Repeatable Crash with Video

[Marc Duffy]

I'll try it out on an AMD today too but I would urge you to check out your PC with a defrag, scandisk etc

In my experience, quite often issues like this have highlighted a problem with your system setup. Other games sometimes don't crash because they do not do some of the intensive stuff that our games do

[old timer]

Personally, I would favor the bad sector theory. If the sector(s) going bad are only in the area where OOTP is being installed to, it wouldn't affect any other program. Perhaps in time, if you removed OOTP and installed some other programs, they would also fail, but unless that happens, the only way to know for sure is scan your hard disk for bad sectors.

If the problem were AMD related I would expect a lot more people to be having similar problems. I have an AMD system and have setup some HUGE test leagues with no crash problems at all.

Sometimes chkdsk won't find a problem even though a sector may be going bad, but it's worth trying anyhow. You may want to try out some third party chkdsk type program. Even something free like Western Digitals diagnostic utility. Maybe you've already done this?

[Ankit]

Originally Posted by Comedian2004

According to Bill Gates:

CAUSE
This behavior may occur if one of the following conditions is true:

• One or more of the random access memory (RAM) modules that are installed on your computer are faulty.
• The RAM configuration is incompatible with Windows XP.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315335

Thanks for the suggestion, but that is not an issue. RAM modules check out fine and the configuration is compatible with XP.

[LarryP]

Originally Posted by old timer

Personally, I would favor the bad sector theory. If the sector(s) going bad are only in the area where OOTP is being installed to, it wouldn't affect any other program. Perhaps in time, if you removed OOTP and installed some other programs, they would also fail, but unless that happens, the only way to know for sure is scan your hard disk for bad sectors.

Sometimes chkdsk won't find a problem even though a sector may be going bad, but it's worth trying anyhow. You may want to try out some third party chkdsk type program. Even something free like Western Digitals diagnostic utility. Maybe you've already done this?

I agree. I replied earlier about the bad sectors. CHKDSK for the most part is a piece of junk. It can find problems but seldom fixes them. Cross linked files under NTFS is no problem but bad sectors baffle it. A program can install right over bad sectors and cause all kinds of mind boggling problems. I found this out a few weeks ago and just about lost my mind trying to find out what the problem was. A very good 3rd party utility (but costs $89) is Spinrite, and it will check any disk drive and fix any problem. I used it on my PC and their support is online and immediate. I mean, I wrote them and within minutes I had replies and this went on for several days. We got it fixed too. It can be found at:

http://www.grc.com/sroverview.htm

They also have a wonderful forum of people ready and willing to help. It can be found here:

http://www.grc.com/discussions.htm

LarryP.

[Ankit]

Originally Posted by Marc Duffy

I'll try it out on an AMD today too but I would urge you to check out your PC with a defrag, scandisk etc

In my experience, quite often issues like this have highlighted a problem with your system setup. Other games sometimes don't crash because they do not do some of the intensive stuff that our games do

Some interesting stuff: I began a Quickstart MAL league and it worked perfectly. I simmed a two months and everything is running fine. This leads to me believe that it is not related to HD errors or system setup. Also, the errors happen at exactly the same spot: In adding historical leagues, it happens after the game is done loading the Lahman DB, and tried to import players. In creating a Standard MAL league, it happens when it is Creating Logos and is 52% of the way through. 56% comes up for a fraction of a second before the Windows crash dialog box appears.

What do we do now?

[Raidergoo]

Originally Posted by Ankit

Some interesting stuff: I began a Quickstart MAL league and it worked perfectly. I simmed a two months and everything is running fine.

Pardon, but for the sake of clarity, is this quickstart that you ran perfectly is on the PC that is giving you all the trouble?

[Ankit]

Originally Posted by Raidergoo

Pardon, but for the sake of clarity, is this quickstart that you ran perfectly is on the PC that is giving you all the trouble?

Yes, the Quickstart is on the Desktop PC which has the AMD chip and where my crashes are occuring.

[huskerdan25]

Originally Posted by Raidergoo

#1 good to hear plan B is working. when possible, give your views on game

#2 the CPU is a good operating hypothesis

Sleep now, hopefully others will chime in soon.

I went ahead and followed the scenario Ankit described in the first post and I was able to successfully create the new league. No crash. I'm runnng an Intel Pentium 4, 3.20Ghz.

