PC freeze playing MOHAA

GT wrote:
[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?

It's all local.
[trimmed]

"Grumps" wrote in message
...
GT wrote:
[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?

It's all local.

Must be file related then - either video driver, or a MOHAA system file.
Elliminate these things in the easiest order. Patch the game first, then
mess about with video drivers, but the game isn't that old and I run both it
and Wolfenstein without any difficulty on both my old Ati card and my newer
nVidia card (same PC otherwise).

"VanguardLH" wrote in message
. ..
"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.


I forgot to ask: Does MOHAA let you select whether to use OpenGL or
DirectX? If so, have you tried running it using DirectX instead of
OpenGL?

"VanguardLH" wrote in message
...
"VanguardLH" wrote in message
. ..
"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.


I forgot to ask: Does MOHAA let you select whether to use OpenGL or
DirectX? If so, have you tried running it using DirectX instead of
OpenGL?

I haven't seen that option, but I'll take another look.

"GT" wrote in message
...
"Grumps" wrote in message
...
GT wrote:
[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?

It's all local.

Must be file related then - either video driver, or a MOHAA system file.
Elliminate these things in the easiest order. Patch the game first, then
mess about with video drivers, but the game isn't that old and I run both
it and Wolfenstein without any difficulty on both my old Ati card and my
newer nVidia card (same PC otherwise).

Games is patched to latest from EA.

It's not the PSU as I just replaced this with a 500W Seasonic.
And it's not hyperthreading as I just turned of one of the CPUs.

Next, drivers....

On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:30:29 -0000, "Grumps"
wrote:


There is nothing (that helps) in the event log(s). The PC just dies.

A better description of _exactly_ what the system does might
have been helpful, since it doesn't actually die it does
some other thing whether that be freeze up (then what is on
the display?) or reset or power off or ??
Regardless, my next comment makes this fairly unimportant.


I agree, there may not be a working driver for this card to enable this game
to run; but there must surely be a fix/workaround somewhere.
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.

The graphics card manufacturer says it is almost certainly an EA fault as
the card works fine with everything else.

Because it only freezes when loading a saved game this is
definitely a game flaw, not video card or power, etc.
Either don't save games anymore or keep checking back on a
game patch, and be sure the game developer knows about this
problem. Also search and ask about possible solutions in
gaming forums. I don't know if that developer has their own
(web) forum but that would be one of the first places to
start looking and asking.

"kony" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:30:29 -0000, "Grumps"
wrote:


There is nothing (that helps) in the event log(s). The PC just dies.

A better description of _exactly_ what the system does might
have been helpful, since it doesn't actually die it does
some other thing whether that be freeze up (then what is on
the display?)

Sorry, I thought I'd mentioned what happens.
All other games play fine.
This game (MOH:AA) plays, from the beginning, without fault.
Loading a saved game will result, after about 30s (or sometimes longer), in
a system freeze. The screen freezes, the sound plays (in a loop), after a
few seconds the screen will go black and video output stops. This PC does
not have a reset button, so it has to be power-cycled.

or reset or power off or ??
Regardless, my next comment makes this fairly unimportant.


I agree, there may not be a working driver for this card to enable this
game
to run; but there must surely be a fix/workaround somewhere.
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.

The graphics card manufacturer says it is almost certainly an EA fault as
the card works fine with everything else.

Because it only freezes when loading a saved game this is
definitely a game flaw, not video card or power, etc.
Either don't save games anymore or keep checking back on a
game patch,

I have the latest patch. I know (from other replies here) that this game
should work ok in my type of system configuration.

and be sure the game developer knows about this
problem.

They certainly do. So far they've requested the results of running dxdiag.

Also search and ask about possible solutions in
gaming forums. I don't know if that developer has their own
(web) forum but that would be one of the first places to
start looking and asking.

Thanks. I'll give that a try.

"Grumps" wrote in message
...
"kony" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:30:29 -0000, "Grumps"
wrote:

trimmed

Also search and ask about possible solutions in
gaming forums. I don't know if that developer has their own
(web) forum but that would be one of the first places to
start looking and asking.

Thanks. I'll give that a try.

