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GameReplays.org»Hardware Forums»Dawn Of War 2 Discussion Forums»Dawn of War 2 Technical Support

Startup crash if I try to run DoW2 more than once per logon.

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# 1Celegus Oct 23 2009, 14:58 PM
I'm not sure exactly how to phrase this problem. For instance:

I turn my computer on.
I run DoW 2 and it works fine.
I close the game.
I start it again in the same "session".
Freezes on startup screen.

It works fine if I restart my computer again - just won't let me start the game twice, so I've just been leaving the game open almost all the time. Is this a known problem?

Also, the game tends to randomly lag. I obviously meet all the requirements (see dxdiag) and it even defaults to all high settings if I press auto-detect in the settings. Sometimes online works fine with my settings all on high, but I noticed it was frequently lagging the game ("Your video options are too high and are lagging the game" messages). So, I've been playing on bare minimum settings and even now it lags when I play online sometimes (1v1, 3v3, TLS equally as much) - yet sometimes it works fine. I turn off all non-essential programs before so it's not like it's a background task. My CPU workload is only at 2% at idle directly before I start the game. And yes, I've recently updated my video drivers to no avail.

Thanks in advance!


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# 2aramonkg Oct 24 2009, 17:40 PM
Well, try applying some of the suggestions found in this thread; Random crashes in DoW2.... I will reproduce the core of them here. If they solve the problem I will merge the topics.
  • Download and install AMD Dual-Core Optimizer Version 1.1.4
  • Change DoW 2 processor affinity settings. To do that...
    1. Launch DoW 2
    2. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del and get into the Task Manager
    3. Go to the 'Processes' tab
    4. Locate DoW2.exe and right click on it
    5. Go affinity and uncheck one of your CPU's
      Attached Image

Lastly, make sure you upgrade to Windows XP® Service Pack 3.

This post has been edited by aramonkg: Oct 24 2009, 17:48 PM
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# 3Celegus Oct 24 2009, 21:46 PM
I tried all of that, and the game seems to work fine - for 5 minutes. On low, medium, or high settings it runs flawlessly, and then completely locks up after 5 minutes of playing. Tried it on TLS, 1v1, and 3v3. After about 5 minutes, it starts looping the last played sound clip and I have to restart. It's never done this before I updated to SP3 and ran the AMD DCO. Any suggestions? sad.gif
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# 4Celegus Oct 24 2009, 23:12 PM
Well I uninstalled the AMD DCO and Windows SP3 - and it still does it. I tried to play Mass Effect to see how that runs, and it stutters and freezes for a few seconds, comes back and does it again. DoW 2 is still doing the same thing of running fine and then completely freezing. I have no clue what to do now...
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# 5aramonkg Oct 25 2009, 07:23 AM
Hmm, ye, I was going to ask you to test other games as well, but seems you did that already! Well, with the added information of the behaviour of Mass Effect I would say it is probably an overheating issue.

If you have any software utility running that dynamically sets the fan speed, usually they come with the motherboard drivers CD/DVD, make sure you set them to max performance or disable them completely. Sometimes this setting is found in the BIOS. Consult your motherboard's manual for information on how to access the BIOS and locate the specific setting.

In addition to that, check the interior of your PC for increased amount of dust, especially near the CPU and graphics card fan. Exercise caution when and if cleaning is needed. There are compressed air cleaning kits on the market that are pretty safe to use.

I would also consider running the accompanying motherboard hardware monitoring utility that would show CPU temperatures just to make sure. If one is not available, consider downloading and running SpeedFan and/or GPU-Z, for CPU and GPU monitoring respectively.
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# 6Celegus Oct 25 2009, 15:25 PM
Actually that's what I thought of right after I posted that yesterday. I dusted out my case with some canned air and made sure all of the fans were still running. I tested the temperature after this and each core maxed out at only around 45 degrees while running Mass Effect after it started stuttering. That's still a fairly safe temp, right? I'm really not sure what else it could be.

