morrowind (PC) crash to desktop problems

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This is really starting to get annoying. Most of the time the game drops
to desktop just as one of the NPC opens their mouth. Be it if they are
accosted by me (space bar), be it in the middle of combat, be it when I
walk up to them directly and stand in front of them.
The second instance the game will most frequently crash is just after
reloading a game; sometimes during the load, sometimes immediately
after.

I've done quite a bit of what's been suggested in various forums and
posts:
set shadows to nil
turned thread-loading off
even disabled audio entirely from ini file (don't like this: I want the
audio clues if I am being stalked from behind)
and I have reduced the number of cells that are kept in memory.
I also tried reducing resolution (with indecisive results) dumping AV
software and firewall etc (didn't help).

None of these seems to have made much difference either way. I even went
so far as go buy goty - which is fully patched up to 1.6820 but it
doesn't help against the crashes.

Any other known thing I might try?

tia, -Peter
 
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On Mon, 21 Jun 2004 20:51:11 +1200, Peter Huebner <no.one@this.address>
wrote:


>None of these seems to have made much difference either way. I even went
>so far as go buy goty - which is fully patched up to 1.6820 but it
>doesn't help against the crashes.
>
>Any other known thing I might try?
>
What OS are you using? I've never been able to get it working reliably
on Win2K, and have installed XP simply for playing this game. 98 also
worked fine, until I got a GB of RAM, after which it was totally
unstable.
--
Greg Johnson
"The POP3 server service depends on the SMTP server service,
which failed to start because of the following error: The
operation completed successfully." (Windows NT Server v3.51)
 
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> What OS are you using? I've never been able to get it working reliably
> on Win2K, and have installed XP simply for playing this game. 98 also
> worked fine, until I got a GB of RAM, after which it was totally
> unstable.

Win98 has (on paper) a maximum memory limit of 2GB, but due to a
bug in its implementation, anything goes over 512Mb will be unstable.
 
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In article <bbcdd0tti578dqm2koft59bsb0lav1vd75@4ax.com>,
gsj@labyrinth.net.au says...

> What OS are you using? I've never been able to get it working reliably
> on Win2K, and have installed XP simply for playing this game. 98 also
> worked fine, until I got a GB of RAM, after which it was totally
> unstable.

Win XP Pro. Um, lemme see - 512 Mb RAM. It's an Abit NF7 MoBo with a
Barton 3200+ chip in it, using onboard sound and a by now ancient
Gigabyte GF1280 (Nvidia GeForce2 MX 400) video card.

cheers, -P.
 
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On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 01:04:49 +1200, Peter Huebner <no.one@this.address>
wrote:

>In article <bbcdd0tti578dqm2koft59bsb0lav1vd75@4ax.com>,
>gsj@labyrinth.net.au says...
>
>> What OS are you using? I've never been able to get it working reliably
>> on Win2K, and have installed XP simply for playing this game. 98 also
>> worked fine, until I got a GB of RAM, after which it was totally
>> unstable.
>
>Win XP Pro. Um, lemme see - 512 Mb RAM. It's an Abit NF7 MoBo with a
>Barton 3200+ chip in it, using onboard sound and a by now ancient
>Gigabyte GF1280 (Nvidia GeForce2 MX 400) video card.
>
Well, your OS should be OK - have you tried installing different
graphics drivers? I've seen people say that some driver versions were
more stable than others - and not necessarily the newer ones.
Also, try looking for drivers for your sound chip - crashing when people
start talking does seem like sound may be the problem. Have you
installed drivers via Windows Update? Doing that left me with a driver
that wasn't actually for my sound card at all, and I had to roll back
and reinstall the old one.
--
Greg Johnson
"The POP3 server service depends on the SMTP server service,
which failed to start because of the following error: The
operation completed successfully." (Windows NT Server v3.51)
 
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Peter Huebner wrote:
|| This is really starting to get annoying. Most of the time the game
|| drops to desktop just as one of the NPC opens their mouth. Be it if
|| they are accosted by me (space bar), be it in the middle of combat,
|| be it when I walk up to them directly and stand in front of them.
|| The second instance the game will most frequently crash is just after
|| reloading a game; sometimes during the load, sometimes immediately
|| after.
||
|| I've done quite a bit of what's been suggested in various forums and
|| posts:
|| set shadows to nil
|| turned thread-loading off
|| even disabled audio entirely from ini file (don't like this: I want
|| the audio clues if I am being stalked from behind)
|| and I have reduced the number of cells that are kept in memory.
|| I also tried reducing resolution (with indecisive results) dumping AV
|| software and firewall etc (didn't help).
||
|| None of these seems to have made much difference either way. I even
|| went so far as go buy goty - which is fully patched up to 1.6820 but
|| it doesn't help against the crashes.
||
|| Any other known thing I might try?
||
|| tia, -Peter

Have you tried changing the ( I think it's called ) "3D Audio" button from
Hardware to Software rendering? Seems to have done the trick for me.

HTH,

-joe.

