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CTD Seemingly Unresolvable.....


bcook62
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Good Day Gentlemen,

I have been a fan of this game series for some time, starting with BC3000AD and now BCM. However, since having read through the FAQ, and here regarding the mysterious CTD issue, I have still been unable to begin a new game and take on a campaign. I have tried uninstalling/reinstalling the prog. with and without the last UD patch, with no luck. I've tried updating the video drivers, have made the various previously posted tweeks and sound/video acceleration adjustments, with no success. The only single common denominator in all this is this....upon starting the game and at the front end, the version number at the lower left of the screen is distorted, giving me a clue that even with whatever adjustment/update(grade) I had made hasn't worked. Also, if I proceed from this screen, the text(s) from that point on are nearly unreadable, again, telling me that it won't work correctly. I'm certain that I have read all that I can here and have had no success still. ANY help in this issue will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you all in/on the developement team and of course you too, SC, for what I can safely say is the single best space sim/rpg I've ever had the pleasure of playing.(Er, when it works that is. )

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Rhune, were you operating in a super-high resolution (e.g. 1600 x 1200)? If so, your video card may not have enough memory, and so CTD (this happened with me). Try deleting the bcconfig file in your BCMG directory. When you re-load the game, go to config and start with resolution of 1024x768.

Alternatively, try loading bcconfig in notepad and find the "resolution" variable to see what it is. If it is set for 1600x1200, manually change it to 1024x768.

Hope that works.

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Originally posted by EricR:

Try deleting the bcconfig file in your BCMG directory. Alternatively, try loading bcconfig in notepad and find the "resolution" variable to see what it is. If it is set for 1600x1200, manually change it to 1024x768.

quote:

My card/monitor only supports 1280x1024, but, yes, I tried both, as well as setting it lower within the game.Also, I updated my profile here and my system specs are available. Thank you Eric.

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Here is perhaps another clue as to my problem. Once I end up back to the DT, I still have a minimized taskbar/window, with what seems to be a second instance of BCM running. Example, I start BCM, go on and try and start a game, once I create one, leave the base and try and use any ship command option and return to the bridge view, I CTD, with the "second" instance showing on the taskbar. If I attempt to click it, I return to what seems to be a running game, but, it too, ends up crashing to the desktop and ending altogether.

Thanks to all who are trying to help with this.

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As I stated in my first post to this thread, and only after reading much material on this forum/board, I DID uninstall/reinstall it and WITH the 1.08 patch.(3 times over, if I recall correctly, AND from WITHIN the program directory). And, not to be undaunted, after reading your reply, SC, I tried it again, per the FAQ instructions,(which I went back and re-read by the way), with the same result. I'll discontinue any further posts about this, since I seem to be causing a problem and that was not my intention I assure you. Thank you all again for your help. Be well and stay safe.

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DX8?? I DID put that in the profile didn't I? After double checking the saved results from running the DX Diagnostic prog, I found that aparently I hadn't updated the directX files at the time I filled out the profile, the version listed in the report is,DirectX 9.0a (4.09.0000.0901). Sorry about that oversight.

And too, I worded that wrong about causing a problem and want to apologize, I'm on a 10-day stretch at work and still going, doing 10+ hrs a day. I guess I must've read your wording of that reply wrong and mistook it as chiding and not just a suggestion. I didn't mean to come across as terse as that might've sounded. I'm updating my sys profile as of this post.

I'm re-downloading the DX file(s) and see if that will help and just "keep at it" and see what happens. Thanks again, and keep up the good work.

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No problem.

Also, your first post isn't clear on what exactly the problem is, what you did to incur it exactly.

e.g. saying that you are having a CTD in a campaign is useless information because that has nothing to do with anything. A CTD is a CTD, whether its in the campaign, instant action or sitting out in the front lawn. So, you need to be specific if you want help.

I suggest that you start clean etc. And by that, I don't mean do the lazy thing and just carry on. Wipe out the game completely and re-install. If you using BCM, then you need to re-download the 1.08 patch again, just to be sure its not corrupted.

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Hello all!

Well, it looks like I too am in the problem child area as far as getting the thing to run.

I'm actually a BCM Veteran (after a fashion) and I'd played it all the way up to V 1.07. (I once, as a different user, complained about a CTD that happened during intruder alerts) Anyway, I moved from Tallahassee to Pensacola (teaching job) and now I have time to play again!

