AAAAAAARGH!! Stupid random quit...

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

What do I have to do to stop the game from just randomly quitting for no
apparent reason? It's really starting to drive me nuts. Sometimes it just
quits to windows, sometimes it even reboots the entire computer. And it
always comes completely without any warning. No error messages, no nothing.
I just finished exploring all the manor houses in Ald'ruhn (goddamn that
place is huge), and just as I was finishing the last one, BAM! I'm looking
at the desktop. In dangerous places, it's not so bad, because I tend to
save frequently wherever there's tough creatures around. But in this case,
I hadn't saved since before I came to town, and thus everything I did
exploring that huge place is gone. Does this happen to everybody? If so,
how do you stand it? This is really pissing me off.

BTW, here's my system specs, in case it matters:
Win2K, SP4
Athalon 2.6GHz
512 MB DDR ram
Radeon 8500, 128MB DDR video
Sound native on the mobo.
Running Morrowind with Tribunal (no Bloodmoon yet) and no mods.

All of this is well above spec for the game, and the video card is even
listed in their "Supported Video Card Chipsets" list in the readme file.

Should I install Bloodmoon just to get up to date? Does it even matter?
Getting really frustrated here...

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

Darrel Hoffman wrote:

> What do I have to do to stop the game from just randomly quitting for no
> apparent reason?

Nothing. Morrowind is buggy and just crashes often. Bethedsa knows it,
players know it, everyone knows it. Quicksave often. Live with it or
bring the game back to the store for a refund.

I've said this before: I can live with bad and buggy games, but good and
buggy games are hell. If a game is bad and buggy, I just uninstall and
forget it. But if a game is good I simply cannot forget it. So the
combination good and buggy can lead to quite some frustration.

While Bethedsa has a history of producing excellent game content which
puts other games to shame, they unfortunately also have a history of
producing bug-ridden and unstable games.
I find it difficult to talk bad about Bethedsa because their
contribution for roleplaying gamers is invaluable. But I have yet to see
a Bethedsa game which runs stable.


Peter

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

Peter Strempel wrote:
> Darrel Hoffman wrote:
>
>> What do I have to do to stop the game from just randomly quitting for no
>> apparent reason?
>
>
> Nothing. Morrowind is buggy and just crashes often. Bethedsa knows it,
> players know it, everyone knows it. Quicksave often. Live with it or
> bring the game back to the store for a refund.
>
> I've said this before: I can live with bad and buggy games, but good and
> buggy games are hell. If a game is bad and buggy, I just uninstall and
> forget it. But if a game is good I simply cannot forget it. So the
> combination good and buggy can lead to quite some frustration.
>
> While Bethedsa has a history of producing excellent game content which
> puts other games to shame, they unfortunately also have a history of
> producing bug-ridden and unstable games.
> I find it difficult to talk bad about Bethedsa because their
> contribution for roleplaying gamers is invaluable. But I have yet to see
> a Bethedsa game which runs stable.
>
>
> Peter

trypically I save after tracelling, resting, picking up something
valuable and if I hear the hard drive swapping irratically

the game is just too damn good to give up as you said - and as long as I
don't lose a hideous amount of progress then restarting is only a minor
drawback

(I found the latest patches cut down the amount of quitting, and also it
hasn't crashed since I merged the level lists either - although that
probably didn't have an effect on stability)

Stu

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

> trypically I save after tracelling, resting, picking up something
> valuable and if I hear the hard drive swapping irratically

My hard drive unfortunately seems to be relatively quiet. I keep the case
on the floor, so if I happen to look down and see the little red light
flashing alot more than it should, that would be a good clue, but of course,
when playing the game, I'm usually looking at the screen. As for resting,
the game saves automatically, fortunately. (Though it saves BEFORE resting
instead of after, but I suppose that's good enough.)

