PC freeze playing MOHAA

"VanguardLH" wrote in message
. ..
Oh, and something else. I have run into games that when installed BEFORE
a video card change will not run properly after the video card change.
During install they did some detection and set themselves up for operating
under that hardware environment but now you changed it. For those games,
and after installing the new video card (which proved not to work with the
current game's setup), I would have to uninstall and then reinstall the
game.

Did that too. Un-installed and re-installed. Still no worky!
May try deleting all previous save games. I did read something about other
games misbehaving if there are too many saves!!!

Some games provide a separate config utility to do that hardware detection
after the install but not all do.

Thanks for the suggestions.

"Grumps" wrote in message
...
"VanguardLH" wrote in message
. ..
"Grumps" wrote in message
...
It's so strange that starting this game from the beginning will
result in normal play. Only when loading a saved game does it
cause a freeze a short while later.

Have you started playing a *new* game (from scratch and not from a
save) and then saving the game and trying to use *that* save to
restart the game?

I restarted the game from the beginning, then did a save. This
save-game also caused a freeze.

If that works, the other saves are corrupted. That isn't something
new. A save that gets corrupted can carry that corruption forward
to each subsequent save. You have to go back to a prior save that
works and play from there while discarding all subsequent saves. I
ran into this with the first 2 series of the Thief games: you
couldn't go forward from a corrupted save even if the game played
okay from that point because later saves would cause a problem, so
you had to walk back through the saves finding one that worked
going forward. If you cannot start a new game and do a save and
restart from that first save then there is a problem in the game
itself.

Have you yet checked if there is a patch for that game?

Thanks, I have the latest patch.




Does MOHAA say that it supports being played under Windows XP? Could
be you're screwed and will need to play it under a prior version of
Windows. You might want to check into multibooting (and not
dualbooting) by allocating some space on the hard disk for another
partition in which you install Windows 98. Note that installing
Windows 98 after installing any version of NT-based Windows will screw
up the bootstrap code in the MBR, so you will probably have to run the
Recovery Console from the install CD of Windows XP to run the FIXMBR
program.

"VanguardLH" wrote in message
...
"Grumps" wrote in message
...
"VanguardLH" wrote in message
. ..
"Grumps" wrote in message ...
It's so strange that starting this game from the beginning will result
in normal play. Only when loading a saved game does it cause a freeze a
short while later.

Have you started playing a *new* game (from scratch and not from a save)
and then saving the game and trying to use *that* save to restart the
game?

I restarted the game from the beginning, then did a save. This save-game
also caused a freeze.

If that works, the other saves are corrupted. That isn't something new.
A save that gets corrupted can carry that corruption forward to each
subsequent save. You have to go back to a prior save that works and
play from there while discarding all subsequent saves. I ran into this
with the first 2 series of the Thief games: you couldn't go forward from
a corrupted save even if the game played okay from that point because
later saves would cause a problem, so you had to walk back through the
saves finding one that worked going forward. If you cannot start a new
game and do a save and restart from that first save then there is a
problem in the game itself.

Have you yet checked if there is a patch for that game?

Thanks, I have the latest patch.




Does MOHAA say that it supports being played under Windows XP?

Yes, 2000/95/98/Me/XP.

"Grumps" wrote in message
...

"VanguardLH" wrote in message

Does MOHAA say that it supports being played under Windows XP?

Yes, 2000/95/98/Me/XP.

Then try booting Windows into its Safe Mode and make sure that the
anti-virus doesn't run in Safe Mode or you disable it (and any other
security or anti-malware programs). That's about a clean an
environment you will get without having to do a fresh install of
Windows. That's assuming the game will play under Safe Mode. Some
won't.

"Grumps" wrote in message
...
Sorry for posting here, but maybe it is a hardware issue (although I'm
doubting it). If there are any groups more appropriate, I'd appreciate
some pointers.

Anyway, I have a Dell PC, 3.4GHz Pentium-D, 1Gig RAM, 2x160Gig SATA,
PowerColor HD3850 256Mbyte graphics, DX9.0c, WinXP-home, all the latest
drivers that I could find. Ok, it's not the top-spec gaming machine, but
it ain't bad!

