Pre-Load now causes system freeze

[MOSQ]

HTC,

The pre-load to system memory and/or video memory has fixed my stutters.

And at first the worst side effect was the lost UDP>to TCP message. I could deal with that by going Offline first, then going Online.

However now I can only login after at least an hour of trying. The problem is: As soon as I hit Offline, my hard drive starts spinning and does not stop. I can wait ten minutes and nothing happens. My screen is frozen solid, I have to hard re-boot. About 50% of the time the reboot goes thru POST ok, but then Windows fails to load. Reboot again, this time Windows starts in safe mode. Reboot again and readjust video settings back to the way they should be. Try to start AHII again, either online or offline, system freeze again>reboot> reboot safe mode> reboot.......

It doesn't matter whether I use 128, 256, 512 textures. It doesn't matter if I use Video or System Memory Pre-Load. It doesn't matter if I use AHII patch 6 or AHII Test.

If I un-enable the pre-load, everything works fine on the login, but the game stutters are so bad it's unplayable.

What I don't understand is why the pre-load worked great after I first installed AHII on a newly re-formatted partition, but now it won't work hardly at all. After numerous trys, I can finally get into the game with pre-load on, but the last two nights I've spent more than an hour going thru attempts to get there.

Is it because I've loaded up all the custom skins over time and now they are too much to handle? Would an option to NOT LOAD custom skins solve this problem? If you can create a test version with that option, I will gladly re-format my AHII partition and try it out.

I could care less about custom skins. The default ones are fine with me. I'd much rather have a smooth, stable game, than one with custom skins.

I love this game but I'm very close to taking a long break from it. I don't have the spare time it takes to keep de-bugging problems every time I want to take a virtual flight. The game is supposed to be fun and entertaining. Now it's become a headache and stress creator for me, not entertainment.  

Celeron 1.4
384 RAM
Intel BX Mobo
Nvidia FX-5200 Ultra 128
SoundBlaster Live! Value
Maxtor 30 GB HD
Win 98 SE, Swap file, and AHII on dedicated partitions; Scan Disk and Defrag daily.
No Anti Virus, No Personal Firewall
No MS Office, Task Scheduler, Screen Saver, or other stuff clogging up the system startup in MSConfig Startup.
Netgear Router
Comcast Cable ISP

Mosq

[straffo]

Buy a new hard disk and make a backup of your important data ... I don't know what happen on your computer but it's not improbable that your disk is slowly dying.

[Blooz]

If the game runs without texture cache and locks up with texture cache enabled seems to me to be insufficient RAM.

384 might not be enough to hold enough space to run the game and cache textures too.

It'd be a painless thing to get another stick of RAM and get it up to or over 512. Just make sure its the same exact type you already have installed.

[MOSQ]

Strafoo and Blooz, thanks for the replies.

I don't think my hard disk is dying. Everything else works great on my PC. I run the SiS Sandra tests, it all works OK. I also run Scan Disk every day, no problems there either.  

I'd bet that if I reformat my AHII partiton and reinstall it will work fine in the beginning, until all the custom skins download over time.

Blooz, if I run 128 textures I can enable Video Memory pre-load. When you use Video Memory pre-load the Textures stay at 0 in the system memory used, and the system memory used stays lower too. However, I'm not discounting that more RAM won't help. 256MBs more is $90 for my old style RAM, a figure I can't afford right now just for this game.

Thanks again for taking the time to reply with suggestions.

[straffo]

But you wrote you have boot problem ?
Only after a freeze ?

[Sundowner]

"And at first the worst side effect was the lost UDP>to TCP message. I could deal with that by going Offline first, then going Online"


Dont go offline first.
I dont know where this practice got started, but it is totally unnessesary:


Start Aces High, enter main arena, exit main arena (quit), then renter main arena.

http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=123986

"Switching TO TCP Message
It is caused by a long load time do to preloading all the textures, and the UDP Connection is timeing out. Untill we put out the next patch you can try a few things. The time out value is set to 15 secs.

1. Lower your max texture size.
2. Try entering the arena TWICE, the 2nd load can be faster.
3. Turn off preloading.


HiTech"


Good luck,
Sun

[214thCavalier]

Or instead of doing the reload shuffle, just download and use the patch 6 test.
For me this loads first time every time whereas before the test patch it always switched to tcp on loading.

[JB73]

Originally posted by 214thCavalier
Or instead of doing the reload shuffle, just download and use the patch 6 test.
For me this loads first time every time whereas before the test patch it always switched to tcp on loading.

he said he tried the patch 6 test.

i suspect this:

Win 98 SE, Swap file, and AHII on dedicated partitions

how many partitions do you have on that 1 drive? and how big is the AH partition, and how big is the swap partition???

i'd have only 2 in RARE circumstances 3 with a win 98 system and a 30GB drive.

5 GB OS partition, 25 GB programs partition, swap file on the OS partition. load only the OS on the 5 GB, and every other app you load onto the 25 GB partition. most apps will still load a folder, and some misc stuff on the OS partition, but it is minimal.

i ran almost that exact HD setup, and my OS partition never got above 2.5 GB. ran smooth as silk too.

either that or go to XP pro.

