - DirectX 9

Battlefield origonal store bought cd with 1.2 and coral sea patches installed.


I have played this game on my system up until 2 weeks ago (took a break) , i go to start it up last night and it starts up and then drops back to desktop when i hit play. When i check the EAinfo it tells me i have 901 to 904 AMD Thunderbird. I have only put one program on the system since this one (Wizardry 8) and have added a new mouse.
Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.
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No one gave him any helpfull advice.....

When I got the problem, I searched the forums and found the above thread. here is what I responded with:
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Did this guy ever figure out the problem? Im having the SAME thing. It worked fine for a while and now it doesnt. I reinstalled the game and it still does it.
Ive got Windows 98SE, DirectX9 and a Geforce 4 Ti4400, Gigabyte GA7VRX, TB Santa Cruz etc. etc.. I noticed the problem yesterday although it could have been there for a few weeks (hadnt played BF for a while).

Here are the changes made to my computer since the last time I *KNOW* the game worked: updated vid drivers(41.09 didnt work with Arx Fatalis so I got 41.80 then later upgraded to 42.01... just found out that 42.01 were causing other games to crash, so im back to 41.80... which make first person weapons all wierd in BF!), got directX 9 and installed a new Logitech MX500 mouse (coincidence?). Also installed some tweaking programs for the newer video drivers, Riva-Tuner (newest) and aTuner (newest). Ive since uninstalled Riva-Tuner, just for trouble-shooting purposes (it obviously wasnt the cause of the problem tho!).
UPDATE: I just found out that the crashing with the other games (not BF1942) was caused by overheating. Ive since totaly cured the problem. Battlefield is the only issue now and it is NOT caused by heat.

Important info:
*Start BF: I get the normal resolution-change flicker from the monitor, then it does it again and im back to desktop... no errors.
*Arx Fatalis does this too when I change resolution (while playing), it flickers then im at the desktop. But while playing, the game is still fairly stable: wierd!
*DX-DIAG finds no errors... ???
*I can run 3dmark on a loop for a while (I tested for about 30-40 minutes... one time heavily stressing the video and another time heavily stressing the CPU) without any crashes\lockups... perfectly stable
*NO OTHER GAMES HAVE ANY STABILITY PROBLEMS RIGHT NOW, ONLY BF1942 and ARX FATALIS. I tested Half-Life, UT2k3, Mobile Forces, Vietcong Demo and Morrowind with no problems. All my games were fudged up with 42.01 drivers (crashed constantly), but 41.80 fixed all that.
*This is WIERD: When I reinstall DirectX9 (I just run the web-setup program) BF works after playing ONCE. After that, its back to the same old crap. I REFUSE to install DirectX9 every damn time I want to play Battlefield.


BTW, I also have another problem with BF. The mouse wheel on my MX500 has some serious problems with BF1942 (no I think its the other way around... all other games work fine with this mouse). I roll the wheel up once and it keeps on scrolling in the game. I have mouseware 9.75 installed because without the software, almost all of my other games have problems with the mouse. Im not going to uninstall it. Is there a way to fix this stupid bug? I guess it doesnt matter until BF actually RUNS tho >:(


Please help me! Im dieing to play BF, a new version of Desert Crisis was just released AND Road to Rome is going to be out soon!!!! GRRR!! What bad timing for the game to screw up!!!!
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If you need any more info, please ask.

Thanks :)

[The Baron]

Uh.

Did you uninstall the game, completely remove the directory, and reinstall?

If you don't completely remove the directory, all your options and such are still being saved. So... that would probably fix it.

[CaptNKILL]

Here is a little more detail on what EXACTLY I was doing when the game "broke". I'll try to get it as accurate as possible, this is a very confusing problem so you'll probably need all the details to figure it out.

I had been playing some games (Arx Fatalis, Mobile Forces) and they crashed a lot. I was trying to narrow the problem down to one cause, since they worked fine last week. I switched my case fans around to get better cooling... no luck. Now I knew it wasnt cooling, so I went to try Battlefield 1942 to see if it had problems too. It ran normaly (jerky\laggy :) so I played for a few minutes. When I tried to change weapons with my mouse wheel, it wouldnt stop scrolling. I emediatly knew that the mouse-ware for my new Logitech MX500 was the problem. I left the game to change some mouse settings in hopes of fixing the problem (see how one thing leads to another? at this point my original problem with all games crashing was still present). This is where things are a little foggy (cant remember exactly how it went). I THINK I tried the game another time and the mouse problem was still present. So I restarted. I tried the game again.... nothing. It didnt even load. At this point I thought that the mouse problem was just a sign of the game being corrupt and now it was dead.

