Answer to Lockups for Some People!

[Bowen]

I know for a fact what the problem is for those of you who have lockups on JKII. The only thing is that it should happen on most games especially 3D games! If you have two Dimms or Simms of memory in your computer, then take out one of the Dimms/Simms and see if your problem doesn't stop immediately. If you are having lockups in most of your games then this is the solution. The reason I know this for sure is because I had 2 sticks of 256 meg PC2100 Crucial DDR memory and I had to replace them (bad mobo ripped the contacts off of them!) and thought Crucial would send me replacements. They didn't and so I was ticked at Crucial and decided to get Kingston memory. I've heard they make good memory, so I bought 2 sticks of 256 megs of that and in all my 3D games that I play now, UT, MOH, JKII etc...it locks up within the first few minutes. I disabled the sound to no avail. So I finally took one of my Dimms out and the problem went away. I had this happen before when I had an Asus P3V4X PIII mobo and that time I had Crucial memory and it was causing conflicts with the mobo. I sent them off to have the replaced with two of the same, also to no avail. It did the same thing too when I pulled out one Dimm (didn't matter which one) the games worked fine but with both of them I got crashes! I finally had my problem corrected by switching to an Asus CUSL2 mobo...same ram different mobo.

The mobo I have currently is an Iwill KA266-R mobo..STAY AWAY FROM IWILL! I've had nothing but grief with them! I've ordered an Abit KR7A-133 mobo using the Via KT266A chipset. This looks to be one of the very best and stable boards out there. Has anyone else had any problems with memory like this with this board? Thanx and I'm sure for those of you who are having game crashes with multiple games that this will correct the problem!

[Chiles4]

It's possible that using two or more sticks of RAM could cause problems. You'd hope that using 2 identical sticks wouldn't cause problems but it's possible. Before yanking a stick, I'd go into your bios and lower your memory settings to the most conservative (safe, failsafe, or normal). One of those should be the name of the slowest memory timings. If that still doesn't work you might want to try Bowen's suggestion.

 

But alot of people's systems worked fine before JO. And for many, JO is the only game that freezes up. It would seem strange that only JO would mind the multiple sticks of ram.

 

But yes, one large stick is almost always more "stable" than multiple sticks. And I wouldn't use 3 sticks or combine different brands of ram.

[Sutek]

I suppose it's possible that JO might push your memory usage further than previous Q3 based games do, just to make sure it can do all the things it does that are "unusual" (force powers and lightsabers)

 

Secondly, do be careful when pulling out memory - if you are careless and the contacts are tight then you will end up ripping them apart, and no company will replace them for you.

[Bowen]

Originally posted by Chiles4

It's possible that using two or more sticks of RAM could cause problems. You'd hope that using 2 identical sticks wouldn't cause problems but it's possible. Before yanking a stick, I'd go into your bios and lower your memory settings to the most conservative (safe, failsafe, or normal). One of those should be the name of the slowest memory timings. If that still doesn't work you might want to try Bowen's suggestion.

 

But alot of people's systems worked fine before JO. And for many, JO is the only game that freezes up. It would seem strange that only JO would mind the multiple sticks of ram.

 

But yes, one large stick is almost always more "stable" than multiple sticks. And I wouldn't use 3 sticks or combine different brands of ram.

 

Yeah Chiles4, if JKII is the only game that freezes and you have other 3D games that run without crashing then it's a safe bet that it's not the ram. Ya know, I tried lowering the settings CAS latency etc and unfortunately that did not help but I forgot to add that and yeah I would definately try that before taking a Dimm out. Thanx for adding that.

[Bowen]

Originally posted by Sutek

I suppose it's possible that JO might push your memory usage further than previous Q3 based games do, just to make sure it can do all the things it does that are "unusual" (force powers and lightsabers)

 

Secondly, do be careful when pulling out memory - if you are careless and the contacts are tight then you will end up ripping them apart, and no company will replace them for you.

 

It would have to affect all or most of your games for it to be the memory. The reason that Crucial did not replace my memory was not because some of the contacts were ripped off the Dimms but because I had put ram heatsinks on them. Take note that you should not put ram heatsinks on your memory because they will not warrantee that despite the fact that the reason your returning your memory has nothing to do with them. I even removed the heatsinks when I sent them in but could not get the sticky glue from the Dimms.

[Elegy]

It's odd you should mention this about the multiple sticks of RAM. I have 511 megs of RAM in this thing and I'm using multiple sticks of it on my motherboard. Many of these games are freezing up with the sound skipping and repeating it's self over and over. Alien vs. Predator 2, System Shock 2 (though not as often), and I can't even get past the first in-game cutscene on JKII during the first level. I'm not entirely certain, but I think these probs just might have started to occur when I'd upgraded my RAM...I got 2 256 sticks in here just like you said you had. I'll try to test your theory if I have to, but I'm not too happy with having to reduce my RAM in half.

[Bowen]

Well guys....I was right about the Ram issue in my case. I just received my Abit KR7A-133 mobo and I'm using the same 2 sticks of PC2100 256 meg Kingston Dimms and I'm using both Dimms at the same time and with this mobo, I'm rock solid!! Again some ppl's problems are because of soundcards. If you take or disable your soundcard and it is still giving you grief and this is happening to most if not all of your 3D games and perhaps even any programs that require alot of memory etc...then I would almost guarantee that it's your memory!

[Death-Dude]

That's always a good thing to check, so I checked it. I have two DDR DIMMs, a micron and a crucial, both 256. I tried each of these alone, and still get a white-screen freeze. At this piont, I want to get it running just to prove I can, more than even playing the game. With as many as there are with a crash/freeze at the white screen, I hope they're working on it.