Game Crashes on PC when entering places

[randallman]

You have a Geforce in another machine and you haven't slammed that thing in there yet?  Sheesh.  I have to wait for one to arrive via FedEx to see if that fixes my (probable ATI related) issues.  My backup machine is AGP so the card from that won't work in this one (PCI-E).  Just do it and let us know if it works.  If it does then we have a definite culprit for some of our woes.

 

You do have a point there. I should slap the TI4400 in and see what happens. If it still crashes, we know that there's even more deeply seated problems (perhaps related to AMD-based CPU's and chipsets)

 

I'll report my findings here.

 

--Randall

 

Unfortunately, the FAN on my TI4400 has ceased to work. As such, it would not be a reliable test. I think I'll just have to leave it in my linux box where it does mostly 2d drawing only...

 

Why did I ever buy an ATI? It seems to me that about 50% of the games I play dont work with the dang thing...

[Corrodias]

 

I suffer from the 'crashes when entering cars sometimes, and crashes when entering buildings frequently' bug.  I most frequently crash when entering that pizza place towards the beginning of the game (and subsequently, timeline in the game is irrelevant to the crashing).  I've even crashed when starting the game before I show up on the screen in CJ's house (save location).

 

    To define the crashes, the system just STOPS.  It stops responding to ICMP pings from an adjacent computer on my LAN, etc...etc...

randallman here has defined pretty much the problem i'm having. by the look of this thread, this is a reasonably common and unstoppable (?) error. i hope rockstar gets around to fixing this soon. i was only 80% convinced to buy this game anyway, even under the assumption that it would work perfectly.

 

but yeah, that description is just about perfect. my system sometimes freezes COMPLETELY while the screen is fading in after i enter a building. i can't even toggle the numlock on my keyboard.

 

i have a similar CPU, a gigabyte motherboard, an audigy sound card (accel is set on "basic" anyway), 768mb of ram, an nvidia gf4, windows xp pro, and dx 9.0c.

 

i should mention that i have no problems that are in any way similar in any of the other games i own and play, including several recent titles, gta3, and gtavc. one thing i don't have is service pack 1, but seeing as that causes no trouble with other games, there is no excuse for that to cause this.

Edited June 13, 2005 by Corrodias

[e*master]

I suffer from the 'crashes when entering cars sometimes, and crashes when entering buildings frequently' bug.  I most frequently crash when entering that pizza place towards the beginning of the game (and subsequently, timeline in the game is irrelevant to the crashing).  I've even crashed when starting the game before I show up on the screen in CJ's house (save location).

 

    To define the crashes, the system just STOPS.  It stops responding to ICMP pings from an adjacent computer on my LAN, etc...etc...

randallman here has defined pretty much the problem i'm having. by the look of this thread, this is a reasonably common and unstoppable (?) error. i hope rockstar gets around to fixing this soon. i was only 80% convinced to buy this game anyway, even under the assumption that it would work perfectly.

 

but yeah, that description is just about perfect. my system sometimes freezes COMPLETELY while the screen is fading in after i enter a building. i can't even toggle the numlock on my keyboard.

 

i have a similar CPU, a gigabyte motherboard, an audigy sound card (accel is set on "basic" anyway), 768mb of ram, an nvidia gf4, windows xp pro, and dx 9.0c.

 

i should mention that i have no problems that are in any way similar in any of the other games i own and play, including several recent titles, gta3, and gtavc. one thing i don't have is service pack 1, but seeing as that causes no trouble with other games, there is no excuse for that to cause this.

I submitted this error to take2 tech support. I am guessing the more people reports this (who have registered the game) can expect a patch to be made.

 

I am not suprised though. GTA 3 and Vice city BOTH needed patches for Video problems (I think audio problems as well). I believe it took them 2 weeks to make a patch. For now I am playing the game as much as possible but those damn blue screens and crashing when I enter places or even trying to save a game are really taking the fun factor out of this game. I never played the PS2 version because I wanted to saviour the occasion for a PC version.

