SC2 Lockup

Hi Guys,

I am having issues with SC2, at any point in time while playing (generally 10, 15 minutes into a game) the graphics will start to go wild and a whole lot of red hash-looking spots will tear across the screen and locks the computer completely, sometimes the sound loops, sometimes it goes off and there's just a black screen with red dots left.

I have consulted the SC2 FAQ guides on lock ups but nothing has worked so far.

I have updated all drivers, motherboard, gpu and even network drivers.
WinXP is up to date as well as anti malware software.

I am frustrated as I can usually fix these sorts of problems on my own.

I would appreciate any help there is.

My comp setup:
WinXP
2gig RAM
8800GT 1g
500gb HDD
Swapfile set to 2 - 4gb

 

Hi Halo,

My apologies I should have mentioned Starcraft 2
Neither the CPU / GPU are overclocked.

Temp readings from being idle (using speedfan)

Cores ~ 38C
GPU ~ 52C
System ~ 34C
Ambient ~ 44C

(not sure what Ambient is).

Funny thing is I play Need For Speed SHIFT and Call of Duty 4, both of which are fairly graphically intense and have no problems at all.

I should also mention Starcraft 2 is fully patched.

 

Thanks for the reply.

I do have the latest Nvidia drivers installed:
Driver version 6.14.12.5896
Driver date 9/07/2010

I downloaded these drivers around a week ago.

Should also mention I got them from the following package:

258.96_desktop_winxp_32bit_english_whql

 

My first thoughts also.

Fase, do you have another graphics card to test with? Or could you borrow one?

 

Apart from buying one, no I don't.

It seems strange that it's only this game which has this effect, as I indicated before I don't have any problem with other games.

 

Has this happened since you updated to the latest nVidia drivers? Was it ok before that?

 

I updated my nVidia drivers as was suggested by the SC2 installer, it said if I dont that I may have compadibility issues.
I've only had the game a little over a week, so I havent tried it on older drivers, not even sure if I have them on my pc anywhere.

 

Blizzard has not always been getting along well with nVidia, let's just leave it at that...

Two question, first is, when you updated your video driver did you make sure to fully remove the old one first? If you didn't, the old one may still be on there somewhere and cause conflicts. Use Driver Sweeper or something similar to completely remove the video river and then reinstall the latest one in Safe Mode. Video drivers can be such a pain sometimes...

Second question is, if you take all your in-game video settings down to the barest minimum, does the problem go away, get better, get worse...? If it goes away, increase them slowly, one by one, one step at a time, until you get to the point where the problem comes back, and scale back one step from there.

 

Thanks for the reply.

First question, I didn't originally uninstall my old video drivers before installing the new ones. I have used driversweeper, following your instructions, uninstalling the nvidia related drivers and software followed by restarting into safe mode and installing them from there.

After doing so, I lowered all the graphic settings to a minimum in SC2, I just played for about 5 minutes and it locked as usual, probably a little quicker than usual this time.

 

So it has nothing to do with your drivers or with the settings in-game. That's too bad, that would have been so easy to fix...

No matter, let's move on. Next question, have you tried to completely uninstall the game and then reinstall it and see if that makes a difference? Back up your saves first! If you haven't, consider turning off all your anti-virus and firewalls and other security software for the reinstall, to prevent them from interfering with installing the game.

 

I've uninstalled an reinstalled a few times, I've done this a few times due to the lock ups and the potential to corrupt parts of the game (saves aren't an issue as I've only had it a little while )

I'm using windows security essentials, so I'll uninstall that and turn off the firewall, then reinstall SC2 and see what happens.

No other security software is running that I'm aware of.

 

MSE is not exactly resource-heavy, in fact a lot of other forums I hang out in recommend it for gaming. Turn it off for the reinstall anyway, just to make sure.

I just noticed that when you posted your specs in the first post in this thread you didn't include the CPU. What processor do you have?

 

I have an Intel Core2 DUO (wolfdale) E8200 I think it is.

 

Thanks. Next big question then... how up to date is your XP install? The reason I ask is that Blizzard lists XP as a minimum for running the game, but they do recommend Vista or 7. Also look at how up to date your DirectX is.

 

XP is up to date, I have it set to automatically download updates then I choose when to install them (nothing is outstanding at this point). Downloaded the latest version of DirectX as it was suggested for the game.

Think I downloaded the SDK package...I don't recall the directX site giving me an option to download anything else.

 

I did some digging, while waiting for the coffee to finish brewing... hopefully I will still be co-herent. LOL

Are you over-clocking the video card? If you are, take off the over-clock and see if that makes a difference. You can also try to change the CPU core affinity to use only one of them. (You do that in Task Manager. Ctrl-Alt-Del, right-click on the process sc2, go down to "set affinity", and uncheck one of the cores. You can change it back later if it makes no difference.)

Do you have any other RAM you can test the game with, just to rule that out? If not, you can try using your 2GB one by one, but the game probably won't run very well on that amount.

 

I'm not O'Cing my video card or anything else on the system.

I've got 2x 1gb sticks so I can always just pull one out, but I've used a mem test utility from microsoft, I ran the tests for about an hour and the RAM came back as fine.

Will try setting the CPU to use 1 core later today.

