Constant crashes -- memory leak?

Arcanum crashes every two hours or so, and it's starting to become a real pain in the ass for me. It crashes looping the last played sound, with either the picture still on screen or a black screen with some peculiar green bars in the top of the screen. I have to reboot every single time it happens, as it takes the whole system down with it. This does not happen in other games. A friend of mine plays the previous version fine on his computer with no crashes whatsoever. So I'm thinking that it might be the patch. Do any of you have any idea what's wrong here?


System specifications:

Windows 98SE
Pentium III 800Mhz
Unknown motherboard with VIA chipset
INNOvision GeForce 2 Pro 64MB DDR
Creative SoundBlaster Live! Value
2 x 256MB Kingston SDRAM PC133
Creative 52x CD-ROM
Plextor PlexWriter 12/10/32 BURN-Proof
10 GB IBM DeskStar 5400 RPM IDE/33
40 GB IBM DeskStar 7200 RPM ATA/100
iOmega 100 MB Zip-drive (LPT1 port)
3.5" floppy-drive
17" Digital Corp. monitor
Logitech Optical Wheel Mouse (PS/2 port, with USB-> PS/2 adapter)
Logitech Internet Navigator Keyboard (USB)
Wacom 9x12" A4 tablet (USB)
Logitech QuickCam Web (USB)
AGFA SnapScan 1212U (USB)
10Mbit NIC
Cisco 677 DSL router
WiseCom 4-port ethernet hub

- 512 MB minimum and maximum virtual memory on D:.
- I use the 1.0.7.4 patch.
- I run Arcanum in both full-screen and normal mode, no difference.

I gave you the whole list, and I know that most of them don't matter at all. But if the game conflicts with any of these pieces of hardware, I thought it would be best to include them all.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: SplitSoul on 2002-02-27 09:00 ]</font>

 

Patch-maybe!

 

I was wondering if any of you had problems with 1.0.7.4?

 

No problems with 1074 and I have only 196MB RAM though I'm using Windows XP (I had some problems with Arcanum under WinME though it didn't crash either).

BTW I had also no such crashes playing version 1070 and even 1064.

 

Let me guess DirectX 8+.

I think the problem is with the sound. I'm using an old Creative card I get the same things, looping and the occasional crash. But I also get the same thing in some of my other games and it didn't happen before I installed DX8.

Might try turning down you sound hardware acceleration and see if that helps.

After dealing with Creative if I were to place the blame somewhere I would say Creative's drivers are not 100% DX8 compatiable. If you run DXdiag you'll also notice that Creative drivers are usually not(ever?)WHQL certified by Microsoft. I asked Creative about this once and their response was that it took to long for MS to go through the MS certification process. Of course this is utter BS if you at the rate video card companies put out certified drivers.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Otto Krupp on 2002-02-27 10:02 ]</font>

 

Nope, I have DX8.1, Sound Balster Live 1024 and everything is OK. Though I didn't install any SB software like LiveWare - I just use Windows drivers.

 

Well, I have LiveWare installed, as well as DX8.


Have you heard that Creative makes you PAY to get their drivers now? Absurd.

 

SplitSoul I feel your pain all too well. Used to until today anyways. And everytime I would reboot my computer and let it finish, scandisk found an invalid long filename that it couldn't fix at boot up. So I ran Scandisk in windows and it found it to be in the Arcanum folder and fixed and I haven't had a problem since. That might be your problem as well.

 

Thanks, I'll try that.