[Sinesis]

I have the same problem, only the game crashes to desktop after 1-2 minutes of gameplay. I get on the bike, ride down the railroad and then BLING, it crashes with an error asking me to send eror report or don't send.. you get what i mean.

 

But i have a totally different setup then anyone else here.

My Spec is:

 

MSI NEO 875P Motherboard

Intel Pentium 4 3.2ghz

MSI Geforce 6800 128mb AGP 8x

1GB Crucial RAM

300GB Seagate S-ATA Hardisk (running the game)

 

And now the real difference:

M-Audio Audiophile 24\96 (Studio Soundcard) w\ newest drivers.

 

Since all of you complaing about Realtek drivers etc.. i have the same problem with a totally different soundcard. I have tried DXDIAG Hardware Acceleration to NONE etc. nothing helps. And all of you say that you have AMD chipsets.. well i have Intel with the same problem.

 

(bougth the game.. btw)

 

[david_again]

I had some freeze problems too. I may have a (quick and dirty) sollution.

When your game completely freezes, try to return to windows by pressing the windows button (or control + alt + del / or alt + tab). Then when returned to windows, return to GTA SA again, and for some strange reason the game continues. Worked several times for me, although I hope for a patch fromRockstar to solve this.

[randallman]

I have the same problem, only the game crashes to desktop after 1-2 minutes of gameplay. I get on the bike, ride down the railroad and then BLING, it crashes with an error asking me to send eror report or don't send.. you get what i mean.

 

But i have a totally different setup then anyone else here.

My Spec is:

 

MSI NEO 875P Motherboard

Intel Pentium 4 3.2ghz

MSI Geforce 6800 128mb AGP 8x

1GB Crucial RAM

300GB Seagate S-ATA Hardisk (running the game)

 

And now the real difference:

M-Audio Audiophile 24\96 (Studio Soundcard) w\ newest drivers.

 

Since all of you complaing about Realtek drivers etc.. i have the same problem with a totally different soundcard. I have tried DXDIAG Hardware Acceleration to NONE etc. nothing helps. And all of you say that you have AMD chipsets.. well i have Intel with the same problem.

 

(bougth the game.. btw)

 

No, you appear to be describing a totally different problem that has the same end result - game doesnt play That just means that this game is FULL of bugs

 

Sorry,

--Randall

[randallman]

I had some freeze problems too. I may have a (quick and dirty) sollution.

When your game completely freezes, try to return to windows by pressing the windows button (or control + alt + del / or alt + tab). Then when returned to windows, return to GTA SA again, and for some strange reason the game continues. Worked several times for me, although I hope for a patch fromRockstar to solve this.

 

Sorry, but the few of us here that are actually describing the same 'freezing when entering places or cars from time to time' lock COMPLETELY. The computer fails to respond at all. No matter of keyboard or network based input will cause the system to become responsive again. As such, alt-tab will not work, nor will the windows key.

 

--Randall

[randallman]

I have the same problem, only the game crashes to desktop after 1-2 minutes of gameplay. I get on the bike, ride down the railroad and then BLING, it crashes with an error asking me to send eror report or don't send.. you get what i mean.

 

But i have a totally different setup then anyone else here.

My Spec is:

 

MSI NEO 875P Motherboard

Intel Pentium 4 3.2ghz

MSI Geforce 6800 128mb AGP 8x

1GB Crucial RAM

300GB Seagate S-ATA Hardisk (running the game)

 

And now the real difference:

M-Audio Audiophile 24\96 (Studio Soundcard) w\ newest drivers.

 

Since all of you complaing about Realtek drivers etc.. i have the same problem with a totally different soundcard. I have tried DXDIAG Hardware Acceleration to NONE etc. nothing helps. And all of you say that you have AMD chipsets.. well i have Intel with the same problem.

 

(bougth the game.. btw)

 

No, you appear to be describing a totally different problem that has the same end result - game doesnt play That just means that this game is FULL of bugs

 

Sorry,

--Randall

 

Oh and we dont all have Realtek audio. I have SB live OR CMedia AC97-based audio... Tried both.

