PC freeze playing MOHAA

[Grumps]

Sorry for posting here, but maybe it is a hardware issue (although I'm
doubting it). If there are any groups more appropriate, I'd appreciate some
pointers.

Anyway, I have a Dell PC, 3.4GHz Pentium-D, 1Gig RAM, 2x160Gig SATA,
PowerColor HD3850 256Mbyte graphics, DX9.0c, WinXP-home, all the latest
drivers that I could find. Ok, it's not the top-spec gaming machine, but it
ain't bad!

This machine will play most games with all eye candy maxed out; Quake4,
Doom3, Bioshock, Need for Speed Carbon, and various battle simulators. No
problem.

However, with Medal of Honor Allied Assault, when you load a saved game and
start to play, the PC will freeze and a power cycle is necessary. MOHAA is
quite an old game and I would've thought that the later games would be more
demanding. Starting a mission from the beginning, and everything is ok.

If I put the original graphics card back in, nVidia 7300LE (low spec PCIe),
then MOHAA runs/loads fine.

I've asked this question to EA and PowerColor, and just thought I'd
supplement their comments (none yet) with expert advice from here.

Thanks for any clues.

 

[Sleepy]

Sorry for posting here, but maybe it is a hardware issue (although I'm
doubting it). If there are any groups more appropriate, I'd appreciate
some pointers.

Anyway, I have a Dell PC, 3.4GHz Pentium-D, 1Gig RAM, 2x160Gig SATA,
PowerColor HD3850 256Mbyte graphics, DX9.0c, WinXP-home, all the latest
drivers that I could find. Ok, it's not the top-spec gaming machine, but
it ain't bad!

This machine will play most games with all eye candy maxed out; Quake4,
Doom3, Bioshock, Need for Speed Carbon, and various battle simulators. No
problem.

However, with Medal of Honor Allied Assault, when you load a saved game
and start to play, the PC will freeze and a power cycle is necessary.
MOHAA is quite an old game and I would've thought that the later games
would be more demanding. Starting a mission from the beginning, and
everything is ok.

If I put the original graphics card back in, nVidia 7300LE (low spec
PCIe), then MOHAA runs/loads fine.

I've asked this question to EA and PowerColor, and just thought I'd
supplement their comments (none yet) with expert advice from here.

Thanks for any clues.

Two things spring to mind ..... putting that 3850 in will have increased
power consumption
substantially - make sure you have a adequate PSU in the case - a decent
quality 450watt PSU.

Secondly thats a old OpenGL game and one thing ATI have never done well is
OpenGL -
I suspect you need an older OpenGL driver but would an older driver work
with a brand new card.
With Quake-engine games you can put an opengl.dll file in the game folder
and the game will use that
rather than the one in c:\windows\system32 - I would try something like the
opengl.dll from the 4.3 catalysts.

 

[Grumps]

Two things spring to mind ..... putting that 3850 in will have increased
power consumption
substantially - make sure you have a adequate PSU in the case - a decent
quality 450watt PSU.

I had thought about this, but assumed that if other games run ok (maxing out
the CPU and GPU), then the current one would suffice. And MOHAA will run as
long as you don't load a saved game.
It's a Dell PSU that came with the machine. Described as 305W, +12VA&B at
18A each, but not to exceed 264W. A little low, but I can easily try
something beefier.

Secondly thats a old OpenGL game and one thing ATI have never done well is
OpenGL -
I suspect you need an older OpenGL driver but would an older driver work
with a brand new card.
With Quake-engine games you can put an opengl.dll file in the game folder
and the game will use that
rather than the one in c:\windows\system32 - I would try something like
the opengl.dll from the 4.3 catalysts.

That's worth a try, thanks.

 

[Grumps]

Secondly thats a old OpenGL game and one thing ATI have never done well is
OpenGL -
I suspect you need an older OpenGL driver but would an older driver work
with a brand new card.
With Quake-engine games you can put an opengl.dll file in the game folder
and the game will use that
rather than the one in c:\windows\system32 - I would try something like
the opengl.dll from the 4.3 catalysts.

