(Workaround!) Game Crash in vista - windows graphics driver

[plaidbear]

I hope this is a workaround for some folks. Run the game in windowed mode on vista to avoid graphics driver crashes from the OS!!!!

In full screen mode it kept crashing between about 5 to 15 minutes into play. I couldn't recreate what I did specifically, except the same window error message would appear in a box in the lower right corner of the screen saying the graphics driver had an error.

After running in windowed mode at a size slightly smaller than my screen I could see the whole window, I was able to play for at least an hour and the game did not crash.

[Peet]

Interesting. I'll be adding this to the large FAQ post, thanks for figuring this out.

[plaidbear]

Although the toshiba update program told me the most current video driver was from last november, Intel had a more current driver on their site. By upgrading the video grahics driver, I played a whole game(s) without any crashing in vista. I think alot of video drivers are more fragile in vista and need a more current version then the manufacturer recommends. Vista has a dumb 'feature' which won't allow some current drivers to install if the are '.exe' drivers. To work around this get the '.zip' version from the manufacturer's website and install it manually using the 'have disk' method. This allowed me to not only play spring, but also some other games which i couldn't previously play on vista such as Scrabble!! I think this has finally solved the problem.

[AF]

I run spring in windowed mod when debugging and Im telling you that your fix is a load of b*****ks, the vast majority of my own driver crashes have been because I ran spring while in windowed mode with a debugger.

[BigSteve]

Sometimes AF, I wanna just grab you by the head and smash it repeatedly off your desk.

Why are you such an arse to people?

[Peet]

And noooo, a debugger would NEVER possibly cause rendering driver issues. Never.

[aegis]

run the game in linux mode to avoid crashes and vista bugs etc!!!1

[Gonzo]

people who have vista installed should have had this coming a long way
its the worst OS ever made
youll just have to live with it :)
either you get linux which is a permanent fix, or go back to XP which actually works

[ZellSF]

Did someone confuse the help forum with the pointless trolling forum again?

[AF]

I honestly believed for a second I had a debugger running spring.exe every time I started a game in the lobby to see if it worked yet for a whole year when I read that post peet.

And no linux crashed, the onyl difference was instead of a pretty baloon popup saying my driver had crashed, my entire window manager had crashed and I had to restart it via a command shell while the drivers refused to render a command shell when not inside a window.

[Vadi]

It's not the drivers, it's an OS without a window manager (I believe in windows that would've been a BSOD right away).

That's why you use compiz though. If something makes it crash, it falls back to another one automatically ^^

[AF]

In XP you would get a BSOD if the graphics driver crashed and have to reboot with the reset button.

In Vista you would get a balloon pop-up if the graphics driver crashed, the driver is reloaded, and any directx games would pause for a moment than carry on as if nothing happened and things generally carry on as usual (unless your an openGL app in which you just crash and get closed by the user).

[Vadi]

I don't know, I've never managed to make the graphics card driver crash... worst cases were the window manager crashing, in which case it shows the background for a bit and then the normal one (non-fancy) takes over.

But I press a button in my panel and it loads the fancy one again

Pretty nifty though that vista reloads the driver again. Not sure what linux does here.

[plaidbear]

Update - It was definately the graphics card driver crashing in VIsta, which gave a ballon popup message saying the graphics driver was reloaded, and which crashes spring.

Again, it seemed a little more stable in windowed mode than full screen, but that was not a fix.

However, the real fix was to find a recent driver for my laptop from the video manufacturer and install it. Vista is a pain because it doesnt let you install some drivers unless you do it using the 'have disk' method (as opposed to using an .exe setup/install. The laptop manufacturer's 'approved' driver was an older version.

Spring doesnt crash at all now after many games - no crashes whatsoever in vista.

[AF]

I've yet to see a crash myself under the latest 8800 drivers in spring myself.

http://downloads.guru3d.com/ForceWare-1 ... ta-(32-bit)-WHQL-download-1887.html
http://downloads.guru3d.com/ForceWare-1 ... ta-(64-bit)-WHQL-download-1888.html

The latest drivers on the nvidia site arent always the newest and greatest available, they're usually the drivers that were made available a month before that have just gone through microsoft testing to tell us what we already knew.

[Vadi]

(edited, failed to read in the morning. I do wonder who gets to do the testing for the linux ones, lol)