Game crashing

[def1]

           
           Windows XP Home
           Gigabyte Motherboard with 450 watt Antec power
           AMD  Athalon XP 2600
           ATI Radeon 9800 PRO (128 Meg)
           512 meg DDR ram
           Creative SB XFI sound card (new a year ago when put in)
           Creative headphones (not USB) (new a year ago when put in)


I haven't played AH too often in the last 6 months until this month... have played over 9 hours this month.  All of a sudden the game stared freezing my whole system after 5-10 minutes of play.  Whatever sound is playing at the time of the freeze (ie, engine, guns) continues though the video is frozen and the system is locked up.  I have to shut down the computer and restart.

I have NOT made any changes to my system nor added any programs this month.  My system is getting old in the tooth, but it ran the game with reasonable frame rates and no problems until a few days ago.

I have tried deleting AH a number of times and started over, but still get the freeze up after 5-10 min.

I have tried running my soundcard without CMSS (though it was on for past year with no problem). Tried hardware acceleration at 3/4.  No effect...still get the freeze up. Have not added any add ons to the game.

Any ideas??

def1

[wrag]

Corrupted sound file?

Any recent updates?

Any new hardware installed?

Sometimes an uninstall and reinstall of AH fixes things?

Cache files sometimes create problems and deleting the AH cache files and letting em rebuild foes wonders.

[def1]

I updated the drivers for the sound card and the video card... didn't help.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled all of AH 3 times... didn't help.

I have tried running the video cache at 1024, 512 and 256 ... didn't help.

No new upgrades, hardware or changes in programs.

Help!!!

def1

[The Fugitive]

Whats your temps? are all of your fans running?

[1701E]

Sounds like what was happening to me just recently.  No changes, but video froze, sound didn't.

I ended up deleting everything related to AH, re-installing with no soundpacks/skins.  Turned off CMSS (EAX).  Changed resolution to 1024x768 from 1280x1024, and no freeze recently.

If everything has been tried, then I have no idea, sorry.

[def1]

Fugitive,

CPU temp is 43 C.

MB temp is 36 C.

All fans are running, including the video card fan.  I have 3 fans in the case, 1 front and 2 rear ... all are working normally.  Power supply fan running properly.

I was running the game at 1024x768 for the past year.


Def1

[PFactorDave]

Probably not related but I'll throw it out there anyway, just in case somebody else finds it helpful.

I recently was experiencing periods of really bad screen stuttering.  Couldn't figure it out.  Then, I just happened to have the Task Manager Open and was looking at the processes running and noticed that something related to ITunes was still up and running and was spiking up to 99% CPU usage.

Uninstalled and reinstalled ITunes and the problem went away.  Then, just to be sure, I went back through the processes and trimmed the fat so to speak so stuff like that ITunes process aren't even running.

I believe, in my case, the offender was something called ITunesHelper.

[Skuzzy]

iTunes is evil.

Actually, any Apple software, written for the PC, is pretty bad in this regard.