rec.autos.simulators

Appears to happen at random, I can play TRD3 for five minutes and it
happens, or I can play TRD3 for two hours then it happens. The pc
just locks up, the screen goes black, but I can still hear the game
sounds, but nothing happens, the controls (wheel, joystick,
keyboard, mouse) do not respond, and I have to do a hard reset to
get the pc working again.

NB: This is NOT heat related as I run pc probe and there are no
sudden increases in heat when the lockups occur.

I presume this may be due to the starforce drivers and/or McAfee
anti-virus, as I previously had a similar problem with TOCA Race
Driver 2, but the problem was cured by disabling McAfee before
playing TRD2. However, turning off McAfee does NOT seem to cure the
problem with TRD3?

For info the pc is as follows:

Asus Asus A7N8X Deluxe m/b based PC (in Antec case) with 400w psu
and AMD Barton 2500 cpu using 1Gb Crucial DDR ram, with a 128Mb
Radeon 9600 Pro graphics card. Two 120Gb SATA hard drives, FDD,
Pioneer CD-RW and Creative Labs DVD player (& 5.1 speakers). Hitachi
19" CRT monitor unit. Using Win XP (SP2). Using latest drivers for
all hardware.

Thanx

--
-- Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard>
-- This announcement is brought to you by the Shimago-Dominguez
Corporation - helping America into the New World...

What game controller are you using ? If you have force feedback enables, try
turning that off and see if it helps.
Also, could be a PSU issue. Do any other games do this ?

Thanx for the info, No, none of my other games do this. (eg: GPL,
GTR, GTL, TRD2, MS FS2004, etc).

As I said Toca Race Driver 2 did lock up initially, but that was
caused by McAfee, and turning OFF McAfee cured the lockups, but that
doesn't cure it in this case.

I'm not using a FF controller, I'm using a Ballracing (BRD) wheel
and pedals. Maybe its about time I upgraded my pc anyway....

8-)

*Peter* -  http://homepage.ntlworld.com/petergagg/

This is a bit of a long shot as it doesn't quite fit in with all your
info, but if your RAM is in the form of 2x512Mb sticks then it might be
worth considering.

I have the Asus A7N8X Deluxe (revision 2.0) mobo, and I also have 1Gb
RAM (in 2x512Mb sticks). This model of mobo seems to be extremely fussy
about which 512Mb sticks it will work with when running in
*dual-channel* memory mode. Take a look at your screen as your PC is
booting up, you should see a message stating how much RAM you have, and
whether it is operating in single-channel or dual-channel mode. If it
says "dual-channel", then your problem may be memory-related.

How to verify the problem? Two ways:

(1) Download a utility called Memtest86 v3.2 from www.memtest86.com.
This will create a boot floppy containing a very comprehensive (but
easy-to-use) memory testing utility. Boot up using this floppy, leave it
running for a while, and it should show up any problems. This is the
only utility I found which confirmed my problems, and oddly enough the
problem only showed up in *one* of the tests - test number 5, called
"block moves".

(2) Open up your PC and move one of your 512Mb sticks into a different
slot. AFAIK dual-channel mode only works with the sticks in one specific
combination of slots, so moving one of them will effectively turn off
the dual-channel mode. (There is no simple BIOS option to turn it off,
unfortunately.) Reboot, observe the bootup message to confirm it says
"single-channel", and then run TuRD 3. If you can run for an extended
period without a crash, then you've probably fixed it.

Unfortunately, running your RAM in single-channel mode is slower than
dual-channel mode, but in human terms the difference may not be
noticeable. In my case, as I haven't got the time or money to experiment
with high-quality RAM, I've left my machine (with an XP 3200+ chip)
running in single-channel mode, and I'm quite happy with its performance.

Why do I doubt this is the problem? Usually, RAM problems will affect
any software which can properly utilize 1Gb of RAM. You mentioned a
number of demanding games, so I would have expected them to be affected
too. However, sometimes it can depend on *how* the game accesses RAM,
not just how much.

Good luck with finding a solution.

The only time I had an issue like this was a few years back and it was
graphics card related.  Can't even remember the game that caused it. It
may have required some kind of driver or game update (sorry, can't
recall), but if I were you, that's where I would begin looking.  Sorry I
can't be more specific.

Have you tried, changing the game settings for graphics to see if the
problem goes away?

--
Pete Ives
Remove All_stRESS before sending me an email

I do have two 512Mb ram chips, and they are running in dual channel
mode. As you say its a long shot (cos it does not seem to affect any
other program/game) but I will give it a try to see what happens
(turning off dual channel mode).

BTW, I did use memtest when I first installed these mem chips (about
a year ago) after upgrading from two 256Mb chips and the test went
fine with no probs. I only ever use high quality mem chips (they are
manufactured by "Crucial" in this case) as I feel using cheap memory
is a false economy.

Thanx again for the info....

*Peter* -  http://homepage.ntlworld.com/petergagg/

I'll turn them all right down and give it a try to see what happens.

Although, I do have a few other "demanding" programs and games
which, if the problem were with the graphics card, I would expect to
also be affected? but they are not, so I'm not convinced this is the
problem.

But as I say I'll give it a go and thanxfor the info.

8-)