Spore freezes after a while

[Flavbot]

I bought Spore yesterday. But of course the computer freezes after x minutes of play. Sometimes 10 mins and sometimes over 1 hour. But one thing is for sure: It will freeze.

What Ive already tried:
Re-install.
Update direct-x.
Update graphic drivers.
Re-installation of Windows (I had to do it anyway)

Since ive re-installed Windows and the problem still occurs its a hardware problem, or am I wrong?

PC specs
CPU: Intel P4 3GHz dual core
1500 mb RAM
Graphicscard: NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT

Please help me, i really want to play Spore

 

[mike99]

What PSU? Make and model. What are CPU and GPU temps? Try Speedfan, it will let you monitor temps and voltages. Keep an eye on 12V.

Mike.

 

[Flavbot]

After 20 minutes of playing the GPU and CPU is both at about 55 degrees celsius.

(Temp3 in speedfan shows 127 degrees C, though its consistant. Broken sensor?)

How do I know what SPU I have, it says nothing on the back.

 

[ovaltineplease]

open the case of your pc and check the side.

Anyways, what mike99 is implying is that there is a reasonable chance the PSU is failing as random "freezing" is usually an after-affect of that.

 

[Flavbot]

Hm. I took the PSU from an older computer. Not that much older, only like 1-2 years, but maybe its outdated?

Anyway, checking what type it is now...

Stay tuned.

 

[Flavbot]

I have a Codegen 300X ATX 2.03 P4 (400W).

 

[Flavbot]

Bump

 

[mike99]

That is not a major brand of PSU, also the performance drops with age. Can you borrow a suitable PSU to test?

Mike.

 

[Flavbot]

Yea I think a friend got one lying around.

Also WoW started to strike, the instant i log in it freezes.

 

[llama_man]

Cheaper PSUs tend to perform badly when they get enar to maximum capacity.

I'm guessing Spore is keeping your CPU and graphics card working hard, and your PSU can't keep up with the load. Buying a decent PSu is always a good idea - it's;
- less likely to give you annoying temporary problems (like you have)
- less likely to give you a major permanent one (blowing up and frying all your expensive components)
- it's one of the few components you'll (realistically) carry across to a new build, so you should get a few years' use out of it.

 

[stemnin]

In what phase of the game? I read there were a lot of memory leaks in one of the phases. If it's not a psu issue (after you've tried a newew one).

 

[Flavbot]

Ive gotten to tribal stage, though ive experienced crashes from the begining.

 

[Flavbot]

Ok, so it seems I need to buy a new PSU. What should i keep in mind? Do it need to be around 400W?

 

[mike99]

Don't get a cheap no-name PSU!
check out http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=108088
A good quality 420W will do fine.

Mike.

 

[LTiger]

I had same prblm & about same comp so i tried http://download guru3d.com/forceware175.80-vista-(32-bit)-download175.80.html freewebs.com/azrin ithink tahe stops after html but wrote it after google search but works great. no problems for three days.

 

[Flavbot]

Nope. Still freezes.
Thanks though.

 

[Flavbot]

Yaaay! I solved it, works perfectly now.
Though im kinda embarrassed i didn't think of it before.
The PC wasn't grounded (is that how you say it?)

 

[clo4life]

Is it me or is it that Spore seems to fail on most Nvidia cards. I'm a little overqualified to play the game, but could anyone make a suggestion? I crash directly after cell stage, during the cut-scene. I re-installed Windows last week, reinstalled the driver and Direct X, and Spore. I can say that I play Crysis at high settings around 30-40fps. I'll admit this is a Dell

Specs:
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 SP2
Pentium 4 660 3.6ghz dual core
650 wat PSU
400 wat secondary PSU @ 12V+37A
NVidia 9800GTX+ x2 = 1g
2045MB DDR2 667 ram

 

[cafuddled]

I have a 8800GTX and spore has fallen over with this weird flashing screen about 5 times now. It happens after a few hours of playing, maybe I need to upgrade to the latest beta drivers.

 

[dtq]

Ive got spore running on a 8800GTX and although Ive played for up to 10 hours straight at once Ive never had a problem, not one crash or stutter... and thats under Vista 64 .

Im running e8400 and have 8gb of ram.

 

[cafuddled]

Might be to do with 64Bit and Quad Cores from what I am reading on the forums. Does not work with running your CPU in single core mode, but the funny thing is it's the D3D9.DLL that seems to be crashing (as from what I see on the forums)

 

[clo4life]

Yeah, unfortunately I had to disable SLI before the game would start to work. Hopefully they'll come out with a patch that allows us to enable it. Happy hunting

 

[dragon66]

got spore creature creator
after i installed it three notices came up!!!!

"direct x is unavailable"
"another instance of the game is running" and some thing about not being able to create a graphics chip or some thing like that!!!!

can someone help me ???????

 

[zolo1243]

it just got done freezing on me literally 5 seconds after loading planet UP YOURS. i was on my way to a nearby nest to kill something to eat, and it locked up on me. had to restart my computer 5 times, since my PC has some sort of virus that makes it start up successfully only SOMETIMES (unrelated to spore). nothing can be done at the moment to fix it. it's just a very annoying bug that NEEDS to be fixed by the professionals. also, to those of you who want to point fingers at the DRM: the DRM has nothing to do with it, since my game is pirated.

 

[Guest]

I got the completely same problem as clo4life.

It's killing me as I rly enjoy the first part of the game. Not the exact same settings, but also an nvidia card.
Any1 got any idears ?