I got both the 3.9 and 4.3 catalysts, but the opengl dll is called
atioglxx.dll. Is this the file that you'd put in your game folder? As is, or
renamed?
Ta.

 

[Sleepy]

I got both the 3.9 and 4.3 catalysts, but the opengl dll is called
atioglxx.dll. Is this the file that you'd put in your game folder? As is,
or renamed?
Ta.

as is I think - sometimes its called OpenGL.dll or OpenGL32.dll or
atiogxx.dll

 

[VanguardLH]

Anyway, I have a Dell PC, 3.4GHz Pentium-D, 1Gig RAM, 2x160Gig SATA,
PowerColor HD3850 256Mbyte graphics, DX9.0c, WinXP-home, all the
latest drivers that I could find. Ok, it's not the top-spec gaming
machine, but it ain't bad!

This machine will play most games with all eye candy maxed out;
Quake4, Doom3, Bioshock, Need for Speed Carbon, and various battle
simulators. No problem.

However, with Medal of Honor Allied Assault, when you load a saved
game and start to play, the PC will freeze and a power cycle is
necessary. MOHAA is quite an old game and I would've thought that
the later games would be more demanding. Starting a mission from the
beginning, and everything is ok.

What makes you believe that the latest version of the video driver is
the best all-around version to play all your games. If the fixes for
the latest versions don't specifically mention bug fixes for your
games (and for bugs that you encounter) then revert to a prior version
of the video driver. You might have to walk back several versions
until you find one that doesn't cause the crash. Because you went
with the 3850 card, and depending on when MOHAA came out, there might
not be an old enough version of their driver that is compatible with
that game.

The latest version is not necessarily the best version for your
particular setup.

If I put the original graphics card back in, nVidia 7300LE (low spec
PCIe), then MOHAA runs/loads fine.

Because you are now using an older video driver which doesn't exhibit
the fault. You also switched from ATI back to nVidia. Some games
that work with one GPU won't work quite right with a different one.
Did you check the Event Viewer for warnings or errors at the time your
host crashed before when using the 3850 video card?

 

[Grumps]

in message news:[email protected]...

What makes you believe that the latest version of the video driver is the
best all-around version to play all your games. If the fixes for the
latest versions don't specifically mention bug fixes for your games (and
for bugs that you encounter) then revert to a prior version of the video
driver. You might have to walk back several versions until you find one
that doesn't cause the crash. Because you went with the 3850 card, and
depending on when MOHAA came out, there might not be an old enough version
of their driver that is compatible with that game.

The latest version is not necessarily the best version for your particular
setup.


Because you are now using an older video driver which doesn't exhibit the
fault. You also switched from ATI back to nVidia. Some games that work
with one GPU won't work quite right with a different one. Did you check
the Event Viewer for warnings or errors at the time your host crashed
before when using the 3850 video card?

Thanks for the reply.

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

 

[VanguardLH]

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.

Have you started playing a *new* game (from scratch and not from a
save) and then saving the game and trying to use *that* save to
restart the game? If that works, the other saves are corrupted. That
isn't something new. A save that gets corrupted can carry that
corruption forward to each subsequent save. You have to go back to a
prior save that works and play from there while discarding all
subsequent saves. I ran into this with the first 2 series of the
Thief games: you couldn't go forward from a corrupted save even if the
game played okay from that point because later saves would cause a
problem, so you had to walk back through the saves finding one that
worked going forward. If you cannot start a new game and do a save
and restart from that first save then there is a problem in the game
itself.

Have you yet checked if there is a patch for that game?

 

[VanguardLH]

Oh, and something else. I have run into games that when installed
BEFORE a video card change will not run properly after the video card
change. During install they did some detection and set themselves up
for operating under that hardware environment but now you changed it.
For those games, and after installing the new video card (which proved
not to work with the current game's setup), I would have to uninstall
and then reinstall the game. Some games provide a separate config
utility to do that hardware detection after the install but not all
do.