So, I bought BCMG! I figured, "Yes! Finally! Multiplayer BCM as it oughta be!"

The big problem I have is the really annoying CTD issue. After the splash screen loads, I get a window in the resolution the game is defaulted to (My W2K runs in 1024 x 768, 32Bit normally and so an empty 800x600 window pops up in the middle.) The window quickly vanishes and then... nothing. My CD stops accessing and it's like I never booted the game up.

I know you've had this complaint from others too and they've been promptly redirected to the faq and whatnot. (Or they've been running at ridiculously high resolutions) Well, I read the FAQ very carefully. I made sure all my drivers were up to date. (Though the VIA website seems to be having trouble so I had to d/l the next most recent drivers...)

I also went into my BIOS and made some adjustments: Turned off a modem I'm no longer using and took off the video BIOS shadow.

Next, thinking that maybe my 192MB RAM wasn't quite sufficient, (as W2K eats up a lot of it!) I bought myself a brand new 128MB chip and installed it.

Each time I made a significant change like this, I completely deleted and then re-installed the game.

Now, here's the real kicker.

Thinking that maybe something was a bit messy with the opening animations (a little too complex for my "go-kart" of a PC... as opposed to all of your "Ferraris"), I tried doing the ol batch file shortcut and shut that off.

At long last, I got into the main menu screen... Though, for some reason, the menu buttons didn't match up with the menu text. The "New Game" button was about an inch and a half to the left of the word "New Game"! Still, I thought I had it licked. I brought the resolution to 640x480, 16 bit, switched off every single graphics feature, the sound, and music, started a new game and, after all the sectors loaded up, I was rewarded with a CTD.

So, it seems like anything that has to do with animation in this game doesn't want to be seen by me!

This is as far as I've been able to get and I really don't know what to do.

As I've said, the regular BCM has worked fine on my machine in the past and so I'm really scratching my head on why BCMG is being so obstinate.

I look forward to getting this worked out.

Hope that was enough info.

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Guest Private Cyberoket

quote:

Originally posted by Stinger:

As I've said, the regular BCM has worked fine on my machine in the past.

I don't want to sound repetetive here. But I'm still Trying to sort my BCM CTD probs....and successfull load then freeze (3 sec later)problems.(hope i worded that right)

As for CTD it generaly happens at warp, in menues.But not always.

If i dont use menus at warp it seems ok. But it can also crash during a very small space battle, with not much happening.

I defrag regularly. I've been running 512mb ram, which definatly helps with big space battles. But it still slows to 1 frame every 5-6 sec when there's alot going on.(Which it eventualy breaks out of without crashing) It seems to have a Mind Of Its Own when it wants to CTD.

I've adjusted sound and hrdwre acceleration...no good, It needs to run on full. Added -x0 to command line, I'm running GF2 64mb. 1.7ghz 512mb ram. I basicly exeed all smokin specs. So the game should run fine, even on 1024*768res, all effects on!! (I'm running 640*480 most effects off)I've had a service manager out to check the PC and it's all well maintained and in order.I was reciving blue screen of death.(Hardware malfunction) But that hasn't happened since reg defrag.

What i haven't done is change "BIOS" settings 1 by 1 to isolate the prob as per FAQ. I dont know how to do this. Can anyone fill me in.

System freeze after load seems controlable. By shutting down and walking away for 5 mins, then re-boot re-load. But not always. (MOIO)

When the frustration peaked, I died restored died restored 4 or 5 times without shutting down(Trying to capture not destroy a station) and no probs loading each time.

I'm starting to loose faith, i need this sorted. I hope this post isnt too...well..big.(SC).

But any help would be appreciated.

Ohh yeh one more thing I'm running BCM in compatibility with w2k.os should i leave it at XP,os?

I thought about buying BCMG if that would be more stable on XP. But the fact is my PC should play BCM fine. Other people with similar systems have the game running fine.

Thank for any further help the support here is great.

I'll shut up now.

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Hello all,

I've read all the posts in this topic, and I didn't find any problem that I never encountered in the past.

Speaking of corrupted graphics, or startup screen's buttons missaligned, that's definately a graphics driver issue, unless...

...unless the graphics card is mulfunctioning due to internal fault (in common words, it's fried) and needs to be replaced ASAP.

