Starting game Shuts down my system?????

Canian · Post by **Canian** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 6:39 pm

Well I found the game by going through A-tractor on betawatcher.com. I read through all the documentation involved with the game and thought it sounded fun. I downloaded both the full version 0.1.36 and the Galaxy Patch only version 0.1.36 I installed the full version then installed the patch... then went to start the game and my firewall asks me if I want to allow the program to access the internet. I answer yes, seeing as how I'd like to check out the game and then answer yes to allowing the game to act as a server as well... then to my suprise my computer restarted on it's own.

WTF???

So I tried again right clicking on the desktop icon the game stats up goes to full screen and everything goes black for a few seconds untill I see that my computer is again restarting on its own.

Again WTF???

I figure ok maybe it because it's running in full screen mode.... I go into the file and find where to change the setting to have it start in Windowed mode... start up the program, cross my fingers, close my eyes and make a wish....no dice... restart again

So I uninstalled the game except the folder C:\Program Files\Universal wouldn't delete but the game itself did, the folder somehow got switched to being read only and I (being the administrator) can't seem to delete it to do a clean install.

I then tried to install the game again and came up witht he same problem, My system keeps restarting whenever I try to start the game.

So whats going on here? Is it me?

system specs:

Pentium 4 2.26 Ghz
512 Meg RAM *edited to add thissince I forgot when I posted*
Windows XP Home (SP2 installed)
Nvidia Gforce 2 400 MX 32meg vid card
SoundMAX sound card

Zone alarm (free edition) for a firewall and AVG for an antivirus

connected over a cable modem

all drivers are up to date and I'm running DirectX 9.0b

any suggestions or settings I'm missing...

I'd certainly like to try the game itself instead of my comp restarting

zaroba · Post by **zaroba** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 8:10 pm

how big/old is your power supply?
do you run any other graphical/memory intensive games at all? if not, it sounds like the power supply might be starting to go out. typical symptoms are a comp shutting down/restarting unexplicably when starting programs that require the video card, etc to draw more power from the power supply which can't supply it thus causeing the pc to reboot or shutdown as if it was just unplugged and plugged back in again.
but if you can play other memory/ghaphic intensive games without trouble, it probably isen't the power supply.

Post by **Mit** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 9:05 pm

sounds nasty :/
oh tits.. i shoulda read that properly.. < edit > to delete suggested solution you already tried...

mmmmmmm..

Its possible this read only thing happening on your folder might actually be messing things up.. The game needs to create some files (like the current options configuration) and files it downloads as it runs and having a read-only folder there might mess that up..
finding a way to get rid of that and doin a full install might help (maybe try installing to somewhere other than 'Program Files'?) but im clutching at straws here really..

Canian · Post by **Canian** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 9:28 pm

It's not the power supply... I've been running graphic intensive games and programs for a while and the power supply is a 500 watt supply I'm only using about 40-50% of that at peek times. I can run any other program on my comp with no problem. The only one that does this is The Universal.

I can post a DXdiag or any other info you might need if you think that would help you out. other than that is there some way to send a log of what is happening when this happens.... trust me I can gt it to repeat happening over and over and over and over et nauseum.

Thanks in advance aand hopping to see you all on there soon.

Canian · Post by **Canian** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 9:51 pm

OK I've got it to stop shutting my system down by not letting it act as a server in zone alarm.

Right now I have the Galaxy Window with only

Andromeda (*** Current Gal ***)

as the only game server and it's status is

not responding

Is it actually down or again is this on my end.

Post by **Magicfinger** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 9:53 pm

another quick thing is that although the game is dx9 compatible and Microsoft swear blind that DX9 is backwards compatible some ppl have found problems if they havent had dx8 installed before the DX9 install.

but that would only usually cause a crash to desktop so i dunno just a thought

Post by **Fooli** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 9:56 pm

Gal is online and seems ok.

Weird symptoms - I use ZA (in fact the gal machine uses it too) and it's fine. The free one also, none of this Pro rubbish.

I haven't heard anything similar in the last few years of this game's development... sounds like something simple, if deadly, but I can't immediately think why the game would trigger a reset. That kinda thing is normally a serious driver/chipset conflict in my experience, but if you've had no problems running other stuff... hmm. It's not like we're particularly graphically or cpu intensive compared to anythin else released in the last 3 (ok, 26) years :)
f

Post by **DeVice** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 1:05 pm

Mmmm i'd say im' suspicious about ZA there. Could you try to disable it for a lil while and see if it improve anything ?

Canian · Post by **Canian** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 2:39 pm

I tried turning off ZoneAlarm, but the system still kept resetting itself.

If you would like I can post a Dxdiag logfile to give you a complete rundown of my system and perhaps that might help.

Post by **Mit** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 4:19 pm

i have a vague suspicion what might be causing your problem, canian.. tho it doesnt make much sense if what i think is happening is happening

I'll drop u a mail sometime in the next few days (might be after the weekend as im gonna be away visiting relatives for a while) with a special build that might avoid the crash.
thanks for your patience.

Canian · Post by **Canian** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 4:48 am

I'll be waiting to hear from you. I put my email in my profile for you. If you need another address with more space just let me know and I'll give you addy I get from my ISP.

10dollars · Post by **10dollars** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 7:31 am

Ok, I had a problem like that for a while, but it wasn't with The Universal. It may be the dreaded sasser, or it could be a virus which is nasty and avg nor zone alarm stops it. It uses rundll and svchost to mess around with things, what I did was install zone alarm security suite, and sygate, denied access with svchost (make sure of changes such as Svchost, or scvhost) and then with zone alarm security suite did virus check, it picked it up somewhere in system32. It stopped all bad stuff going on.

Or theres the easier and less costly way. Buy a metal baseball bat, and smash your computer up. It makes a wierd sound for a while, bash it again, and it will go away

Canian · Post by **Canian** » Thu Dec 09, 2004 2:03 pm

OK I rebooted my computer in safe mode and ran AVG on my entire system. Nothing was picked up at all. Rebooted againt and checked for updates for AVG and there weren't any.

Still waiting for that special build from Mit. If you need anything like my specs from a DXdiag let me know where to send it to yoou in an e-mail.

I switched the e-mail to one from my ISP since it's got more storage space.