Emperor Locks up on my pc

[darkmage]

I have a p2 333 with 224mb ram a 32mb tnt2 and enough hard drive space to install emperor several times. the Game always locks up when I play it. It runs fast enough I've never seen lag in it EVER. it just locks up randomly which gets very annoying. When it locks up everything freezes but the music keeps playing.the latest Nvidia drivers for my graphics card just make windows unstable AND do nothing to help the game from locking up.there is no way in hell I'll be able to upgrade any time soon. can anyone help?

[darkmage]

I have also been experimenting with running the game in Linux but as yet wine cannot run emperor yet, it doesn't have enough directx support enabled. If i can get it to run in linux I will publish my findings for the community. as to my problem. the Westwood tech centre says it won't help me cause my pc is below their specs even though i know a guy who had emperor running perfectly on his p2 300.

[playerap]

welll linux isnt that good but try a diff one like on hxer its will work but not many people use it

[Gobalopper]

Some things you can try.

Disable sound, ie remove your soundcard or run emperor by going emperor.exe -s. That will rule out if its your sound card or not.

If its your video card and its your drivers causing the problem there isn't much you can do but complain to Nvidia. You could try older drivers though but that may just cause more problems.

Also check your RAM. I know I had a lot of random crashes with Emperor and it turned out I just had a bad stick of RAM. You can run a 3D test program like 3DMark, if that is crashing you know its not Emperor causing the problems.

Also what version of Windows are you using? What DirectX version do you have?

[darkmage]

win98se and I have directx 8.1

[darkmage]

I might try testing the ram, if it is the ram it's either a 32mb stick or a 64 mb stick, I also have a 128mb stick in there but that went in after it was locking up

[Gobalopper]

Emperor should work fine on that. Let me know how the testing goes.

[playerap]

I hate that it locks up all the time.

[darkmage]

I think I'm in deep crap.... I tested the ram, it came out fine, I tested the sound even though It locked on my old sb16 and locks on my new sblive I still tested it it cme out clean, SO i'm down to the vid card or CPU.... others have p2 300 cpus running it fine, and I'm on a 333 leaving me with the grim fact... IT'S my VID card or something weird.

[darkmage]

my vid card is a tnt2 model 64/64 pro it's a pretty crap card I reckon and the company has a LOT to answer for. it came with a manual and drivers claiming it to be a tnt 2 v225 ULTRA. I believe that either the card is faulty BTW it locks with the new detonator drivers. or it's just plain stupid. I am now looking at getting either a new tnt2, buying a geforce2, OR and this might just work... running emperor in linux.. yes linux. There are several things which can enable software from windows to run on linux.

[darkmage]

looks like I won't have to wait too much longer. www.transgaming.com makers of winex have announced that Max Payne runs perfectly in winex and that directx 8.0 support is being crammed into their latest release. Emperor USES directx8! so I may soon be playing in linux!

[Terror]

I also guess that it's the ram... it's best to use numbers like 32, 64, 128, 256 mb ram... otherwise it may give problems... it can also be that one piece of ram is somewhat damaged... you should just find that out

[darkmage]

it is not the ram, I tested it by taknig out the 32 mb and 64 mb pieces leaving the 128 stick. the 32 and 64 sticks were in when i first got the game and it still locked up then. even with all the old ram out leaving only the new stick it locks up. with all the old ram it also locks up.

[Nyarlathotep]

Darkmage, check my site: www.xs4all.nl/~sascho

Look at the general page and look at point 9. There are some BIOS settings there that you might want to give a try. If it doesn't help, let me know and mail, or post your EASy file here.. I'll help you where ever I can..

[darkmage]

thanks for that, i'm going to try it i don't think it will help though, It seems to be the card itself but I guess there's no harm in checking the bios

[darkmage]

THANKYOU SOOOO MUCH!!!!! I played with settings described on your site... something clicked.... the game RUNS! perfectly... OH my god the game looks so..so...OOOOOHHHHH!!!!!! I am eternally grateful for your help it wasn't the bios it was something else, not sure what. i'll be making a registry backup ASAP

[darkmage]

Expect to see me contributing to the game community... I'm already developing maps for emporer and plan to move into mods as soon as new models can be added. :) ;)

[Nyarlathotep]

See... it's those replies that makes helping so much fun  ;D

Enjoy and have fun Darkmage..

[Terror]

Nice work Nyarlathotep!  :D

[darkmage]

the story has a happy ending but a different one. the game locks on my tnt2, changing the refresh rate helped, and i managed to finish one level. it still locks. Now for the happy news. I now OWN a geforce2 mx 400 64mb vid card... and it does not lock! the guy in the store thinks my old card had a bad ram chip on it. but the new one appears to be running smooth and nice. I have the graphics on full, and DAMN they look FINE.