 

[Grumps]

in message news:[email protected]...

Have you started playing a *new* game (from scratch and not from a save)
and then saving the game and trying to use *that* save to restart the
game?

I restarted the game from the beginning, then did a save. This save-game
also caused a freeze.

If that works, the other saves are corrupted. That isn't something new.
A save that gets corrupted can carry that corruption forward to each
subsequent save. You have to go back to a prior save that works and play
from there while discarding all subsequent saves. I ran into this with
the first 2 series of the Thief games: you couldn't go forward from a
corrupted save even if the game played okay from that point because later
saves would cause a problem, so you had to walk back through the saves
finding one that worked going forward. If you cannot start a new game and
do a save and restart from that first save then there is a problem in the
game itself.

Have you yet checked if there is a patch for that game?

Thanks, I have the latest patch.

 

[Grumps]

Oh, and something else. I have run into games that when installed BEFORE
a video card change will not run properly after the video card change.
During install they did some detection and set themselves up for operating
under that hardware environment but now you changed it. For those games,
and after installing the new video card (which proved not to work with the
current game's setup), I would have to uninstall and then reinstall the
game.

Did that too. Un-installed and re-installed. Still no worky!
May try deleting all previous save games. I did read something about other
games misbehaving if there are too many saves!!!

Some games provide a separate config utility to do that hardware detection
after the install but not all do.

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[VanguardLH]

I restarted the game from the beginning, then did a save. This
save-game also caused a freeze.


Thanks, I have the latest patch.

Does MOHAA say that it supports being played under Windows XP? Could
be you're screwed and will need to play it under a prior version of
Windows. You might want to check into multibooting (and not
dualbooting) by allocating some space on the hard disk for another
partition in which you install Windows 98. Note that installing
Windows 98 after installing any version of NT-based Windows will screw
up the bootstrap code in the MBR, so you will probably have to run the
Recovery Console from the install CD of Windows XP to run the FIXMBR
program.

 

[Grumps]

Does MOHAA say that it supports being played under Windows XP?

Yes, 2000/95/98/Me/XP.

 

[VanguardLH]

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.

 

[Sleepy]

Sorry for posting here, but maybe it is a hardware issue (although I'm
doubting it). If there are any groups more appropriate, I'd appreciate
some pointers.

Anyway, I have a Dell PC, 3.4GHz Pentium-D, 1Gig RAM, 2x160Gig SATA,
PowerColor HD3850 256Mbyte graphics, DX9.0c, WinXP-home, all the latest
drivers that I could find. Ok, it's not the top-spec gaming machine, but
it ain't bad!

This machine will play most games with all eye candy maxed out; Quake4,
Doom3, Bioshock, Need for Speed Carbon, and various battle simulators. No
problem.

However, with Medal of Honor Allied Assault, when you load a saved game
and start to play, the PC will freeze and a power cycle is necessary.
MOHAA is quite an old game and I would've thought that the later games
would be more demanding. Starting a mission from the beginning, and
everything is ok.

If I put the original graphics card back in, nVidia 7300LE (low spec
PCIe), then MOHAA runs/loads fine.

I've asked this question to EA and PowerColor, and just thought I'd
supplement their comments (none yet) with expert advice from here.

Thanks for any clues.

I have a copy of MoH:AA so I thought I'd try it on my PC which is fairly
similar to yours
..... WinXP Pro + SP2
AMD X2 3800 o/c to 2.4ghz
2gb DDR
Sapphire 3850 256mb with 7.11 drivers
2 SATA II drives

quicksave worked and loading from quicksaves worked fine - I made sure to
exit and restart
the game before loading saves - no problems.

So no problem with XP and recent drivers or using a dual-core CPU. though
you could disable hyper-threading
temporarily to see if it makes a differance. MoHAA uses an older version of
OpenGL to Doom3 so Im
inclined to think its still driver related.

