Supreme Commander Lock up

First of all I'm not sure where this belongs, I am playing Supreme Commander (gaming section), but I am playing on my desktop (desktop section). In the end the gaming section gets a whole lot more views/topics/replys, so I decided to post here.

Ok now the problem. I have my computer, specs in my sig, which plays the game great. However, seemingly randomly, when I'm an hour or so (sometimes 2 hours, sometimes 30 minutes), into a game (skirmish (can be big (81km) or small (20km), 7 AI or 3) or campaign), the game will lock my computer up, I mean a complete freeze, no BSOD or anything, my mouse stops moving, the keyboard doesn't respond to any keypresses (not even num/caps lock), the sound kinda keeps repeating a little hum, the screen stays on though, and my G15 keyboard LCD(on the performance monitor setting) is frozen, and someitmes the CPU is very high (ie 97%), and sometimes down to 0 when it freezes.

I don't think it is overheating, because the air flowing out of the computer doesn't even feel hot. So what I do is I press the reset button (which works) and the computer reboots, I don't get any "Windows had a problem shutting down blah blah blah" screen. And the computer acts like nothing happenend.

I have scanned (via Spybot and Adaware) for bad stuff, and I don't think I have any. Needless to say C&C 3, Oblivion, and Bioshock have never given me any problems. So I thought it might have been a game thing.

I checked out the Supcom forums, and I read up on some things there, they had some fix called the 3GB fix, which releases more system ram to Supcom, but I don't think that was my problem, because I think that people who had that problem didn't get a complete system lock up, but I tried it anyway, and it seems to have made my game last longer before locking up (although it could be placebo effect or something).

I did post a topic there, but as of yet I got 1 reply (saying maybe I should reduce over clocks, and check my RAM out), I don't have any over clocks, and I don't know how to check my RAM. So I thought I'd ask you guys. If it was a game issue then would it totally freeze my computer up? That kind of seems like a hardware issue maybe?

Thanks if you even read this far.

 

I had some freezes occur in SupCom for seemingly no reason before, too. That 3 gb fix you applied would help the memory barrier issue a little. Check and see if right before a freeze you have just finished building the first unit in a new factory. I've had the game freeze before because a bugged factory just completes its first unit. If you are hitting the 2 gb limit then you might try going to extreme tech's website and looking for an article about vista patches they released yesterday. There is a new patch for vista you can only download manually that will help keep games from hitting the 2 gb memory limit. I'll post more later. Right now I'm using a mobile phone and this is really difficult to write.

 

wow I'm surprised you wrote so much lol I hate texting on my phone...

I'm actually not running vista (using XP Media center edition).

And I'm pretty sure that the problem isn't a new unit in a factory. Like I said it seems random, although it could be possible. I'll play again and be sure to keep track of that (I am patched all the way).

I did get the 3GB patch and it seemed to help, I was thinking maybe I should upgrade it manually to 4GB and see if that helps anymore?

 

I'd bet it's the unit bug. It took me a long time to pinpoint for me. I had to save the game several times till the game froze and then load the last save to try to pinpoint. It happened three times to me. I had to blow up a bugged factory or the game would stop. I'll continue to think of what else it might be, still on phone.

 

Well I can't say it isn't the unit bug, havent' gotten it yet again though.

I'll do what you did.

 

Good luck. It might take awhile, but I bet you'll find the problem, even if it isn't a bugged factory.

 

Well I don't think that the bug is that easy to duplicate. Not something straight forward.

I've saved 18 or so saves of a multi hour game, and it keeps locking up, then I load and try to replicate the steps and I can play for another 10 minutes then another freeze.

I can confirm that it is not ONLY the factory bug. I am having at least 1 problem that is not the factory bug, unless the AI are building a bugged factory (which could definatly be the case).

I did a memory test (ran memtest86+ for 11:30) and no errors, so thats not it, I was told that if I go to 97.92 driver for my video card it might help, so I'll try that next.

Thanks for your help.

 

Ok, I pretty much got it figured out.

So I guess if you've got a strong system with an 8800, what you should do is:

Install the 3GB fix. (at the gpg forums, read about this, it was right for my system)
Download the 97.92 nvidia drivers.
Go into control panel and uninstall the current nvidia drivers
reboot
install the 97.92 drivers
reboot
delete the file called Game.prefs in "C:\Documents and Settings\<your login>\Local Settings\Application Data\Gas Powered Games\SupremeCommander\Game.prefs" (if you get a video error on game start)

And then you should be set.

That is what I did and I have no problems now (so far).

 

Edit: got it.

 

Check the Event Viewer on your computer to see if anything got logged at the time of the crash. It might give you some hints.