13 réponses à ce sujet

[Seeker_for_help]

Hi Everyone,

what I can see ME is a really great game with much depth that I'd love to be playing.

I am having an issue that ME crashes after a while of playing. Most of the times some or all textures become yellow and after a while it crashes or freezes.

Below are the details of my system.

1.  Mass Effect (patched up to latest version 1.02) PC Version from physical disc.
 
2.  System Details

  a. Processor AMD Phenom II X4 955 / 4 Core / 3.2Ghz / 4GB RAM (3,25 recognized under Win XP 32bit) Neither the system as a whole nor single components have ever been overclocked.                                          

  b. Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 / 1024MB / Driver Version 260.99 (latest), 258.96 same issue                                                

  c. Realtek HD / Driver Version 5.10.0.6194 from Sept. 9th 2010, Sennheiser USB Headset (Standard Drivers that are included in Windows). Putting both in Software Emulation mode didn't help.

  d. Operating System Windows XP 32bit SP3 (Clean Install), running as Administrator

  e. Direct X Version 9.0c (4.09.0000.09.4) latest version

3.  Problem Details

  a.  What?  What is the nature of the problem that you’re seeing?
    Scenario 1: While playing some or all textures turn yellow and sometimes after a few seconds the application crashes with error message General Protection fault or Files not found or even the whole PC freezes
    Scenario 2: When opening local Map it freezes either immediately or after a few seconds of scrolling. However not always.

  b.  When?  When does the problem occur? Every time you engage in a particular action or only after so many hours of play?
    Happens randomly, can be after 20-30 minutes of playing or even after 5 minutes

  c.  Where? Where does the problem occur? Is the problem localized to a particular planet or does it occur everywhere?
    It does occur everywhere.

  d.  Why? As much as possible, can you isolate the problem to a specific set of steps?
    Not at all, it happens randomly. Running in Window mode didn't help resolve the issue.

I am quite sure that the issue is not caused by hardware failure or overheating, as I finished the game Metro 2033 the other day without any glitches on the same PC; only booting from a different harddrive running Windows 7 64bit.

Hopefully someone can help me resolve this issue. After spending hours and hours on different forums reading through tons of messages and trying several things, I haven't been able to resole the issue so far.

It would be great if someone had an idea how to resolve the issue or at least find a mitigation that I can play at least 1-2 hours without a crash. Thank you very much for helping out here.

Modifié par Seeker_for_help, 24 novembre 2010 - 10:59 .

[Domar]

Tried older drivers than the one mentioned? In my experience, the latest does not always work the best, especially for older graphics cards (but your card is rather new, isn't it?).

Tried experimenting with the 3D settings of your graphics card (the ones on the NVidia control panel)? Some combinations there might not work so well for your setup at present - who knows?

I'm also wondering about the VRAM size of your card. If I recall correctly, this very size created some problems for gamers sporting rather new equipment when trying to play the game Empire Total War. Don't remember their solution, though.

Another idea: try using a program called Game Booster. It might make a difference.

[Seeker_for_help]

Domar, thank you for sending over your thoughts.

I can't go back way too much with my video card GTX 460 drivers as it was released on the market about 2 months ago and using any driver older than that would not support the hardware.

I have been playing around with the 3D settings in NVidia control panel, with no results so far. I will stay on it.

I tried game booster and the game still crashed.

There are 3 more things that I can think of trying:

1. disabling Anti-Virus Software (Avira Anti Virus) before playing
2. re-installing the game
3. disabling my Nvidia 460 video card and use the onboard ATI Radeon HD 4290 instead

I'll give it a try and see what happens.

Modifié par Seeker_for_help, 14 novembre 2010 - 09:55 .

[Domar]

Yes, reinstalling the game is a good idea. Also shutting down all unnecessary programs running in the background. Some of them may interfere with the proper working of the game. Game Booster takes care of some of these programs and you can increase the number of such programs by going into the details of what programs are set for shutdown.

So a different game worked with the 64-bit version of Windows 7? How about testing ME under that system as well?

Modifié par Domar, 15 novembre 2010 - 01:04 .

[Seeker_for_help]

A brief update what I have done so far.

So far I had re-installed the game and disabled Anti Virus.The issue still remains.

For the moment I am not going to utilize the on board VGA card. I will install the game on my Win 7 64bit harddrive instead and see if the issue is gone.

Modifié par Seeker_for_help, 20 novembre 2010 - 03:33 .

[Seeker_for_help]

It works now flawlessly!

