Bad Memory Pointer...

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

Darrel Hoffman wrote:
> Anyone ever get this error when picking up an item that they left on the
> ground a long time ago? The first time it was some Orcish armor I didn't
> have room for but wanted to come back and retrieve later (back when I really
> needed the money.) The second time, it was a Racer Plume, because I'd
> killed a Cliff Racer right on the Mudcrab Merchant's island, and their
> "bodies" are huge, and take precedence over all other items and characters
> over a wide area. I disposed of the corpse to get it out of the way, but
> didn't really want the Racer Plume, so I left it there. In each case, when
> I went to pick up the item, the game gave me a "Bad Memory Pointer",
> auto-saved my game to the Restore file, and then rebooted the computer. I
> can't reload the Restored game, it comes up with all sorts of error
> messages, and if I tell it to ignore them, it just crashes. I think it may
> be caused by the fact that in both these cases, I dropped the item directly
> from corpse to ground, without ever putting it in my inventory first. But
> I've done that plenty of times without any problem. It may be that in
> combination with the fact that it was a very long time later that I tried to
> pick the items up again. Either way, these items seem to be permently on
> the ground, as I can never pick them up without crashing the game.
>
> (Funny thing about those Cliff Racers - as hard as they seem to be to target
> when alive, they're almost impossible NOT to target after you've killed
> them. As annoying in death as they are in life, I guess...)
>
>
Have you tried starting a new save game first? I quit using the fast
save for reasons like this. Occasionally when I got errors during play
I could save the game to a new name, load the new save and continue.

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

> Have you tried starting a new save game first? I quit using the fast
> save for reasons like this. Occasionally when I got errors during play
> I could save the game to a new name, load the new save and continue.

Yeah, even if I reload an older save, I can never get the Restore save file
to open after this particular crash. (The Restore save has saved my ass on
other occasions, but in the case of the game crashing when picking up an
item, it's so far always un-recoverable.) In one case, I knew that this
item was bugged, and saved immediately before attempting to pick it up.
Didn't matter. Any attempt to pick up the bugged item results in a crash,
no matter what I do. Right now, I'd rather if there were just some way to
make these items disappear forever, just so I don't accidentally forget that
they're bugged and try to pick them up again when I haven't just recently
saved. I can live without a pair of Orcish Boots and a Racer Plume, so it's
not like it's a big loss. I'd just rather avoid having to worry about these
things again later, particularly the Racer Plume, as it's right next to the
Mudcrab, who I visit quite regularly. (The whole island is now covered in
items too high-priced to sell anywhere else, and I try to go back there any
time I think about it for another 10,000 gold. I even have my Mark spell
right there for easy transport...)

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

Darrel Hoffman wrote:
> Anyone ever get this error when picking up an item that they left on the
> ground a long time ago? The first time it was some Orcish armor I didn't
> have room for but wanted to come back and retrieve later (back when I really
> needed the money.) The second time, it was a Racer Plume, because I'd
> killed a Cliff Racer right on the Mudcrab Merchant's island, and their
> "bodies" are huge, and take precedence over all other items and characters
> over a wide area. I disposed of the corpse to get it out of the way, but
> didn't really want the Racer Plume, so I left it there. In each case, when
> I went to pick up the item, the game gave me a "Bad Memory Pointer",
> auto-saved my game to the Restore file, and then rebooted the computer. I
> can't reload the Restored game, it comes up with all sorts of error
> messages, and if I tell it to ignore them, it just crashes. I think it may
> be caused by the fact that in both these cases, I dropped the item directly
> from corpse to ground, without ever putting it in my inventory first. But
> I've done that plenty of times without any problem. It may be that in
> combination with the fact that it was a very long time later that I tried to
> pick the items up again. Either way, these items seem to be permently on
> the ground, as I can never pick them up without crashing the game.
>
> (Funny thing about those Cliff Racers - as hard as they seem to be to target
> when alive, they're almost impossible NOT to target after you've killed
> them. As annoying in death as they are in life, I guess...)
>
>

I got a similar error "Bad Menu Pointer" in the main tribunal quest,
when I tried to pick something up I had never had before, it saved to
'Recover' and I was able to use that save game file.