So I reinstalled the game. Patched, installed Coral Sea, Installed CD Crack (yes, I bought the game). Still NOTHING. At this point I was a bit uhm... "frustrated" with my computer. So, I went down the list of possible things that could cause the game to screw up. I uninstalled the vid drivers and used det-destroyer (I dont even think it did anything), then reinstalled the same drivers I had before(42.01). No change, other games still crashed too.

THEN, I reinstalled 41.80 drivers (which I had been using relyably for weeks, but gave me texture probs in BF1942, so when 42.01 came out I got those instead). ALL of my games work fine with these drivers now! BUT NOT BATTLEFIELD. I still get the same crash with Arx Fatalis and BF1942, but all my other games LOVE these drivers. At this point, im stumped. I start running system checking utils. No corrupt files :(

UPDATE: I just found out that the crashing with the other games (not BF1942) was caused by overheating. Ive since totaly cured the problem. Battlefield is the only issue now and it is NOT caused by heat.

So I go hunt down my DirectX9 Web-Installer. I reinstall DX9.

I try BF, AND IT WORKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (I didnt get a chance to try Arx)

The gun textures\sprites are screwy because of the 41.80 drivers but the game WORKS. The mouse wheel problem was still there.

I was happy with the results here, but the game was a bit jerky because I had just done a bunch of crap before playing the game so I left the game, restarted and prepaired to play it online (smoothly!). NOPE!!!!!!! It didnt work, AGAIN. Its like the damn game or maybe DirectX breaks itself or something..... ive delt with MANY problems over the years, but its these massive DirectX-related problems that always stump me. Stupid directX >:(

Hope this info helps.

[CaptNKILL]

Originally posted by The Baron
Uh.

Did you uninstall the game, completely remove the directory, and reinstall?

If you don't completely remove the directory, all your options and such are still being saved. So... that would probably fix it.

Yes, I deleted the directory right after doing this.

Please read the post I just made, it should clear things up a bit. Or make them more confusing ;)

[CaptNKILL]

If you dont want to search the text for them, here are my complete system specs:

-Windows 98SE (fully updated)
-DirectX 9 (installed from web-setup)
-Athlon XP 1800+
-Gigabyte GA-7VRX KT333 Mobo (newest BIOS and newest 4in1 drivers)
-512Mbs PC-2700 (tried at CAS2 and CAS2.5... no affect on BF1942)
-evga Geforce 4 Ti4400 (overclocked to 300\650- lowering to default clocks didnt help)
-Currently using Nvidia 42.01 drivers
-Turtle Beach Santa Cruz using 4167 WDM drivers (I wish they would update drivers!)
-60gig Maxtor Diamond Max Plus 9 Hard Drive (about 14gigs used)
-Logitech MX500 Optical mouse with newest mouseware (running)
-Linksys NC100 PCI Network Card
-Charter Pipeline Cable Internet
-Minimum 768Mb Swap file max 2048Mbs (hehe)

Programs running with windows:
-Cacheman -Im thinking of disabling it now that ive got 512Mbs of RAM, with 256 I used it to "free" memory before playing memory hog games
-Windows Key Killer -I hate bumping that stupid key during games :)
-Logitech Mouse Config (Em_Exec) -Need it for most games so I can use some of the buttons and the wheel

I regularly defrag and scandisk (every few days) and run adaware every week or so.

[Jon]

Can't promise this will work for you... but I was using the 30.82 drivers and BF1942 was working fine. When I upgraded to the 40's set of drivers, I had the same problem, when changing screen resolution the game would drop back to the desktop. I finally got it to work when I noticed that the 40's set of drivers incude a slider Application--Balanced--Aggressive. Mine was set to balanced. I set it to application and everything worked again. This slider seems only to be in more recent versions of the drivers. I think its worth a try... its also worth noting that in the readme file for the Splinter Cell demo, it also mentions this setting and says it MUST be set to Application!!! So there must be something bad about it.

[CaptNKILL]

Nope, doesnt work :(

Thanks for the input though.

Please, if anyone has any ideas, im all ears (eyes?).

[CaptNKILL]

I just played Arx Fatalis for about an hour and a half with only 1 crash. It happened while loading. Ive gotten the "Fatal Memory Errors" in this game, its not one of those. It just went to the desktop with no messages.
I have a feeling its being caused by whatever is making BF1942 not work.

UPDATE: I just found out that the crashing with the other games (not BF1942) was caused by overheating. Ive since totaly cured the problem. Battlefield is the only issue now and it is NOT caused by heat.

