WastedChances
09-15-2007, 01:12 AM
<p>I'm not sure what happened but the last couple patches have been wreaking havoc on my system. Here are the things I'm encountering on a rather frequent basis:</p><p>1) Random lockups and suddenly the screen goes black</p><p>When this happens, I can still hear the music, sound FX and such but I can't see anything. I have to CTRL+ALT+DELETE to bring up TaskManager which shows EQ2 as not responding. Also, it isn't my GPU overheating because when that happens it actually turns my monitor off. </p><p>2) "Out of memory"</p><p>I realize this is stickied and I have posted there however it doesn't seem as if it's getting any better</p><p>3) Seems like you have a memory leak</p><p>I am a programmer by profession so I'm aware that memory leaks are easy to cause and difficult to hunt down. The reason I presume you have a memory leak is because after about two or three hours of solo play, suddenly all my spells cause extreme lag as the particles render. When I first launch the game all is fine. It seems around the three hour mark I have to quit the game and restart it.</p><p>I have tried playing with the various particle settings but it makes no difference and rightly so. If the particles render fine at the start of gameplay, I can only attribute it to a memory leak that would cause them to drop my FPS to about 5 as my Heroic Opportunities render. It's not a network issue since nothing else in the game is affected, only spells.</p><p>Also, when this starts happening I can see in TaskManager that EQ2 is using upwards of 750 MB of ram. My game settings aren't set to high either. I started with a base of "Balanced" and then dropped things like texture resolution to low, shadows off, minimal lights, etc. Either way, I can run the game on "high" without issue until about the three hour mark</p><p>4) Random (and rare) crashes with no message</p><p>These are extremely difficult bugs to find since they leave virtually no trace. Occasionally EQ2 will simply vanish. No error message, no memory dump, no message in my System Event Viewer. It disappears and I find myself looking at my boring, blue desktop. There isn't any specific action in game I've been able to pin it on. Happens when I'm crafting, running, flying or just standing at the bank. Strange indeed.</p><p>For information, here are my system specs.:</p><ul><li>CPU: Intel Pentium IV, 3.2 Ghz.</li><li>GPU: nVidia GeForce 7600 GS w/ 512 MB video ram (and the most recent drivers - 162.18, WHQL not the beta)</li><li>RAM: 1 GB</li><li>OS: Windows XP Pro, SP2 (with latest updates)</li><li>HD (the game runs on): Western Digital Raptor (SATA)</li><li>Audio: Audigy X-Fi Platinum (with the latest drivers)</li></ul><p>A final note, when any of these things occurr, if I open my nVidia control panel and look at any of the 3d settings that have a preview image, the image is all distorted and pixelated. I usually need to reboot to fix it. If this continues much longer I'll have to suspend my account. Not because I don't like the game or out of a fit of anger, simply because I don't want to ruin my system. It's evident from the image distortion in the nVidia control panel that the game is wreaking havoc on my GPU. Of the games I play, it is the only one that seems to do that.</p><p>Thanks for your time.</p><p>** Edit:</p><p>I forgot to mention, after these crashes, if I Right-Click my desktop, select "Properties" and select "Settings", my screen resolution is locked to 640x480 and the color quality is... get this... "Lowest (4 bit)"... yikes! Again, a reboot is in order to reset everythng.</p>