 

If we're going to try to properly Q/A these problems for Rockstar so that we can get fixes for each and every distinct issue, we need to pay a bit more attention to what we post please.

[ernst]

hello ernst!

 

We have nearly the same system.

 

I only have a Radeon 9600XT, GA-7DX & Athlon XP 2400+ @ 2600+

 

And my game freezes too. It's anoying!!! What soundcard do you have ?

I got an (old ) SB Live! Soundcard.

 

I found a solution though that has been working for the last day - playing the game in Win98-compatibility mode.

[Corrodias]

i tried running the game in '98 compatibility mode. unfortunately, for whatever reason, this disabled the use of my left shift key in the game, which is completely unacceptable. therefore, even if that does prevent crashes, i can't use it.

 

...that is, unless i can find the specific fix in the '98 compatibility mode that disables the shift key. maybe i can turn that off but leave the others on. (thank you application compatibility toolkit) i'll get back to you on this.

[Fuse_Head]

Holy s*it! Thanks for the WIN98 compatibility tip. It works! I played few hours and no crashes yet! Maybe a bit slower than normally but not much. It will do untill Rockstar releases a patch.

[randallman]

Holy s*it! Thanks for the WIN98 compatibility tip. It works! I played few hours and no crashes yet! Maybe a bit slower than normally but not much. It will do untill Rockstar releases a patch.

 

BTW, How do I enable 98 compat. mode for the game? I've never had to do such a thing before

 

--Randall

[Fuse_Head]

Well.. I was celebrating too early.. It crashed once when I was running at the street. But it wasn't complete freeze because I was able to alt+tab to Windows. So some kind of progress one might say.. You can enable compatibility mode by clicking the SA icon with your RMB and choose properties and then goto compatibility. Hopefully patch will be published soon.

[jmccoy]

dude.. i tried it all..

 

downloaded new drivers of my 3d card.. my soundcard.. disabled sound acceleration from dxdiag..

 

damn.. this screen-freezing thing is starting to get on my nerves..

 

im able to 'save game' a couple of times.. but when i do lots of stuff (like modifying my car, my clothes or finishing a mission) and try to save the game by steping on the diskette thingy.. it freezes on the same fscking black screen with some kind of a air pad sound ...

 

awaiting rockstar's patch...

[gohan2091]

I am also having this problem, but I want to make sure I am suffering the exact same problem as everyone else.

 

First of all here are my specs...

 

AMD Athlon 3500+ Winchester

MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum

1024mb DDR400 ram

Sapphire Radeon 9800pro 128mb (with 5.6 ccatalyst drivers)

Creative Sound Blaster Live!

 

I only got the game 20 minutes ago, installed it, configured the graphics settings to run on maximum @ 1152x864 resolution. I started a new game, skipped the intro (just because I wanted to see how well the game ran) then I jumped on my bike and rode down the street. I then got off the bike and (sorry I dont know the name of the car) entered a black car. As soon as I entered the vehicle, the screen went total black but I could still hear the sounds of the game, the radio, the people walking around in the street etc.

 

I pressed ESC and pressed up and down on my keyboard. I could hear the sound of the menu going as I pressed up and down. I couldn't alt+tab out, pressing the windows key did nothing, nor did alt+f4 so I had to reboot.

 

As soon as I rebooted, I started searching google for possible solutions and found this forum. Ive only ran the game once but as I read this thread, I understand its a common problem.

 

Is this happening to everyone? or is your crashes slightly different?

Edited June 13, 2005 by gohan2091

[Corrodias]

that is not really the sort of problem we are experiencing. you could probably blindly select "quit" from the menu, since you are able to move around on it apparently.

 

basically, there are two problems being discussed in this thread:

 

1) the game crashes occasionally with a BSOD (or the pc automatically restarts if windows is configured to do so). i dont know much about the details of when because i don't pay much attention to these posts.

 

2) rarely when entering a vehicle and frequently when entering a building, the game will totally FREEZE the computer. there will be no sound (or a constant tone), absolutely no keyboard input does anything, and the only way to continue is a hard reset. this happens almost every time you enter the pizza place during the second mission of the game (right after you get your new hairdo), making the game pretty much unplayable.

