"Insufficient memory" & "CTD" - workaround

[Brusilov]

Excellent post. I will PM (or report the post) in order to get it stickied. I look forward to trying this fix in a couple of days.

+rep

[R4nd0M]

Very nice to see CA will be using largeaddressaware in future releases.

@Boris: I just had a look at my executable in hex. It seems I screwed something up at 0x00000126 and confirmed this with your tool. I've applied your fix and will give it another test some time soon. Hopefully I'll be less likely to experience the crash. Thanks once again.

[apoll]

MadBoris...this didn;t appear to work for me. Not sure why. I am having the dreaded insufficient memory problem. The game runs okay for a while...then starts to slow..then looses the colour out of the ocean and then finally gives the dreade 'insuffiecient memory' message. Usually I quit out before that, re boot and go for another 45 min or so before having to do the same again. Symptons of the memory leak or failing to dump after the battles, I guess.

Anyway, with great hope, I tried your remedy. But sadly, it seemed to make it worse; I could not get through two turns before the 'insufficient memory' problem hit. Couple of clarifications:

1) in the boot.ini file, with the bottom replicated line on which I tack onto the "/3GB /USERVA=2500"...I take it there is a space between it and the end of the line (as you say) AND a space between /3GB AND /USERVA? These two are run up against each other?

2) Upon booting, two options on Windows XP Home are presented for me...which one do I choose? Which one is the modified one? The top one or the bottom one? How do I know which one is the modified one?

Any ideas why this wouldn't work for me?

2 x ATI 4879 x 2 in crosssfire, using 9.1 drivers (since 9.2 seemed to cuase the memory problem frequently)...

tks.

apoll

[Garbarsardar]

Excellent post. I will PM (or report the post) in order to get it stickied. I look forward to trying this fix in a couple of days.

+rep

[Katsu]

Well done and thanks. I had a save game just prior to a large battle. Every time I tried to play the battle it would at some point CTD. I was getting juddering or a black sky and then a CTD and out of memory message. I tried all the different drivers and got the same issue. One thing that did seem to fix it was having no fog (it was a foggy morning). But with your fix it seems to have gone even when I have the fog on. I have not had any other crashes in the last five hours. BTW I lost the battle.

[apoll]

MadBoris...just confirming...I am stuck on a siege of a big town in India...everytime I try to run the battle, it gives me an insufficient memory error. I have a large number of troops and the city is large. This with your fix in place.

Also, I note the normal executable path of my Empire Total War icon shortcuts is not to the folder you suggested..it is to an executable called "steam.exe - applauch 10600". I have set it to the proper amended icon that you modified.

regards,

apoll

[zowrath]

Also, I note the normal executable path of my Empire Total War icon shortcuts is not to the folder you suggested..it is to an executable called "steam.exe - applauch 10600". I have set it to the proper amended icon that you modified.

regards,

apoll

'steam.exe - applauch 10600' just calls empire.exe after you have logged on to Steam if you have not done so already.

[MadBoris]

MadBoris...this didn;t appear to work for me. Not sure why. I am having the dreaded insufficient memory problem. The game runs okay for a while...then starts to slow..then looses the colour out of the ocean and then finally gives the dreade 'insuffiecient memory' message.
...
1) in the boot.ini file, with the bottom replicated line on which I tack onto the "/3GB /USERVA=2500"...I take it there is a space between it and the end of the line (as you say) AND a space between /3GB AND /USERVA? These two are run up against each other?

2) Upon booting, two options on Windows XP Home are presented for me...which one do I choose? Which one is the modified one? The top one or the bottom one? How do I know which one is the modified one?

Well lets assume you missed something. The symptoms sound exactly like I would expect for the issue.

1) You just add a space between each command for the boot option. "/" delineates a command to the bootloader to read a command. So it would be something like "multiboot /3gb /userva=2500 /command1 /coommand2"
Space then forward slash, that is the pattern.

2) Good point. I'll just show you what mine looks like exactly.

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional 3GB" /FASTDETECT /NOEXECUTE=ALWAYSOFF /3GB /USERVA=2900

As you see I added "3GB" to the name that you see in quotes. Also you should be able to better see the spacing there too. (don't change the partition(1) info if yours is different. I use 2900, nbut here I am recommending 2500. people can manipulate that number but lower is better in most cases unless one needs to go higher. Sometimes lowering it has helped people with flaky drivers, while people requiring more address space for real heavy memory intensive games/apps have to raise it to allow for more addresses available to the game/app. Try higher, 2900.

All I can suggest is you double check your boot.ini and spacing. if you get it wrong windows just boots and ignores the commands, so you never know if there is a typo. Make sure also that you verify with "V" using the batch program that the header gets applied to the exe, don't forget to copy it back into the game directory. Let me know.

[Heinz Guderian]

Nice work Madboris. rep+. We need more guys like you around. Appreciate the help.

[MadBoris]

Also, I note the normal executable path of my Empire Total War icon shortcuts is not to the folder you suggested..it is to an executable called "steam.exe - applauch 10600". I have set it to the proper amended icon that you modified.

regards,

apoll

Well, actually it is ok. That is normal for the startup icon for the game to point to steam.exe. Steam.exe actually initializes the Empire.exe process either way. Even if one executes it directly I think Steam is still told to reinitialize the process, that's just from my memory though.