What did I do?

I simply installed the game on my 2nd hard drive which has Win 7 64bit installed, using the same computer, copied over my saved-games as well as the config file.

Since then I have played about 4x2 hours, without even a single glitch.

I find it bizarre that a 3 years old game works better on Win 7 than on XP, which it was actually made for.

Anyway, I am happy now that I can play and enjoy it.

Domar, thank you very much for your help. It is much appreciated.

Modifié par Seeker_for_help, 24 novembre 2010 - 10:49 .

[james1976]

I just got a 460 recently as well. Perhaps I should install this on my VIsta Drive to see if it improves any. But my issue isn't textures. It's game freezes, then yellow screen for a second, then blue screen of death for a split second and THEN reboots itself.

[Gorath Alpha]

No game player worth that description should ever allow Windows to auto- reboot. You usually need to know what error message is involved, and that stupid default doesn't allow you to do so, therefore, you need to fix that.

Incidentally, almost all of the Geforce 4n0 cards are causing trouble in any games more than a couple of years old, such as ME-1 and NWN2, both from Bioware. 

Only the GTS 450 seems immune so far. 

Modifié par Gorath Alpha, 20 décembre 2010 - 02:33 .

[james1976]

I'm getting the yellow textures now. I was able to save and hop out to avoid the reboot. Looks like I'm installing on the other drive for sure now to see if it works.

[Seeker_for_help]

James1976, install ME on your Vista drive ASAP. I am confident that this will resolve your issues.



I've had no single freeze, crash or yellow texture after I installed it on my Win 7 drive. I finished ME the other day and are plying ME2 now.

[james1976]

I installed ME1 on my Vista drive last night. As with you Seeker, I have not froze or crashed since putting it on that drive. I do however get a bit of lag that wasn't there before. But at least it is not rebooting my system now. My particle effects are rock bottom but textures are on high. I will try to take it down to medium tonight to see if it makes a difference. I wouldn't think with a card like this I would have to do something like that but the drivers aren't polished either.

The GTX 460 is a new card. I firmly believe that the drivers need to be polished more and ME1 might be working better with the DX libraries available on Vista and Win7 as oppose to that on XP right now. Once the drivers are more polished, the DX9 libraries might be okay again. While DX and video drivers are different things, they do work together in gaming. I don't think the 400 series was made with older games in mind. That is part of the problem. But not all of it. I've been on the nvidia forums for the last couple of weeks trying to resolve a problem that occurred with Sacred 2 since installing the 460. People are reporting problems with other games such as the newer Battlefield and Call of Duty games.

But I can say that on Vista Ultimate 64, Borderlands runs smooth as silk. Been meaning to test it out on XP 32-bit. Sacred 2 the issue is on both drives.

I have a slew of other games to see how well the current drivers will work. Dragon Age and Jade Empire:SE (which were fine on the 8800 GTS 640mb cards), Mass Effect 2 (haven't played yet), and more.

ME1 is what I'm into at the moment though. There is suppose to be a new driver release this week and then again after New Years, unless they decide to bundle them together in one release.

EDIT -From the nvidia forums regarding new geforce driver release

 
ManuelG
[*]
NVIDIA Technical Support

Posted Today, 10:38 AM

Sorry guys. Yes, the driver has been pushed back to first week of January.

Modifié par james1976, 20 décembre 2010 - 05:41 .

[Seeker_for_help]

As far as my Win 7 64 bit is concerned, my GTX460 has been working perfectly so far with Metro 2033, ME 1 and ME 2 in conjunction with the latest drivers. After I finished ME 2 I will give it a try and start with Dragon Age.

[james1976]

Okay. It could be the card was more focused on Windows 7 anyway since it supports DX11. Let me know how it all goes. I'll do the same. At the very least we can keep others informed when they come looking for the same issue.

[james1976]

After going back to the drivers that came on disc for the GTX 460, ME1 is not lag free on Vista Ultimate 64.

The only trouble I have now is a Rendering Thread Exception that CTD twice tonight while exiting a conversation. Not really going to complain about that too much as I read it might be a game bug with Geforce drivers. I am looking into that.



EVGA Precision shows GPU Temp reaching 58C at the most, with as much as 60%+ GPU usage (spiked once at 75% but mostly hung in the 40s and 50s range) and no more that 168mb of memory usage while playing thus far.



I am convinced now that all of this has been driver related. The newer operating systems working better with the newer cards and as a result XP side suffers the worst.