Just bought Episode I but I'm just getting a crash!!!

tapalai

when trying to start the game after a logo-splash screen appears, the game just crashes the computer very badly.
I get a blue screen with some errors that lasts for half a second and then the computer reboots. i am really dissatisfied with this because i just spend some money on the game!
i've read carefully through the requirements, and the computer should be able to run the game, it's a p4 2000mhz, 1024mb ram, nvidia geforce 440 go 64m chip and enough disk-space. damn, i should have tried the demo.
is there anything i can do to get the game running?
and if not, how can i get my money back?
thanks for help or ideas!!! we wanted to play this game this evening and are really unhappy now!!

Candle

Try to update your directx from the Download DirectX 9.0c End-User Runtime web site

Erwin

I'd try updating your video card drivers as well.

You can do so here: http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp

--Erwin

tapalai

thanks for your answers so long...

i have already updated directx to 9.0c but i cannot update the graphics card driver, because it is a laptop and only the manufacturers driver will work and we've already got the last version installed. i've already tried changing harware acceleration on the sound tab in dxdiag, still the big crash :mad:

any other ideas ???

by the way, i've copied this thread to the support forum (didn'r know how to move it there) so any answers, hints or ideas would be very welcome there:

http://www.telltalegames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2932

thanks for any help!!!

AdamG

It's likely a memory conflict of some type, it's very hard to say what the error could be without knowing what the error says. Could you please try to write down as many details of it as possible? Do you have a digital camera? If you do, make the blue screen o' death error come up again, and take a picture and post it here. www.imageshack.us is a good picture host.

tapalai

good idea trying to use a camera... but unfortunately i don'T have it here right now, will try that later. and the error on the blue screen is only readable for a very short time and the whole screen is filled with text, so without a camera i can't tell anything about the contents. i'll try to take a picture in the next days :rolleyes:

jmm

Based on your system specs, I'll say driver incompatibility, the GeForce 440 is quite old and I don't know how compatible with DX9c.

To gather some info:
Go to Event Viewer (Control Panel->Administrative Tools)
Select the System view and check for the bugcheck info (The source says Save Dump).

Open the event, the description should say something like

The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x00000000 (0x00000000, 0x00000000, 0x00000000, 0x00000000). 

Post the numbers to see what caused the crash. If you saved a dump file (It will say so on the event message) and you have a debugger like WinDBG (Free download from MS), you can get really see what happened.

AdamG

You have a GeForce 440? Yeah, a card that old will definately cause some compatibility issues. That's the MX series, isn't it? People had a lot of problems with the MX series. Until you get a photo of the error message I'm not sure what I can do. Jmm's has a good idea though, that might get you more usefull debugging data then even the blue screen o' death would.

tapalai

thanks for your idea on this topic. i found the suggested information, it says the following (sorry it's in german):

---

Der Computer ist nach einem schwerwiegenden Fehler neu gestartet. Der Fehlercode war: 0x10000050 (0xbe8b98d3, 0x00000001, 0xbfa20a6a, 0x00000002). Ein volles Abbild wurde gespeichert in: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini052707-05.dmp.

Weitere Informationen über die Hilfe- und Supportdienste erhalten Sie unter http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

---

in english (my translation :rolleyes:): 'the computer is restarted after a heavy crash. the error code was: ......


if it is an unsolvable problem, is there any possibility to get the money back? we would love to play the game, though. but if it doesn't work...

i'll try this winDBG now...

thanks!

AdamG

Any possibility that you could email me that file mentioned in the error? Adam_Geldersma @ yahoo.com

P.S. Yes, I'm sure TellTale would gladly give you a refund if you can't get it to work. They don't generally like people paying for things that don't work, from what I've seen. Well, it looks like it's more likely to be something on your side, but it still doesn't work either way.

AdamG

Tapalai, go check this out.

http://www.telltalegames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1205&highlight=nvidia

AdamG

Like I said MX cards are a real pain in the ass. It seems others in your same situation are also having problems with onboard audio drivers as well. Is your laptop a Dell by any chance? Dells are a big pain in the ass too.

tapalai

i have found and tried out this winDBG but it says a lot of errors like

'Your debugger is not using the correct symbols'
'Kernel symbols are WRONG.'
'ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for nv4_disp.dll'
'Symbols can not be loaded because symbol path is not initialized.'
'Symbol search path is: *** Invalid ***'

which i cannot understand right now. i don't know what symbols the program is talking about. however, i understand that it has to do most likely with the somehow outdated geforce 440 go chip.