If the PC rebooted at a guess it looks like the error trap hadn't been
successful and the game may have done something it shouldn't have to
memory, if this error happened to be in the information that is written
to the restore file then best to leave it as pointers with an erroneous
address are dangerous creatures, very dangerous and as the game crashes
at load time I would guess the error handling isn't as stringent as
should be.

~Cameron

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

On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 01:10:46 -0500, Darrel Hoffman <i.dont@think.so> wrote:

> [...] Any attempt to pick up the bugged item results in a crash,
> no matter what I do. Right now, I'd rather if there were just some way
> to
> make these items disappear forever, just so I don't accidentally forget
> that
> they're bugged and try to pick them up again when I haven't just recently
> saved.

You might want to try removing the items by using the console. To do so,
open the Console, single-left-click on the item (the Console title should
show the item's ID) and enter the following lines:
disable
setdelete 1

"disable" temporarily removes items and "setdelete 1" removes them from
your savegame. After that, save your game (use a fresh savegame), exit
and reload to see if it worked.

Bjoern

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

Darrel Hoffman wrote:
> Anyone ever get this error when picking up an item that they left on the
> ground a long time ago? The first time it was some Orcish armor I didn't
> have room for but wanted to come back and retrieve later (back when I really
> needed the money.) The second time, it was a Racer Plume, because I'd
> killed a Cliff Racer right on the Mudcrab Merchant's island, and their
> "bodies" are huge, and take precedence over all other items and characters
> over a wide area. I disposed of the corpse to get it out of the way, but
> didn't really want the Racer Plume, so I left it there. In each case, when
> I went to pick up the item, the game gave me a "Bad Memory Pointer",
> auto-saved my game to the Restore file, and then rebooted the computer. I
> can't reload the Restored game, it comes up with all sorts of error
> messages, and if I tell it to ignore them, it just crashes. I think it may
> be caused by the fact that in both these cases, I dropped the item directly
> from corpse to ground, without ever putting it in my inventory first. But
> I've done that plenty of times without any problem. It may be that in
> combination with the fact that it was a very long time later that I tried to
> pick the items up again. Either way, these items seem to be permently on
> the ground, as I can never pick them up without crashing the game.
>
> (Funny thing about those Cliff Racers - as hard as they seem to be to target
> when alive, they're almost impossible NOT to target after you've killed
> them. As annoying in death as they are in life, I guess...)
>
>

the first time I got that was when I was asked to go find the roland's
tear petals for some vivec alchemist - I noticed one petal just lying on
the ground - picked up and crash (luckily hitting a bad memory pointer
causes morrowind to quicksave or autosave before exiting (at least mine did)

the next time was at caius' house - I'd dumped a load of alchemy
eqipment there for load lightening and later on another bad memory
pointer cost me a master's calcinator (infuriating)

before reinstalling windows a short while ago I starting seeing messages
appearing on screen "attempting to fix bugged NPC"

and also for a while if I got attacked by an assasin I could defeat him,
but if I took his armour the game would CTD.

hopefull in this next installation of windows I can choose the mods I
install more carefully and keep the game a bit cleaner  

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

> (luckily hitting a bad memory pointer
> causes morrowind to quicksave or autosave before exiting (at least mine
did)

Oh, it saved in my case too, but the backup save was un-recoverable. I got
a bunch of error messages trying to load it, and then it just crashes to
desktop.

> hopefull in this next installation of windows I can choose the mods I
> install more carefully and keep the game a bit cleaner  

I should also mention that I'm not using any mods whatsoever. Well, except
for Tribunal and Bloodmoon, that is.

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

Darrel Hoffman wrote:
>>(luckily hitting a bad memory pointer
>>causes morrowind to quicksave or autosave before exiting (at least mine
>
> did)
>
> Oh, it saved in my case too, but the backup save was un-recoverable. I got
> a bunch of error messages trying to load it, and then it just crashes to
> desktop.
>
>
>>hopefull in this next installation of windows I can choose the mods I
>>install more carefully and keep the game a bit cleaner  
>
>
> I should also mention that I'm not using any mods whatsoever. Well, except
> for Tribunal and Bloodmoon, that is.
>
>
I've reached the stage where I can't do without graphical enhancements

every game must have better heads, better bodies, darker morrowind,
windows glow, ordinator armour replacement  

it makes the game look a lot richer