--


________________________________________________
I must be lost: I've passed the point of no return
three times in the last hour.
 
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Peter Huebner wrote:

> In article <bbcdd0tti578dqm2koft59bsb0lav1vd75@4ax.com>,
> gsj@labyrinth.net.au says...
>
>
>>What OS are you using? I've never been able to get it working reliably
>>on Win2K, and have installed XP simply for playing this game. 98 also
>>worked fine, until I got a GB of RAM, after which it was totally
>>unstable.
>
>
> Win XP Pro. Um, lemme see - 512 Mb RAM. It's an Abit NF7 MoBo with a
> Barton 3200+ chip in it, using onboard sound and a by now ancient
> Gigabyte GF1280 (Nvidia GeForce2 MX 400) video card.
>
> cheers, -P.


Two things I have noticed that cause your problems are overheating and
the memory leak problem. First check the temperature of your computer,
especially the video card after one of these crashes. If they are still
at a comfortable temperature, touchable, look at your memory usage in
Task Manager. I could use over 700 MB of memory in the game at times
and this is usually when it would crash with the memory leak problem.
A last thing to look at are the system logs to see if any problem
occurred to cause it to crash.
 
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Archived from groups: alt.games.elder-scrolls (More info?)

In article <40d7cb55$0$18667$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au>,
none@all.causeidontlikespam.com says...

> Have you tried changing the ( I think it's called ) "3D Audio" button from
> Hardware to Software rendering? Seems to have done the trick for me.
>
> HTH,
>
> -joe.

Thanks Joe, I tried it either way and it crashes both ways,
unfortunately. It even crashes with sound turned off entirely
at times. Maybe it's trying to load sound, even when it's turned off,
and encountering problems there, I just don't know (yet).

cheers, -Peter
 
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Archived from groups: alt.games.elder-scrolls (More info?)

In article <7t0Cc.116509$Gx4.107929@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>,
mwryder@_worldnet.att.net says...
>
> Two things I have noticed that cause your problems are overheating and
> the memory leak problem. First check the temperature of your computer,
> especially the video card after one of these crashes. If they are still
> at a comfortable temperature, touchable, look at your memory usage in
> Task Manager. I could use over 700 MB of memory in the game at times
> and this is usually when it would crash with the memory leak problem.
> A last thing to look at are the system logs to see if any problem
> occurred to cause it to crash.

Is there any fix for the memory leak problem? I have LOTs of swap file
free, but of course that doesn't necessarily mean anything in that
context ...

System Temperature is not a problem, anyway. Not since I put a
Thermalright cooler with a 90 mm fan on my CPU - it cools the bridge
chip and the video card at the same time as the CPU <g>.

How do you get at task manager with the game running full screen,
b.t.w.? I find I cannot get out of it short of exiting.

cheers, -P.
 
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Peter Huebner wrote:

> In article <7t0Cc.116509$Gx4.107929@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>,
> mwryder@_worldnet.att.net says...
>
>>Two things I have noticed that cause your problems are overheating and
>>the memory leak problem. First check the temperature of your computer,
>>especially the video card after one of these crashes. If they are still
>>at a comfortable temperature, touchable, look at your memory usage in
>>Task Manager. I could use over 700 MB of memory in the game at times
>>and this is usually when it would crash with the memory leak problem.
>>A last thing to look at are the system logs to see if any problem
>>occurred to cause it to crash.
>
>
> Is there any fix for the memory leak problem? I have LOTs of swap file
> free, but of course that doesn't necessarily mean anything in that
> context ...
>

I never found one :( The only way to avoid it is to avoid a lot of
traveling, especially fast travel such as recall, teleports, and boats.

> System Temperature is not a problem, anyway. Not since I put a
> Thermalright cooler with a 90 mm fan on my CPU - it cools the bridge
> chip and the video card at the same time as the CPU <g>.
>

You might still open the case after one of these crashes and feel the
video card. Mine was getting too hot to touch until I installed a PCI
slot cooler.

> How do you get at task manager with the game running full screen,
> b.t.w.? I find I cannot get out of it short of exiting.
>

I just checked what the readings were before starting the game,
including the max memory used, then checked them again just after
exiting. Usually Morrowind used about 200 MB of memory but when the
memory leak caused it to crash it was using upwards of 700 MB!


> cheers, -P.
 
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"Peter Huebner" <no.one@this.address> wrote in message
news:MPG.1b43bf5be859b698989797@news.nzl.ihugultra.co.nz...

> Is there any fix for the memory leak problem? I have LOTs of swap file
> free, but of course that doesn't necessarily mean anything in that
> context ...
>
> How do you get at task manager with the game running full screen,
> b.t.w.? I find I cannot get out of it short of exiting.

I set the [indispensible, wonderful] FPS utility to run in a normal window
(that is, not minimized to the system tray), and then always launch
Morrowind from it.

With FPS up in the background, I can reliably Alt-Tab from Morrowind to the
it and hence the desktop. It takes a few seconds, but from there one should
be able to get to Task Manager using Ctrl-Alt-Delete.

