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(The following problem seems to have been properly analyzed and fixed thanks to pheer. The crashes seem to have occured due to compatibility problems with old games such as Starcraft and multi-core CPUs. Look to post 6,7 and 13 in this thread for relevant information on how we seem to have solved the problem - at least in my case - edit made: 9/8 - 2008)
I hate to make these kind of threads. Partly because it means I failed at solving a problem on my own and have to admit defeat/look for help. And partly because I feel I'm dumping a problem on the people of this forum.
Normally I'd go to tomshardware.com or something and talk to computer technicians etc, but since I can't even say if this is a hardware problem and that it seems to be related only to starcraft, I decided to post it here.
I'm sorry, but it can't be helped. You people tend to be too awesome at solving stuff, so I just had to come here for help
Anywho - Main problem: Computer crashes.
Picture the following scenario: You start up a game of Starcraft, get into focus, play your heart out and somewhere in the middle of the game your computer goes 'behziiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii'. Basically the last sound the game plays in your speakers gets stuck and loops forever and ever and ever.
--> The computer is bloody stuck. Not the "ctrl+alt+delete -->end process/activity --> problem solved" kind of stuck, and not the bluescreen kind of stuck either. Just... stuck. No response, nothing. Only solution is the reset button. After I've rebooted the computer NOTHING shows up in the system logs. Not on 'Applications', not on 'System', not anywhere. Gives me no clues to follow.
So why am I here whining about it? Well, turns out my computer likes doing this a whole bloody lot (Once every 3-4 games I play. My Bnet stats are something like 650 games played and 120 disconnects - totally absurd). Weirdest thing? It's so far only happened in Starcraft. Knowing how Starcraft uses the PC's CPU I started looking into possible harware problems.
Hardware (the relevant stuff): Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz (CPU) - not overclocked atm to ensure stability XFX GeForce 8800GT 640M 512MB XT GDDR3 (Graphics) Corsair Dominator 4096MB, DDR2, 2x2GB (TWIN2X8500C5DF series if that's relevant) - running at 1066 MHz, 2,1V, with timings 5-5-5-18 atm (originally, 5-5-5-15, loosened up the timings somewhat for stability) Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P, P35, Socket-775 (motherboard) Corsair Powersupply 620W, 120mm fan (grid) NEC DVD-burner AD-7170S Silver (from where I run the StarCraft CD - also tried running without CD using the .mpq (?) file) Note: I don't have a SoundCard, using the motherboard's built-in systems for that.
CPU-tests conducted last month: 1x24 hour testing using Orthos (http://sp2004.fre3.com/beta/orthos_exe_20060420.cab) and 2x12-16 hour testing using prime95 with small FFT's. Both cases NO errors, no problems, no instability, no nothing. Perfect results. No core ever went above 45 degrees celsius (for you Fahrenheiter's : that's very cool for a CPU )
Memory tests conducted last month: 4x 12 hours+ testing using prime95 with large and blended FFTs. 2x 12 huors+ using memtest86. Same here - perfect results every time. The reason why I've done so much memory testing lately is because I had to return a set of Crucial Ballistix memories I had bought, which caused me tons of problems and instability from april to may/june (which partly caused the problems I described in this thread: CPU Savior thread, page 4, so when I received my new Corsair Dominator memories about a month ago, I decided to test them real thoroughly.
I've done no real graphic card testing cause I haven't really found a good software for that. Same goes for motherboard.
Starcraft has (as many of you probably know) a nasty habit of stealing every available cycle on your system resulting in a 100% CPU usage. However, on a Quad-core processor it only steals 100% of the cycles using 1 core. So the CPU usage is actually exactly 25% if Starcraft is the only main program you're running.
So we have 1 core pushed to the max, while the other 3 are taking a nap. Does this effect anything negatively? I don't know - but I can't see how it would. By now you probably want me to try the CPU Savior by R1CH. Problem is it makes everything lagg up. Even if played on single player/LAN, Starcraft starts moving in jelly. It's like playing in 100 ms or 500 ping. Don't know why really, I'd love if someone had a good explanation for that too.
To get some structure I summed up things I've done so far in an attempt to exclude some possible factors:
1. Since the crashes seem to mostly occur when I'm doing a lot of things (read: macroing hard, spamming in a micro-tense situation etc) I first suspected the amount of commands overloaded the system.
Thus I played like every RTS game I own and played at~ 300-350 apm nonstop (read: spammed as shit) with all graphic settings at max - including 8 player FFAs in Warcraft III with a few hundred units on screen at the same time, 4 player games in Ground Controll II, Medieval II, Rome: Total War, Star Wars Battlefront, Sacrifice, Command and Conquer Tiberian Sun etc and so on.