As far as the issue still being a problem, maybe if you want to retrace your steps of what you did and tell me what you did so I can see if you missed something. Other than that I don't know.

[MadBoris]

I have not had any other crashes in the last five hours. BTW I lost the battle.

Congratulations and my condolences.

[TheSpaceHamster]

woo hoo! I knew if we made enough threads about it - it'd get some feedback!

Great work Boris.

[Yojimbo]

A very good summary of the issue MadBoris. At some point in the near future we'll start releasing ETW executables linked with /LARGEADDRESSAWARE enabled, it's currently in test. This will at least save you the second part of the process (and having to repeat it!).

Just to expand a little further, the reason why this can cause both 'out of video memory' and 'out of system memory' issues is because DirectX grabs a fair amount of application address space for its buffers, and these resources are placed inside the user portion of the full 4 mb range. The memory issues are certainly not responsible for all problems people are reporting - for example crashes during the end-of-turn are down to other things, and there are a few other cases which can throw up identical errors - but it's one of several priority items for the programming team at CA right now.

+1 rep

You woul hope a game runign crash bug would be a high prority. I remember how angry I was when i heard ca started work on an expansion instead of patching m2tw properly...

[Kinjo]

+1 rep MadBoris for being a stud.

[jmbuehler]

From the other topic, I heard you had an issue with the boot, but maybe lessening the userva to 2500 or less will help this time around, but may not. Give it a go, but 3 GB vid cards is tough. As for your SLI question from the other topic, I have no idea. Bleeding edge sometimes cuts deep.

Very true indeed. Still, hitting vsync pretty much in every battle regardless of unit size and quantity is worth the pain imho

Just patched my exe, will give it a shot in a minute. Just out of curiosity, is this workaround any drifferent from what has been described in this thread:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...76#post4610276

Good to have you on the forum, dude! Funnily enough I have now run into you in connection with the two games I had been anticipating most eagerly (i.e. Crysis and Empire)...

EDIT: And if you think 3GiB vid mem is an issue, it'll be fun to see how Empire deals with a setup I'm currently building for a client with 3 GTX285 with 2GiBs of VRAM each...

[Tassen]

Maybe more likely a motherboard driver. Myself, I have been using /3Gb switch for a couple years with no issue. Never any issues with vid drivers in XP and I go through nvidia drivers often. Although I never used that driver but it's doubtful. it's likely something else entirely.

It's hard to identify the culprit and I am hesitant to start suggesting workarounds for a workaround. Although latest motherboard drivers may address the issue. Boot in normally, update the driver to the latest if you like then see if there is any benefit.

What mobo chipset you got?

Edit: There will be certain hampered by this but in the past experience has been few, although maybe certain chipsets and their drivers have an issue here.

I read up a bit on the /3GB switch and as far as I understand it you can run into 'trouble' if using a video card with a lot of on-board ram. The video driver simply won't load and you will end up in Windows on some fallback 4bit setup. Just as I do. I also tested a few different values with the /USERVA switch, 2100-2400, but to no avail.


I have a fair amount of v-ram on my video card, 768MB to be exact. So to you guys who can boot back into windows, video driver loaded and all, how much on-board v-ram do you have on your video cards?


I am running the 185.20 NVIDIA beta drivers, and all has been very stable, so far. I am only about 25% through the GC though. You think switching back down to a lower officially released version of drivers could do the trick?

[Stalins Ghost]

Cheers MadBoris! I wasn't having any crash issues, but I was curious anyway, and I seem to get better performance than I did before. Nice one!

[jmbuehler]

I read up a bit on the /3GB switch and as far as I understand it you can run into 'trouble' if using a video card with a lot of on-board ram. The video driver simply won't load and you will end up in Windows on some fallback 4bit setup. Just as I do. I also tested a few different values with the /USERVA switch, 2100-2400, but to no avail.


I have a fair amount of v-ram on my video card, 768MB to be exact. So to you guys who can boot back into windows, video driver loaded and all, how much on-board v-ram do you have on your video cards?


I am running the 185.20 NVIDIA beta drivers, and all has been very stable, so far. I am only about 25% through the GC though. You think switching back down to a lower officially released version of drivers could do the trick?

I'm running the modified exe with 3 GTX280s, each 1GiB of VRAM. No probs so far, in fact I haven't had any crashes since.
In spite of the fact that your drivers are called 185.20 they are actually pretty old beta drivers... I tested them myself as well, but becaue there are new things integrated into the driver such as SSAO from the Control Panel, they can cause a lot of headache.
The confusing 'number' (185.20) is a result of Nvidia emplying several different driver development teams, each with a different focus.
I recommend using 181.22 if using SLI or 182.06 if not, they should be the most stable.
Also, most changes included in 185.20 have later been removed from subsequent driver releases, indicating that there might be some underlying issues with this driver architecture.

[Spaxspore]

quick question, i assume we do since there will be a new .exe but ill ask any how.


If there is another patch, do we have to run the utility again to give it 2gb+ addressing space?

[jmbuehler]

quick question, i assume we do since there will be a new .exe but ill ask any how.


If there is another patch, do we have to run the utility again to give it 2gb+ addressing space?

Depends on whether they'll include the ability to address 2+GiB in the patch. If not, then yes we willl.