 

[Grumps]

I have a copy of MoH:AA so I thought I'd try it on my PC which is
fairly similar to yours
.... WinXP Pro + SP2
AMD X2 3800 o/c to 2.4ghz
2gb DDR
Sapphire 3850 256mb with 7.11 drivers
2 SATA II drives

quicksave worked and loading from quicksaves worked fine - I made
sure to exit and restart
the game before loading saves - no problems.

So no problem with XP and recent drivers or using a dual-core CPU.
though you could disable hyper-threading
temporarily to see if it makes a differance. MoHAA uses an older
version of OpenGL to Doom3 so Im
inclined to think its still driver related.

Thanks for trying that.
I've still to try the older ati opengl dll (from catalyst 3.9 and 4.3), and
I'm going to try a bigger PSU (although I'm pretty sure it's not that).
Hyperthreading can be turned off in the BIOS, can you also do it within XP?
What about using taskmgr to set the processor affinity - I'll give that a go
too.

 

[Grumps]

There is a Microsoft article (KB327809) that covers a known issue "Cannot
Run Certain Programs on Hyper-Threaded or Dual-Processor Computers with a
CPU Speed of Greater Than 2 GHz". So maybe stopping the hyperthreading is a
good test.

Still doesn't explain why the old nVidia card is ok though.

 

[GT]

There is a Microsoft article (KB327809) that covers a known issue "Cannot
Run Certain Programs on Hyper-Threaded or Dual-Processor Computers with a
CPU Speed of Greater Than 2 GHz". So maybe stopping the hyperthreading is
a good test.

Still doesn't explain why the old nVidia card is ok though.

There are plenty of people running MOHAA on a dual core PC over 2GHz. I'm
one of them, so thats not directly the problem. Haven't replied before now,
because I've not had anything useful to add! 2 quick thoughts:

1. Have you tried a simple re-install of the game? Perhaps a file is
corrupted.
2. Perhaps your firewall is preventing local disk access. Check the list of
programs enabled for access in your firewall software. If you can't get to
the list, a long way round is this: Enable hibernate on your PC and set it
to hibernate when you press the power button. Then get MOHAA to the 'broken'
state and press the power button to hibernate the PC. When you restart, it
will go to the windows desktop, where you will see the firewall software
asking of the MOHAA.exe can access the local machine or local network (or
something along those lines).

 

[Grumps]

There are plenty of people running MOHAA on a dual core PC over 2GHz.
I'm one of them, so thats not directly the problem. Haven't replied
before now, because I've not had anything useful to add! 2 quick
thoughts:
1. Have you tried a simple re-install of the game? Perhaps a file is
corrupted.

Thanks. Yep, did that.

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.

Check the
list of programs enabled for access in your firewall software. If you
can't get to the list, a long way round is this: Enable hibernate on
your PC and set it to hibernate when you press the power button. Then
get MOHAA to the 'broken' state and press the power button to
hibernate the PC.

When it gets to the broken state, the screen freezes, then after a few
seconds it'll go black, and the monitor switches off. The PC can only be
power cycled.

When you restart, it will go to the windows
desktop, where you will see the firewall software asking of the
MOHAA.exe can access the local machine or local network (or something
along those lines).

I still can't understand why the nVidia card allows normal play, but the ATI
one doesn't.

If ever I find the cause, I'll be sure to post it here.

 

[GT]

[trimmed]

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?

When it gets to the broken state, the screen freezes, then after a few
seconds it'll go black, and the monitor switches off. The PC can only be
power cycled.

When the PC 'freezes' try pressing the numlock key a few times. If the
numlock light on the keyboard doesn't change, then the PC is truely
crashed/hung, but if the light still changes, then the PC is still alive and
only the game has crashed - try doing Ctrl-Escape to get back to windows and
see if there are any useful message boxes sitting on the desktop.

I still can't understand why the nVidia card allows normal play, but the
ATI one doesn't.

As suggested elsewhere - this has to be driver or file related. Not
necessarily the graphics card driver - there may be other files involved,
like DLLs in the game. Although a re-install should have sorted that out, so
sm still not any help! Have you tried to patch the game? I know there are
various patches and updates for MOHAA.