crashing to desktop and freezing

[luna jenny]

Hi, I am having trouble with Crashing to Desktop (CTD) during faction selection and freezing during battle

First of all, I am using Windows XP, my system meets the requirements to run the game and I have installed Medieval 2 and all 4 Kingdoms expansion campaigns.

I made a copy of my Medieval 2 folder inside the Program Files/Sega folder and named it Stainless Steel. I then installed Stainless Steel v6 part 1 and part 2 into this folder. I then installed the 6.1 patch into this folder and checked the option to install 'Real combat & real recruitment'

I started the game up and clicked on Early Campaign, it came up with a campaign map and list of factions so I started clicking through the factions one by one, when I clicked on the Fatimid faction the game CTD. I started it up again and clicked on the Fatimid faction again and it didn't crash so I kept going and the next time it crashed at the Kievan Rus faction. I loaded it up again and looked at the remaining factions then went back and clicked on Late Campaign, it came up with a list of campaigns to play but only Late campaign was on the list so I clicked on it and the game CTD. The next time it loaded up but it started CTD randomly as I clicked on factions. After reloading 3 more times and looking through the factions I started a game as the English in Early Era.

Everything was fine for about 5 turns. Then I started my first battle which was with York. I had been beseiging them and they sallied out, from where I was facing the settlements most of their forces came out the front but 2 militia spearmen units stayed at the town center and a peasant and peasant archer unit came out the left hand side so I sent my general and mailed knights unit to kill them. The militia spearmen came from the town center along with another unit of peasant archers, I lured them away with my cavalry then split them up, my general lured the spearmen away and my mailed knights chased the archers to the town center and killed all but 3 of them. Meanwhile my 3 units of peasant archers were shooting flaming arrows at an enemy unit of peasant archers, they routed and I sent my general after them and ordered my archers to cease fire and turned off fire at will. My general didn't get there in time so I sent him behind my line and had my mailed knights escape from the town center through an unguarded path as all the enemy units returned to the town center to try to get them, I then had my mailed knights loop back around and head behind my battle line again.

the enemy started to come back out of the town again so I set my archers back to fire at will and then the game immediately froze (btw I was on 6x time at this point)

After 5 minutes I tried pressing 'start', when that didn't work I tried alt + tab and when that didn't work i tried ctrl + alt + delete which didn't work either. After mashing those for a while I eventually gave up and pressed the power button on my tower to force it to shut down, that didn't work either so I had to resort to switching it off at the plug socket.

How can I resolve these problems?

[PerXX]

I made a copy of my Medieval 2 folder inside the Program Files/Sega folder and named it Stainless Steel.

Why'd you do this? There's no reason to make a seperate copy. SS will install as a seperate mod, and will not interfere with the Vanilla campaigns, or the expansions.
Renaming/Moving the entire folder after installing it, could very easily be the cause of your problems, because the game could be looking for files where they are no longer located. I'd reinstall SS in your proper install directory.

I started the game up and clicked on Early Campaign, it came up with a campaign map and list of factions so I started clicking through the factions one by one, when I clicked on the Fatimid faction the game CTD. I started it up again and clicked on the Fatimid faction again and it didn't crash so I kept going and the next time it crashed at the Kievan Rus faction. I loaded it up again and looked at the remaining factions then went back and clicked on Late Campaign, it came up with a list of campaigns to play but only Late campaign was on the list so I clicked on it and the game CTD. The next time it loaded up but it started CTD randomly as I clicked on factions. After reloading 3 more times and looking through the factions I started a game as the English in Early Era.

This is a known issue, unfortunatly not fixable. Clicking too many factions, or too fast can often cause a CTD.

the enemy started to come back out of the town again so I set my archers back to fire at will and then the game immediately froze (btw I was on 6x time at this point)

After 5 minutes I tried pressing 'start', when that didn't work I tried alt + tab and when that didn't work i tried ctrl + alt + delete which didn't work either. After mashing those for a while I eventually gave up and pressed the power button on my tower to force it to shut down, that didn't work either so I had to resort to switching it off at the plug socket.

Have you tried fighting the battle, and seeing if the same problem happens again? Most likely this is either a problem with the SS installation, or related to your moving/renaming of the original installation.
Posting the last lines of your system.log file (Medieval II Total War\logs\system.log) could help us figure out exactly what the problem might be.

[Navajo Joe]

Luna Jenny,
I am afraid to say that clicking thru various factions will always result in a CTD. You need to choose your faction then select, do not troll thru the factions.

The freeze was unlikely to be this mod, this happened to me, when I had 128mb graphs card. How many MB is your graphs card and when was the last time you downloaded the latest driver.

I would also suggest you check thru Rozanov's F.A.Q under bugs, before starting a campaign, some important info there you need to do and be aware of.

[luna jenny]

the last part of the system log reads:

13:29:14.359 [system.rpt] [always] CPU: SSE2

[luna jenny]

by the way, do I need to download and install real combat and recruitment or is the one I installed with the v6.1 patch the whole thing?

the reason I ask is because the one in the 6.1 patch was only 7mb or something whereas the one on the sub-mods forum is about 700mb

[bigrobbo9]

Yeah there's a newer version on the forums, and there's also a brand new version out in a few days I think, so you might as well wait for that.