> the game is just too damn good to give up as you said - and as long as I
> don't lose a hideous amount of progress then restarting is only a minor
> drawback

Yeah, see, if I'm in the "good" parts of the game, you know, exploring new
areas and fighting monsters and stuff, I'm usually saving all the time
anyhow. Either because I have to rest after major fights, or I just save
when I'm not sure if I should be doing something. So if the game decides to
crash on me, it's not so bad. It's when I'm doing the boring, safe stuff
that I forget to save. When there's no combat, I'm not taking damage or
improving my skills much, so there's no need to rest ever. And since I'm
not going anywhere dangerous, my "I should probably save now" instinct
doesn't kick in like it does in dangerous areas. So it's especially
infuriating, because not only have I not saved in a long time, but it was a
long time of doing boring stuff that I now have to do all over again. (In
this case I was just going through all the Ald'ruhn manors looking for those
lovely skill-increasing books... Since I knew I had found several on the
first trip, it meant I knew I had to go and do it again. Otherwise I'd have
just said screw it, I don't need to map out this entire place...)

> (I found the latest patches cut down the amount of quitting, and also it
> hasn't crashed since I merged the level lists either - although that
> probably didn't have an effect on stability)

What is this "merged the level lists"? How would I go about doing that?
One thing I did do on the advice of the read-me was to lower the audio
hardware acceleration, but it didn't help. I just got kicked out again.
(Didn't lose too much this time, fortunately.) I may try turning it off
completely and see if that helps.

For the life of me, I can't even remember now when the last time was I
actually quit this game the way you're supposed to. I just play until it
crashes and then get fed up and go do something else for a while...

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

> Nothing. Morrowind is buggy and just crashes often. Bethedsa knows it,
> players know it, everyone knows it. Quicksave often. Live with it or
> bring the game back to the store for a refund.
>
> I've said this before: I can live with bad and buggy games, but good and
> buggy games are hell. If a game is bad and buggy, I just uninstall and
> forget it. But if a game is good I simply cannot forget it. So the
> combination good and buggy can lead to quite some frustration.

Yeah, that's the problem. I'm addicted now, so it's all the more
frustrating. If I didn't like the game, I'd just stop playing it. And
while this isn't my only complaint about it, it's by far the biggest. I
just wish there were some way to predict when it was about to happen, so I
don't have to keep redoing the annoying stuff...

> While Bethedsa has a history of producing excellent game content which
> puts other games to shame, they unfortunately also have a history of
> producing bug-ridden and unstable games.
> I find it difficult to talk bad about Bethedsa because their
> contribution for roleplaying gamers is invaluable. But I have yet to see
> a Bethedsa game which runs stable.

A sad state of affairs, it seems.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

Darrel Hoffman wrote:
> What do I have to do to stop the game from just randomly quitting for no
> apparent reason? It's really starting to drive me nuts. Sometimes it just
> quits to windows, sometimes it even reboots the entire computer. And it
> always comes completely without any warning. No error messages, no nothing.
> I just finished exploring all the manor houses in Ald'ruhn (goddamn that
> place is huge), and just as I was finishing the last one, BAM! I'm looking
> at the desktop. In dangerous places, it's not so bad, because I tend to
> save frequently wherever there's tough creatures around. But in this case,
> I hadn't saved since before I came to town, and thus everything I did
> exploring that huge place is gone. Does this happen to everybody? If so,
> how do you stand it? This is really pissing me off.
>
> BTW, here's my system specs, in case it matters:
> Win2K, SP4
> Athalon 2.6GHz
> 512 MB DDR ram
> Radeon 8500, 128MB DDR video
> Sound native on the mobo.
> Running Morrowind with Tribunal (no Bloodmoon yet) and no mods.
>
> All of this is well above spec for the game, and the video card is even
> listed in their "Supported Video Card Chipsets" list in the readme file.
>
> Should I install Bloodmoon just to get up to date? Does it even matter?
> Getting really frustrated here...
>
>
I only had the game crash to desk without warning if the computer or
video card got too hot or I had entered and left a bunch of "locations"
quickly. Your crash in Ald'ruhn may have been caused by the second
problem. In my case when that bug arose my memory usage more than
tripled and I could hear the hard drive "trashing" and the response
would go down warning me to save and exit immediately.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

> I only had the game crash to desk without warning if the computer or
> video card got too hot or I had entered and left a bunch of "locations"
> quickly. Your crash in Ald'ruhn may have been caused by the second
> problem. In my case when that bug arose my memory usage more than
> tripled and I could hear the hard drive "trashing" and the response
> would go down warning me to save and exit immediately.