[Corrodias]

okay, as far as i can tell, it is confirmed: win98 compatibility mode seems to prevent the "dark screen total freeze when entering buildings" crash, at least on my machine.

 

however, at least on my machine, it also seems to disable the LEFT SHIFT key. therefore, by experimenting with Microsoft's Application Compatibility Toolkit, i have made this custom database which you can add to your compatibility database and it should make the game work until a patch is released. this should only be necessary if both A) the LSHIFT key is disabled in the game when you use regular win98 compatibility mode and B) you need the LSHIFT key because you are used to it or something, like i am. otherwise, you can use win98 compat mode.

 

note that someone said before that the game may still crash on occasion in the "has performed an illegal operaton" manner. however, at least you can hit ENTER to close the box that pops up (you may not be able to see it... i've had it happen and the screen was all black) and restart GTASA without rebooting.

 

instructions for use:

 

new step: 0) disable any compatibility mode for the exe. if you have one set, it will override the fix detailed below!

 

1) get the Application Compatibility Toolkit here. the version there MAY not work on windows xp previous to service pack 2, so if not, post here and i can get you a previous version that does.

 

2) launch the Compatibility Administration Tool

 

3) download the .rar here. you may have to enable "Passive FTP" in your browser. in IE, it's on the "advanced" page of your Internet Options. from what i know, FireFox always uses passive when possible.

 

4) extract the .sdb file somewhere (remember where), even the GTASA folder if you want.

 

5) in the compatibility administration tool, click the OPEN button, and open the .sdb file you extracted. a new database thingy should appear under the "custom databases" list.

 

6) right-click the new custom database and select "install".

 

7) that's it! you can close the compat admin tool and run the game like normal, and it should keep those particular fixes applied to it. you may experience Crashes To Desktop rarely, so save often, as you always should.

Edited June 14, 2005 by Corrodias

[taxevader]

Damn I've been waiting for months for this game.. I can run around and do anything but it randomly crashes. Ie I dont have to enter a building or vehicle. Sometimes it works for 30 secs, sometimes 2 mins, but its ALWAYS an unrecoverable crash, I have to hard-reset or switch my PC off. I'm so annoyed!! HELP!

[Phrozen_]

Thanks Corridias , i too am used to the LShift key, i use it to run.

 

If only you told me all this 3 days ago (long weekend here in AUS, was so bored - had to play dota on war3 ugh)

 

*EDIT* gah, just crashed, this one was just a crash to desktop... and i didnt save

 

and btw the LShift button Doesnt work for me still, even after doing all that stuff - it said it was installed completely but no luck

Edited June 14, 2005 by Phrozen_

[Corrodias]

here's a small update: i played for about 5 hours after installing that compatibility fix, and i haven't seen a hint of instability so far. that means that it probably totally fixes the freeze problem (or is a fine workaround at least). anyone experiencing other crashes is well advised to use this compat fix and make sure that all their other games are perfectly stable. we don't want to blame crashes on the game if they are really your own computer's fault.

[Corrodias]

*EDIT* gah, just crashed, this one was just a crash to desktop... and i didnt save

 

and btw the LShift button Doesnt work for me still, even after doing all that stuff - it said it was installed completely but no luck

well, all right.. we should make sure to save after every mission because it MAY still CTD sometimes (whether or not that is the fault of the compat fixes i don't know).

 

as for your LSHIFT key... i dunno, man. open the properties box on the game's executable and make sure it doesn't have a compatibility mode selected, and run the compat admin toolkit again and make sure the custom thing i made is still installed. that way it will only be using the fixes for that, and not the full '98 compat mode.

 

i couldn't use LSHIFT when i had win98 compat mode on it, but with only the fixes in that custom database i linked to, it works like normal.

[filipe_silva]

I´ve done what you said Corrodias, but didn´t work for me

 

The random crashes still happening on my gta:sa

 

btw, thanks!

 

Greets from Portugal!

