Far Cry 1.31 gives BSOD when trying to load a SP saved game | Forums

[wrxxtrm]

Ok,
Far cry 1.31 crashes as when it gets to the end of the loading bar. The screen goes black, then gives me the blue screen of death with no specific info. Only happens in Far Cry. HL2, Doom 3, Rid****, everything else works just fine. No problems with windows. Fresh install. Etc Etc. I've been in the computer game since 1980, building my own systems etc, and am an EE, so troubleshooting usually isn't an issue, but I have to admit this one is stumping me. I've already RMA'd a motherboard over this, and the new board does the same thing. Any help would be appreciated

Winchester 3500 with XP90 HS
DFI LP NF4 SLI-DR
1 gig Kingston HyperX PC 4000
WD HD 120Gig PATA
Memorex CD Rom
On board sound (Karajan audio module)
D-link Wireless Network Card
Enermax 650W power supply dual rail
EVGA 6800Ultra PCI EX (not in SLI)
Win XP SP2
NFORCE 6.53
Tried all different video drivers
Tried with and without overclocking
System temps are very low

[fabulouscoops]

Need more info about where the crash occurs. Is this single player when starting a new game or a multiplayer map or just installing the 1.31 patch? Did you load 1.3 before 1.31?

[wrxxtrm]

It happens when I try to load up a single player game from an old saved game. I recently changed motherboards, and video cards, but I had my old saved games stored. I'll get to the main menu, choose campaign, river level (Or whatever), then it goes to the loading screen where it has that bar that runs across with a progress meter. When it gets to the end there has always been a short pause, then the game comes up, but now the game doesn't come up, instead I hear my hard drive power down, video goes black, then I get a generic BSOD. It is the 1.31 patch. I do not remember for sure if I had installed the 1.3 patch before I installed the 1.31 patch, but I'm 70-80% sure I did. Any ideas?

[fabulouscoops]

Thanks for the extra info.
Does this happen when you start a new game from the beginning?
If it works, what may be happening is that you are trying to load a 1.1 or 1.3 savegame using the 1.31 patch. Old games are not compatable with new patches. Try removing the 1.31 patch by running it again and selecting "remove" from the installer screen. Then try to load a game. If the games are really old (like 1.1 or 1.0), then you will have to "back out" the 1.3 patch the same way and patch the game to the correct one for the saves you have.

[wrxxtrm]

Ok, all of the save games were from the 1.31 patch. I've actually had it come up a couple of times and play at which point I save, but usually the computer does what I described above. Odd thing is, that the other day just before I posted I had been able to play the thing, then all of a sudden, bang back to the same thing. Nothing changed, and I hadn't turned off the computer or anything, I played, shut down the game, came back half an hour later and it wouldn't play to save my life. I beginning to think I'm just not going to be able to finish this game. Sucks because I actually like it, but when it causes my computer to go down with a BSOD, it just isn't worth it. Anyone else have any ideas? Thanks

[Triple_Ace]

I'm having exactly the same problem - Patch 1.31, XP gives me the BSOD at the end of the loading bar when opening up a singleplayer checkpoint.

Intel Pentium 4 530J (3.0GHz)
Asus P5GPL mobo, BIOS rev. 0202 (latest and only one so far)
1GB Infinity DDR400 (2x512 in dual-channel mode)
Inno3D GeForce 6600 (non-GT), on XG 76.41 drivers
LG GSA-4163B Super Multi DVD+/-R/RAM writer (Firmware A104)
Onboard Realtek 8-ch audio (but I only have a 2.1 setup)
Enermax EG-465P-VE 460w power supply
Integrated Marvell Gigabit Ethernet
Windows XP Service Pack 2 with all the latest updates

At first, I thought it was an overclocking issue. My videocard was overclocked, so I set the driver to "No Overclocking" and everything returned to normal - for a while at least. Today, I am having exactly the same problem as before, but the videocard is still on completely stock settings.

Then I came to this page, and finding someone else havin exactly the same problem on a completely different system. fabulouscoops suggests older saves, but I've been having this problem only recently and my last non-1.31 save game was a week ago (I started having this problem two days ago). It also occurs on my brother's profile, which was created on 1.31 and thus consists of STRICTLY 1.31 save games.

