TheFeniX

And with two incredibly stupid combat games in which NS managed to lock up no less than 5 times: I'm pretty much quitting NS.

I've had to deal with near constant lock-ups in this game for a while, but I stuck with it due to the quality of the games here. Now I find that quality slipping just enough to push me over the threshold of what I can take.

In the next week I will make the final decisions on this matter.

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CaveDog

wow. that sucks. i will be VERY sorry to see you go. i understand tho. nothing worse than tech problems.

i will miss you if you go.

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--
CaveDog
"Go sell crazy somewhere else... we're all stocked up here."

lordflametide

You have your configs tweaked? Did you run adaware to remove any spyware/adware? Half-life is 5 years old, theres no reason you should be freezing (aside from VPU lock ups...which has occured quite frequently with me in many games in the last few ATI Catalyst driver patches). I've had no problems from steam in the last few months except for increased loading time of NS (makes no sense, but okay).

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--T3C[]-[]N0 []v[]UFF1N

The vending machine originated in Egypt in 215 B.C. Learn somethin new everyday, dontcha?

jackel

feennixxx dont gooooooo
i neverr hummped your armory..


rawrrrr

you have to come back at like b6 or something, have to!@!!!$@!$!@#%!
one one eleven

TheFeniX

I don't think you fully comprehend the hours of testing I've done to figure out what is the problem.

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Rampage

Nonetheless, if there's anything we can do to help, give us a shot. A lot of times, a fresh pair of eyes is all that's needed to come up with the solution. No insult to your capabilities or knowledge, just a sincere offer of assistance.

Lt.Asher

Mhhh a lock-up of what you describe is typically assoicated with 1) Driver issues 2) IRQ ports being shared at the same time and 3) falty hard ware.

Seeing as how (and this is total assumption) that you run other games fine it would seem to me that #3 is ruled out. And driver issues don't usually cause a lock up, they are more the "blue screen of death" or "crash to desktop" type errors, espcially with how advanved console recovery has become lately.

I'm not sure if you've tried it or not, but try moving some, if you have any, PCI cards around. sometimes the sound card will share the same IRQ of a video card and that will cause lock-ups big time. However if it's 5 minutes into the game it sounds like something else but I can't pinpoint what because i just don't know your system configuration.

One thing to look for for sure is during the boot-up phase, but just before the xp screen loads up is there is a giant page of system information. This includes what hardware sits on what IRQ port. if your fast enough you can hit pause on your keyboard and read all that. If you see a irq conflict then your best choice is to go into bios and manually beat down the offending hardware. Just my two cents. Good luck.

Oh... and it seems that you didn't have these issues a few weeks ago... whats changed in your hardware profile?

__________________
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved heaven and earth, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

blackjackel

I have a bit of experience on my hands with both hardware and software and gaming-related issues, so i will attempt to help you buddy....

Did you COMPLETELY uninstall and reinstall steam from a fresh copy that you downloaded from a different site that your original copy of steam was downloaded?

Do you run highly graphix instensive games (other than Half-life games) and if so do they also give you crashes?

What grpahix card do you use, which drivers?

What motherboard do you use? Does it use an Nforce Chipset? What are your NFORCE and/or motherboard drivers? Do you have the latest motherboard bios installed?

When NS crashes, Does the sound freeze too ? can you still alt-tab to windows or CTRL-ALT-DELETE into task manager?

If you get a Blue Screen of death BSOD, whats the message displayed?

How often do the crashes happen? Are they becomeing less frequent or more frequent over time? Are the crashes tied to anything (more players, ns maps....etc) ?


If i had to go ahead and make a blind guess, shot in the dark, without knowing the answer to any of the above questions and just basing my guess on the problem described i would say your problem is faulty ram....

Answering the above questions will help me better assist you =)

TheFeniX

Done that including removing all other PCI cards and moving my sound card to different slots.

I've had these issues for over 2 months, since I upgraded my system to even better hardware. Before that, going fade or hearing the blink sound too much would break NS.

Not only that, I reformatted as well.

Doom3, UT2k4, SW Galaxies, Jedi Academy have absolutely no problems.

GeForce FX 5700 with latest drivers. I've also loaded 7 different versions of the older drivers.

ASUS A7V8X Via chipset.

NS is the only thing that dies. I usually just close steam then reload NS.

Random and can happen at any time. Although, once it goes once if I load back in it will usually happen again soon after.

Fat chance. 2 512 MBs Samsung DDR400. I've even tried different RAM in this system: same problem.

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jackel

i blame ender for your computer problems, fenix.

Lt.Asher

I did see there were via updates from Augest 26th on the via website. Asus doesn't link to them though, so that irks me. That is definitly something to try if you haven't in the past.

I'm also looking at the BIOS history of this motherboard and it's had more then a handful of BIOS updates which makes me weary of how reliable the BIOS is.

One last thing you can do is post your DXDIAG info. If you need help doing this either google or I can assist

__________________
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved heaven and earth, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

TheFeniX

I leave no driver unturned when updating.

The ASUS A7N8x is argueably one of the highest quality boards made and was surpased only by the -N (I believe) which is based off the Nforce chipset.

I don't buy cheap parts.

There is nothing wrong with my DirectX that wouldn't also affect games that require more recent drivers.

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Lt.Asher

I'd argue that the nForce 2 chipset on the A7n8X-E Delux is of higher quality, espcially sense it can go 400mhz FSB but anywho.

And your right about DXDAIG not meaning anything. NS is OpenGL based der. Ignore my World of Warcraft tech support kicking in

I honestly can't think why your PC is locking up. I'm sorry =(

__________________
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved heaven and earth, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

TheFeniX

So it's -E, I didn't feel like looking it up at the time.

__________________

Lirix

"Via chipset" - TheFenix

Heh, I've had so many issues over the years with those particular words always being the root. I see you mention using the latest VIA drivers; let's try something crazy. Reinstall Windows without loading *any* VIA drivers. I'm fairly certain the board will run with only default MS crap loaded and I'm curious if it has different results. I'd say uninstall the drivers, but that has proven to be a horrendous pain on several attempts.

Nothing else has worked so far, right?