Graphic freez hard reboot!

[fisklisa]

Since there doenst seem to be any answers anywhere on this forum i will try again.. my dxdiag file is included.

Problem is the game works perfectly a couple of minutes. Then BAM! it freezes, then a graphical error which gives me apx. 3secs to hit ctrlaltdel, to hopefully avoid the hard reboot. Sound will continue till the track is out then tehres just the sfx. It doesnt seem to help patching, tried both .65 and .7 both will make my game start? It also dont seem to matter where in the game im at.. i can be in a fight, talking to npc or in the world area.

I know the dxdiag says i dont have the latest drivers right now. but i have tried the last stable aswell. Only tried this one because someone on the forums said they worked for him.

Please help, btw i have the atari version.
(since my txt is bigger then the forum allows, please change the .zip to .txt :-P...)

[fisklisa]

hmm lots of people checking, so i guess lots have the same problem...
but i have been looking around ALOT lately and found out that gamersgate patch 1.7 is a couple of mbs bigger then the others? why is that?

still need help :-D so if anyone know anything.. please help out

[City Builder]

I have same issue, or maybe very similar. I have patched the game to the 1.6.5 patch for the Atari published game. The game starts, and I talk to the first guy who gives me the task of going to kill the dragon.

I enter room with dragon and graphics get screwed up, I get flashing white large blocks about 4" in size all over screen although I can still see the game map, they are flashing very fast. This eventually stops and I enter battle with the dragon, everything is fine at this point, but about half way through battle, the grid pattern on the floor starts flashing, but game continues on. Then shortly after the game causes a hard lock where I have to press the power button on my computer to power down since the three finger salute won't get me to task manager, nothing will, Kings Bounty has hard locked my computer once again.

We have totally different computers fisklisa, I have Vista 64 bit and you have XP 32bit I gather from seeing your dxdiag file. The only thing similar is that we both have Nvidia 8800 cards, except you have the GT and I have the GTS.

My dxdiag.txt will be attached in case (heaven forbid) someone from 1c support were to actually read these forums and know the answer.

If I bypass the opening tests and go straight into the map (at least with the demo) I have not gotten locked up yet, I just bought the full version of the game yesterday, so I'll have to try that with the full version to see if it's the same as it was with the demo, however in the demo I didn't have those flashing white blocks on my screen and neither did I have the floor grid flashing either in any battles I participated in, so maybe the patch is the cause of that.

My Dxdiag.zip is real zip file since silly forums only allow 19.2kb max size text files, silly forum, 19.2kb is for kids :-P

[fisklisa]

maan.. this is some bs.. how can this game become best of the year? seriously? it doesnt even work.. and the support is not even worth mention. Thats why im here on the forums looking for answeres since the damn developers dont give a damn crap hopefully my fellow gamers will?

its rreally sad, the game seems very nice.

COME ON!! please help!.

[aghiuta]

I don't know if this helps but try setting all graphic opions to minimum, disable shadows/antialiasing etc. Disable all sounds.
If after this it works ok start enabling them one by one until you find the problem one.
The game is very enjoyable even with minimum graphics and no sounds (I play it like that becausemy computer is a bit old).

[fisklisa]

aye, thanks for responding..
i have already tried to run it with minimal settings and no sound.. but with no luck.. still freezes and crashes.. :(

[City Builder]

I was trying to get back here to post earlier, but my Internet connection at home barfed all over itself and I couldn't get to any websites except for google for some reason, all the rest of them were dead, I thought it strange that I had just been playing KB when it happend and my initial thoughts were that it had screwed up my network somehow. Anyway, internet is back and here I am to say that I was able to play for about 1 hour without a freeze, I may have been able to play longer but I had to take care of some issues at home here, so this time I quit the game instead of the game quitting me.

The only difference this time is that I had changed all the settings like I did in the demo, other than I don't recall what I set them to in the demo, but here's a screenshot that I took when my internet was dead of the settings panel in the game, this (SO FAR) seems to allow me to play okay (keeping fingers crossed).