Not a single crash. Unless the 100% CPU usage of one core in SC is what's causing the problem, then it shouldn't be related to insufficient hardware.
To top it off I played Crysis, The Witcher, Biochock and Call of Duty 4 on more or less max graphic settings. Clear as water.
2. I've reinstalled Starcraft 5-7 times and with 3 different CDs borrowed from friends. Same result.
3. I've run the game both from the CD and by copying the .exe file and converting it into an .mpq file as the last patch made possible. Same result.
4. I've humped the chassi while praying to the Brood War gods. Same result.
5. I've been at this for over 3 weeks every day/night after work and once screamed so loud my neighbor came over and wondered if I had hurt myself.
ps (6). Oh! And it also happens when I watch replays, mostly in 8x/16x speed or when I click around a lot in the replay.
Things that point to hardware/compatibility problems:
1. I've previously had a lot of problems with my memories/the communication between memories and motherboard, but all that should be fixed now since I spent the better part of late June/early July troubleshooting/rebuilding my entire computer step by step, buying new memories and finally installing everything under the supervision of a good friend who works at technical support for a computer store. Could still be something wrong, but as written above - all stress tests (prime 95, memtest etc) say it's good to go.
2. I've never experienced these crashes on my old computers. In fact, I installed Starcraft on my laptop the other week and played at it for a few hours. Didn't crash.
3. Come to think about it, I recall a similar crash once while I was watching VODs on youtube. Unless the sound of a grunting zealot is what makes my computer mad, the problem might not lie in Starcraft per se..
This is starting to become really long and since I don't even know exactly what the problem is, I think I'll conclude now.
Please feel free to discuss experiences and theories, but I kindly ask that if you have no experience of what I'm talking about or if you aren't knowledgeable/versed in the world of hardware, please don't spit out your homemade, irrelevant theories that only will derail the discussion and confuse people - even if you only mean well by it
Pardon any grammatical errors, English isn't my mother tongue and I'm very tired. I'll monitor this thread as often and thoroughly as I can, even when at work, so if I missed any vital information or anything, please ask! Thanks in advance for any help!
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It might be worth it to try using this XP patch:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896256
From the link.. -------------------------------------------------------------- SYMPTOMS Computers that are equipped with multiple processors that support processor power management features, such as Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) processor performance states, require Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2). Additional updates are available to optimize performance and behavior on computers that are running Windows XP SP2. Without these updates, computers that are equipped with these power management-capable, mobile, dual-core processors may experience decreased performance or unexpected behavior. ---------------------------------------------------------------
The crash might occur when some kind of underclocking event happens (some processors automatically underclock themselves when they reach a certain temperature). That would explain the unpredictable nature of the crashes. That also might explain the performance issues you described.
Be sure to set a system restore point before applying the patch.
Good luck
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Thank you for the input!
Unfortuantely it seems (reading further down in the article you provided) that Service Pack 3 for Windows XP included all those updates and I have been using Service Pack 3 ever since the computer in question was built/put together in December -07.
However, I'm at work at the moment and will try to manually apply each of these updates once I'm back at home. Perhaps there are misc. updates provided in the article that weren't included in the ServicePack3 after all.
Once again, thanks for the input, I will at least give your theory a good try!
Ps. The theory of underclocking due to power-saving features and/or low CPU temperatures is very very interesting indeed! Logically, it does make a lot of sense for why the crashes would be so visibly irregular. The sudden drop in CPU activity could very well be why SC (and the computer) gets stuck - simply because of the way SC constantly craves 100% of available CPU.
Whether or not those updates make a difference, you opened up my eyes a lot here! I need to google some on this subject and see if there's a way to manually disable any power-saving features - to see if that could fix the problem instead.
Pps. Oh and, if all theories are this interesting, please keep posting if you have any other experience and/or relevant idea!
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Regarding all Service Packs for Windows XP, do you know if there is any way to customize the various updates installed - for example, if you want to keep specific previous drivers/properties while adding some new ones, or would I have to manually find and install each and every SP3-feature one by one?
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Update: After installing all the recommended updates, disabling all power-saving/power-management functions for the CPU in BIOS, I still experience the same kind of crashes. Thus I'm bumping this thread again - the only thing I haven't tried yet is calling Blizzard, something I'll have to try after the weekend if nothing else works.
