Freeze problems.
 

I have two problems that no one seems to be able to figure out with winSPMBT. The 1st problem is that when I upgrade past version 3.0 the game will run for 2-5 minutes and crash usually while moving a unit. The screen just freezes and I have to restart the PC. I have been in contact with the developers of the patches and we can not figure out why this happens. I am on Windows XP with a GForce 700 series graphics card. I have unistalled and reinstalled the game and my graphics card. The game works almost flawlessly using the game and updates up to 3.0. The only problem I have here is that the screen turns the game into poor graphics that I can't see (pink and green colors mostly) during the buy units and deployment phases. In game it does not produce the colors but an active movie window shows up and takes me out of the game. I simply have to clock the game which is still running in the toolbar and I am back to playing. This can happen multiple times during a game though and gets annoying. Anyone have any ideas?

Re: Freeze problems.
 

Is your graphics card updated with ALL the latest driver updates? Do you have enough memory after installing the game? Are you running the game full screen? If so try running it inside a window.

Re: Freeze problems.
 

My graphics card is up to date with the latest drivers. I do have enough memory after the install. I have tried running the game in both windowed and full and I get the same problems.

Re: Freeze problems.
 

There is a sticky for problems with Vista or Win 7, you are the only person with XP that seems to have graphic issues similar to them but worse. Have you disabled game intro sounds like its starting up all by its self. Sorry to say I think you are the only person with these problems so I would say you have modified something somewhere on your computer or something has. I would seriously deep scan your computer for unwanted guests.

Re: Freeze problems.
 

Just an FYI for anyone wondering , V3.5 was when we officially switched from MP3 to Wav sound format due to compatability issues with some players computers and ended 99.9% of the complants we had related to sound issues and this is when he started having problems and I agree with Imp. He's the only one wo has ever reported anything like this and the "active movie window shows up and takes me out of the game" is totally unique and highly suspicious. NOBODY else has reported anything especially not being able to at least run windowed mode and I've run out of ideas
Don

Re: Freeze problems.
 

If the "active movie window" opens, then it is likely that some user-installed media application has taken over the file extension and/or displaying of the format from the normal Directshow/Directplay of windows itself.

The end user should find out whatever external media player (most likely) he has installed that is intercepting business as usual, and remove it or train it properly (set its file extensions in its options screen or whatever).

Says Andy, who recently installed a media application that decided that .dat extension files were movies. (Duh!) - dat files are data files and have been since before MS-DOS!). Now all my programming data files icons are all set to its icon style. Ahah - It was only in the third config screen I chose. "Gom Player" thought .dat files were an MPEG file format... Anyway, unchecked it and they are back to normal.

Andy

Re: Freeze problems.
 

I use viper anti-virus and online armor for firewall. Im not sure if these are good programs but they do seem to be. They seem to keep my PC full from adware malware tracking cookies trojans etc. How would I find out which media player is interfering and how would I turn it off or set it to a specific media player that will be compatible with the game? I did go through the MP3 .wav advice with DRG and that did not seem to work.Thanks for the help and advice.

Re: Freeze problems.
 

Update: I have uninstalled every media/video player I had on my PC that I know of and I still get the ActiveMovie Window popup. It seems to have relevance to the game because it has a picture of a tank unit in the tool bar representing the window that pops up. I am still running the 3.0 update because of the problem that occurs past 3.0

Re: Freeze problems.
 

Never seen this before, ever - we don't use ActiveMovie.

A quick Google on "ActiveMovie window" brings up many hits about it popping up, and suggestions on how to kill it e.g. http://www.theeldergeek.com/forum/in...showtopic=9047

DirectPlay is used for sounds - have you tried turning sounds off?.
- Set the interface mouse click to off in the game options programme Misc tab
- Set both sound buttons (battle FX and sound FX) to off in the preferences screen of the actual game itself.

DirectPlay is used to show the splash screen at startup
- Set Show Introduction to no in the game options program main tab.

See if that helps your problem.

Cheers
Andy

Re: Freeze problems.
 

The things you had me try worked! Thank you. Two questions:

1. Does this mean in order for the game to work correctly I must play without sound?

2. Should I download the rest of the updates and try the game or will this fix not have anything to do with updates 3.5 and beyond?

Again thanks for everyones time.