qolelis on 3/3/2011 at 11:21
I have now scanned my machine with a number of different antimalware software and well, the ever so overzealous Ad-Aware did of course find something. Probably a false positive (the other scanners did not report the same files), but it was really old stuff that I have never used and really have no use of, so I let Ad-Aware delete it.
Well, that's that, no known malware on my machine, so those can't affect Thief/DromEd anymore.
I went through the list of running services and disabled the once I could disable, to squeeze out some extra juice. I have also replaced some background-running memory hungry processes with less memory hungry processes.
Next up is testing memory use by a) freeing up as much as possible and then try to start Thief/DromEd and b) opening a lot of stuff and then try to start Thief/DromEd.
Edit:
I don't think running out of RAM has anything to do with it; I managed to get memory usage down to as low as 141 MB and DromEd still refused to start. The firewall has nothing to do with it either and neither does maxres.
Right now DromEd refuses to start after a reboot, but if I choose to run it as the current user and with "Protect my computer..." checked (yep, checked this time), DromEd starts just fine. One of the Thief 2 executables sometimes run (I once made it run by running it as admin, which earlier made it crash). The way to make things running keeps changing... :(
Oh well, at least I now have a pretty clean computer.
Edit 2:
I only need to run DromEd as the current user and check "Protect my computer..." once after a reboot. The next time I can run it normally and it still starts.
qolelis on 5/3/2011 at 01:36
I have kind of given up on getting everything stable, so now I'm just learning to accept that DromEd crashes frequently.
qolelis on 6/3/2011 at 23:12
(
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=133946#t3button)
The above tip made me check the device manager and, lo and behold, I had two entries for my mouse, so I deleted them both and installed the drivers that came with the mouse. After that I think that DromEd actually became less unstable (before it could crash just by selecting a brush with the mouse). I haven't been able to check the upwards drifting in the actual game yet, but I'm hoping that that one has been solved now.
Edit:
I also disabled Game Detection (and application-specific settings) for my mouse in Logitech's SetPoint software.
qolelis on 13/3/2011 at 15:08
The ritual to start DromEd now is as follows:
* Doubleclick the DromEd 2 executable with ddfix 1.5.11 and no compatibility mode.
If DromEd starts, then go to step 3.
* Set compatibility mode to Windows 2000 and try again.
If DromEd still crashes, go to step 5.
* Try opening the latest saved mission file.
If DromEd crashes, go to step 1. Then try to open an earlier saved mission file when you have DromEd running again. Repeat until you find one that loads and then try to open the latest saved mission file again. This time it usually works.
* Game mode now works fine. Start editing and check things out in game mode. If I am lucky, DromEd will now allow me to work for several hours before game mode stops working (black screen or desktop showing through). If i am not lucky, game mode will stop working a lot sooner. Game mode will eventually stop working and when it does, then kill DromEd via the task manager and go to step 1.
* Start DromEd in win 98 compatibility mode. This usually works, but now I cannot enter game mode (black screen). I can still edit my mission, though. I can also usually open a mission file without DromEd crashing. DromEd always crashes when I close it in win 98 compatibility mode. Sometimes DromEd also crashes when processing a mission in win 98 compatibility mode.
* Try again from step 1 if you need to enter game mode.
Then we have the issue of DromEd getting minimized when losing focus after entering and leaving game mode. This sometimes even happens when I open a DromEd properties dialog. I know that using D3DWindower is supposed to solve this, but I haven't yet been able to get that to function at all - which comes as no surprise, though, considering how involved it is to even start DromEd normally.
qolelis on 2/5/2011 at 12:11
I have finally made some progress in finding out what's wrong...
While looking at something else I stumbled upon this thread:
(
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=110694)
My lg.ini originally (and per default) looked like this:
Code:
[Allocator]
Heap=0
MultiPool=0
After reading the above thread I learned that these are not the settings that DromEd wants to use by default, so I changed my lg.ini to this (I also wanted to test the other available settings):
Code:
;[AppCore]
;MakeAllCodeWritable=0
[WinShell]
MT=0
DisableInactiveBlock=0
DisableWindowsPrintScreen=0
ShowCursor=0
;GDIOriginX=320
;GDIOriginY=0
;ShellKind=0
;StrictGDIPalette=0
[Threading]
Enabled=1
[Allocator]
Heap=1
MultiPool=1
Timings=0
Debug=2
DumpUnfreed=0
MemoryCap=2147483647
;UseExternal=0
[Res]
ARQ=1
I added all mentioned settings for convenience, but commented some of them out for later testing. After changing my lg.ini, DromEd no longer crashes when I quit it :) It turned out that having
MultiPool set to zero (0) makes DromEd crash (on my system) when quitting.
I will test more later - and hopefully I can fix my other problems too.
nickie on 2/5/2011 at 20:56
Really glad to know you're making progress!!!
qolelis on 2/5/2011 at 21:38
:)
I don't know what MultiPool=1 does, but it works. I have tested more now: going in and out of game mode, doing complete processing etc and DromEd seems to be stable. I'm not one to cheer prematurely, but I'm actually a bit excited.
I will test Thief2.exe (and 1/G) later.
Yandros on 3/5/2011 at 03:01
\O/
qolelis on 3/5/2011 at 12:04
Thief2.exe seems stable too: I Ctrl+Alt+Shift+End:ed my way through it twice and it didn't crash. I could also switch between running DromEd.exe and Thief2.exe without crashing. D3DWindower works too. Fog and sky works with the latest drivers (and latest ddfix).
The only thing that still isn't working is T1 and TG, but I guess downgrading to older graphics drivers would solve that. I cannot risk trying that right now, though, so that will have to wait. T2 and D2 was the most important to fix.
Next up is cleaning and setting everything up as it was before with DarkLoader and all the different T2 folders - and hopefully things will stay stable.
Nameless Voice on 3/5/2011 at 12:20
So, the question remains: how did that stuff end up in your lg.ini in the first place?