That sounds about right. I had gone through a bunch of doors in a row, and
had to load up locations like that. However, the crash happened in the
middle of a room, not during the loading of a new room. (I wish it just
happened when I went through doors. I'd quickly develop a habit of saving
before going through any door if that were the case.) However, as far as I
can recall, this is one of the few times I've gotten one of these crashes
indoors. Usually they happen outside in the middle of nowhere.
Unfortunately, as I explained above, I really can't tell when the hard drive
is acting up on my machine, because it's unusually quiet. (Part blessing,
part curse, apparently. Until now, I was glad that my hard drive never
makes very much noise...) Does anybody know if there's a way to get an
on-screen display that would indicate this sort of thing in the game?
(Don't say run the game in a window. I've tried that, and it has so many
graphic errors it's almost un-playable in some places.) Just something
which displays the FPS up in the corner or something. I've seen many games
that have this, and it can really help. That way if I see it starting to
choke, I can save quickly. Or maybe another alternative would be a mod
which would cause it to auto-save every 10 minutes or so, though that could
get annoying.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

Darrel Hoffman wrote:

>>I only had the game crash to desk without warning if the computer or
>>video card got too hot or I had entered and left a bunch of "locations"
>>quickly. Your crash in Ald'ruhn may have been caused by the second
>>problem. In my case when that bug arose my memory usage more than
>>tripled and I could hear the hard drive "trashing" and the response
>>would go down warning me to save and exit immediately.
>
>
> That sounds about right. I had gone through a bunch of doors in a row, and
> had to load up locations like that. However, the crash happened in the
> middle of a room, not during the loading of a new room. (I wish it just
> happened when I went through doors. I'd quickly develop a habit of saving
> before going through any door if that were the case.) However, as far as I
> can recall, this is one of the few times I've gotten one of these crashes
> indoors. Usually they happen outside in the middle of nowhere.
> Unfortunately, as I explained above, I really can't tell when the hard drive
> is acting up on my machine, because it's unusually quiet. (Part blessing,
> part curse, apparently. Until now, I was glad that my hard drive never
> makes very much noise...) Does anybody know if there's a way to get an
> on-screen display that would indicate this sort of thing in the game?
> (Don't say run the game in a window. I've tried that, and it has so many
> graphic errors it's almost un-playable in some places.) Just something
> which displays the FPS up in the corner or something. I've seen many games
> that have this, and it can really help. That way if I see it starting to
> choke, I can save quickly. Or maybe another alternative would be a mod
> which would cause it to auto-save every 10 minutes or so, though that could
> get annoying.
>
>
Like I mentioned you might see a slowing down right before it crashes if
it is the memory leak bug. Unfortunately there is no rhyme or reason
when it is going to bite you. It never happened to me right after
entering a new area but I noticed the lagging and after being bit a
couple of times recognized the symptoms and saved and quit. Quitting
seems to be the only way to flush the buffered locations and free enough
memory to continue. Other people have said that upgrading to 1 GB of
memory will prevent this, but it is not an option in my case as I am
using RDRAM and it is far too expensive now. I'll just have to wait
till the new computer upgrades stabilize some and upgrade everything.

 

[Frosty]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

"Darrel Hoffman" <i.dont@think.so> a écrit dans le message de
news:9omdnZOVV8_owRncRVn-sw@giganews.com...
> > Nothing. Morrowind is buggy and just crashes often. Bethedsa knows it,
> > players know it, everyone knows it. Quicksave often. Live with it or
> > bring the game back to the store for a refund.
> >
> > I've said this before: I can live with bad and buggy games, but good and
> > buggy games are hell. If a game is bad and buggy, I just uninstall and
> > forget it. But if a game is good I simply cannot forget it. So the
> > combination good and buggy can lead to quite some frustration.
>
> Yeah, that's the problem. I'm addicted now, so it's all the more
> frustrating. If I didn't like the game, I'd just stop playing it. And
> while this isn't my only complaint about it, it's by far the biggest. I
> just wish there were some way to predict when it was about to happen, so I
> don't have to keep redoing the annoying stuff...
>
> > While Bethedsa has a history of producing excellent game content which
> > puts other games to shame, they unfortunately also have a history of
> > producing bug-ridden and unstable games.
> > I find it difficult to talk bad about Bethedsa because their
> > contribution for roleplaying gamers is invaluable. But I have yet to see
> > a Bethedsa game which runs stable.
>
> A sad state of affairs, it seems.
>
>


My experience with Morrowind crash :

I play since 2 years without problem (Morrowind is stable, only crash after
3, 4 hours of playing) but the last days many crash after 30 secondes, no
CTD, manual reboot, auto reboot, the sound doesn t stop.(In middle of
nowhere like you). I try to play in a window, the problem is the same +
garbage on my screen.

