Intermittent Crashes Sometimes Ctrl-Alt-Del'able

[guyinco6nito]

Hello,

I thoroughly enjoy Unreal Tournament 3, but it crashes (seemingly) randomly and it's really hurting the experience.

I will be playing Warfare online and anywhere from 5 to 45 minutes in the game will lock up. It stops moving at a certain frame and will not recover. Sometimes the music and sound effects will continue, in those cases the game can be ended by Control-Alt-Delete. Other times the audio stops at the exact second as the video, and a hard reboot is the only option.

I'm able to play Unreal Tournament 2004 for several hours without crashing, and after ctrl-alt-del'ing some UT3 crashes, I see that my video card is no more than 45 degrees celsius. I'm stumped.

Here is my hardware information:
Asus P5K-VM Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750
WINTEC AMPO 2GB DDR2 800
Sapphire ATI HD 2600 XT
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro
A recent Installation of Windows XP Pro SP2

I'm willing to try any ideas (including reformatting) to fix this problem so I can play the game without fear. Please advise!
Thanks,
-guyinco6nito

[utDigi]

Have you tried this yet?

http://utforums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=590086

[guyinco6nito]

Not Yet.

When I get home I'll try re-installing DirectX, disabling startup items, and disabling OpenAL.
I'll post back after testing (testing isn't too bad when it's playing this game!)

_______________
guyinco6nito

[guyinco6nito]

DirectX and OpenAL Updates Fail

I updated DirectX and OpenAL to the latest available versions and restarted.

Playing Warfare I had just crushed the enemy orb carrier under my manta when I got out to link-build the enemy prime node. When I walked back towards the manta I continued walking forwards after I reached it for a fraction of a second, then pressed 'e' and the game crashed.

I'll now try disabling OpenAL.
-guyinco6nito

[guyinco6nito]

OpenAL Not the Problem

I disabled OpenAL and the game frozeas I drove a Hellbender into a wall.
I was able to ctrl-alt-del and found the UT3.exe was using 99% of my processor and 600 megabytes of ram.

Not sure what to try next.

Any Ideas?
-guyinco6nito

[utDigi]

After changing settings in the .ini save and make the file read only.

Try setting to what's showen below in the UTEngine.ini:

[SystemSettings]
OnlyStreamInTextures=True
OneFrameThreadLag=False

If that doesn't work then try this next in the UTEngine.ini:

[Engine.ISVHacks]
DisableATITextureFilterOptimizationChecks=False
PumpWindowMessagesWhenRenderThreadStalled=True

[guyinco6nito]

Promising Initial Results

I tried the first 2 changes you suggested, namely:

-Change C:\Program Files\UT3\Engine\Config\BaseEngine.ini to read-enabled (not read only).
And then inside that file change:
-OnlyStreamInTextures=True
-OneFrameThreadLag=False

Then set the file back to read-only. When I launched the game it told me I needed to rebuild UTEngine.ini. I said yes, and then was able to play for 2 complete rounds without crashing. That has happened before, so the problem might still persist. I'll play some more tomorrow.

Thanks, and have good ones,
-guyinco6nito

[guyinco6nito]

Negative. Proceeding

My computer crashed while playing Dusk while I was on a hoverboard trying to enter the gun seat of the goliath.

Now trying your second suggestion, modifying the latter 2 variables in E:\ProgFiles\UT3\Engine\Config.

___________________
guyinco6nito

[guyinco6nito]

No Dice

No more than 5 minutes in I was in a manta on the way to the enemies core, when my manta was destroyed by an AvRil (Longbow), and the game froze, requiring a restart.

I'll be reformatting tomorrow, any advice on a good order of installations could be useful.
have good ones,
-guyinco6nito

[utDigi]

These changes need to be made in the "My Documents\My Games\Unreal Tournament 3\UTGame\Config" folder not the "Program Files" folder ...

And the file your looking for is "UTEngine.ini"

[guyinco6nito]

Scratch That

I've fixed it!

I had to turn down World Detail and Texture Detail to 2!
Since then the game runs more smoothly and doesn't crash after hours of play.

Seems the game was pushing my HD 2600 XT too far, and rather than lower the FPS, it crashed it.
Thanks for the help, and if you have problems, turn it down!


Have good onces,
-guyinco6nito

[guyinco6nito]

Scratch THAT

I just reformatted, installed UT3, set it to 2, and it crashed 10 seconds in.

I would like to update DirectX (still running 9), but the site it inexplicably down, with a Microsoft Sharepoint error page :-(

-guyinco6nito

[Fearzone]

My problems were exactly the same.

Try this:

http://utforums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=587511

I haven't crashed since. Apparently there is a "memory leak" which these two .ini tweaks corrected at least for me and several others.

[guyinco6nito]

Thank you, but I've reached stability

Hi,

It's funny, since that first crash I last posted about, the game has been completely stable on my reformatted machine.

Turning the World Detail and Texture Detail to 2 fixed my crashing problem, and improved my fps to a near-constant 62.

Thank you for the help, but unless I could help Epic by testing something, I'm considering the problem solved.
-guyinco6nito

[EduardvalX]

Hey

Hey incognito i had the same problem,and i solved it reducing FOV to 80 and the screen percentage to 50,with these settings you can move up in resolution to compensate graphics

Leave world & texture details on 2

Post results!

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