RTR Platinum Game freezes?

[MarcusAurelius]

My HP laptop (college = "make do attitude") is having problems with RTR Platinum. When I load the game, it goes through the intro and into the game and I selected optimized options for my computer so to keep it running smoothly and not pushing the limits. After a few minutes, the game randomly freezes and all computer activities freeze with it forcing me to restart the comp. I have never actually been able to start a custom battle or campaign so I dont know whether it would lockup in either of those. I get pretty close but still it freezes. No CTD, no black screen, no windows errors, just frozen solid.

The tech specs for my computer are as follows:
RTW v1.5 Sega 3CDs patched to 1.6 Platinum patched to 1.7 beta
2.8ghz Intel Mobile Pentium 4
28.1GB available harddrive space of 93.1 formatted total.
768MB RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 (with most recent Omega 3.8.252 drivers)

No unnecessary task manager programs running (except antivirus)

I have thought up a couple of reasons...
First, Virus scan could possibly be trying to update which would cause a problem (should I disable before playing?), I have a large external harddrive plugged into the usb port which, i suppose, could disrupt the game... C drive analysis said it was not needed to defrag but that is also questionable.

anyone have any thoughts? Specific driver updates I should look at?

Also, regular RTW gets CTDs when I try to load my saved game but thats not a problem, just an annoyance since I was cheating dirty anyway...

Much Thanks, I tried to be as specific as possible for the computer l33t hax0rs here though I am not l33t myself.

p.s. yes, the map reset program has been run, yes I saved the files in The Creative Assembly/Rome-Total War folder instead of Activision.

[JoeyJubb]

Two things that I can think of that may be a problem here -

1) Make sure you're running on AC power when playing games; a lot of mobile processors slow down when you're just on batteries in order to conserve power; open up system properties to see how fast your processor is actually going at that time. My 3ghz mobile processor slows to just 700mhz when on battery power!!

2) I know Omega drivers are nice and sometimes quite useful, but I should imagine HP have a special set of drivers for your integrated ATI graphics. I've dappled with the omega drivers before and at best you'll only ever see a 1 or 2 fps difference in games. For stability, it's best to uninstall your graphics drivers completely, then let windows update decide which drivers are best for you gfx.

As for your ideas..

When you're playing games that don't connect to the internet, it's generally a good idea to disable your antivirus programs because they can put a drain on many games because of the increased load on the harddrive.

Is RTW installed onto this large external drive? If it isn't, then just see if it works when it's unplugged. If it is, then disconnect as many other USB peripherals as possible, because they could be eating on your bandwidth, though things like mice and keyboards wouldn't make a difference.


Hope this helps!

Oh! Merry Christmas!!!

[MarcusAurelius]

Ok, I made a new user account in XP and played in that and it worked very well. Anyone know how I can tweak the settings of the game to play in my regular account? Registry editing? There must be something buggy or something out of order in my regular account settings.

[JoeyJubb]

Both of these accounts are administrator accounts right?

Editing the registry is akward at best but in this case I wouldn't know where to begin! You could try a complete manual uninstall of RTW, then your account might work with RTW. The sad fact is that most "pros" often reinstall windows once or twice a year to get rid of all the niggling issues like that.

My advice for now is do a manual uninstall, the directions for which I will try to find for you now.

This post links you to the manual uninstall guide.