I ran disk defragmenter on my system and it has 22% fragmentation and it recommends I run the defragger. But is it possible your fragmentation is significantly more and the system is having problems find usable disk space at times?

[Ankit]

I have 4% Disk defragmentation. As far as disk space is concerned, I have 35 gigs free on a 80 gig HD.

I have checked the "usual suspects" that are causes of an error and have come up empty.

[Ankit]

Any update on this? Is this being looked into or am I just out of luck?

[Raidergoo]

It is being looked at. At this second you are out of luck. I am trying to get this problem identified/isolated/solved.

[Raidergoo]

Next suggestions would involve:

removing the application
cleaning the registry of all SI references
rebooting
redownloading
reinstallation
testing

[Ankit]

May I ask how the registry can be interferring with importing Lahman DB players and Creating Logos? My quickstarts are running fine, started a Quickstart MAL league last league and set it autoplay for 50 years. 20 years have been simmed and no crash. I don't want to be simply trying things to see if I get lucky.

Also, how would I know how many and which registry entries refer to SI? Am I searching for "SI" only? What about "OOTP Baseball 2006" or some other ones?

[Raidergoo]

Originally Posted by Ankit

May I ask how the registry can be interferring with importing Lahman DB players and Creating Logos? My quickstarts are running fine, started a Quickstart MAL league last league and set it autoplay for 50 years. 20 years have been simmed and no crash. I don't want to be simply trying things to see if I get lucky.

Also, how would I know how many and which registry entries refer to SI? Am I searching for "SI" only? What about "OOTP Baseball 2006" or some other ones?

OOTP Baseball 2006 to be specific, for the registry. As it is not malfunctioning with a quickstart, don't try that yet.

What happens if you try a different DB, like Arod23/Garlon in lieu of Lahman?

[Ankit]

I have the latest Arod23/Garlon and I get the same error at the same time (Importing Players, after it has completed loading the DB). I also tried loading the DB from different locations (C:\Lahman, C:\Games\OOTP 2006\Lahman, D:\Lahman, C:\Arod, D:\Arod).

[Raidergoo]

Originally Posted by Ankit

I have the latest Arod23/Garlon and I get the same error at the same time (Importing Players, after it has completed loading the DB). I also tried loading the DB from different locations (C:\Lahman, C:\Games\OOTP 2006\Lahman, D:\Lahman, C:\Arod, D:\Arod).

That likely isolates it from being the DB.

It might be a good idea to send you a successfully imported league from same year.

[Ankit]

True, but then the problem of crashing in creating non-historical leagues still remains (Creating Logos - 52%). Regardless, you don't need to send a save game over, I can import a historical league on my laptop (Intel-based) and move it over to the desktop to see if it loads. I am 99.5% sure it will load, its the creation of leagues that is the problems.

Are logos being created from within the OOTP2006.EXE or is that job being sent to a different file. Could the same DLL be used by both the creation of logos and the importing of players, which is likely calculating ratings and is why is crashing. Just some thoughts...

[Raidergoo]

Originally Posted by Ankit

True, but then the problem of crashing in creating non-historical leagues still remains (Creating Logos - 52%). Regardless, you don't need to send a save game over, I can import a historical league on my laptop (Intel-based) and move it over to the desktop to see if it loads. I am 99.5% sure it will load, its the creation of leagues that is the problems.

Are logos being created from within the OOTP2006.EXE or is that job being sent to a different file. Could the same DLL be used by both the creation of logos and the importing of players, which is likely calculating ratings and is why is crashing. Just some thoughts...

Interesting theory. I'll paste more notes into TT.

[Ankit]

Another update: I created a historical league on my laptop, saved it without simming a game, and moved it to my desktop to see how things would go. Amazingly, I simmed 2 seasons and it imported rookies perfectly when it was time to do so. So the problems rears it ugly head only during League Creation.

On a side note, one bug that has been already reported showed up: the Age of the Human Manager being changed after the Manager is created. I set my Year of Birth in the 1920 Historical League to 1894, where as it ended up being 1808 once the League loaded.

[Raidergoo]

Originally Posted by Ankit

So the problems rears it ugly head only during League Creation.

This point was added to to the TT case for Markus.

If he ever gets over the German victory over Costa Rica . . .