Wow! There are so many people having issues (or had issues) with MOH:AA.
One comment on a forum gave a new atioglxx.dll file that should be placed in
the game's root. This has been mentioned in this thread too. So I thought
I'd give that a try.

Now, this PC's windows\system32 has atioglx2.dll and opengl32.dll, but no
ati*.dll in the game's root.
I put this old atioglxx.dll in the game's root, and (just to be sure)
renamed the windows\system32 relevant dlls so they wouldn't be found. I
noticed that opengl32.dll cannot be deleted; well, you can delete it, but it
comes right back!

Running MOH results in a message saying that the opengl system could not
initialise. The only way to make it get past this stage was to put the
atioglxx.dll back in windows\system32 (putting the old atioglxx.dll here
makes no difference) - so I conlcude that (on my PC) MOH never looks in its
root for atioglxx.dll.

On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 23:00:43 -0000, "Grumps"
wrote:

"Grumps" wrote in message
...
"kony" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:30:29 -0000, "Grumps"
wrote:

trimmed

Also search and ask about possible solutions in
gaming forums. I don't know if that developer has their own
(web) forum but that would be one of the first places to
start looking and asking.

Thanks. I'll give that a try.

Wow! There are so many people having issues (or had issues) with MOH:AA.
One comment on a forum gave a new atioglxx.dll file that should be placed in
the game's root. This has been mentioned in this thread too. So I thought
I'd give that a try.

Now, this PC's windows\system32 has atioglx2.dll and opengl32.dll, but no
ati*.dll in the game's root.
I put this old atioglxx.dll in the game's root, and (just to be sure)
renamed the windows\system32 relevant dlls so they wouldn't be found. I
noticed that opengl32.dll cannot be deleted; well, you can delete it, but it
comes right back!

To do this effectively you can either temporarily disable
windows file protection, or the easier way is before you
delete or rename the file you want to be rid of, first put
the old file in the system32/dllcache folder, which is where
windows first looks for a backup copy of the file it's
restoring, so having replaced the file there you can delete
the \system32 file and it'll copy the older one you want.

However I'm not clear about why you need to hide the files
in the system32 folder at all, wasn't the point of putting
the driver file in the game root folder such that it
wouldn't need to be changed elsewhere?



Running MOH results in a message saying that the opengl system could not
initialise. The only way to make it get past this stage was to put the
atioglxx.dll back in windows\system32 (putting the old atioglxx.dll here
makes no difference) - so I conlcude that (on my PC) MOH never looks in its
root for atioglxx.dll.

I don't know, you might ask the person who posted that in
the forum.

"kony" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 23:00:43 -0000, "Grumps"
wrote:

"Grumps" wrote in message
...
"kony" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:30:29 -0000, "Grumps"
wrote:

trimmed

Also search and ask about possible solutions in
gaming forums. I don't know if that developer has their own
(web) forum but that would be one of the first places to
start looking and asking.

Thanks. I'll give that a try.

Wow! There are so many people having issues (or had issues) with MOH:AA.
One comment on a forum gave a new atioglxx.dll file that should be placed
in
the game's root. This has been mentioned in this thread too. So I thought
I'd give that a try.

Now, this PC's windows\system32 has atioglx2.dll and opengl32.dll, but no
ati*.dll in the game's root.
I put this old atioglxx.dll in the game's root, and (just to be sure)
renamed the windows\system32 relevant dlls so they wouldn't be found. I
noticed that opengl32.dll cannot be deleted; well, you can delete it, but
it
comes right back!

To do this effectively you can either temporarily disable
windows file protection, or the easier way is before you
delete or rename the file you want to be rid of, first put
the old file in the system32/dllcache folder, which is where
windows first looks for a backup copy of the file it's
restoring, so having replaced the file there you can delete
the \system32 file and it'll copy the older one you want.

Ah, thanks. I saw a file copy in the dllcache folder. Wondered what that was
for.

However I'm not clear about why you need to hide the files
in the system32 folder at all, wasn't the point of putting
the driver file in the game root folder such that it
wouldn't need to be changed elsewhere?

That's correct, but it was obvious that the file in the game's root folder
was not being used. So this was my attempt to hide the win\sys32 files to
force the game to use its root dll.