posted 03-10-99 11:07 PM ET        

My configuration is as follows:
AMD K6 233
128 megs of RAM
ATI 3d Xpression 4 meg video card
ATI TV Tuner
Monster 3d (not that it matters)
Soundblaster Live
Logitech Cordless Wheel Mouse
Trident Generic Vid Card (2 meg) - for secondary monitor
USR Sportster Winmodem 56k
Creative Labs 24x CD-Rom

Did I forget anything?

DXDiags returns everything certified

posted 03-11-99 12:09 PM ET            

jkm

posted 03-11-99 05:45 PM ET            

Also, to answer MadFly, I have tried disabling the second monitor but SMAC still crashes.

posted 03-11-99 06:28 PM ET         

My system is as follow:

AMD K6 200
Matrox Display
64 meg ram
SB AWE32 sound card

Please help!

I've got a feeling that it's more like a problem with AMD cpu and not a display card problem.

Just a question for Jeff. Will there be a 2.0 upgrade for the Asia version?

posted 03-12-99 10:27 AM ET            

jkm

posted 03-12-99 11:36 AM ET         

I can't play 2 turns without my the Terran.exe crash.

What exactly do you mean when you say a HW incompatiblity? Bad drivers, physical hardware conflicts, version of DX?

What makes you so sure it is a HW problem? The crash I get ALWAYS occurs in the same situation: After I finish my turn and the computer is taking it's. Also, I have a save game that will always cause a crash, I installed SMAC on a completely different machine and loaded the game and low and behold, same crash. What sort of HW is it using that would cause this crash when I used two completely differnt platforms?

I have read a bunch of threads on this topic and tried all the possible fixes I have seen. Set ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=1, ran in 800x600x256, turned off animations, turned off flashing units, check swap file/hard drive space, re-installed, etc. The only fix that works for a while is loading old save games and to tell the truth the that fix is complete BULL CRAP. What fun is it to have to play 10 turns just to have to reload 9 turns previous, play 10 reload 9, etc. Totally Lame.

Sorry for my rant. I am really frustrated right now following my >20th TERRAN.EXE crash of the day.

The machine I am using is as follows:

Pentium Pro 200
64Mb RAM
2.1Gb WD Caviar (220Mb free)
STB Powergraph 64 3D (Virge)
SoundBlaster 16
3Com Fast Etherlink III
Win98
DX 6.1, all drivers certified

posted 03-12-99 11:53 AM ET            

Not saying it's not the CPU, but try EVERYTHING Firaxis is suggesting. The systray was the final option I had, nothing else having worked, and I've never, ever had to do this for another game/program, but it seems to have worked for me.

posted 03-13-99 09:06 PM ET            

There seem to be some users who experience frequent crashes in SMAC, and who cannot alleviate the problem by any of the many methods suggested.

First, I would like to explain that the only reason Firaxis has not addressed this problem long ago is:

We have never been able to reproduce the problem on any of our machines. Nor have either the Origin nor the EA testing departments been able to reproduce the problem. Nor was the testing firm we hired here in Baltimore able to make the problem occur on any of their machines.

Believe me, we have tried, on lots of different kinds of machines.

Here is the information I -do- have:

Now the common thread which seems to run through these complaints is that about 90% of people with this problem have "AMD K6, 200-233Mhz CPU". Now I've seen a couple Pentium Pro's and Pentium II's, though it is conceivable they have a different problem. I've also seen plenty of people saying "I have AMD K6 and it works just fine", though those users often have 400Mhz or some different speed.

Some people who have had this exact complaint have reported that they fixed the problem for good by "de-overclocking" their CPU. I realize not everyone knows how to do that (or even if their chip is overclocked, since some motherboards are sold overclocked w/o any notice to the consumer). But I point it out as a possible starting point for those interested & knowledgeable about such things.

There is a reason this problem is specific to SMAC and other games work fine: we purchased some graphics technology to use with SMAC (yeah, I know, bad decision. Live and learn.) In order to achieve maximum speed, this technology apparently uses some very fancy "optimizations" and processor tricks. These tricks almost always work, and worked with complete reliability on the wide variety of test machines used. But apparently there are some processors which get confused by it. We have been able to correct this situation for some processors (AMD K5 users no longer seem to have problems, for instance).

