Strange freezing problem

**madjoints** · December 30, 2012, 07:25 AM

I used to have MII installed on this same computer with the same hardware with no problems. Then I stumbled on a semi-rare bug Intel SSDs have that can wipe out your OS and programs if it loses power unexpectedly, so I had to reinstall Win7.

Now when load a saved game in MII (with mods or vanilla), Windows freezes completely within the first 5 minutes of play. Never instantly - it always takes 3-5 minutes before it freezes and I have to power off the computer manually and restart. The weird part is that when I try to load it the second time, it always plays fine. I can go for as many hours as I want without a crash or freeze or anything. If I Alt-Tab out of it and come back to it, it'll still be fine. But if I close out the game, go to work or whatever, and then come back home and load it up again, it freezes Windows. And then I'm forced to reboot, and afterwards it works fine.

What the hell? This isn't some kind of one-time or occasional thing, either. I've loaded Kingdoms at least 15-20 times since reinstalling and I get the exact same behavior every time.

Anyone have any ideas? I'm running
AMD Phenom II X3 720 CPU
Radeon HD 6850 1GB
Win 7 x64
All drivers up to date.

**irishron** · December 30, 2012, 07:35 AM

Memory glitch in a cache file.
I wouldn't be surprised if it's the one the SSD uses since it's already been causing problems.

**madjoints** · December 30, 2012, 08:27 AM

Is there any way I can fix that?

**madjoints** · December 30, 2012, 08:29 AM

Also, I haven't had any freezing problems with any other games or programs.

**irishron** · December 30, 2012, 08:33 AM

Have you tried reinstalling the game since this power hiccup?
What other programs are we discussing?

**madjoints** · December 30, 2012, 08:40 AM

No, I haven't tried a reinstall. I think I'll do that next. I've been able to play various Steam games - Just Cause 2, Shogun 2, Empire, without problems. And I just remembered that MII is actually installed to one of my regular hard drives. It's not even on the SSD. Thanks for the help. I'll try redownloading from Steam and reinstalling later today.

**Krάtos** · December 30, 2012, 04:40 PM

A freeze usually happens when a hardware component hangs or stops responding so make sure that in your fresh copy of windows every driver is properly installed and updated. Sometimes new drivers also conflict with an old game. Maybe it's the CPU. Try changing the affinity to only one core when playing M2TW as this game only utilizes one core, so perhaps this new AMD processor of yours is doing some drama now...

A system may also give BSODs or freezes if the CPU or GPU is overclocked and the game is not coping well with it.

**madjoints** · December 31, 2012, 08:01 AM

Well, I reinstalled and it's still doing it. That just seems so weird that it always does it the first time, but never does it the second time after rebooting. Something that consistent and only particular to one program makes me think it's not a hardware problem, but who knows? Drivers are all installed and up-to-date - and most, if not all, are the same versions that were on there before reinstalling Windows. Nothing is overclocked, and heat hasn't been an issue even with far more GPU-hungry games. I'll give processor affinity a shot, but this is starting to seem like one of those bizarre problems that nobody else seems to have and are a nightmare to track down. At least it's not a huge inconvenience and I can still play the game.