I installed KB on one of the other computers here next to me, which is a Vista 32bit, with 2GB RAM and an 8800 GTS and played it for about 2 hours without any problems at all, and that was with all settings on high except turned off shadows, so Im stumped as to why it freezes on yours with XP, and freezes on my Vista 64bit, but doesn't freeze on my vista 32bit.

Anyway, try out these game settings (I know you said you already tried it with minimal settings but perhaps the game coding is shist and stumbling upon the correct combination of settings might make the difference like it has so far for me) and see if it works out for you. Like I said, it's only been 1 hour of playing, but had no problems in that one hour and could have played longer if I had the time.

Hope it helps you too.

I'm going to try playing it again some more before dawn and see if it continues to play nice or if it locks up the computer again. But because it was locking up my computer within the first 2 to 10 minutes and I now managed to play for 1 hour, I have to think that it's working okay for me now. I have this deep seated feeling that I'll eventually run into a arena fight or some other odd ball graphics that the developers have put into it somewhere while Im playing and get it to lock up again, but so far, so good. I hope it continues to play without locking up, that gets old really fast.

[fisklisa]

... really strange this.. but it works! :D
really big thanks citybuilder.. dont know why but i guess youre right, theres some kind of "right" settings glitch.. have been playing for 3hours without crash or freeze.. but i quit on my own. :D

so once again.. big thanks

[City Builder]

Pleased I could help. Theres my good deed for the year, now I can go back to being the old grumpy bastage for the remainder. LOL

[FarAway Sooner]

Honestly, I had this problem, but could always solve it by Alt+Tabbing out to my desktop (or any other application) and then Alt+Tabbing back into the game.

I might have to do it every couple hours, or I might not, but it was a 5-second fix. See if that works.

[luna_park]

yes alt-tab would fix the flashing graphics but it would still lock up now and again and need a hard reset.

I found city builders fix fixes that flashing and the lock ups, i've been playing for a couple of days now with no crash.

from the sounds of things on the forum the crash is to do with the vista and 8000 serires video cards. I never had a problem on xp.

Edit: seems its still crashing giving me a black screens now. So irratating

[Antonius]

I have the same issue. I cannot play for more than a few minutes. I am running Vista 64 and am using 2 BFG GTX280s in SLI.

[Nike-it]

I have the same issue. I cannot play for more than a few minutes. I am running Vista 64 and am using 2 BFG GTX280s in SLI.

The problem may be in SLI mode, try to switch off one of the cards.

[Antonius]

Shockingly...that fixed it. I created a single card profile for this game and it runs just fine. I have seen SO many posts on this in so many places and boards and no one has an answer. I would imagine that might fix it for a few people. Thanks.

[Landmarx]

I had this problem for months and thought it was a general problem with my video card. This also happened with Heroes 5. Screen would go black and lock machine completely causing hard reset. I noticed on both games that anisotropic filtering was maxed out. I turned down only this one setting to 2x and it solved the problem. I haven't noticed this with any other graphic intensive games so it may be something in these engines causing a problem with my nvidia card or the latest drivers. I really can't see much graphical difference now and have no more crashes. Hope this helps someone.

[zawardo]

I have italian version (so i can only have 1.6.4 native version or 1.7 patch), with 1.6.4 che game crashes to desktop as soon as i enter the 3d map; with 1.7 it does work but freezes randomly when a dialog overlay appears. I've tried anything: citybuilder config, newsest vga drivers, 4:3 aspect ratio, lower settings...etc
It's always the same, random freezes. I have one of the firsts athlon x2 4400+ and a 8800gt.
I've played several hours (i'm level 8 ), but the freezes are getting worse, today it does always freeze after few minutes, i suppose the only chcance is a new patch.
:( it's so sad a game so good have such issues which definetly prevent me from being able to finish it