-- So, is there anything to be done? --

Well, a couple of things:

(1) Next time the problem occurs on your machine (and the crash box appears), click the "Details" button instead of the "Close" button. Cut-and-paste the details information into an e-mail to me at [email protected]. That gives me some information.

(2) If you know your chip is being overclocked, and you know how to de-overclock it, try that.

(3) If you have this problem and happen by extraordinarily fortunate coincidence to live in Baltimore County, and you would be willing to bring your machine by the office sometime, we would -dearly- love to reproduce the problem on your machine under our debugger. Unfortunately we can't just order up a "AMD K6-233 machine" from a manufacturer any more (we could get a 400+ no problem, of course). If we could reproduce the problem at our office, we could probably fix it pretty quickly.

(4) Some users have two machines and have been able to play on the other.

If none of these solutions works for you, I have to be honest that unless "(3)" above happens this issue is not likely to be addressed in an upcoming patch. With deepest regret and sincerest apologies, I have to recommend you return the product to point of purchase as incompatible with your system. I can assure you that we will avoid using this (or similar) technology in future products, but I realize this is of little short term benefit.

Brian Reynolds
Alpha Centauri Designer
FIRAXIS Games

posted 03-15-99 05:07 PM ET            

The only advice I would give to Firaxis for future testing is to try the programs on less-than-top-of-the-line machines (I still use a 166 because I was waiting till the 333-450s came down in price and the speed upgrade was worth the price) with less than standard video and sound cards. I know it would really be a pain to switch out SBs and Voodoos and Monsters and a dozen or so other sound and video cards playing each faction to each kind of victory on each level several times, but thats kinda what playtesting is all about.

While I doubt there will be a AC 2 type game out anytime in the foreseable future that will (or in this case won't) use the same graphics system, this was a live and learn (and mistake) situation. Untried (and unproven) tech fails all the time.

If the game is SO bad and gets on your nerves, complain, rant and rave, say your peace (or pieces) and go on with other games. Chalk it up as a bad/OK/good game for Firaxis and wait till Civilization: Call to Power comes out; see if it is better or worse, and let your dollars/pounds/DM/yen/whatever be seen and heard; send them an email with why it won't work, what you think is the problem; try some fixes, then decide if it's junk. Don't take is so personal when they say too bad (although some companies never learn). They're not aiming to screw you out of $50ish; it just doesn't work for you with what you have; and upgrading hardware should NEVER be required on anything less than two years old.

Redstorm, for example, has had some good and some bad games; they know it, they learned from it (kinda). How many games has Firaxis released; less than a half-dozen? They get one good/bad game, get the good (and bad) press from it, and learn what NEVER to do again (hopefully).

I sincerely hope that someone in the Baltimore area IS having terran.exe faults so maybe Firaxis can get their hands on the problem and possible solution. Maybe somebody nearby could UPS it and Firaxis pick up the tab (or 1/2 of it) to see what exactly is the problem, the game, the drivers, Windows (as usual), or the hardware.

posted 03-15-99 05:45 PM ET            

>> Unfortunately we can't just order up a
>> "AMD K6-233 machine" from a manufacturer
>> any more (we could get a 400+ no problem,
>> of course). If we could reproduce the
>> problem at our office, we could probably
>> fix it pretty quickly.

This may sound snide, but it's meant in the best possible spirit. That said, try egghead.com or Damark. They typically have machines from a generation or two ago. If you're sure you really want to try this approach. <rueful grin>

GL...

-- footpad

P.S. FWIW, I'm using an AMD 233 that is not overclocked and have had no problems whatsoever. Well, okay, flying units tend to drag a bit, but otherwise things work well.

posted 03-15-99 07:59 PM ET            

The game was running fine and all. I finshed a couple games on the lower levels. My problem started when I tried my first game at the thinker level. Everything was going fine until the fault in terran.exe came up. Now I cannot play a single turn in the game. As far as my system goes, it's pretty different from the ones mentioned above.

Win98
PII 450 (not overclocked)
S3 GX/2 (4mb) AGP
64 megs ram
Aureal 338-A3D (Sound Blaster Comapt)
Standard ps/2 mouse
BUZZ SCSI Card
Netgear Ethernet Adapter

All current drivers.

posted 03-15-99 08:19 PM ET            

My system too, is different than what seems to be the norm.