This machine will play most games with all eye candy maxed out; Quake4,
Doom3, Bioshock, Need for Speed Carbon, and various battle simulators. No
problem.

However, with Medal of Honor Allied Assault, when you load a saved game
and start to play, the PC will freeze and a power cycle is necessary.
MOHAA is quite an old game and I would've thought that the later games
would be more demanding. Starting a mission from the beginning, and
everything is ok.

If I put the original graphics card back in, nVidia 7300LE (low spec
PCIe), then MOHAA runs/loads fine.

I've asked this question to EA and PowerColor, and just thought I'd
supplement their comments (none yet) with expert advice from here.

Thanks for any clues.



I have a copy of MoH:AA so I thought I'd try it on my PC which is fairly
similar to yours
..... WinXP Pro + SP2
AMD X2 3800 o/c to 2.4ghz
2gb DDR
Sapphire 3850 256mb with 7.11 drivers
2 SATA II drives

quicksave worked and loading from quicksaves worked fine - I made sure to
exit and restart
the game before loading saves - no problems.

So no problem with XP and recent drivers or using a dual-core CPU. though
you could disable hyper-threading
temporarily to see if it makes a differance. MoHAA uses an older version of
OpenGL to Doom3 so Im
inclined to think its still driver related.

Sleepy wrote:
"Grumps" wrote in message
...
Sorry for posting here, but maybe it is a hardware issue (although
I'm doubting it). If there are any groups more appropriate, I'd
appreciate some pointers.

Anyway, I have a Dell PC, 3.4GHz Pentium-D, 1Gig RAM, 2x160Gig SATA,
PowerColor HD3850 256Mbyte graphics, DX9.0c, WinXP-home, all the
latest drivers that I could find. Ok, it's not the top-spec gaming
machine, but it ain't bad!

This machine will play most games with all eye candy maxed out;
Quake4, Doom3, Bioshock, Need for Speed Carbon, and various battle
simulators. No problem.

However, with Medal of Honor Allied Assault, when you load a saved
game and start to play, the PC will freeze and a power cycle is
necessary. MOHAA is quite an old game and I would've thought that
the later games would be more demanding. Starting a mission from the
beginning, and everything is ok.

If I put the original graphics card back in, nVidia 7300LE (low spec
PCIe), then MOHAA runs/loads fine.

I've asked this question to EA and PowerColor, and just thought I'd
supplement their comments (none yet) with expert advice from here.

Thanks for any clues.



I have a copy of MoH:AA so I thought I'd try it on my PC which is
fairly similar to yours
.... WinXP Pro + SP2
AMD X2 3800 o/c to 2.4ghz
2gb DDR
Sapphire 3850 256mb with 7.11 drivers
2 SATA II drives

quicksave worked and loading from quicksaves worked fine - I made
sure to exit and restart
the game before loading saves - no problems.

So no problem with XP and recent drivers or using a dual-core CPU.
though you could disable hyper-threading
temporarily to see if it makes a differance. MoHAA uses an older
version of OpenGL to Doom3 so Im
inclined to think its still driver related.

Thanks for trying that.
I've still to try the older ati opengl dll (from catalyst 3.9 and 4.3), and
I'm going to try a bigger PSU (although I'm pretty sure it's not that).
Hyperthreading can be turned off in the BIOS, can you also do it within XP?
What about using taskmgr to set the processor affinity - I'll give that a go
too.

Grumps wrote:
Sleepy wrote:
"Grumps" wrote in message
...

There is a Microsoft article (KB327809) that covers a known issue "Cannot
Run Certain Programs on Hyper-Threaded or Dual-Processor Computers with a
CPU Speed of Greater Than 2 GHz". So maybe stopping the hyperthreading is a
good test.

Still doesn't explain why the old nVidia card is ok though.

"Grumps" wrote in message
...
Grumps wrote:
Sleepy wrote:
"Grumps" wrote in message
...

There is a Microsoft article (KB327809) that covers a known issue "Cannot
Run Certain Programs on Hyper-Threaded or Dual-Processor Computers with a
CPU Speed of Greater Than 2 GHz". So maybe stopping the hyperthreading is
a good test.