Anyway, just upgrading the drivers to the most current version won't solve the problem (espacially on nVidia chips). What needed is a complete uninstallation of the previous drivers and a clean install of the current ones.

As for the reloading freezes, SC has given a working solution in the game's FAQ. BCM, and BCMG are quite demanding in sound resources, due to their 3D positioning algorithm. In SB Cards, things are much worse. I had such freezes even with my SB Extigy... As a matter of fact the more crowded and active is your ingame space region, the more possible it is to get your system frozen solid. To bypass this,

The x0, x1, etc. command parameters control the 3D positioning sound system, making BCM or BCMG to utilise less or more of it's features...

I may not have described something correctly, so,

The full story resides in the FAQ's.

Hope I helped someway...

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quote:


Originally posted by Stinger:

I'm actually a BCM Veteran (after a fashion) and I'd played it all the way up to V 1.07.


If you truly are a vet, then you must've taken the wrong turn and ended up at a Budhist temple and in the process, forgotten everything you learned about BCM. Case in point: you used a batch file, to start the game?!? And how do you even know which executable to use? From the sounds of it, you probably ended up using the multi player executable instead of the single player one. Yes, there are TWO which is why there are shortcuts.

From reading your thread, it doesn't look like you were a BCM vet nor a Budhist monk. So, here, lemme help since my ignoring this thread for the most part, isn't helping.

  1. READ THE FAQ.
  2. READ THE VCF.See that VERY FIRST line where it talks about the intro movie? READ IT AGAIN!
  3. Drivers. You know what they are right? Good. Now go update them. ALL of them. Then read EVERY single line in the video cards section of the FAQ. Twice.

This is really quite simple = to all of you - if your drivers are not up to date, you will get strange anomalies which nobody else is getting. If you've overclocked your vid card, your system, your toaster and your refrigerator, you're on your own.

Don't go applying BCM patches on BCM Gold. There are NOT BCM Gold patches to date.

Don't go pissing around in the CONFIG settings until you have SUCCESSFULLY run the game using the default settings.

If you have a sound card which shouldn't been condemned back when the Adlib card was the rage, disable sounds AND music (especially!).

There is absolutely NOTHING new to ANY of these instances that hasn't been covered or not in the FAQ. BCM and BCM Gold use the same exact engine kernel and there is absolutely NO reason why one should work and not the other. NONE.

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quote:

Originally posted by Stinger:

Gee, nothing like being condescended to to make me remember to upgrade DivX.

Thanks. Everything works now and I appreciate the brick in the teeth.


Ah yes, feel the love! Now, run down to the MediBay, they're very experienced replacing teeth. See?

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Guest Remo Williams

quote:

Thanks. Everything works now and I appreciate the brick in the teeth.


Your welome. I do miss the old days though when we used a bat and the airlock instead. Much more effective IMO.

Quick someone lock the door were being over run!

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quote:


Originally posted by Stinger:

Gee, nothing like being condescended to to make me remember to upgrade DivX.


aw c'mon, you got off easy!!

quote:


Thanks. Everything works now and I appreciate the brick in the teeth.

LOL!!! You see what I mean? Nothing like a sense of humor.

Anyway, glad your problem is solved....though I think upgrading to DivX was a waste of time, since you could've just (a) disabled the intro by using /n as indicated in the VCF (B) the 1.00.01 patch replaced the DivX encoded movie with an Indeo 5.1 version. heh

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quote:

Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr:

quote:

Originally posted by Stinger:

Gee, nothing like being condescended to to make me remember to upgrade DivX.

aw c'mon, you got off easy!!


Your not kidding SC you got to devolop a thick skin around here and apply a good amount of common sense!

quote:

Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr:

quote:

Thanks. Everything works now and I appreciate the brick in the teeth.

LOL!!! You see what I mean? Nothing like a sense of humor.

Anyway, glad your problem is solved....though I think upgrading to DivX was a waste of time, since you could've just (a) disabled the intro by using /n as indicated in the VCF (B) the 1.00.01 patch replaced the DivX encoded movie with an Indeo 5.1 version. heh


Lesson 1 Always read the VCF before posting!
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Guest Private Cyberoket

OK I'm still trying to change BIOS settings as per FAQ. I don't see anywhere on this site that explains..(for all the dummies out there who actualy want to play the game, not become a programer) how to edjust those settings. No probs accessing BIOS (del) but the only settings i can access that are mentioned on that list is apperture size. I know enough, to know messing with BIOS can destroy the system, if you dont know what you are doing. So can anyone please help.