Win98
PII 450
STB nVidia w/ 16 Megs Ram
128 megs ram
Aureal A3DII Sound
Standard PS2 Logitech mouse
3Com Fast Etherlink XL Card

posted 03-15-99 08:22 PM ET            

jkm

posted 03-16-99 01:01 AM ET         

Thank-you for being upfront with us. Seeing as you can't change the past, that's all I really want from Firaxis at this point.

Anyways, good luck with future endeavours and like you said: "Live and Learn".

And who knows, maybe a patch will come out down the line that allows us to get full value out of what is really an excellent game concept.

Cheers,

posted 03-16-99 03:48 PM ET         

I got the game 5 days ago, the day after I did a full install, game seems to be running fine. On Fri. 12 Mar, I install the 2.0 update, after this I started getting the mgs. SMAC could not find the CD with RETRY/PLAY buttons, I pushed play, again game seem to be running fine. On Sat. 13 Mar. I got the Terran.exe crash. I did a restart of the game, when I got to the same place in the game got the Error again. I got the error a total of 3 time. After the third time I place the CD back in the drive. Sofar its seem to running again. I'v not tryed any of the work around listed. Nor did I shut down my McAfee VirusScan, or the 5 other items in the tray. Here is the list of my system. The Dates at the end are the Driver updates.

AMD K6 233 (Not overclock)
64mb Ram SDRAM
6.4 GB HardDrive (6x1GB Partitions, 1 496MB)
Diamond Viper 550 PCI 16MB SDRam (02/05/99)
Diamond Supra 56i vorce/modem(w/V.90 upgrade
SB Awe64(w/2 mb ram install) (11/03/98
Win98 & Win98Plus (US) (clean install no other OS on sys. With all the updates from MSN update page.)
MS PS/2 Wheelmouse on IRQ 12
MS USB Wheelmouse
Iomega 100/Zip SCSI external drive (w/Iomega SCSI ZipCard)

Swapfile is set at 300mb on the small drive.
Before install a full scandisk was run, and a full Defrag was done on the partition.

Here are the cut and paste's of the errors.

TERRAN caused an invalid page fault in
module TERRAN.EXE at 015f:00563ac6.
Registers:
EAX=fffffd35 CS=015f EIP=00563ac6 EFLGS=00010283
EBX=0094d02a SS=0167 ESP=00c2a594 EBP=00c2a5e0
ECX=00005c38 DS=0167 ESI=0386002c FS=4317
EDX=ffffffff ES=0167 EDI=00005bd0 GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
8a 5c 86 08 8d 04 86 f6 c3 01 74 0b 8a 40 02 83
Stack dump:
000001c4 00005bd0 00005bd0 00000003 00000031 00000008 00000040 00c2a5d4 00000010 00000020 00000000 00005bd0 00c2a5e4 0000005f 000001c6 00000e40

TERRAN caused an invalid page fault in
module TERRAN.EXE at 015f:00563ac6.
Registers:
EAX=fffffd35 CS=015f EIP=00563ac6 EFLGS=00010283
EBX=0094d5a6 SS=0167 ESP=00c2a594 EBP=00c2a5e0
ECX=000061b4 DS=0167 ESI=02b2002c FS=0f0f
EDX=ffffffff ES=0167 EDI=00006180 GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
8a 5c 86 08 8d 04 86 f6 c3 01 74 0b 8a 40 02 83
Stack dump:
000001e0 00006180 00006180 00000003 00000056 00000008 00000017 00c2a5d4 00000010 00000020 00000030 00006180 00c2a5e4 00000058 000001e1 00001460

TERRAN caused an invalid page fault in
module TERRAN.EXE at 015f:00563ac6.
Registers:
EAX=fffffd35 CS=015f EIP=00563ac6 EFLGS=00010283
EBX=0094d162 SS=0167 ESP=00c2a594 EBP=00c2a5e0
ECX=00005d70 DS=0167 ESI=02b2002c FS=0ce7
EDX=ffffffff ES=0167 EDI=00005cd4 GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
8a 5c 86 08 8d 04 86 f6 c3 01 74 0b 8a 40 02 83
Stack dump:
000001c9 00005cd4 00005cd4 00000003 0000006f 00000008 00000017 00c2a5d4 00000010 00000020 00000030 00005cd4 00c2a5e4 0000005c 000001cc 00001780

Hope this helps.