BTW, I just did some experimenting. Whatever is causing BF to crash is not caused by resolution change. The default resolution (the one that the BF menus are set at) is 800x600x32. Sooo... you dont need to change resolution if your DESKTOP is the same res, right? I set my desktop to 800x600 and ran BF. Still no go. It doesnt have to change res to crash. It just flicks black, really fast, then im at the desktop again.

Of all these issues, the one that stumps me the most is how re-installing DX9 fixes it until I restart.... if we can figure out what would change after restarting, I think we've got this thing solved.

[The Baron]

have you used RefreshForce (see link in Det Drivers forum) to set refresh rates and then properly set it in BF1942's config file?

[CaptNKILL]

Originally posted by The Baron
have you used RefreshForce (see link in Det Drivers forum) to set refresh rates and then properly set it in BF1942's config file?

Im using Windows 98, arent refresh rate bugs strictly Windows XP\2000 related?

Anyway, I DID try the "renderer.allowAllRefreshRates 1" command in the videodefault.con file (one of the first things I did). I read at the BF1942 forums that it fixed this kind of problem, but since its an XP\2000 only bug, it had no effect.

Im all out of ideas :(

Anyone know of a DirectX\3D guru that knows every possible way the API can malfuntion, and ways to fix each individual problem? Thats what I need ;)

[CaptNKILL]

ahA!! Heres some new info!!!

I just tried BF again. IT WORKED. I closed it and then it didnt work. (?)

So.,... I logged off (rather than restart). Emediatly after logging on, I ran the game, IT WORKED. Then I quit, and it didnt work. I tried a few more times: no go.

THEN, I logged off again, and this time, I waited a few seconds after everything was all loaded, then tried the game. DIDNT WORK.

Logged off again, tried the game real fast (while windows was still loading) and it WORKED.

Appearently, something is loading near the end of windows startup (something new, that wasnt there 3 weeks ago) that is causing BF to not work. There is deffinitly something wrong here.

I'll experiment a little more to see if im wrong ;)

[CaptNKILL]

Does anyone know about a "startup configuration" program that lets me edit registry entries (since thats probably the cause) I think thats what I need.

I have a program that shows me what processes are running in the background called CoralSoft Taskmanager. I just got it yesterday and it seems like it will be very usefull. BUT, I checked every program running with windows, and they are all normal windows programs (or things that I have been using for a while). So either one of those windows programs is damaged (unlikely), or its a registry entry that doesnt show up in a running-processes list.

I think im getting this, I just hope im on the right track :)

[CaptNKILL]

ok, it appears that logging off then logging back on leaves my startup programs in RAM (although they still have to load) so it doesnt give me enough time to start the game before the offending program\instruction loads. So a restart is necisary to be able to play BF before it loads.

i just played a few quick rounds and it worked just fine! And get this:
while typing this message I tried the game again and it worked!

Then I tried again: AND IT DIDNT WORK!!!!!!!!!!!

I think I need some proffessional help..... no not a psychiatrist (yet!). Please, if anyone reads this, at least give some input. I was under the impression that these boards were fairly active.... im having my doubts :\

[Smokey]

start, run, type: msconfig, from there you can see which programs are starting at startup. Someother things, check the general software forum and a thread about adawre. Run a scan for spyware, also do a virus scan. Theres are just some ideas, dont know if it will help.

[CaptNKILL]

I know all about msconfig (im no n00b! :p ) , and as I said above, I run adaware every few weeks (rust ran it).

However, ive NEVER done a virus scan in my life (never EVER had any trouble with viruses) so I decided to try it. I used McAfee (sp?) free scan on their website. It took a while and scanned 44900 files....... and no virus :)

Thanks for the tips tho, virus scanning never even crossed my mind, it was worth a try :)

[CaptNKILL]

OK, since know one has any ideas about the problem itself. How about advice? Im not going to reinstall my OS or format my hard drive. Thats out of the question.

Anyone know where I should go about something like this? Im not going to bother emailing Microsoft because they will say its a problem with the game (when Im pretty sure its not, simply because the game works great when Windows LETS it).

Dont make me beg guys! Someone has got to have some helpfull info.

How about another forum\site\person to give this problem to? That would be the next best thing. Im stumped :(

[zippermcfrag]

If you have mouseware istalled uninstall it.

[CaptNKILL]

Originally posted by zippermcfrag
If you have mouseware istalled uninstall it.

I tried dissabling it at startup and it didnt fix the problem. Actually, I dissabled ALL of my startup items (only systray loading with windows) and nothing changed.

