Larian Studios Forums Divine Divinity (English) Technical Problems Strange crashing problem

At odd intervals (sometimes 5 minutes in, sometimes 3 hours), I'm experiencing a crash that completely locks my system. Stranger, I get a low constant beep coming from my cpu the second it crashes until I power down. Any ideas?

1.6ghz P4
512 MB DDR pc-2100
Geforce 2 Mx400 64 mb
Soundblaster Audigy
via motherboard
win2000

I have all the latest drivers, service pack 3, etc...although if questionable I can provide the specifics. Don't have problems with other new games, including C&C generals, NWN, Warcraft III, and Morrowind.

Any and all help is appreciated.

Hi drochief,

Do you have the hotfix installed?

You might want to try out our Technical Support Faq

I have downloaded and installed the hotfix.

I have a question about my direct x version. "First of all, we cannot stress ... and that you are running at minimum DirectX8.1b." I'm running DirectX8.1 (4.08.01.0881), is that kosher?

"5) Problem: Random crashes
We have had a number of reports on random crashes. Most of these could be solved by doing one of the following things:"

'Make sure all your drivers are up to date and you have the latest service packs and windows updates installed.' Done.

'Turn down the windows hardware acceleration of the sound driver down by one notch.' Done.

'Make sure the color depth of your desktop is set to 16 bits.' Done.

'Make sure the integrity of your files is not compromised by executing a scandisk.' Done.

'Make sure you have no other applications running in the background.' Done, and though I am running Win2000 I have almost all non-necessary services disabled so I'm a lot more barebones than most 2000 users.

'Make sure you have enough free hard disc space' Done, 17 some odd gigs open.

'Make sure you have full read/write access to the folder where you installed Divine Divinity' Done.

'You also might want to check if there is a file called error.txt in the run folder of the folder where Divine Divinity was installed, as it might contain helpful hints.' No such file on my computer.

I also looked through the via motherboard problems even though I don't have an amd processor, but I've applied the latency patches and stuff before trying to get bink videos to run correctly for C&C generals (they run choppy in some games for via motherboards using creative soundcards).

I will say that setting my display to 16-bit color or putting the windows hardware acceleration down a notch on my soundcard may have helped some as I seem to be getting the crash more infrequently since I have changed those (only seems to be after hours of play now). Then again it could be completely aleatory.

I have been selecting Direct 3D on the configuration screen (where you select resolution etc...), is it possible I should be selecting something else? This screen pops up when I load the game everytime after I crash, saying something about it not closing correctly last time and I reselect the options. I have tried all three resolutions (and generally play with the 800 * 600 as I prefer it to the larger one).

Well, if you come up with any more ideas I'm all ears, and thank you for the quick response. Sorry if this message is a little cluttered, just wanted to be clear on what I tried.

"I'm running DirectX8.1 (4.08.01.0881), is that kosher?"

That is the version I have, and the game runs fine here.


"I have been selecting Direct 3D on the configuration screen (where you select resolution etc...), is it possible I should be selecting something else?"

If you try software or Direct Draw mode and your game stops crashing, then yes, you should be selecting something else. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" /> Direct 3D can cause problems for some people in the council hall or with cut scenes, but I have not heard of it contributing to random crashes. Can't hurt to try, though.