Neverending freeze during battles

[Nem]

Hi.

I've played RTW and BI since their release and now that I've installed the 1.6 patch, I've got some issue during battles (during the first battle after launching RTW, it didn't happen on BI... yet). It looks like it happens randomly during the battle: I'm on the battlefield and suddenly the game/screen freezes: nothing responds, no more sound, the HD doesn't work, alt-tab or ctrl-alt-del doesn't wake up the system and I have to reset the system (XP then says that a serious error occured). It desn't seem to be related to any particular events of the battle (one time it happened 20 seconds after I placed my army, another time in the middle of the battle).

I have never experienced such a problem before, and it began just after I installed the patch. I'd like to know if someone experienced that problem and if they managed to solve it. Thank you and merry christmas.

[BelowZero]

Hi, I registered just so I can post about this frustrating situation which I am also experiencing. Nem's description fits me perfectly as well and so far I haven't had any luck searching for a resolution.

I haven't had BI very long (I've played the original RTW almost since release) and this is my second campaign (I'm leading the Huns this time, my first was a brief test with the Saxons which I quickly abandoned after getting a feel for things.) though I have played several custom battles and they all went fine. I am only a handful of years into the campaign and have fought maybe half a dozen battles so far, all with no freezing. I've been trying to take the Goth's capital (I don't recall the name at the moment.) for a few evenings now using one full stack comprised of a minor general and mixed cavalry (no infantry). Each time I've tried the game freezes on me at some point after I have setup my forces and clicked to start the battle. Sometimes shortly after I begin, before any units engage the enemy, and sometimes as late as my final rush on the town center.

In any case, I'm looking forward to any helpful advice that someone might be able to share.

[Talos]

I am having this exact same problem with RTW version 1.2 as well! I am on the verge of uninstalling the game from this computer unless somebody has a solution.

[BelowZero]

Well I decided to start a new campaign. I went with the Huns again, still with v1.6. This time the problem popped up during my first siege (and first battle? i think), on the Roxi town just southeast of the Hun's starting position, so a fair bit earlier than before. It occurred as I was swarming the town center from all directions but hadn't quite touched it yet. All mixed cavalry as before. Now I wasn't paying too close of attention but I know it happened while I was zoomed very far out and looking pretty much straight down at the action, and I think that I had the game paused as I was moving my view. I also think that some or all of the interface vanished when it froze, but I was a little distracted by rage so I didn't watch as closely as I should have. One other thing, I do recall on one occasion when it froze I sat back and waited a minute then as I was reaching to poke at the three Lock keys (a good way to test for a hard freeze before you reboot, see if the keyboard's lights respond when you press the Num/Caps/Scroll Lock keys) the game moved for a second at most and was then stuck for good. I've only noticed that once though. Does anyone else have similar details to share?

[Talos]

I am not sure if this will apply with everyone, but after installing the latest driver to my video card, the problems went away. I suggest that everyone here tries the same.

[BelowZero]

Thanks Talos, but I'm very good at keeping my drivers up to date. (Always good advice though.) I installed Nvidia's latest officially released set just a few days ago (81.98). HHmmm..... I wonder though, maybe it would be worth stepping back a version or two to test. Or even just redownloading and installing these ones just in case something went wrong. Now that I think about it I'm not sure if my problems started before or after I changed drivers, definitely something to look into. If I figure anything out I'll post back here again.

[Nem]

I'm playing on a laptop. I don't think it's a problem of driver. The problem started just after I installed the last patch. It didn't happen before (played for several months. I though it was a problem of video card cooling or something related to a virus. I've formated my computer and offered it a place where it will not overheat and a solid firewall/antivirus. Now I have to reinstall the stuff. I'll tell you if it works better. Good luck.

ps: I use player1 bug fixer. I didn't play that long with the vanilla version but it didn't freeze without it. However I don't think it makes the game crash.

[BelowZero]

Just an update; I reinstalled my soundcard driver (same version) just for the heck of it mostly, and I went to 3dguru and grabbed a "leaked" nvidia driver (v82.12). I haven't had much of a chance to really test it yet but a few hours the other night, which included two sieges on cities and one on a fort, several village battles, and a couple field battles, performed quite well so I'll hope that means I got it. I guess either the 81.98 nvidia drivers gave me trouble, or maybe my sound and/or video driver had somehow been corrupted in a very odd way. I've also realized that I have added a few things to my system lately which could potentially be to blame, the most likely being a video capture driver that was installed when I enabled that feature of my card.

[Nem]

Reinstalled windows, all drivers up to date. Kicked out Norton and reinstalled a new antivirus and a new firewall. Reinstalled BI and latest patch. No more trouble so far after 4h of game. I'll reinstall bug fixer later. If troubles come back with it I'll tell you (and player1 too).