I'm looking forward to playing this game alot. This game is what OUTPOST should of been, I just hope it does not have all the bugs.

Sorry for the long post.

Madone

posted 03-16-99 08:43 PM ET            

AMD K6-2 333 mHz (not o/ced)
FIC VA-503+ mobo
48 meg RAM
Velocity 128 4 meg vid card
Mx300 sound card

I havn't been able to play more than 5 turns of this game since I purchased it an hour ago, and from what I saw, I liked it.. I would just like to play more of it.

posted 03-17-99 05:22 AM ET            

Intel P-100 (not overclocked);
Normal instal;
No CD;
80 MB RAM = 16 MB ancient + 64 MB EDO;
ESS-688 soundcard;
Diamond Stealth 64 DRAM video card;
DirectX 6.0 (from SMAC CD).

I played many games with no problem (except very slow play late on a huge land map), on levels Citizen to Specialist.

Then I tried my first two games on Librarian,
on medium water maps, and both of those seized up during the AI's turns. I was able to isolate the problem to the PK's turn, and sent the savefile to Jeffrey Morris.

Now I'm on my first Thinker game, on the Standard Planet map, and lo and behold! I get my first Terran.exe (you Firaxis guys Starcraft fans?) page fault.

Again, it's in the middle of the 24th century (circa 2360-2370); and again there aren't many units for the AI to move (not now that I've strafed and intercepted twenty of Miriam's bombers).

posted 03-17-99 05:29 AM ET            

What can I say? I bought this system in April 1996, all except the 64 MB EDO that I later had the retailer add.

posted 03-17-99 09:49 AM ET            

The one that faults is a Gateway 333 purchased in Oct 98, w/ 64M, plenty of HD space and built in video and sound, so I'm not sure what the problem is. This computer has a complete install and I run it without the CD.

The computer that has yet to fail is a junk-yard dog 166 with 32M and a decent (over 1G) HD space, a SB 64 AWE, ATI 8M Video and Monster Voodoo II 8M accelerator with a standard install and using the CD.

The 333 has the 2.0 patch the 166 does not. It runs slow on the 166, but I wouldn't call it unplayable by any means, just annoyingly slow.

My brother has a Compaq 233 with God knows what inside, and he never got a Terran fault until he did a full install and quit using the CD.

I realize this is a flagrant violation of the program rights, usage, copyright issue, etc., etc., etc., and I know lots of people do it anyway for less than 'honorable' purposes (giving their friends copies, burning and selling copies) and that the end doesn't necessarily justify the means, but has anyone else tried varying combinations of installs with and without playing with the CD? in default and user-defined directories? with and without patches? I read somewhere that someone switched out their hardware componets (sound, video, accelerator) to see what would happen, have other people tried that, and if so, let us know what happened. If you're worried about illegal multi-installing, don't mention the fact, just let us know what the results were.

We shouldn't have to be testing this game ourselves (thats what the Beta's and programmers were for), but MAYBE there is a logical pattern (possibly in the game) that WE as players will find on our varied machines that couldn't be found during playtesting on relatively good machines.

posted 03-17-99 01:21 PM ET            

I also have an AMD (which seems to be the common problem)
My Equipment:

ASUS P5A Mainboard
AMD K&-2 350 MHz
128 MB SD-RAM 7ns (PC-100 compliant)
ASUS AGP-3000 Graphic card (old Riva128)
Diamond Monster 2 8MB Voodoo2 (not used in SMAC)
Adaptac 2940U SCSI Adapter (SCSI only System)
3Com Network Card (100mbit)
Terratec EWS 64 S Soundboard (a bit non-standard, Direct Sound drivers halfway accept it :-) )

So far, I had not a single problem with SMAC, except for the "Sound initialisazion bug" which however occurs in other games as well (Baldurs Gate, Pop 3, ... ) and I expect this comes from my non-standard Sound Board.
Ok, to admit it, SMAC crashed twice or three times now, but given the fact that I sometimes play it (or have it at least running) for up to 6 hrs and longer I don't count that. After restart (windows, not just SMAC) and reload it all went well.

