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Author Topic: UQM crashes my pc. And hard! What seems to be the problem?  (Read 2718 times)
Stinkfinger
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UQM crashes my pc. And hard! What seems to be the problem?
« on: March 02, 2006, 04:34:22 am »

Star Control II is one of my all time favorites, so when I found UQM the other day I was giddy.  Until I tried to run the game that is.  It runs fine for about 3 minutes then invariably the sound stutters, a bsod flashes and my pc restarts.  That's what I call a hard crash.

What could be causing this?  I thought it might have to do with some of the settings I was using, but I figured that if any of the settings were incompatible with my machine the setting in question (eg: sound) wouldn't function at all.  I'm running an Athlon 64 3000, a gig of RAM and a Radeon X800 XL.

What could be causing this?
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Re: UQM crashes my pc. And hard! What seems to be the problem?
« Reply #1 on: March 02, 2006, 10:45:57 am »

Can you provide any details on the BSOD? As it's restarting by itself, I assume you're running XP. Anyway, a BSOD is an indication that something is wrong with the operating system or a driver used by it (and XP is actually quite stable by itself), so I'd start checking the drivers used by your system. Video drivers, in particular, are very complex beasts, so I'd strongly suggest upgrading to ATI's latest display driver version. The BSOD text should give some clue as to where the error occurred.
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Re: UQM crashes my pc. And hard! What seems to be the problem?
« Reply #2 on: March 02, 2006, 03:53:51 pm »

To be able to read the message of the BSOD, you have to do this:

Go to System properties (fastest by right-clicking on "My computer" and selecting "properties"). There you choose "Advanced". Click on the "settings" button for "Startup and recovery". Deactivate the option, which causes an automated reboot on system errors and click OK.

When you experience a "hard crash" the next time, the PC won't reboot anymore and you can read, what the BSOD says. Use Ctrl+Alt+Del to reboot the system, when you are done reading/taking notes.
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Todd
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Re: UQM crashes my pc. And hard! What seems to be the problem?
« Reply #3 on: March 02, 2006, 08:36:39 pm »

Can you provide any details on the BSOD? As it's restarting by itself, I assume you're running XP. Anyway, a BSOD is an indication that something is wrong with the operating system or a driver used by it (and XP is actually quite stable by itself), so I'd start checking the drivers used by your system. Video drivers, in particular, are very complex beasts, so I'd strongly suggest upgrading to ATI's latest display driver version. The BSOD text should give some clue as to where the error occurred.

Actually my pc is quite stable otherwise.  In almost a year of constant use UQM is the only program I've run into that's caused these problems.  All of my drivers are up to date and everything else runs tip top.  As far as the BSOD goes, its not your typical BSOD.  All that happens is that the screen flashes blue (in that familiar BSOD low resolution) and the pc restarts.  No text, no nothing,  just a restart.  Now what?
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Re: UQM crashes my pc. And hard! What seems to be the problem?
« Reply #4 on: March 02, 2006, 11:00:04 pm »

A (modern) operating system provides a separation between programs. If a program does something wrong, it can only mess up itself, not the rest of the system. As for Windows, anything starting with Windows 2000 can be considered "modern".

If UQM causes your OS to crash, it means it calls some system function which itself does something wrong. This is usually caused not by the Windows kernel itself, but by some device driver. As you say the sound stutters, I'd start at the sound driver.

Another possibility not mentioned yet is some piece of hardware malfunctioning when it gets hot. But as your other programs never caused something like this, that's not very likely.

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Re: UQM crashes my pc. And hard! What seems to be the problem?
« Reply #5 on: March 03, 2006, 04:25:38 am »

I would also check for viruses and the like or third party services.
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Stinkfinger
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Re: UQM crashes my pc. And hard! What seems to be the problem?
« Reply #6 on: March 04, 2006, 09:39:06 pm »

Still nothing.  I have no viruses or anything like that.  The game just doesn't seem to like my pc.  That makes me very very sad!  Any other ideas gang?
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Re: UQM crashes my pc. And hard! What seems to be the problem?
« Reply #7 on: March 17, 2006, 01:42:12 am »

To be able to read the message of the BSOD, you have to do this:

Go to System properties (fastest by right-clicking on "My computer" and selecting "properties"). There you choose "Advanced". Click on the "settings" button for "Startup and recovery". Deactivate the option, which causes an automated reboot on system errors and click OK.

When you experience a "hard crash" the next time, the PC won't reboot anymore and you can read, what the BSOD says. Use Ctrl+Alt+Del to reboot the system, when you are done reading/taking notes.
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