Still doesn't explain why the old nVidia card is ok though.

There are plenty of people running MOHAA on a dual core PC over 2GHz. I'm
one of them, so thats not directly the problem. Haven't replied before now,
because I've not had anything useful to add! 2 quick thoughts:

1. Have you tried a simple re-install of the game? Perhaps a file is
corrupted.
2. Perhaps your firewall is preventing local disk access. Check the list of
programs enabled for access in your firewall software. If you can't get to
the list, a long way round is this: Enable hibernate on your PC and set it
to hibernate when you press the power button. Then get MOHAA to the 'broken'
state and press the power button to hibernate the PC. When you restart, it
will go to the windows desktop, where you will see the firewall software
asking of the MOHAA.exe can access the local machine or local network (or
something along those lines).

GT wrote:
"Grumps" wrote in message
...
Grumps wrote:
Sleepy wrote:
"Grumps" wrote in message
...

There is a Microsoft article (KB327809) that covers a known issue
"Cannot Run Certain Programs on Hyper-Threaded or Dual-Processor
Computers with a CPU Speed of Greater Than 2 GHz". So maybe stopping
the hyperthreading is a good test.

Still doesn't explain why the old nVidia card is ok though.

There are plenty of people running MOHAA on a dual core PC over 2GHz.
I'm one of them, so thats not directly the problem. Haven't replied
before now, because I've not had anything useful to add! 2 quick
thoughts:
1. Have you tried a simple re-install of the game? Perhaps a file is
corrupted.

Thanks. Yep, did that.

2. Perhaps your firewall is preventing local disk access.

I didn't know firewalls restricted local disk access. I can add it to the
exclusion list though or switch it off. It's only the resident Windows
firewall.

Check the
list of programs enabled for access in your firewall software. If you
can't get to the list, a long way round is this: Enable hibernate on
your PC and set it to hibernate when you press the power button. Then
get MOHAA to the 'broken' state and press the power button to
hibernate the PC.

When it gets to the broken state, the screen freezes, then after a few
seconds it'll go black, and the monitor switches off. The PC can only be
power cycled.

When you restart, it will go to the windows
desktop, where you will see the firewall software asking of the
MOHAA.exe can access the local machine or local network (or something
along those lines).

I still can't understand why the nVidia card allows normal play, but the ATI
one doesn't.

If ever I find the cause, I'll be sure to post it here.

[trimmed]
2. Perhaps your firewall is preventing local disk access.

I didn't know firewalls restricted local disk access. I can add it to the
exclusion list though or switch it off. It's only the resident Windows
firewall.

No, firewalls don't restrict local disk access, but i just thought that
perhaps it has got into a pickle and thinks the drive it is trying to read
is on a network. Are the files loaded and saved locally, or have you setup a
network drive, or even an external drive perhaps?

Check the
list of programs enabled for access in your firewall software. If you
can't get to the list, a long way round is this: Enable hibernate on
your PC and set it to hibernate when you press the power button. Then
get MOHAA to the 'broken' state and press the power button to
hibernate the PC.

When it gets to the broken state, the screen freezes, then after a few
seconds it'll go black, and the monitor switches off. The PC can only be
power cycled.

When the PC 'freezes' try pressing the numlock key a few times. If the
numlock light on the keyboard doesn't change, then the PC is truely
crashed/hung, but if the light still changes, then the PC is still alive and
only the game has crashed - try doing Ctrl-Escape to get back to windows and
see if there are any useful message boxes sitting on the desktop.

When you restart, it will go to the windows
desktop, where you will see the firewall software asking of the
MOHAA.exe can access the local machine or local network (or something
along those lines).

I still can't understand why the nVidia card allows normal play, but the
ATI one doesn't.

As suggested elsewhere - this has to be driver or file related. Not
necessarily the graphics card driver - there may be other files involved,
like DLLs in the game. Although a re-install should have sorted that out, so
sm still not any help! Have you tried to patch the game? I know there are
various patches and updates for MOHAA.