However, and this is the reason why I post this reply, I had very serious problems with Populous 3 some months ago. When the PC was 'cold' I could start Windows and play Pop3 for, well about 30 Minutes, then it crashed. (usually Bluescreen, sometimes it even did a reboot) After that, when the pc was "warm" I could restart Windows, start the game again and after 5 Minutes it crashed again. and so on and so on.

Needless to say I was not at all happy. I ran several tests. I suspected the motherboard, the RAM. Luckily I could lend some new ram from a shop and tried them out - no effect. I exchanged the Motherboard - no effect. At this time, I could let my PC crash by simply loading Windows (98, because of the Speed Bug with fast AMD CPUs) let it run and sometimes after 1 hr, sometimes after 4 hrs I had a bluescreen: without doing anything at all..

After I exchanged nearly everything I suspected the AMD CPU of being the reason for the crashes. Since I bought the PC (or the parts of it) all in the Computer Firm where I worked, I could easily request an exchange for the CPU. However, this takes some time and so I just simply down-clocked my pure 350 CPU to 300 MHz (I wanted to check if it is the 100Mhz external clockspeed or the internal speed that caused trouble) So I switched the multiplier from 3.5x to 3.0x and from this time on everything worked beautifully! I could play Pop3 for 5 hrs without a single bluescreen. Everything great! But since I ordered, recieved and paid for a 350 Mhz Cpu, I exchanged it against a new one. Now with the new processor in place, everything worked great, but again with 350MHz...

btw: As I removed the bad-350Mhz Processor, the bottomside of the heat-Fan showed the "brandmarked" inscription that was on the top of the processor.. it's heat transfered and burned the text into the fan's bottom side...

Aparently, there are quite a few AMD processors out there that aren't quite stable. If you experience (un)frequent crashes, first try this: Turn on your PC when it was off for a long (around 3hrs) time. Let it run the night trough (switch off all screen safers and the monitor) if at the next morning you have a bluescreen, you know what's it up to) also if you have no bluescreen, try down-clocking your AMD CPU. Do only change the multiplier not the external frequency (that is, you did never overclock it) If you don't know how to do it, search for a friend who knows it or ask your local PC dealer.

If that doesn't resolve your problem try to lend out another cpu from a friend or maybe at your PC dealer (if you know the people who work there personally, this usually isn't a problem) if the problem now vanishes - request an exchange of the CPU. If you're still on warranty, you're lucky, if not, you might try contacting AMD directly.

So that were my (long <g> ) 2 cents of the story. Hope that it helps some of you to enjoy this game. It really is fun I like it! (Even though I spend too much time playing it than working... )

P.S.: I myself have and play the german version (switzerland) but before the 2.0 Patch I downloaded the US Terran from the URL which was given on the board here and with this version, I could not play a single turn without a terran.exe crash. (Though it might be related that it was only the 2.0 exe, not the 2.0 .txt and ini also) The German 1.0i as well as the german 2.0 work reliable.

CU

posted 03-17-99 05:02 PM ET            

A couple of comments--

First of all, my earlier message was addressed solely to those people having frequent crashes (every 5 minutes or so) even when they start a brand new game.

If you've got a particular "game in progress" which locks up during the enemy turn, that's almost certainly the known (and fixed for 3.0) "enemy missile problem". It sounded like :

Rick_S
Mars Inf
dconner
Harvey Fox
Zoetrope

(Madone may have something fixable as well, not certain yet)

...had that particular problem. Version 3.0 has not cleared testing yet (could be as early as this week, no promises though), but anyone who has that symptom is welcome to send me an e-mail ([email protected]) and I will try to e-mail you a version to get you around this problem. May take a little longer than usual this week, since I'm going to be on the road.

TheUnforgiven sounds like he has the mysterious "AMD" problem I was talking about.

For those in the AMD category, if you've tried -everything else- (including the closing all your systray icons on the lower right of your taskbar), then try this below:

I'd be interested in learning whether some of the overheating solutions proposed help at all-- for instance, turn your system off to cool down for a while, open the case, and point a big household fan at it. Obviously that's not a longterm solution but if it works or fails to work it's a significant piece of data.

So anyway, I think most people's problems can be solved by either:

(a) Correcting hardware configuration issues.
(b) Getting patch 3.0 when it comes out.

