50% of battles CTD - what bug?

**Xstar** · March 23, 2009, 06:12 PM

What bug would cause a large battle of the battles in ETW to crash to desktop with error message "Empire: Total War has stopped working" on a Core i7 system with a 4870X2?

All components seem to be fine, 100% stable otherwise, stresstest of CPU, GPU and RAM ok.

Could it be some sound bug (Xonar D2)?

**Crimson Scythe** · March 23, 2009, 06:20 PM

Have you noticed the game gradually slowing down before the CTD by any chance? I have a 4850X2 and it seems that it's a memory leak problem.

Could also be a Crossfire problem, though. I noticed that ETW was more stable (marginally) when I turned it off - you might want to try that.

**Darth_Revan** · March 23, 2009, 06:42 PM

yeah my game been gradually slowing down everytime i play it.. especially campaign, i ctd on battles alot mainly after em.

**Turbo** · March 24, 2009, 02:47 PM

Originally Posted by Xstar

What bug would cause a large battle of the battles in ETW to crash to desktop with error message "Empire: Total War has stopped working" on a Core i7 system with a 4870X2?

All components seem to be fine, 100% stable otherwise, stresstest of CPU, GPU and RAM ok.

Could it be some sound bug (Xonar D2)?

Nope. I get the same error frequently at the end of a turn. This is already an issue that good old Creative Assembly is presumably working on. Relax, you should be able to play the game sometime in the summer of 09'.

**Spartan 666** · March 24, 2009, 03:22 PM

Originally Posted by Turbo

Relax, you should be able to play the game sometime in the summer of 09'.

lol you are optimistic!!!

**Xstar** · March 24, 2009, 04:34 PM

Originally Posted by Turbo

Nope. I get the same error frequently at the end of a turn. This is already an issue that good old Creative Assembly is presumably working on. Relax, you should be able to play the game sometime in the summer of 09'.

I'm not sure it's the same underlying error. I haven't had any "end of turn"-CTD's, but I know some people have them...

**Lethaface** · March 24, 2009, 06:09 PM

Xstar, same setup here (with 6gb ram vista64), also CTD's

It seem to be mainly campaign battles. Only 1 MP battle ever ctd'd on me. Sieges are almost inplayable. I have a gut feeling that it is connected to deploying your troops with the right mouse button or when using the UI buttons. In open terrain no problem, however when I try to deploy troops between some obstructions it seems to CTD more often. (EDIT: With deploying I mean ordering units in certain positions, not during the deployment phase!)

IIRC these CTD's started after one of the earlier patches (demo was fine and first few days also). I also get an 'out of video memory' error sometimes when loading a battle. Temporary slowdowns do happen, not too often though.

Hope they fix these things with the patch thats coming out this week (?). Those sprites are also getting on my nerves. I could play m2tw on my previous legacy rig quite ok, only large siege battles had significant slow down. However, I never saw these type of ugly sprites so I hope we can get rid of them. Especially on high end systems like i7 and 4870x2 & equivalents.

**Xstar** · March 24, 2009, 07:40 PM

Well, at least it's good to know I'm not the only one having it this bad. I share your observation, LethaFace, that the game is more likely to crash when deploying units and issuing orders. Often the CTD is preceded by me issuing an order, selecting a unit or zooming in.

CA, hope you are aware of this!

**Billux** · March 24, 2009, 08:39 PM

Btw does adding memory help with memory leak issues and performance? I've been planning to upgrade from 2GB to 4GB, would like to know before I actually go and buy the combs.

I've been having CTD's regularly. Updating my videocard drivers helped a little, but I'm having CTD's in about 33% of battles and sometimes when I'm on the campaign map.

**Lethaface** · March 24, 2009, 09:02 PM

Billux, wont help for that but extra GB always helps for everything

(be aware that 32bit OS will only use up to 3.x - 4.0 GB depending on you config).

DDR2 RAM is so cheap I can surely advise you to put in some extra if you have space left. Especially if you use Vista it might give a nice performance boost.

I have 6GB ram & 2GB vram, and still ctd's

and memory leaks. I dont have 33% crashes (perhaps the leak can leak on for some time in the extra gb's

), however i tend to auto resolve siege battles due to this bug. Just now I invaded maratha as the dutch with 4 armies and another ctd during the battle just at the moment i clicked and dragged to position some units. Hope they fix this quickly!

**Billux** · March 24, 2009, 11:44 PM

Thanks for your quick answer Lethaface, as I was thinking to get some ram today. My system is 2 years old, but I haven't felt any pressure to upgrade the whole machine. Even newer games I like to play will still run very well on it, such as Far Cry 2. So I guess more ram and new videocard might just be enough.

Most annoying thing happened the other day: I was winning a great long battle, surprisingly difficult and challenging one and the game crashed just before the end. I had to replay it few times to get the victory I deserved.

**Jihada** · March 25, 2009, 07:43 AM

I get frequent video memory leak crashes and I have 6GB ram and 64 bit video card. There is a thread for this somewhere ,a sort of work around, I'm trying to find it again atm. CA need to fix this urgently.

**Xstar** · March 25, 2009, 01:58 PM

After letting the latest patch (March 25) update, I once again tried the game. I still got a CTD. but this time it said something about a Runtime Error and something about the C++ Redistributable. I checked and I had both the 32bit and the 64bit version of the C++ Redistributable installed. Maybe this could be related to our problems?

**Jihada** · March 25, 2009, 02:16 PM

You may want to check MasBoris' workaround...search thread 'Insufficient memory & CTD workaround. I have 6gb ram and 64 bit OS but game was crashing and lagging badly after about 50 turns. Now it runs really smooth on ultra after adding the memory leak fix. Just keeping my fingers crossed it stays this way to 1799.

**Xstar** · March 26, 2009, 06:15 AM

I've already tried his workaround, didn't help.

**Xstar** · March 26, 2009, 02:07 PM

Well, the bug seems to be causing "buffer overrun".

Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: Empire.exe
Application Version: 1.0.0.0
Application Timestamp: 49b7b98b
Fault Module Name: Empire.exe
Fault Module Version: 1.0.0.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 49b7b98b
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 0083a7c2
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1053
Additional Information 1: fd00
Additional Information 2: ea6f5fe8924aaa756324d57f87834160
Additional Information 3: fd00
Additional Information 4: ea6f5fe8924aaa756324d57f87834160

But what could possibly cause this?

Found this about error message c0000005 but it doesn't really help

http://blogs.msdn.com/calvin_hsia/ar...30/170344.aspx