Empire Total War crash

Hey,

Today I installed ETW and it stopped working multiple times. I reinstalled, and it didnt work. Then a few hours later, I try again, and could play for a few hours, but then it shut down again. This time, it didnt stop working as usual, but also gave me this errorcode:
the instruction at 0x774a38e reference memory at 0xffd1bda5 could not be read

Any idea's?

 

if by error code you mean BSOD, then can you give us the minidump file (read with bluescreenview), I said BSOD because it looks like a memory module problem

 

have you tried to validate the files via steam?

I had a similar laptop and it worked without issues. Drivers included.

But that looks like a memory dump

 

@ graz, no it wasn't a blue/any other screen of death, only the game stopped working
@ mrm MM: yes I tried validating the files via steam, and defraging the game cache files, it didn't seem to find any problem

Today I didnt have that particular error again, now and then ETW just stops working, without that 'instruction blabla' message

I also find that multiple people on the internet have this problem, and there is no clear solution to this random shut down problem. (One guy suggested running steam as an admin, that didn't work).

The only thing I can think off is some kind of windows error, since I have no vista updates or service packs (windows key doesn't work anymore since I upgraded my hdd). All the other games work fine though...

 

you could just give MS and they revalidated the key since its tied to the mobo.

You could try running something to repair the windows install if you if think thats the problem lay, you can download a mini iso from MS for that as well.

I ran the game on vista and on win 7, no problems for me at all, except a glitch that was beneficial to me, the highlights for the troops were missing but those were on the 10.1 drivers and the 10.2 beta drivers

Another thing that you could try is to get the some of the usual components that ETW needs, like .net framework 4 and so forth.

 

select the compatibility mode windows 7 and run as admin (solves most similar problems)

 

I use windows vista btw, and neither microsoft nor acer can fix my key problem, (they are basicly both incompetent in dealing with an OEM laptop license), but thats another issue.

 

edit: now it crashed again, and I got a message saying I dont have sufficient memory to run the game and it must be terminated xD really weird...

 

have you removed the page file?

 

i played that game, and all the other total war games as well. its not totaly your problem, the game was very poorly made, huge memory leak and other mountain of problems (thats why the released napoleon later on). here is a fix that would help, it helped me for shogun 2 (kept crashing as well, this fixed it):

XP 32
* Find your Boot.ini located usually on the C:.
If you cannot see it, you probably have system files hidden, then follow these instructions at microsoft (also uncheck "hide protected operating system files")
* Right click on the boot.ini and choose properties. Uncheck "read only"
* Open the boot.ini by double clicking it.
* Under the section called [operating systems] find the line that says "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional...". Yours may look a bit different. We are going to make a duplicate, so that if you make a mistake you will not harm yourself from booting into your computer. Drag you're mouse across the entire line, right click and choose copy. Then right below the line you just copied right click your mouse and choose paste. You should now have two lines one after another that are exact duplicates.
* Change the bottom line that you just copied with the following addition on the end. Add a space at the end of the line and then this without the quotes "/3GB /USERVA=2500"
* In that lower boot entry you just made, find the name of the operating system in quotes and change it to something like "Windows XP 3GB", so you can differentiate at boot up.
* Close and save the boot.ini.
* Right click on the boot.ini, hit properties, check read only.

Vista 32, Win 7 32bit
* In Vista go to Start menu. Go to Accessories. Locate the command prompt shortcut and hover mouse over it. Right Click on the shortcut then select Run as Administrator.
* In the command prompt type this exactly: bcdedit /set increaseuserva 2500. Then hit enter.
* Make sure you get a message back confirming the change was made. To verify the entry is there you can type just bcdedit, hit enter, and you should see the entry now listed.
* Then close the command prompt. You just told Vista to increase user virtual address (userva) space to 2500MB.
* Changes take effect on reboot but don't reboot yet.

SUMMARY
We extended the user virtual address space in XP and Vista to 2500MB, so now applications can utilize up to that much if they are set to be Large Address Aware. While some 32 bit games/applications are set, Empire is not.

 

Thx silverfern, I think your solution actually did it! Doing that fixed all my errors! I've been playing for hours today without a single problem ;-)

You sir, are a genius!