It's only the "AMD crashing intermittently every 5 minutes or so" problem that is a bit mysterious.

Note: for people with the "locks during enemy turn" problem, 3.0 corrects the underlying problem (so it won't develop again), but if you want to continue your existing saved games, they'll have to be "repaired". Once you have 3.0 I can tell you how to repair your save.

posted 03-17-99 05:19 PM ET         

Thanks again for your informative comments. At least when you write, I have the definate impression that Firaxis is aware of, and is moving to fix, gameplay-logic related issues. You might want to check this out, too:

Try the game on Transcend level. I'm beginning to see a correlation with Terran.exe and higher levels of play. At higher levels, various game components activate (such as skunkworks/cost to prototype). Perhaps a "hole" in some of the code that gets executed at higher levels is responsible for some of the Terran.exe issues.

There have been others who have noticed this as well. They play with no problems on the easy levels, but run into Terran.exe as they go to Librarian level or higher...

Best of luck,

posted 03-18-99 01:51 AM ET            

Btw, have Firaxis examined the error messages that a couple of players have posted? There's a lot of consistency in the data, suggesting that the crash occurs in a particular place in the code.

I'll try a strong household fan on my last save, immediately before the crash, but considering the evidence, I'd be surprised if that makes any difference in my case.

As for the hanging at Librarian level, one point I didn't mention is that it's not a complete lockup: (1) the keyboard lets me C-A-D the game, and (2) the mouse is still free to travel the screen. So the input devices are still active. It's just the program that doesn't respond.

posted 03-18-99 02:35 AM ET            

Pentium II 333mhz
160mb SDRAM
STB Velocity 4400
Diamond Monster Sound Card
USR 56k Sportster Modem
Kenwood 40x cdrom
Microstar 6117 Main Board, Newest Bios
13.3gb Western Digital Hard Drive

posted 03-18-99 10:36 AM ET            

Basically if your problem mostly occurs with a particular game, but you can start a new game and play for a long time with no problems, then you don't have a configuration issue, you just need to get version 3.0, which will be ready soon.

posted 03-18-99 02:46 PM ET            

I have experience what I hope is the "enemy missle attack hang". I would love to know how to resetore my saved game after I apply the 3.0 patch (very engrossing game).

posted 03-18-99 05:50 PM ET         

His issue concerns "squares of death". If you click on these developed squares during the game, it crashes. I've seen this issue before, and it seems to involve squares that are well developed (boreholes, condensers, etc.) that are being remotely mined by supply crawlers.

posted 03-18-99 07:18 PM ET            

First I re-installed it. I think the 2.0 patch is where the terren.exe problem
started. The 1.0 CD version didn't crash.

Also...
In Control Pannel-Systems-Graphics set
the graphics acceleration to a low value.

posted 03-19-99 12:19 AM ET            

TERRAN caused a divide error in module TERRAN.EXE at 0137:004f68b0.
Registers:
EAX=00000027 CS=0137 EIP=004f68b0 EFLGS=00010216
EBX=00000000 SS=013f ESP=00c2a8d8 EBP=00c2a900
ECX=0000a3ac DS=013f ESI=00000005 FS=0cb7
EDX=00000000 ES=013f EDI=00000027 GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
f7 fb 8b d8 a1 e0 46 90 00 8b 90 18 01 00 00 3b
Stack dump:
00000005 0000a3ac 00000003 00000002 0000002a 00000038 00c28704 00000020 fffffffa 00000006 00c2a91c 004f9996 00971f1c 0000a3ac 00000003 00971f18

posted 03-19-99 10:16 AM ET         

I just copied the low res caviar from the CD.
Having copied it I got past the troubling turn and didn't get the error any longer.
Since then I've been enjoying SMAC on a reasonable game speed even on huge maps without problems in spite of the fact that my system is not the latest:
AMD 166 processor
Some 1mb Trident Graphics Card
AWE 32 Creative Labs Soundblaster
48 mb EDO RAM
48-300 mb swap file
some Win 95b Version (exceptionally the only one I know working without severe errors for 2 years know)

I hope I could help someone.