Edit: I downloaded GPU-Z to make sure it wasn't the video card overheating and it never made it past 35 degrees while "playing" a game.

This post has been edited by Celegus: Oct 25 2009, 15:52 PM
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# 7aramonkg Oct 26 2009, 15:35 PM
Have you considered the possibility that your hard disk drive may have been performing poorly? It would not be that noticeable in normal day-to-day desktop activities but it could surface up in games that require huge amounts of data to be moved to memory.

Regardless, here is something else you could try so that we figure out whether it is a DoW2 related issue or rather a system wide one.
  1. Download and extract ProcDump to a folder of your choice.
  2. Open a command prompt window by selecting Start->All Programs->Accessories->Command Prompt.
  3. Change to the folder you extracted ProcDump in by entering the command cd followed by the said folder, in the example, C:\Program Files (x86)\SysinternalsSuite.
    CODE

    cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\SysinternalsSuite"
  4. Now launch DoW 2, wait till it hangs and then Alt+TAB to the Command Prompt window
  5. Enter the command
    CODE

    procdump dow2
  6. A file will be created in that same folder named dow2.dmp. Compress that file to a ZIP, RAR, etc. archive and attach it to your post.


This post has been edited by aramonkg: Oct 26 2009, 15:36 PM
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# 8Celegus Oct 26 2009, 15:47 PM
I'll give that a shot then, but I'm not sure if I'd be able to use Dawn of War 2. Out of all the games I've tried, DoW2 is the only one that completely locks up the system after 5 minutes where the rest just get all choppy but I'm still able to alt-tab. Would a different game give usable results?
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# 9aramonkg Oct 26 2009, 16:12 PM
QUOTE(Celegus @ Oct 26 2009, 18:47 PM) *

I'll give that a shot then, but I'm not sure if I'd be able to use Dawn of War 2. Out of all the games I've tried, DoW2 is the only one that completely locks up the system after 5 minutes where the rest just get all choppy but I'm still able to alt-tab. Would a different game give usable results?

Oh, I thought you were able to Alt-TAB during that DoW 2 hang... So you have to to a hard reset when that happens? As for other games, no, not really, because the procedure I detailed actually takes advantage of the hang...

You said you were using the latest version of the graphics card driver, which is 9.10 for ATI. Try downgrading it to a previous version. Also make you sure you run this DirectX® web installer.
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# 10Celegus Oct 26 2009, 22:51 PM
I went back to the 9.8 drivers and ran the directx thing. Still the same exact thing and had to hard reset. I've been testing it in TLS so as to not completely ruin my TS rating and win %, and as weird as this sounds, it seems to freeze as soon as I see the Tyranid Warriors in Wave 5. I can kill the termagaunts fine at first but as soon as I scroll over and see the Warriors on-screen is when it locks up. Or if I wait by the gate that spawns the Warriors, it freezes as soon as they come out. Really weird, not sure if that could be related or not.
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# 11aramonkg Oct 27 2009, 22:09 PM
Well, the game crashing when a Warrior appears could be related to the texture file of the warrior being corrupt or the place where it is saved on your hard disk malfunctioning.

Try downloading this Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostic and run an 'EXTENDED TEST' on your hard drive. Well, if everything goes well, at least we get to rule that part of your computer being responsible for these errors.
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# 12Celegus Nov 6 2009, 21:09 PM
That didn't show anything either. post-13661-1143531603.gif But my wife remembered about the system restore function and I rolled everything back to 10/23, the day before everything went nuts. And it works fine! My best guess is that one of the Windows updates broke it as there were about 50 updates listed in the control panel that it installed prior to installing SP3 (I rarely ever update Windows, now I probably never will again). And since the only thing I really cared about was getting my computer back to how it was in the first place so that I could play games again, that's exactly what system restore does best. I just never knew that it existed. So, thanks again for all your help and suggestions but it's back to normal now!
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