Is mouseware known to make games crash? Ive had plenty of trouble with it and mouse functions in games, but it seems to help more than it hurts in that aspect (I cant use my mouse wheel at all in some games without the software). Ive never had any stability problems with it before this.

Thanks for the input tho.

[fastguy94416]

It may have been mentioned before, but have you tried the 41.09 drivers? I'm using those and they work just fine with bf 1942

[CaptNKILL]

I guess I could try them again, but I used 41.80 for a few rounds of BF (right after christmas) and never had this problem. Im using them now and it doesnt work. I really cant think what would have caused this. I installed DirectX9 and the 41.80 drivers on XMas day because I tried to run Arx Fatalis and it didnt work (41.09 doesnt work with that game). I didnt start having this problem with BF until I played the game a few days ago.

ugh, im talking in circles again :)

This crap is driving me nuts!!!!!!! ARRRRRHGGG!!!!!!!

[CaptNKILL]

OK, heres a small update.

The problem is ONLY present in Battlefield 1942. Nothing else.

The problem I had with Arx Fatalis was caused by heat. I played Mobile Forces right after Arx crashed and it crashed too, a sure sign of overheating on the video card's core (which is "highly" overclocked). It was cured by making better air circulation in my case (CPU fan pulls air AWAY and blows it out the side fan, as the back fan pulls air away from the CPU too... this lowered my Case temps from 35 degrees C [OUCH!] to 26). I checked my other games and they also stopped crashing. So im back with 42.01 drivers (since I now know that it was heat, not the drivers that made my system unstable).

So to sum it up:
BATTLEFIELD CRASHING IS THE ONLY PROBLEM IVE GOT NOW. My PC is working great besides that. And with the new patch coming out along with Road to Rome, im getting a bit nervous :(

Please help.

[Im0n©]

This is a longshot but ur new mouse is prob a USB
ur old mouse had it USB or Ps2 ?
If Ps2 didnt u get a converter with ur new mouse ? try it out.

Had problems with Diablo 2 about 2 years ago with my USB mouse snapped on the converter and used it as a Ps2 no problems .

As i said this is a longshot .

[CaptNKILL]

hmm.... its worth a try!

Ive got a dozen converters laying around here... just have to find them...... lol

[CaptNKILL]

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!

It turns out that you were RIGHT Im0n©. All this DAMN trouble was with the way Logitech mouseware recognized my USB mouse (MX500). When it was in the PS2 slot it worked fine (although it doesnt stay in very good, it nearly fell out... stupid converter) and I loaded the game 10 times with no trouble. Without rebooting, I switched ports (back to USB). And the game didnt load. Then I switched back and it worked another 5 times.

So i uninstalled mouseware and installed the Logitech drivers (windows ones dont work for crap with this mouse). And im still using the mouse on USB. Now, Mobile Forces can see the middle mouse button and the wheel just fine, this time WITHOUT mouseware (it even defaults the "back" button on the mouse to the same function as the middle mouse button: which was how I used it WITH the mouseware).

The only NEW problem now: Arx Fatalis only recognizes the left and right buttons. No big deal really, I have key already set for the function that I am missing now :)

One problem still remains with Battlefield: once I touch the damn mouse wheel, it just keeps scrolling and scrolling! Whether it be through weapons or in menus, it never stops until I reposition the wheel (if I roll up 1 it doesnt go away until I roll down 1). I guess this is a more well-known problem with newer logitech mice (MX500 and MX700 I think) so hopefully there will be some support. Until then, I'll have to reeeaaach across the keyboard and select the weapons by number :)

BTW, zippermcfrag's advice was correct it turns out. Too bad he didnt elaborate. I would have done it a few days ago had I known it was capable of fixing crashes but I thought he just said that "just because". Oh well, thats how it goes some times :)

THANK YOU FOR ALL OF YOUR HELP PEOPLE!!!!!! THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!!!! Im0n©, THANKS!!!!!!!!!!

[Im0n©]

Glad to hear it worked out for ya
but the mouse scroll thingie has not been working for me
whenever ive used the logitech driver so now i just use windows own .

But there was a fix for this on 9x windows , ive not looked for it on xp or 2000 ...looking..........
i found this and i belive this is what u want .
GAME_WHL.EXE (http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm?page=downloads/software&CRID=320&contentid=4998&OSID=1&softwareid=10579&countryid=14&languageid=12)

And this is the file thats been doing all the bad things for you
EM_EXEC.EXE .

GAME_WHL.EXE enghlish page (http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm?page=downloads/software&CRID=320&contentid=4998&OSID=1&softwareid=8211&countryid=19&languageid=1)