I'm sure there HAS to be people on this forum who've played Starcraft on Duo or Quad-core processors. If you haven't experienced the problems I am on a Duo/Quadcore, then please post in this thread anyway - as a confirmation.
I'm getting rather paranoid, and it'd be nice to know if there's any other who've had similar problems, or, as said just above, even knowing if everyone else on Duo/Quad has a problem-free Starcraft experience. That way I can at least determine if the problem lies in the Duo/Quad CPU itself, or if the problem has other roots. I'd hate to spend 30 hours this weekend troubleshooting the CPU, if other people have no problem playing it on Duo/Quad
Again, any help is greatly appreciated! I'm a very desperate man by now! Thank you in advance!
/GinNtoniC
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5377 Posts
If you are playing Battlefield 2 on a dual-core computer, it will randomly disconnect or crash from the game. The solution is to open the game, CTRL+ALT+DEL and goto the processes tab. Right click on the executable and set the affinity to only one CPU core.
This solution is specific to BF2 but it might work in your case too. Give it a shot...
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On August 09 2008 04:20 pheer wrote: If you are playing Battlefield 2 on a dual-core computer, it will randomly disconnect or crash from the game. The solution is to open the game, CTRL+ALT+DEL and goto the processes tab. Right click on the executable and set the affinity to only one CPU core.
This solution is specific to BF2 but it might work in your case too. Give it a shot... I will! Unfortunately we've already stated that it runs on one core as it is, or at least performance monitors says the entire CPU unit is running at ~25%. Considering how SC drains 100% of available CPU, that's probably a sign that it's draining full capacity off of one core.
Again, thanks for the tips - I'll be back with un update once I've tried it.
Update: Right clicking Starcraft.exe in processes and checking affinity, it was listed as allowed to use: CPU 0 CPU 1 CPU 2 CPU 3
Trying to uncheck CPU 1-3 and see what happens. Will play a Bnet game and spam my ass off, see what happens. Be back soon with an update! Holding my breath!
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I have the same processor, motherboard, and video card, and I was having this problem when my processor was overclocked to 3.0ghz. It also seemed to only crash if I was spamming, which wasn't really a problem for me because I don't spam in normal games, although it did crash a lot when I was practicing my mechanics in single player. I haven't had any crashes since I brought my processor back down to 2.4ghz, although I might have just gotten lucky. I'll test it out more today and see if I can reproduce the crash.
I also have the same problem with CPU Savior - it slows down the game's responsiveness considerably.
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This just started happening to me recently.
Hardware (I don't know much about hardware so I can't give more information): Lenovo T60 Thinkpad Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.16GHz 2.0GB Ram Radeon Mobility X1400 Integrate Graphics Chipset
OS: Windows XP
1) It has NEVER occurred while I was playing unmodded Brood Wars.
2) I started using CPU Savior a few months ago but no problems before that either.
3) First time it happened was when I was playing Sins of a Solar Empire.
4) Happened 3 more times when I was running a Custom for Brood Wars without CPU Savior.
5) On one occasion, I was unable to start Windows for a few minutes after it happened. It got to the loading screen but the bar never appeared.
Again, I'm a hardware noob but the above seems to imply overheating. I can't think of any other reason it would disrupt start-up.
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Have you tried using Chaoslauncher or ADVloader to run SC with the CPU savior plugin?
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solution: buy a new one.
That quad-core comes with soft to asign the cores to an specific task, or for all cores to work as one, try changing some of those settings.
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On August 09 2008 08:03 CharlieMurphy wrote: Have you tried using Chaoslauncher or ADVloader to run SC with the CPU savior plugin? I explained what happens when I use CPU Savior in my first post. Horrible lagg/fps drop
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On August 09 2008 08:13 thoraxe wrote: solution: buy a new one.
That quad-core comes with soft to asign the cores to an specific task, or for all cores to work as one, try changing some of those settings. Buy a new what? A new CPU? How would that solve anything, unless you're saying my specific CPU is bad and needs to be replaced?
Anyway, major update: I spent 4-5 hours last night trying out what Pheer suggested (changing affinity properties for starcraft.exe in 'processes'. So far I haven't experienced a single crash = this seems to have solved the problem!
I guess that makes the conclusion that it was in fact a problem of the game wanting to run on one core while the system tried to include all cores, resulting in miscommunication and occational crashes. Limiting the game to only be allowed to use one core clears up the miscommunication and lets Starcraft run isolated.
