Emperor technical problem; can anyone help me?

[Moltare]

I'd be most grateful if anyone had a solution to this to better the official EA line ("Sorry, we don't do tech support for Windows XP")...

Emperor installs without a hitch, starts fine, loads a game well enough. But after some period of time (between about five seconds and half a minute or so) it crashes to the desktop, no error message.

I've tried everything I can think of to no avail; anyone experienced this and been able to fix it?

Thanks,

Moltare.

[rigel6669]

Are you running a firewall when playing emperor?

I am using windows xp and norton internet security 2002 and all works fine.

[number6]

A lot of people seem to be having problems under XP. I would suggest reading this thread:

http://www.dune2k.com/forum/?board=4;action=display;threadid=8710

and see if anything in there helps. The biggest tool at your disposal is XP's compatability mode.

[slaphapy]

I'd be most grateful if anyone had a solution to this to better the official EA line ("Sorry, we don't do tech support for Windows XP")...

Emperor installs without a hitch, starts fine, loads a game well enough. But after some period of time (between about five seconds and half a minute or so) it crashes to the desktop, no error message.

I've tried everything I can think of to no avail; anyone experienced this and been able to fix it?

Thanks,

Moltare.

well, i dont' have XP, but this exact same thing happened to me a couple times... i reinstalled it, and it worked fine...

[Nyarlathotep]

Moltare, could you please attach your dxdiag output ?

[Moltare]

Apologies: find DxDiagThing.txt attached (didn't like DxDiag.txt).

And sadly I've tried reinstalling, and various compatibility modes, and patches, to no avail.

[attachment archived by Gobalopper]

[Nyarlathotep]

Please make sure you update your drivers, especially for your video card and your VIA chipset.

[number6]

I agree with doc in that you need to make sure that your VIA chipset drivers are up to date, especially with an FIC motherboard. I still have an old PC with an FIC PA-2013 (K6-III 400Mhz) and boy does that thing suck for playing games. I never had lockup problems with emperor, but games in general just ran slow. Also, you are using a K6 chip which is not supported for Emperor. That does not mean it will not run, but the K6 line were never meant for 3D games (no matter what AMD says). Anyway try the updating of the video card and chipset drivers like Nyar suggested and see if that helps.

[Moltare]

Thanks for the advice, guys, but having installed the latest drivers for both of those it's giving me the same grief. (This with a fresh install of Windows, and a new 80gig hard drive)

I've come to the conclusion that it's my sound card doing generic nasty stuff, seeing as Deus Ex runs choppy due to the sound as does Jedi Knight 2...

[aox0m0xoa]

id be more inclined to say your sound runs choppy because your computer cant handle those games.

[Nyarlathotep]

Moltare, are you saying that after upgrading your drivers (especially VIA), it still crashes back to desktop ?

Another thing you could try is to at least lower your desktop resolution to 800x600 and set your adapter refresh rate to default.

All ingame graphical settings should be set to low and especially for EBFD, make sure shadows is turned off.

Make sure all background programs are closed when you try to play.

[Moltare]

Yep, got the latest drivers for video card and VIA chipset.

I'm running it in 800*600 at default adaptor rate anyway, with no other programs running, and turning the various graphical options off has no effect.

And my computer can handle games newer than the two I mentioned. It runs both of those perfectly well with sound disabled, which is what led me to believe the sound's a problem.

Thanks for your continued support,

Moltare

[Nyarlathotep]

If you want to try, you can add -s option behind the games shortcut. It should disable the sound.