The last modifications on my computer :

Overclocking my graphic cards (I restore to defaut)
Overclocking ddram in Bios (I restore to defaut)
Install an exotic codec MP3 (I desinstall this codec and restore original
system MP3 codec)
And I can play now without problem.

PS: I see in offical FAQ : MP3 association must be by defaut (with WMPlayer)

I hope this can help some.

 

[JC]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

I found that once I upgraded to 768mb of ram the crashes dropped to about
1/20th of the number I was having before. I guess that is the "memory leak"
bug that others have mentioned.

JC

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

> What is this "merged the level lists"? How would I go about doing that?
> One thing I did do on the advice of the read-me was to lower the audio
> hardware acceleration, but it didn't help. I just got kicked out again.
> (Didn't lose too much this time, fortunately.) I may try turning it off
> completely and see if that helps.


fire up morrowind summit and use the drop down search list to find a
tool called 'horatio's list merger'
( I'm pretty sure that's it)

what you do is run the app (instruction in the readme are very good)
what it does is take the leved lists from al the mods you're currently
running and combine them into one big list - very useful if you run lots
of plugins as the game will only use the level list from the most recent
plugin (the last plugin listed in the data files menu)

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

> fire up morrowind summit and use the drop down search list to find a
> tool called 'horatio's list merger'
> ( I'm pretty sure that's it)
>
> what you do is run the app (instruction in the readme are very good)
> what it does is take the leved lists from al the mods you're currently
> running and combine them into one big list - very useful if you run lots
> of plugins as the game will only use the level list from the most recent
> plugin (the last plugin listed in the data files menu)

Oh, in other words, if you're running no mods at all, like me, it probably
just does nothing then, huh? Unless I suppose it combines the stuff from
Tribunal and/or Bloodmoon in with the default MW stuff, which might help,
but I know that I got random quits before I even installed Tribunal, so that
can't be the reason. (Still haven't installed Bloodmoon.)

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

Darrel Hoffman wrote:

> Oh, in other words, if you're running no mods at all, like me, it probably
> just does nothing then, huh?

Yup. No mods, no need to merge them.

As a sidenote, as this might be interesting for you when you start
trying some mods: Many mods modify levelled lists. Those lists define
what critters or items you find, depending on your level. For example,
tomb critters for a low-level character are anchestor ghosts and weak
skeletons, later bigger skellies, then bonelords and finally liches.
They are basically the same creature, a "levelled creature", and
selected depending on your level. Similar with loot, early on you find
mostly junk, later it's getting interesting.
Anyways, I suppose so far I'm not telling you anything new. But it's
getting interesting when several mods add stuff to those levelled lists.
Unfortunately Morrowind cannot merge all the changes to the same list,
and would only use the changes by one mod ignoring the others. So some
smart people wrote mergers to solve this problem.

I'd guess merging mods wouldn't improve general game stability. However,
it's essential to workaround a Morrowind flaw when running several mods.


Peter

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

I would just like to say at this point that I do not use unbalancing mods

only mods which improve graphics and some gameplay...and maybe add NPCs
here and there....and some cool vampire stuff ... and GIANTS (of
course )

I am not a cheater

thankyou =]

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

JC wrote:
> I found that once I upgraded to 768mb of ram the crashes dropped to about
> 1/20th of the number I was having before. I guess that is the "memory leak"
> bug that others have mentioned.
>
> JC
>
>
hmm...