- Gramatically that was very poorly formulated, but you get the idea. Old games need some manual care and tweaking to put them in a safe and homey environment that reminds them of old 90's computers
I'll keep monitoring this thread for further discussion and/or help to people who experience similar problems. I'll also eventually add another update once I've played a few dozen games and hours - when I will accurately be able to determine whether or not the problem was actually fixed.
Thanks again Pheer for pointing me in the right direction! (provided it keeps working ^^)
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you know its weird.. I've played sc on all sorts of pc's and anything over 300mhz has proven to run the game perfectly in the past, now since upgrading to a new intel chip with near identical installation and settings to all previous computers this one chokes at random times while I play yet in all other programs it is blindingly fast
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Hi, GinNtoniC i have the same problem specification
Manufacturer: System manufacturer Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz (4 CPUs) Memory: 3328MB RAM Hard Drive: 540 GB Total Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 512 Monitor: SyncMaster 931BW , SyncMaster Magic CX931BW (Analog) Sound Card: SB X-Fi Audio [EC00] Speakers/Headphones: Keyboard: Urządzenie klawiatury HID Mouse: A4Tech USB Port Mouse Mouse Surface: Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Dodatek Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.070227-2254) Motherboard: Computer Case: Unfortunly i reinstaled os on new partition couse of wirus, and instaled the lates windows sp updates it's look like microsoft had something fu...d. Few weak ago i thought it was becouse my hd that, initialy stops and not detected in windows - he was to old.
I think that all of this issues are becouse sp (3).
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i'm running a Q6600 as well (and vista) and starcraft runs fine. My system setup is pretty much the same as the OP's except i run a radeon 4870.
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GinNtoniC. I can confirm that I am using the same CPU as you with no BroodWar problems. I actually suspect the RAM, I'm using the same RAM and it acts a bit strange sometimes and has failed memtests before but also passed. I'm using Vista64 so I can't really compare to you but there u go.
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On August 09 2008 18:21 GinNtoniC wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2008 08:13 thoraxe wrote: solution: buy a new one.
That quad-core comes with soft to asign the cores to an specific task, or for all cores to work as one, try changing some of those settings. Buy a new what? A new CPU? How would that solve anything, unless you're saying my specific CPU is bad and needs to be replaced? Anyway, major update: I spent 4-5 hours last night trying out what Pheer suggested (changing affinity properties for starcraft.exe in 'processes'. So far I haven't experienced a single crash = this seems to have solved the problem!
I guess that makes the conclusion that it was in fact a problem of the game wanting to run on one core while the system tried to include all cores, resulting in miscommunication and occational crashes. Limiting the game to only be allowed to use one core clears up the miscommunication and lets Starcraft run isolated. - Gramatically that was very poorly formulated, but you get the idea. Old games need some manual care and tweaking to put them in a safe and homey environment that reminds them of old 90's computers I'll keep monitoring this thread for further discussion and/or help to people who experience similar problems. I'll also eventually add another update once I've played a few dozen games and hours - when I will accurately be able to determine whether or not the problem was actually fixed. Thanks again Pheer for pointing me in the right direction! (provided it keeps working ^^)
Glad it worked, I have the same problem on a duo-core (i think). But it sometimes comes up when I watch replays.
Can you tell me exactly what you did? Since I don't understand this things and I wouldn't want to ruin things..
Thanks!
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On September 17 2008 19:13 MrNice wrote: Hi, GinNtoniC i have the same problem specification
Manufacturer: System manufacturer Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz (4 CPUs) Memory: 3328MB RAM Hard Drive: 540 GB Total Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 512 Monitor: SyncMaster 931BW , SyncMaster Magic CX931BW (Analog) Sound Card: SB X-Fi Audio [EC00] Speakers/Headphones: Keyboard: Urządzenie klawiatury HID Mouse: A4Tech USB Port Mouse Mouse Surface: Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Dodatek Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.070227-2254) Motherboard: Computer Case: Unfortunly i reinstaled os on new partition couse of wirus, and instaled the lates windows sp updates it's look like microsoft had something fu...d. Few weak ago i thought it was becouse my hd that, initialy stops and not detected in windows - he was to old.
I think that all of this issues are becouse sp (3).
Interesting to read that both of you have Q6600. I have the same problem which I also fixed by changing the affinity of the process.
General specs of my system are:
Intel Q6600 B0 Stepping Asus 8800GTS 512MB MSI P6N SLI Platinum, nForce-650i SLI Asus Xonar D2 OCZ Platinum DDR2 PC6400 4096MB WD CAVIAR SE 500GB 8MB
So it might be that the Q6600 is the one to blame. I do not experience this problem on my other multicore systems so far.
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