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Author Topic:   Some crash help I hope

Mad Amos posted 03-08-99 09:37 PM ET
Firstly, my system:
PII 400, ABIT BH6 mboard, 64megs 100 mhz RAM,
primary video: Diamond Viper 550 TNT w/16mb SDRAM, secondary video: Diamond Monster 3DII,Monster Sound MX300
My experience so far: Bought the game because of the rave reviews in several game mags. (Sometimes I wonder what version THEY got. No mention of any bugs in the reviews. Go figure.) Installed full install on my F drive (I have a Caviar 8.4 gig divided into 4 2.1 gig partitions.) The F drive has 1.something gigs free after the full install. My C drive is my win98 drive which includes the win swap file (letting windows manage my virtual memory), and has about 1.5 gigs free space.
Okay, with a virgin install to a defragged F drive I could play for about 3 turns before it froze. No alt/tab out. No control/alt/delete out. Reboot. No error messages, no blue screen of death, nothing.
Found and d/led the 2.0 patch. Installed. At that point could play maybe 10 turns, saving at every "turn completed". But still it sucks.
At this point I came to this wonderful little corner of cyberspace. I scanned the posts and did the following:
Tweaked the AlphaCentauri.ini to disable the two sound lines ( sorry I don't remember the names offhand I think one was an EAX thingie.You know change the value to 0 instead of 1) And also changed the last line, the OldVoxel one from 1 to 0.
Anyway, things I didn't do: I didn't change my hardware acceleration in windows. I am a forgetfull sod and would probably forget to change it back. Then I could play HalfLife in slideshow mode. I didn't change my windows resolution from 1024 X 768 to 800 X 600 because that is a simple pain in the ass.
And so, now with all said and done, I can play the game for about an hour or two with no probs. I still save frequently and await the 3.0 patch with bated breath...
Other stuff: Has anyone noticed problems with win98 AFTER they exit SMAC? Now, if I don't reboot AFTER I EXIT, I eventually get someting like...
FATAL EXCEPTION at VXD VCACHE(01) or several more blue screens of high bloodpressure. This DOES NOT HAPPEN if I run any other game or app as log as I have NOT RUN SMAC previously!
Is SMAC leaving some garbage behind? If so then I guess (with all respect to Jeff) this is not an OS problem. No?
To clarify, I love the game and it is my new reason to tell my girlfriend, "Just a couple more turns, honey?"
Also, I think a lot of problems are because of the swap file. If you have a gig or two of space on the disk with the cache, all well and good. But is it all in one place? A fragmented cache is sometimes just as bad as one that is too small. So I defrag every day just to be careful. Also I believe, but can not document, that your win swap should be on the same drive (logical or physical) as your windows directory. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Anyway, I hope I have helped someone with this long-winded post. Good luck.
Mad Amos posted 03-08-99 09:57 PM ET
P.S Rereading the post I think I should clarify. I have 4 2.1 LOGICAL drives not 4 PARTITIONS. This important, I think. :'
mic posted 03-09-99 05:34 AM ET
Putting your Win swapfile on another (physical) drive should enhance performance, because you can let do two drives do the work. However, this won't work if you only have one physical disk.
Some programs make extensive use of OS components that other programs do not. Therefore, you might encounter errors you don't with other programs. That might not because of the programs, but because they use otherwise unused OS features.
The VXD (virtual device driver, i.e. some piece of 32-bit code in the mostly 16-bit Win98) VCACHE is what used to be SHARE.EXE in good old DOS. These two fellows often collide and you should only use one of them. Check your AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS for SHARE and remove it or commment it out (put a ; in front of the line). Reboot.
If you have disk compression (or FAT32) turned on, try to get rid of it. It makes your system unstable.
Remove any 'disk agents' and virus checkers.
Swapfiles don't get fragmented (the system reserves one block of diskspace), so that shouldn't be an issue.
All in all, I'd say the most likely place would be somewhere in conflicting disk access programs, because of the VXD fatal.
