Help - Hard Crash

[LordMachiavelli]

I recently installed the official 3.17 patch, and solver's unofficial patch. Since then, I can't go 10 turns without the whole computer crashing hard. Sometimes it happens trying to pull up the tech tree, but sometimes it's as simple as moving a worker into the next square. I don't have any problem starting right back up again after the last autosave, so uploading a save game won't even help. It crashes so hard (to black screen), that the power button won't even turn off the computer. The fans go off, but the power light stays on until I physically pull the plug out of the back of the computer. I tried a search for "3.17 crash", but I saw nothing of this magnitude. At first I thought it might have been the mod, but I tried with straight vanilla BTS, and a variety of graphics and sound settings. It's almost acting like it could be a dying 7600 video card, but the temp looks good before the crash, and no other application does this, even other games. I found an updated directX, but that didn't seem to solve anything.

Any ideas?? Help muchly appreciated!

LM

 

[GooglyBoogly]

Could it be faulty RAM? Once the game has run a bit, you start using more and more RAM until you reach the damaged sector(s) and then it falls over. I am sure you can find some freeware RAM checkers if you just google it.

 

[LordMachiavelli]

Thanks for the thought, but that didn't seem to help. I often run many applications at once, and I sometimes push my 1.5G RAM to 2.5, so I wasn't expecting much.

Nobody else had this problem?

Is there a way to contact EA support? I'm asking here (instead of googling it), because I don't know if they even respond to such things. Or is there a better route to tech support than through EA? The disk has been living so long in my drive that I can't seem to find the box right now. lol

LM

 

[GooglyBoogly]

There is a dedicated tech suport subforum here. I would strongly suggest you repost your issues there if you want dedicated tech support (all I can offer is a few general ideas)

 

[LordMachiavelli]

I reposted in the general tech support forum. Thank you.

LM