@AdamG: i've sent the file to you! i'll try the driver from the other thread, but i'm quite sure that i've read some time ago, that only the manufacturers driver will work on this laptop. it's not a dell, but a 'medion' which is a cheap european label i think.

thanks for your help!

AdamG

Arg... The dump file is encrypted. Why on earth would a dump file be encrypted? I don't know what can unencrypt it, someone here should though.

tapalai

thanks anyway i'll be going to bed soon because it's close to midnight here already. i'll continue the search for a solution tomorrow

i don't know what could have encrypted the file, i just copied it from the given directory. maybe this windbg unencrypts the file (if you have the correct 'symbols')?

tapalai

one last thing for today: i'm really happy for all your fast feedback and ideas! thanks!

AdamG

No problem, tapalai. Hopefully the info in that thread can help you. If not, we'll try to figure out what's the problem. Unfortunately it could always be the case that you won't get it to work, which it should because your hardware is capable of doing it. If we can't get it to work though, I'm sure they will give you a refund.

Candle

i have a Dell laptop and what a pain it is to play games on it. ..

jmm

RE WinDBG and symbols: All depends on which specific version of Windows do you have (ie: XP Original/SP1/SP2).

The symbols must be downloaded from MS' site and setup on WinDBG (File->Symbol File Path).
If you have all that ok, just open the crash dump (File->Open Crash Dump) and enter
"!analyze -v" (no quotes)

That should tell enough info on what went wrong.

Note: Do not install the symbols under your Windows directory (ie: C:\WINDOWS\Symbols)

tapalai

ok... back online again.
good morning

i have just downloaded the 'symbols' (200 mb !!!!) for windbg, and with these 'symbols' the program could finally analyze the little few kb dump file. the error was caused by nv4mini.sys or something like that, so it's defenitely the graphics adapter.

i have downloaded the omega driver and it unexpectedly worked (after damn many times of rebooting and tweaking and trying) fine with the computer.

with this driver the game starts (somehow...) without crashing the computer. but it only starts a window that is displaying only white and after a while music starts and finally i can hear sam and max talk. great! but too white to see anything.

after all these hours i've lost hope somehow and i think i'm going to spent the last energy on trying to get the money back maybe the game will just not run on this machine. thanks anyway to all!

ShaggE

Definitely get a new card. I used to use a GeForce MX440, and its more trouble than it's worth. No shaders, slow, non-overclockable... (dunno if it's standard design for the MX440, but the fan on mine was actually tied on with a piece of plastic :S)

If you want a cheap upgrade with plenty of bells and whistles, get yourself a Radeon X1300. It's incredibly cheap, surprisingly powerful, and runs Sam & Max like butter. It will even run games like FEAR and Prey at fairly high settings.

AdamG

Yep, looks like it's the curse of the MX card. I never bought one of those, and was really mad back when they were popular because lots of people were buying them and getting them in their pre-built computers and having lots of problems, and there wasn't anything they could do most of the time except buy a new video card or computer. I don't know what else could be done, as your computer sounds quite obsolete.

Emily

See the FAQ here about Geforce4 cards. Please try the driver suggested there and let us know if it resolves the problem.

If you'd rather get your money back, just email us at support@telltalegames.com to request this. Thanks.

tapalai

finally we managed to get the game running !!!!!! thanks for all your help.
installing the omega driver (which took hours...) and deleting this prefprop-file in every game every time did a lot of help...
the games run very very slow though, now in part 3 the sound stutters in the dialogues. thats because its only a 2MHz machine with a 64M geforce4 and 1024mb of ram and lots of free disk space, i know i've once played some very fast and impressive 3d-games on that same machine in the past (e.g. half life 2).
however the biggest problem now is a bug or 2: i cannot access the options screen, i can click on the button, hear the sound, but the screen won't open. it will SOMETIMES after deleting the prefs.prop (have to exit and delete every time!) but that works only every 10th time (so i don'T try that anymore). so i can't adjust the volume and i get tired from the loud music after a while. and i would like to turn the quality down as much as possible to get a chance of running the game more fluid. another thing is that the game crashes instantly when trying to enter fullscreen, so it's quite tiny on the 1280 screen (the resolution is not changeable in the game!)

i'll put these last problems/questions in another thread so if anyone has an idea of what i can change, youÄre welcome to answer there.

thanks to anyone for your help!