Rome crashes in the middle of a loading screen

[JarlFrank]

This has happened to me the first time recently when I was playing a very long session of the BI mod Somnium Apostatae Iuliani, and the game crashed while loading a battle. The problem is that now, this problem is happening all the time, no matter which mod I play, or even vanilla (I haven't installed any new mod before or after encountering this problem so it's not a compatibility problem).
It usually happens after more or less half an hour, not immediately after I start the game but I can't play for very long until it happens, usually when I'm loading the third or fourth battle. The loading screen progresses about halfway, then the screen turns black and I get an error window telling me that I can send the error log to Microsoft, and it has been saved in a file called appcompat.txt.
Now, I've suspected a hardware problem, maybe faulty RAM because when I check my system, it says I got 2 gigs of RAM even though I have three, so there might be a problem there...

But then, the strange thing is that Rome is the *only* game where this happens. Medieval 2, Napoleon and Empire all work perfectly, no matter how long I play them, no matter if modded or unmodded. And, as I said, I haven't changed anything about my Rome installation when this happened. I just played normally, everything worked fine, and suddenly it crashed during a loading screen and now it does so all the time...

I haven't tried reinstalling yet because I don't know if it will help. The same problem persists even when I play from my second installation which I use for Roma Surrectum (again, this has worked perfectly all the time, only now it suffers from these crashes too...)

Does anyone know what could cause this problem? Any help would be appreciated.

[Che]

I actually have the same problem. It happens when it's loading, before and after the battle. I know this has happened to me in the past but I can't remember if there's any way to fix it or not. Could anyone help?

[Brusilov]

You've not included any technical information for which someone could attempt to provide a sensible answer. This is the "Eras Technical Help" forum after all.

Operating System
CPU and memory
Graphics card
Graphics Level at which you play the game (resolution and all other settings)

[JarlFrank]

You've not included any technical information for which someone could attempt to provide a sensible answer. This is the "Eras Technical Help" forum after all.

Operating System
CPU and memory
Graphics card
Graphics Level at which you play the game (resolution and all other settings)

Windows XP with Service Pack 3
DualCore AMD Athlon 64 X2, 3800+
3 Gigs of RAM
Nvidia Geforce 9600GT with 1 gig of RAM

I play on 1920x1080, with all settings except shadows and grass at maximum, with all other settings (glints, reflections etc) activated except for campaign shadows.

[Brusilov]

Having a CTD when the battle is loading is usually a sign that the graphics card is struggling with what you are asking of it or it could be something wrong with the mod. Make sure that you add the -show_err switch to the shortcut property target - this will return any errors that are trapped by the program. Not all CTDs have an error message though. How to do this is buried in this thread: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=62217

I would presume that you've done some housekeeping on your PC - make sure that the problem is not caused by a build up of dust in the fans or inside the machine. Use compressed air - you could also use a photography 'blower brush' if you have one to hand (I use both).

If you feel the need to monitor the temperatures ofyour graphic card there are a number of free utilities to do that (a lot of them are to do with overclocking but you can just use the temperature monitor part);

Rivatuner: http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?page=rivatuner
EVGA: http://www.evga.com/precision/
CPUZ: http://www.cpuid.com/


The following thread has a number of 'good playing practices' that may be of help (if it's a hardware fault then it won't help): http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=100384

OK, one thing that you can try is to reduce the resolution to see if you can play the game for longer than you currently do. If you do this it could indicate that there is a problem with the card. Exactly what that is I'm not sure.

If you want to check your memory there is a free download called 'Memtest' which I amost used when I had problems with my previous system (built by a bunch of cowboys in Manchester called Computer Planet) where the system continued to lock up due to temperatures (it was delivered in an 'overclocked' state which they denied doing) and did so even after it was 'fixed' by thier technicans - in the end I scraped it so I'm not very happy about that.

Anyway here's the web site for 'Memtest': http://www.memtest.org/

I guess that's a starter..... Finding exaclty what is going wrong on your system could be fiddly.