P.S.: Today I'll try the v2.0 Patch and I hope I get the sounds working perfectly now.
Oh, before I forget it thanks to Firaxis for developing such a great game like SMAC. I hope there will be much more to follow.

posted 03-19-99 02:45 PM ET            

configuration:

posted 03-20-99 02:04 AM ET            

I have a AMD K6 233 system with 64Meg Ram and 8Meg Matrox Millenium2 video card.

I've had it for over a year and the past couple months it once in a while will just FREEZE UP (not just SMAC). I suspected a heat problem and bought a blue double fan unit that plugs into a PCI or ISA slot (just to position it) and I aim the two input portions to different sections of my comptuer ... it blows air OUT of the computer. I also bought a Digital Doctor unit that monitors the temp in the computer in two places ... I put one under the mother board and one near the hard drive.

By the motherboard the temp is about 72 degrees F ... by the harddrive it is 89-92 degrees F. (wondering if I should buy a Hard Drive triple fan unit now too).

I think the extra fans have helped immensely ... no SMAC lock ups lately in ver 2.0.

So perhaps a message Brian had about putting a fan blowing on the system has some merit ... though I would suggest buying the fan I got ... it is quite affordable and seems to work very well.

(minor detail ... I just got their latest catalog yesterday and the fan I bought last month is no longer listed in it - this is Cyberguys - maybe check their website at www.cyberguys.com)

Best Regards,

posted 03-20-99 06:20 AM ET         

64mb 100mhz DIMM
awe32
viper v330 PCI
Teles ISDN modem
NE2000 comp. network adaptor
Diamond monster 3d

And it's runs more stable than my intel p166 that i had before.

A problem could be ATImach videocards, lots of people with terran crashes seem to have a ATImach chipset on their videocard. Another thing that could cause the problem is AGP cards on a non intel-chipset mainboard (VIA of ALI), try downloading the newest AGP implementation for your mainboard
(www.via.com.tw and www.ali.com.tw)
This might help.

For amd owners, try applying some coolingpaste (the whitestuff), helps alot to keep your CPU cool, and make sure the hot air leaves your system!!!!!

You could also try lowering your memory timings!!!! To high timings really piss windows off and make it prone to crash.

Hope this will solve someones problems!!!

BTW The only time my terran.exe crashes is when i try to load a custommade faction file. I can import the original factions, but when i load a custommade terran.exe crases.

Just downloaded v 3.0 maybe that will solve the problem.

posted 03-20-99 09:35 AM ET            

I suppose people are experiencing this crash for different reasons. For me, one of the following actions "solved" the problem (I did both simultaneously and didn't bother ruling out which was actually causing the crash):

1) Turn OFF the Voices in your Audio/Visual Preferences
2) Don't use the microphone to communicate

posted 03-21-99 11:23 PM ET            

After following just about all of the steps posted previously, after removing Win98, doing a scratch install of 95 and repeating the aforementioned steps on that O/S, I reduced the clock speed of my K6/2-300 (66 bus) to 266MHz. After that I completely uninstalled the game and saves, reinstalled a typical installation and then applied the 3.0 patch. The game now rarely crashes, usually in the endgame. As my applications don't really depend on the 300MHz speed, its not a huge sacrifice to run at 266, but then your mileage may vary. For those who are interested, the system specs are:
The aforementioned K6/2 300 (266)
M-Technology M51 MB
Generic S3Virge/DX
SB AWE 64

posted 03-22-99 04:57 PM ET         

I have tried everything that has been posted with no luck, from setting my graphics performance to 0, to turning off all sound, to minimizing the graphics. I am convinced that this is a game bug, as I can make it to this year in any new game I start, regardless of map size or whether the world is random or standard, and regardless of what faction I use.

I have a PII 266 with 128 megs ram
A Hercules Dynamite TNT video card
A Sound Blaster AWE 64

All drivers are up to spec. I have loaded version 3.0 of the game.

I still get this crash whenever I get to this point in the game.

I tried to e-mail a file to Firaxis, but have not gotten a reply, so either you guys are swamped, don't care, or are embarrassed about your inability to solve a problem facing so many people.

Please reply to this post, I have sent a number of e-mail to no avail, and am tired of starting games that crash just as I am finally way up the technology chain.

Take some responsibility Firaxis. This is not a hardware problem, but is rather the result of poor beta-testing.