I find the following strange:

-No other game has this problem, only Far Cry. Everything else looks and works perfectly, overclocked or stock. In fact, I never experienced even minor problems such as artifacting on Far Cry, the only problem I ever encountered is one major BSOD after loading a single player game.

-When I returned the card to stock clocks which temporarily solved my problem, no amount of overclocking, even 5MHz, allowed me to enter a saved checkpoint. I don't think it's an overheating issue - monitoring software indicates everything is normal, and like above I've never had a problem with any other game.

-Someone else has exactly the same problem.

This leads me to believe that this is a Far Cry issue, not a hardware or driver issue.

[Triple_Ace]

The STOP error is 0x7F BTW.

Okay, I've tried to mess around to solve this problem, and found out the following:

-Relaxing system memory timings and running on stock video card speeds help, but isn't guaranteed to work. In fact, Far Cry still crashed even though I *underclocked* by 50MHz! I also failed to mention that I tightened my CAS from 3 to 2.5.

-It occurs to certain save games only. My bro can't progress at the moment, but I can load my save games fine. I can also start a new game without any issues.

-It seems to occur when the comp has been running for a while, especially after playing other games for a long period of time.

I dunno why this only happens on Far Cry, and only on certain saves, and why reverting to stock helps even though more aggressive clocks/timings doesn't cause any issues, minor or major in any other games. In fact, I've run the system on those settings for at least a month now. I've even finished Half-Life 2 on those settings, despite my 12+ hour long marathons, only pausing the game for a 45-minute break to eat meals and watch some TV. Anyway, now I'm running totally stock, but my bro's save still refuses to load on occasion (but mine does perfectly).

[fabulouscoops]

Triple: Thanks for posting your situation.

I am running overclocked on both CPU and GPU with tight timings as well. I am not having these issues. I know you have ruled it out but heat is the main reason for the game dropping to desktop. Bad memory is also a culprit. If your timings are too aggresive you will get errors.

Far Cry is more demanding than DOOM3 or HL2 and stresses your system more. I put my specs in the sig for you to compare.

[slugworth01]

I'm with Coops, sounds like some component is marginal, and FC is pushing it over the edge while some of the other games mentioned are not. I'm not doubiting your troubleshooting or system building skills; it's just from your description it sounds like you are having problems that in the past have been diagnosed to component issues.

At one time I had similar strange crashing issues in FC that I could not reproduce in other applications. I did the usual - tried out various drivers, BIOS settings, even bought a new PSU 'cuz I thought it might be at issue. I finally diagnosed it down to a memory stick through the use of a MS-supplied memory test program that you have to boot off a CD and run in DOS mode. Even then, I had to run some specific extended tests and let the system warm up and run a while before I would start to get memory errors.

Once I could get the errors, it was easy to verify which stick it was - swap them, see that the errors occurr at different address ranges, then test only one stick, then the other.

You problem may not be the same as mine, but I would try some testing that involves stressing your system over a period of time - some long running 3D benchmarks, various system stress tests, etc., and see if you can first create the problem outside of FC. Maybe swap your memory sticks around and see if that changes your behavior.

[Triple_Ace]

Thanks for the response guys.

slugworth: well, this is the first PC that I built myself. And no, I haven't had any component problems in the past, except pushing the video card memory clocks too high.

BTW, I've tried running memtest86+ for five hours straight yesterday, on 2.5-3-3-8. No errors. My RAM is rated for 3-3-3-8, if it helps. I've currently restored it back to stock for troubleshooting purposes.

Also, the problem's gone - for now. What I did, was load a save game from my profile, then loaded my bro's save. Voila, it worked! In fact, right now I couldn't seem to reproduce the problem.

Edit: There seems to be something that I overlooked - Asus Hyper Path 2! I'm sure many of you know what it is. Anyway it's a feature on certain Asus Intel-based boards (dunno what other mobo makers call a similar feature of theirs) that artificially re-enable Intel PAT for chipsets that aren't officially supposed to support it... a "PAT hack" in other words. Maybe I got unlucky and my chipset was binned to be a 915PL really because it failed the "PAT test"? Being very much related to the memory subsystem, this could be the key to this problem... I've never disabled the feature all my life. I'll take a look at this first the next time I come across the problem.