 

So I tried just using 1 core for SC2, didn't make a difference :-(

Would me pulling the RAM sticks out 1 by 1 and testing them be worthwhile considering I used RAM testing software?

For some reason I keep thinking that its the nVidia drivers causing the problem, with other games I can hear my system's fans really start getting loud, when playing SC2 the sound is quieter, almost idle noise levels.

 

Could very well be the driver... we've tried almost everything else. I'm not on an nVidia system at the moment, but I think they have a setting somewhere that lets you control fan speed. Try setting it to 100% and see if that makes a difference. If you can't find that setting in the nVidia control panel, Riva Tuner will let you control the fan speed as well as monitor temperatures.

 

Well now, I got though an online game, it would have been maybe 15 minutes long without a hitch after using Riva and upping the video card fan up to 100%

Will play some more tomorrow and hopefully fully test it out...

 

SC2's behavior in combination with the fan sounds (or lack of fan sounds) points towards the card over-heating from the fan not doing its job. Here's hoping we're on the right track!

 

Had 1 lock up after about 15 minutes, I noticed that the fan didn't seem quite as loud as it should have been, I think Riva may have reverted back to "system controlled" fan operation and it therefore must have overheated again.

This time around I clicked apply AND ok, Riva seemed to disappear but the fan was still going @ 100%, had a 22 minute intense game and all was good.

I tested the game once again with another lengthy game, no dramas.

Could we conclude that it is the game's fault or the driver? and what could be done about it as a proper fix rather than using the current work-around?

 

It may be the game's fault. It has some wonky stuff going on here and there.

Post all your graphics settings, either copy-paste or link to an uploaded screen shot (Flickr or Photbucket or somesuch) and we'll go from there. My better half runs SC2 on an nvidia card and no issues... this is definitely salvagable.

 

Last night had a game for about half an hour and it locked up on me arrgh! So the work around isn't 100%.

Anyhow, by graphics settings do you mean from the SC2 options or elsewhere?

 

From the SC2 options.

Did you follow/notice the huge uproar about the "card-killing" bug in SC2?

I put "card-killing" in " " because it only kills cheap low-budget cards that would have died from working hard on anything anyway... basically the game forgets to cap the frame rate and the card goes 100% and becomes too hot. A good card shuts down before the heat damages it, which it sounds like yours is doing.

What brand is the card, out of curiosity?

 

I did notice something like that, there are quite a few people now complaining about similar issues which I'm facing.

The brand of my card...it's a generic one (I cannot remember), not Asus, Gigabyte or MSI...the better known brands.

The below imageshack link is a screenshot of my SC2 graphics settings (All are "recommended" apart from shadows which is recommended as low and I have it as medium...I am unable to change it to low as the option doesn't appear there.

http://img718.imageshack.us/i/57996742.jpg/

 

Very quick first impression: Lower Physics and Effects to Medium, and check the box next to V-sync, see how that goes.

More details in roughly 24 hours when I'm not exhausted from a 6-day work week... only morons try to give advise when they can't think straight. :zzz

 

Thanks for you efforts Mimsy, enjoy your rest.

Did what you suggested, didn't work, it locked up after 10 minutes :-(

Soon I'll have to buy the game as I'm only playing on a guest pass right now, it expires tomorrow arrgh!

 

So as far as I can tell, after going through the thread again, we have ruled out pretty much everything that can cause your game to crash after running for 10-20 minutes. It's not heat, the fan keeps running, and it doesn't matter if you lower your in-game settings or not. The game acts as if your system can barely run it, although your hardware is above the minimum specifications.

That leaves your software, and we have ruled out the driver. However, your operating system is listed in the minimum requirements, while Blizzard recommends Vista or 7. What that means to me, now that I'm a bit more awake, is that SC2 can in theory run in DirectX9, but it prefers to run on DirectX 10 or higher. If that's the case, you might never be able to solve this, since XP can't run DirectX 10.

Get the the latest version of DirectX 9 and install it, and see how the game runs now. If that doesn't fix it though, you might have to choose between living with the crashes or buying a new OS.

 

Looks like I have the latest version of DirextX 9.0C installed already :-(

Well, not all is lost, I do have an academic version of Win 7 (I'm still a uni student)...all I need to get is another hard drive, then I can install it and have xp + 7...but that wont be for at least another week or so.

 

If you do decide to go that route, please let us know how it turns out.

And frankly, if you have the chance to get a student license of 7 you should take the chance. It's a great OS.

 

Well I have windows 7 up and running, all patched!
Ran SC2, 3 or 4 minutes in and it locked up :-S

 

Yep, just confirmed it...exactly the same problem as on XP :-(

 

How very annoying.

Once again back to your video card... which should be enough to run SC2, but the way it's acting it's not. If you can, borrow a video card from someone and switch it out. That will tell us for sure if it's hardware or software.

 

Hi Mimsy,

Well, today I did the one thing I should have probably tried waaaay back...lowering the resolution!!!

It works...sure its not Max but its playable, no crashes :-D

Guess my card isn't exactly cut out for the max res.

Looks like a permanent workaround as I played it for about 2 hours straight today :-D


Thanks for all your support!

 

Hooray! :highfive

Congratulations on finding a solution, and thanks for posting it here so others can see it as well.