[TequilaChaser]

Just a FYI, I run win98se, have a 64 meg vid card and only 256 meg ram, and I PRELOAD mem textures, and have no problem at all.

so with that being said his 384 megs of ram should be plenty.

granted my system mem and vid mem are near maxed out after all this, but the game plays smooth for the most part, and btw I use 256 meg textures.

just saying.............


only time a CTD is when I switch from 1 arena to another with out restarting the game from the desktop, soon as I fire guns  I am CTD.

one freak occurance of 1 CTD the other night, but a router went down and is reason I dumped, 2 minutes later back in game and all was fine.......

[hitech]

Tequlia, can you try reproduce the switch arena consistantly?


HiTech

[MOSQ]

Straffo,
The only time I have a boot problem is after an AHII pre-load freeze.

Sundowner, going offline works great for avoiding the UDP>TCP bug. The problem is I can't even go Offline.

JB73, I have:

C: Win98 only, 1.5 GB, about 700 MB used.

D: Swap file only, 1.2 GB. I occasionally run SYSMON in the background in logging mode to watch my swap file used and other memory related stats. Even with a dozen windows open and 5 applications running my swap file size used never gets over 300 MBs, although Windows will create a 800 MB swap file during that time. If I run AHII my swap file used never gets over 300, so 1.5 GB should be more than enough.

I like having the swap file on it's own partition, it reduces the fragmentation on C because you don't have a swap file on C constantly growing and shrinking.

E: AHII. 1.5 GB. about 700 used.

F: All other data and applications.

I've considered adding a second newer, faster HD and loading XP & AHII on it, then dual booting. I need WIN98 because I have the CH analog stick,throttle, and pedals. You can't program them in XP. They will work in XP, you just can't re-program them there.

But like more RAM, that costs bucks that might better be used for a new computer in a few months, rather than cobbling this one along any further. There is a certain Zen to playing AHII with an old computer and high ENY value planes though.

Update: Last night from a fresh boot I was able to pre-load AHII offline at 128 Texture to Video Memory. Jumped into the MA and had a great time for 2 hours. No stutters, smooth as silk. No CTDs.
Even got a AR 234 kill in my Mossie.

Logged all the way out. Tried to start up again, freeze. Tried several times, freeze each time. I have learned that when I re-boot if I "hot'" re-boot I don't get the SAFE mode boot. It's when I turn the comp off and back on that the SAFE mode occurs 50% of the time.

I went into my HTC files and looked at the Cache files. Most of the plane .TES files were 1 MB. But some were only 66Kbs. That seems strange. Same thing in the skins file folder. I'm sure it has to do with the custom skins, the 1 MB planes for example were the P-51s ect, the 66kBs were for example the F6F.

So I uninstalled AHII and reformatted the AHII partition. I will re-install over the weekend and get back on how it goes from a fresh install.

Thanks to everyone for your replies.

PS: HTC, the switch arena CTD has happened to me since day 1 back in 2001 in AH I. It also happened when a new map would download. I learned to always log all the way out and back in whenever I switched from the Training Arena to the MA, or if a new map loaded.

[TequilaChaser]

Originally posted by hitech
Tequlia, can you try reproduce the switch arena consistantly?


HiTech

I tryed reproducing just now, switched from all arenas to other arenas, took up planes fired guns no dumps ( CTD's)
tryed this 4 or so times

in last 2 or 3 weeks it happened maybe 4 to 5 times max. but I have not had it happened at all this week. I recall last friday night after squad ops in SEA alot CTD haven't heard of or seen any more since last friday night ( 7/23/04 )

best answer I can come up with

[JB73]

Mosq, thats alot of partitions for the HD controller to keep track of. also the inherent latency involved.

it is possible data is being corrupted by too many different requests to multiple partitions at the same time. if you have a prog on F running accessing that partition, of course the system and swap partition are being accessed, sys moniter running is constantly logging data to the HD, then you run AH.

also all that defragging takes a huge toll on the arm.

i see that HD going bad extreemly quick.

dont forget that HD still has only 1 arm to read / write (well 1 for each platter).

id seriously suggest a complete fdisk removing all partitions, then creating just 2 partitions. 1 5gb and then the other the rest of the HD. load the OS on the 5gb, all programs on the "D" drive.


if you do defrag every week (i bit much IMHO) it wont matter if the swap file gets big then small.

just my opinion.

[MOSQ]

JB73,
Thanks for the post. You got me thinking about partitions. I've always liked having multiple partitions going back to my DOS days.
So I did a little surfing and found some posts on the advantages of multiple partitions. This was a good one:


http://www.aumha.org/a/parts.htm

[MOSQ]

As long as I use 128 textures I can login Online and Offline now with Patch 7 and use both Video and System memory preload.

HTC, Thanks for the Do not use Custom Skins button. It seems to help.