Here's my guess......I dont even have those options! because they were not in the titan motherboard manual, nor could i find them in BIOS.

maby i'm just lacking PC experience. But I'm sure I'm not the only one.

As for stability (CTD) my PC plays all other programs fine. Unreal 3,(huge) BF1942,(bigger still) There must be some reason why this game is so unstable on my system....and lots of other systems.

Now I've seen some preety obvious posts politely responded to. I don't think anything that i've posted is obvious. So I dont want another 1/RTFM and 2/ RTFFAQ. Because I have. Its been proven not everything is in there. And especialy Advanced BIOS Setup and Configuration procedures.

There should be ONE forum that explains all the symptoms and cures for all the probs, without having to read the entire version controle file. The FAQ did very little, most of that is preety obvious.

I don't want to get I love this game. I just want it running how it was meant to run. I'm just starting to run out of options and patience.

If BOIS is thoroughly explained I sincerely oppologise.

But don't expect all gamers to know there way around a PC. After all It Is just a game and It's meant to be fun.

Ohh yeah I do have something a bit more constructive to say, But I'll post that over in Bad saved games.

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quote:


Originally posted by Private Cyberoket:

And especialy Advanced BIOS Setup and Configuration procedures.

There should be ONE forum that explains all the symptoms and cures for all the probs, without having to read the entire version controle file. The FAQ did very little, most of that is preety obvious.

I don't want to get I love this game. I just want it running how it was meant to run. I'm just starting to run out of options and patience.

If BOIS is thoroughly explained I sincerely oppologise.

But don't expect all gamers to know there way around a PC. After all It Is just a game and It's meant to be fun.


Nobody said that you should go screwing around in your BIOS. It is just another troubleshooting step if it becomes necessary.

The stability of the game on your system is something you have to figure out on your own (since you know your system better) and get it sorted out - especially since its an isolated incident.

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Guest Private Cyberoket

quote:

Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr:

Nobody said that you should go screwing around in your BIOS. It is just another troubleshooting step if it becomes necessary.


Yes I should know my system better but when the VCF (I incorrectly said FAQ in my last post) tells me to edjust BIOS settings, and no other suggestion is working then that tells me i should CHANGE BIOS settings. Then when i could not find most of the effects to change I asked, in this topic. But i got no reply, hence the frustration.

As it turns out i jumped on a PC using Windows 98 and wadaya no there's all the settings i couldn't find on XP. I guess that particular fix is not refering to XP. Perhaps you should include that info to save sending people on a wild goose chase.

But all that aside, my problem is now sorted. It was a GF2 mx 400 overheating problem causing the CTD, and probly system failure. Now that I've sorted my problems I'll be able to help other newcomers get into this game as smoothly as possible.

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quote:


Originally posted by Private Cyberoket:

Yes I should know my system better but when the VCF (I incorrectly said FAQ in my last post) tells me to edjust BIOS settings, and no other suggestion is working then that tells me i should CHANGE BIOS settings. Then when i could not find most of the effects to change I asked, in this topic. But i got no reply, hence the frustration.

As it turns out i jumped on a PC using Windows 98 and wadaya no there's all the settings i couldn't find on XP. I guess that particular fix is not refering to XP.


Common sense should tell you that if you don't find a setting in your BIOS, then its not supported in your BIOS? Right? Right.

And anything in the FAQ that is OS specific, is clearly indicated as such.

quote:


Perhaps you should include that info to save sending people on a wild goose chase.

Thats right, hold me accountable for problems you caused all on your own.

quote:


But all that aside, my problem is now sorted. It was a GF2 mx 400 overheating problem causing the CTD, and probly system failure. Now that I've sorted my problems

Figures

quote:


I'll be able to help other newcomers get into this game as smoothly as possible.

No you won't because your posting priviledges have been revoked indefinitely. If you circumvent it and re-register, you will be banned from the site.

Incompetence (since you have no idea what you're doing with your HW) - at the expense of everyone's time is one thing, disrespect is another.

Goodbye.

[ 06-01-2003, 09:44 AM: Message edited by: Supreme Cmdr ]

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