Happy hacking !
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Author	Topic: Some crash help I hope
Mad Amos	posted 03-08-99 09:37 PM ET Firstly, my system: PII 400, ABIT BH6 mboard, 64megs 100 mhz RAM, primary video: Diamond Viper 550 TNT w/16mb SDRAM, secondary video: Diamond Monster 3DII,Monster Sound MX300 My experience so far: Bought the game because of the rave reviews in several game mags. (Sometimes I wonder what version THEY got. No mention of any bugs in the reviews. Go figure.) Installed full install on my F drive (I have a Caviar 8.4 gig divided into 4 2.1 gig partitions.) The F drive has 1.something gigs free after the full install. My C drive is my win98 drive which includes the win swap file (letting windows manage my virtual memory), and has about 1.5 gigs free space. Okay, with a virgin install to a defragged F drive I could play for about 3 turns before it froze. No alt/tab out. No control/alt/delete out. Reboot. No error messages, no blue screen of death, nothing. Found and d/led the 2.0 patch. Installed. At that point could play maybe 10 turns, saving at every "turn completed". But still it sucks. At this point I came to this wonderful little corner of cyberspace. I scanned the posts and did the following: Tweaked the AlphaCentauri.ini to disable the two sound lines ( sorry I don't remember the names offhand I think one was an EAX thingie.You know change the value to 0 instead of 1) And also changed the last line, the OldVoxel one from 1 to 0. Anyway, things I didn't do: I didn't change my hardware acceleration in windows. I am a forgetfull sod and would probably forget to change it back. Then I could play HalfLife in slideshow mode. I didn't change my windows resolution from 1024 X 768 to 800 X 600 because that is a simple pain in the ass. And so, now with all said and done, I can play the game for about an hour or two with no probs. I still save frequently and await the 3.0 patch with bated breath... Other stuff: Has anyone noticed problems with win98 AFTER they exit SMAC? Now, if I don't reboot AFTER I EXIT, I eventually get someting like... FATAL EXCEPTION at VXD VCACHE(01) or several more blue screens of high bloodpressure. This DOES NOT HAPPEN if I run any other game or app as log as I have NOT RUN SMAC previously! Is SMAC leaving some garbage behind? If so then I guess (with all respect to Jeff) this is not an OS problem. No? To clarify, I love the game and it is my new reason to tell my girlfriend, "Just a couple more turns, honey?" Also, I think a lot of problems are because of the swap file. If you have a gig or two of space on the disk with the cache, all well and good. But is it all in one place? A fragmented cache is sometimes just as bad as one that is too small. So I defrag every day just to be careful. Also I believe, but can not document, that your win swap should be on the same drive (logical or physical) as your windows directory. Please correct me if I am wrong. Anyway, I hope I have helped someone with this long-winded post. Good luck.
Mad Amos	posted 03-08-99 09:57 PM ET P.S Rereading the post I think I should clarify. I have 4 2.1 LOGICAL drives not 4 PARTITIONS. This important, I think. :'
mic	posted 03-09-99 05:34 AM ET Putting your Win swapfile on another (physical) drive should enhance performance, because you can let do two drives do the work. However, this won't work if you only have one physical disk. Some programs make extensive use of OS components that other programs do not. Therefore, you might encounter errors you don't with other programs. That might not because of the programs, but because they use otherwise unused OS features. The VXD (virtual device driver, i.e. some piece of 32-bit code in the mostly 16-bit Win98) VCACHE is what used to be SHARE.EXE in good old DOS. These two fellows often collide and you should only use one of them. Check your AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS for SHARE and remove it or commment it out (put a ; in front of the line). Reboot. If you have disk compression (or FAT32) turned on, try to get rid of it. It makes your system unstable. Remove any 'disk agents' and virus checkers. Swapfiles don't get fragmented (the system reserves one block of diskspace), so that shouldn't be an issue. All in all, I'd say the most likely place would be somewhere in conflicting disk access programs, because of the VXD fatal. Happy hacking !