I guess - although generally a really fatal memory leak occurs because
objects are quickly being copied, edited but not deconstructed (ie, they
are left on the RAM until hell freezes over (or until your computer has
had enough)) in the case of this being done in a loop that doesn't
terminate I can see a major problem

but object on RAM are generally quite small, so the game occasionally
fogetting to deconstruct an object shouldn't have much consequence,
unless you play for hour (and we are talking days )

still, I guess it all mounts up - if morrowind was programmed in Java we
wouldn't have this problem (that was a joke )

Stu

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

Stuart Hacking wrote:

> JC wrote:
>
>> I found that once I upgraded to 768mb of ram the crashes dropped to
>> about 1/20th of the number I was having before. I guess that is the
>> "memory leak" bug that others have mentioned.
>>
>> JC
>>
> hmm...
>
> I guess - although generally a really fatal memory leak occurs because
> objects are quickly being copied, edited but not deconstructed (ie, they
> are left on the RAM until hell freezes over (or until your computer has
> had enough)) in the case of this being done in a loop that doesn't
> terminate I can see a major problem
>
> but object on RAM are generally quite small, so the game occasionally
> fogetting to deconstruct an object shouldn't have much consequence,
> unless you play for hour (and we are talking days )
>

I could get this crash in less than 15 minutes very reliably. For
example doing several Imperial Cult quests in a row. I would set a mark
at the quest giver, go out the door and use the boat to go close to
where I was going. Then using the Boots of Blinding Speed perform the
mission and recall back. Repeat for a couple of quests and the machine
starts to crawl and the disk drive to "trash". If I didn't save and
exit right away it would crash to the desktop.
This was really annoying in some quests, such as one in Bloodmoon, that
required a lot of traveling. I normally use the "fast" transports and
using a bunch of them in a row will crash the system. My memory usage
went from around 250 MB for normal play to over 750 MB when it was ready
to crash.


> still, I guess it all mounts up - if morrowind was programmed in Java we
> wouldn't have this problem (that was a joke )
>
> Stu

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

On Mon, 29 Nov 2004 23:33:45 +0000 (UTC), Stuart Hacking
<smhacking@btopenworld.com> wrote:

>JC wrote:
>> I found that once I upgraded to 768mb of ram the crashes dropped to about
>> 1/20th of the number I was having before. I guess that is the "memory leak"
>> bug that others have mentioned.
>>
>> JC
>>
>>
>hmm...
>
>I guess - although generally a really fatal memory leak occurs because
>objects are quickly being copied, edited but not deconstructed (ie, they
>are left on the RAM until hell freezes over (or until your computer has
>had enough)) in the case of this being done in a loop that doesn't
>terminate I can see a major problem
>
>but object on RAM are generally quite small, so the game occasionally
>fogetting to deconstruct an object shouldn't have much consequence,
>unless you play for hour (and we are talking days )
>
>still, I guess it all mounts up - if morrowind was programmed in Java we
>wouldn't have this problem (that was a joke )

It's definitely something to do with their model loading, otherwise it
wouldn't sometimes occur when switching equipment, as well as during
cell transitions.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

Greg Johnson wrote:

> On Mon, 29 Nov 2004 23:33:45 +0000 (UTC), Stuart Hacking
> <smhacking@btopenworld.com> wrote:
>
>
>>JC wrote:
>>
>>>I found that once I upgraded to 768mb of ram the crashes dropped to about
>>>1/20th of the number I was having before. I guess that is the "memory leak"
>>>bug that others have mentioned.
>>>
>>>JC
>>>
>>>
>>
>>hmm...
>>
>>I guess - although generally a really fatal memory leak occurs because
>>objects are quickly being copied, edited but not deconstructed (ie, they
>>are left on the RAM until hell freezes over (or until your computer has
>>had enough)) in the case of this being done in a loop that doesn't
>>terminate I can see a major problem
>>
>>but object on RAM are generally quite small, so the game occasionally
>>fogetting to deconstruct an object shouldn't have much consequence,
>>unless you play for hour (and we are talking days )
>>
>>still, I guess it all mounts up - if morrowind was programmed in Java we
>>wouldn't have this problem (that was a joke )
>
>
> It's definitely something to do with their model loading, otherwise it
> wouldn't sometimes occur when switching equipment, as well as during
> cell transitions.

I'm gonna try running a RAM manager underneath morrowind and see if that
helps - it's possible that clearing the heap of dead objects regularly
could have a positive effect.