[Phrozen_]

Ahh, now i see wat i did wrong. I did it in the wrong order, because i first changed it to Win98/Me comp... then tested to see if my Lshift works, which it didnt, so THEN i used that program and installed the workaround, therefore it didnt work.

 

But i tried again, taking off Win98/Me Compatibility Mode, then using the Lshift Workaround you made and its all good now .

 

Oh yeh btw, thanks again.

[Corrodias]

The random crashes still happening on my gta:sa

first off, i'm glad its working for you now, Phrozen_! enjoy.

 

now, as for filipe_silva... i'm sorry to hear youre having problems. this compatibility fix is designed to prevent a particular kind of problem where the game often freezes the computer when you enter a building. if you're not experiencing this, then the fix won't help you.

 

truly random crashes are probably more the result of problems with your own hardware (damage, overheating), your drivers (bugs), or something else about your computer. you can try other things discussed in this forum, such as lowering your audio hardware accelleration to "standard" or "basic", updating your video drivers, and using new audio drivers from Realtek if you are using AC '97 audio.

[filipe_silva]

The random crashes still happening on my gta:sa 

first off, i'm glad its working for you now, Phrozen_! enjoy.

 

now, as for filipe_silva... i'm sorry to hear youre having problems. this compatibility fix is designed to prevent a particular kind of problem where the game often freezes the computer when you enter a building. if you're not experiencing this, then the fix won't help you.

 

truly random crashes are probably more the result of problems with your own hardware (damage, overheating), your drivers (bugs), or something else about your computer. you can try other things discussed in this forum, such as lowering your audio hardware accelleration to "standard" or "basic", updating your video drivers, and using new audio drivers from Realtek if you are using AC '97 audio.

I've already made all that stuff, but he could crash passed 5 minutes or 5 hours, but it crash always.

 

Sound card up to date, graphic card too, i´ve put the sound acceleration off, in the shrtcut put the compability to Win 98, but the crashes are all in there.

 

My system isn´t problem. I play Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike Source, Doom 3, Far Cry, with no problems at all.

 

But, my favourite game (GTA: SA) crashes all the time....

 

Greets from Portugal!

[Corrodias]

ah, well, that's too bad. i hope rockstar gets a patch out soon that fixes this for you, since nothing we know of seems to work.

 

that leaves us with 3 major bugs of which i am aware, 2 of which have workarounds:

 

1) weird sounds problems, which have their own threads (fixable)

2) freezing when entering a building, which i posted a fix for on page.. was it 4? (fixable)

3) random crashes experienced by a few people (unfixed)

[gohan2091]

Why run in windows 98 mode? anyone tried running in Windows 2000? Does it stop some of the crashes?

[Eimps]

Hi im having a same problem-(game crashes and system restart) due the problem i decided to make a format today (all needed drivers were applied) and got me played about hour(restart)-->no use for format thou:(

 

specs:

amd athlon xp 2600+ <-- no overheating

abit NF7 nforce2 nvidia on board audio

Geforce 6600gt leadtek

512 ddr

160gb seagate

XP pro SP2

 

But in my situation i cant tell if game crashes when entering places, because it seems you never know, when restart comes

 

only hope is looking forward for some patch

no help that compability mode and lowering,disabling audio hardware acceleration(then sound started to staying back from the video and crashes continued).

Edited June 14, 2005 by Eimps

[chachaflorida]

I am having the same problems as you guys, whenever i go into a room and it shoot to cut-scence it crashes, and restarts the computer automatically.....and i have a pentinum 4...WTF!!!

[Corrodias]

Why run in windows 98 mode? anyone tried running in Windows 2000? Does it stop some of the crashes?

windows 2000 compat mode does not include whatever fix that makes it stop freezing. it has to be win98 mode (or a modified version such as the one i posted on page 4). the extra fixes that '98 has that '2000 doesn't have apparently don't affect the game, other than THAT one and the one that disables the LSHIFT key (which is why i put that thing on page 4).

 

it is possible that '2000 compat mode will stop some of the crashes people are experiencing. it doesn't do anything about the freezing problem but anyone experiencing the semi-random crashes might want to try comapt modes too, if they haven't already.