/Andy
 
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In article <g3med017hglt1p27fu1aq89snb86jt787j@4ax.com>,
gsj@labyrinth.net.au says...

> Well, your OS should be OK - have you tried installing different
> graphics drivers?

I have run the [Omega?] drivers in the past, although I think after a
reinstall I didn't put them up again. I will pursue that further.

> I've seen people say that some driver versions were
> more stable than others - and not necessarily the newer ones.
> Also, try looking for drivers for your sound chip - crashing when people
> start talking does seem like sound may be the problem.

Either that or it's still trying to allocate memory even if speech or
sound are turned off and the allocation process is causing the crash,
rather than any actual sound issues. I've found my sound to be
absolutely rock-solid with any other software I've used. ?!?

> Have you
> installed drivers via Windows Update? Doing that left me with a driver
> that wasn't actually for my sound card at all, and I had to roll back
> and reinstall the old one.

No, I just don't trust Microsoft that far so I would let them install
things on my machine without me having the finger on the trigger.
And I've had WinUpdate highjacked by some hacker trying to install a
dialler on my machine!!! (vanilla WinXP, just before I got a firewall
up) Fortunately I was watching and killed the connection before it could
burrow in. I immediately disabled WinUpdate.
:-\

cheers, -Peter
 
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On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 15:33:57 +1200, Peter Huebner <no.one@this.address>
wrote:

>Either that or it's still trying to allocate memory even if speech or
>sound are turned off and the allocation process is causing the crash,
>rather than any actual sound issues. I've found my sound to be
>absolutely rock-solid with any other software I've used. ?!?

You might want to try testing your memory itself - Windows isn't very
fussy about RAM that isn't quite right, and often doesn't notice. Use
something like memtest86 (http://www.memtest86.com/), which is freeware,
to make sure your memory is really OK.
--
Greg Johnson
"The POP3 server service depends on the SMTP server service,
which failed to start because of the following error: The
operation completed successfully." (Windows NT Server v3.51)
 
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Archived from groups: alt.games.elder-scrolls (More info?)

In article <pj1id0tek1ts1qv6t9sve83ovkmp70gv00@4ax.com>,
gsj@labyrinth.net.au says...
> On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 15:33:57 +1200, Peter Huebner <no.one@this.address>
> wrote:
>
> >Either that or it's still trying to allocate memory even if speech or
> >sound are turned off and the allocation process is causing the crash,
> >rather than any actual sound issues. I've found my sound to be
> >absolutely rock-solid with any other software I've used. ?!?
>
> You might want to try testing your memory itself - Windows isn't very
> fussy about RAM that isn't quite right, and often doesn't notice. Use
> something like memtest86 (http://www.memtest86.com/), which is freeware,
> to make sure your memory is really OK.

Onwards it goes. I have re-installed the Omega drivers - omigosh,
Morrowind is such a pretty place now - the definition is really so very
much better than with the bog standard nvidia/windows drivers. Although
mouse response has slowed considerably. (I chose the 'quality' drivers
over the 'performance' ones).

I have also installed the latest NVidia Chipset drivers for sound and
ide and memory management for the motherboard.

Playtest time. Ran from Pelagiad to Balmora, killed a bunch of cliff
racers on the way (since I took the mountain route) - slept, levelled,
trained alchemy 3 times and had a C2D on the 4th time. This is the
fastest crash ever, just about <sigh>. Also the first time I've had a
crash on training.
I very much doubt ye olde 'memory leak' would've caught me out only this
briefly into the game.

I just got the memtest util as you suggested and will let it run some
time tonight.
Not too optimistic, though - I think I have *good* memory in this
machine.

-P.
 
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my game crashes when i start it cant even get to main-menu.which is strange it was running fine for a year until i turned of the comp to go get some sleep and the next day i tried to play it and the problem was there.

tried:
Turning of all mods bloodmoon and Tribunal

reinstaling

what can i do?
 
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I found a solution to this problem. I used to get hangs and crashes on Morrowind all the time. I've had the game for years and just always accepted the desktop crashes and tried to work around it by saving every 5 minutes(literally). And it's not just my machine; It seems to be a known, common problem. But, alas! I found a cure!

Here's what I did:

1) Updated DirectX to the latest version
2) Updated video driver to the latest version
3) Updated audio driver to the latest version
4) Used Spybot, Registry Mechanic, and CleanUp to fix potential problems.
5) Updated Bloodmoon to the latest version (1.6.1820)
6) Installed the Bloodmoon No-CD fix (1.6.1820)
6a) Also copied video files from CD to Game folder, as instructed by the No-CD fix

And there it is! Success! I've played the game for several hours straight, saved numerous times, explored a great deal, and not a single crash!

No-CD fixes can be found at MegaGames dot com.

As for Registry Mechanic...ThePirateBay, anyone?

NOTE: I have installed several mods, including Better Bodies, Tradeskills, extra landmasses/quests, and extra items and I'm convinced the frequently ill-timed desktop crashes are a thing of the past!