user error

**centurie** · March 26, 2009, 07:54 AM

iv just come from the official total war forum....the CA staff has put a post up asking people what problems they have had post the recent patch,they are posting there DXDIAG's so as the devs can look deeper into there problems...............i could not believe what i saw..........99% of the people who were ranting and raving about crashes are using drivers both graphics and sound drivers that are over 3 years old..........most are dated from 2006,this is why i say 90% of the problems are user error,they really do not understand anything about computers..even tho they say they are all experts.........now if these same people are overlooking this simple peice of computer maintanance,what else have they done to there pc.s??? i bet if most of these peope typed MSCONFIG in there run box and clicked on the statup tab...they would have a list of running applications as long as there arm,yet most would not even undertsand the implications of having so many..........

well i give up already and won't be posting anymore help.......how the hell CA meant to patch user errors id beyond me.......my game runs great sound is great , i am sorry if your game is not, but like i said its mostly user error and i stick with that................some are genuine as i can see by there DXD that they keep a tight clean system......anyway off to play for the rest of the day....i won't be posting anymore in either forum.........see you around

**IHV** · March 26, 2009, 07:59 AM

Its like this in any game, some are more forgiving for user stupidness, some are not and some are just badly coded, which 1 is ETW i dont know, all i know ive been playing it since release

**Darth_Revan** · March 26, 2009, 08:07 AM

well i guess some people are technologically

challenged lol, i have been playing it fine since i got it, and still playing it even though the sound is a little distorted all the time

, but i guess updating drivers or new cards n such are a must or maybe they failed to notice that.. lol

**centurie** · March 26, 2009, 08:09 AM

Originally Posted by IHV

Its like this in any game, some are more forgiving for user stupidness, some are not and some are just badly coded, which 1 is ETW i dont know, all i know ive been playing it since release

game works great for me too..since that last patch the sounds are fantastic too in 5.1 surround sound...........it really is user error because people with the same sound card as me are having problems..i bet most are not using creative alchemy software for game when using vista........most don't even know what it is.........but without that when using a XFI card the sounds won't work properly..........but to be honest i give up now..its like talking to a brick wall sometimes.......i feel sorry for CA i really do, i wouldn't want there job.

**InF3sTeD** · March 26, 2009, 08:13 AM

The game is working fine for me other then my brittish campaign. Don't know why but after every battle it just crashes... However I am glad that the lag on the campaign map is not as bad as it was.

As for the topic I believe it is a combination of both bugs and user errors which is making it one big mess all around

**Bob the Insane** · March 26, 2009, 08:07 AM

I can feel your pain...

But I don't think it is fair to introduce minimal technical ability levels as prerequisits for PC gaming...

Besides, normally the result of old drivers is perfromance problems, not crashing. But I take your point that if your drivers are old what is the rest of your machine like?

While it is good to here that some people have no problem with the game it is not true for everyone. My machine is in pretty good fighting shape (or as good as Vista 32bit ever gets...

) but I still suffered the occasional CTD (none yesterday mind you) and "Out of Video Memory" errors despite trying a variety of recent and/or beta drivers.

It is unfair to label all of us how experience some stability issues as suffereing from ID-10T errors...

**Darth_Revan** · March 26, 2009, 08:12 AM

i guess i gota check my sound card on my laptop when i get home..on college library pc right now.. i feel like part of the flock of idiot sheep now

lol

**up_and_adam** · March 26, 2009, 08:16 AM

totally agreed. I make sure i regularly clean my registry, update drivers, and cclearner helps with the junk/managing startup. all im saying is its so easy to do this with all the free software out there. 20 mins once a month will do it. yet people will spend hours on forums ranting on about all kinds of stuff.

i cant tell you how many times i had to fix a mates computer because it was running slow, games lagging and crashing simply because the computer wasnt regularly maintained.

That makes a big difference, its not logical to think that developers can possibly account for outdated drivers and a poorly kept OS

**Darth_Revan** · March 26, 2009, 08:16 AM

majority of the CTD's people complain of i havent experienced one besides a memory leak after playin for 6hrs

, i guess majority of it is user errors, can't wipe the slate clean for CA either, personally in my opinion i think the game was released to early, maybe held back alittle more could been more satifying for others? i wonder..

**Ondaderthad** · March 26, 2009, 08:16 AM

I had a few crashes but nothing worse than any other new game. It works fine most of the time and is enjoyable.

**wearycelt** · March 26, 2009, 09:23 AM

Alright, as this thread seems to have attracted the "cream of the crop" of intelligent PC users, riddle me this...

My Specs:
AMD Athlon Dual Core 1.00 ghz
1 gig ram
Nvida 7300 128mb ram
onboard sound, dunno my MB
Windows XP

1.) Why am I able to play this game? Yeah, its slow to load (incredibly at times) and I'm on the lowest settings but its smooth. (With only one CTD, which occured last night, post patch)

2.) Any suggestions to improve performance?? (My drivers are up to date, and I run almost nothing in the background except AVG and SuperAntiSpyware neither of which takes up any performance space)

Just wondering.

**centurie** · March 26, 2009, 09:33 AM

Originally Posted by wearycelt

Alright, as this thread seems to have attracted the "cream of the crop" of intelligent PC users, riddle me this...

My Specs:
AMD Athlon Dual Core 1.00 ghz
1 gig ram
Nvida 7300 128mb ram
onboard sound, dunno my MB
Windows XP

1.) Why am I able to play this game? Yeah, its slow to load (incredibly at times) and I'm on the lowest settings but its smooth. (With only one CTD, which occured last night, post patch)

2.) Any suggestions to improve performance?? (My drivers are up to date, and I run almost nothing in the background except AVG and SuperAntiSpyware neither of which takes up any performance space)

Just wondering.

i am surprised you can run it at all..but the reason is this...what you have is very basic hardware you are not using advanced shaders on your graphics, most games are backward compatable meaning they will al play on old hardware upto a point,its always been the case that people with the new uptodate hardware have many more problems than people running old hardware....as older hardware has been tested and bug fixed,,where as new hardware is and can be unstable due to driver development......all this means for you is you have a very clean system and even tho its old it is at least working...........people play this game on laptops at medium settings so you see my point.
the only problem i can see is the might get a crash late in game because of low ram..but hopefully CA has fixed or are fixing these problems...other than that well done.

yea one performance tip..go to start then run then type in the box msconfig,press enter then put a tick in selective start up.then go to the startup tab at the top,and untick everything thats in there...applie the changes and reboot............then look at your speed increase

then go back to run box type in %temp% press enter and delete all files in that filder((don't worry these are just temp files created when installing /dleteing or using apps) they are old.

then go to run again and type prefetch press enter and delete all tho's files ( these files are created everytime you do something what these do makes programms start quicker the next time you access them) problem is if you ever uninstall something the prefetch file stays ,so when you start up the computer it will look for the uninstalled software slowing down your computer, so dlete all these files, your pc will make new ones each time you do something and won't bother looking for old apps)

**wearycelt** · March 26, 2009, 09:43 AM

the only problem i can see is the might get a crash late in game because of low ram..but hopefully CA has fixed or are fixing these problems...other than that well done.

I must say, every 2-3 hours I save and exit, let the memory cache clear out, and then start again, as memory leakage is an issue... Not a game crashing nor breaking one yet, but i know its there.

yea one performance tip..go to start then run then type in the box msconfig, then put a tick in selective start up.then go to the startup tab at the top,and untick everything thats in there...applie the changes and reboot............then look at your speed increase

Thank you, sir, I will give it a whirl when I get home from work this evening. (yeah, I'm wandering the tw forums at work all day, what about it?

)