Crashes at Loading Screens

[cplrico]

Crashes at Loading Screens

Hi everyone. I purchased The Witcher on Sunday, and it's a very compelling and engrossing game. However, I'm having problems with repeated crashes at loading screens, and I also have the dreaded Please insert DVD "The Witcher" problem. I've read countless posts in the forums over the past two nights trying to resolve these problems, but to no avail. Most of the posts pertain to Vista users, but I did increase the size of my page files to 4096, deleted the atapi.sys file, etc. The "Please insert DVD" issue I can live with - I just put the cd in the drive and let the autorun start the game. However, the two problems that I'm having might be related, and it's very frustrating having to restart the game every time it crashes at a loading screen. At these screens, I can hear the background music, but it clicks into a loop that doesn't stop and the data won't load. As a result, I'm forced to pop out the DVD so it will crash quickly to the desktop. Outside of these specific problems, the game otherwise performs very well on my system. I have a brand new rig with a pair of DVD RW drives. I could be wrong, but after reading many posts in the forums, I might be running into write protection problems with the DVD. I'm guessing that this is the root of my problem. However, I don't have any other disc copy software installed on my PC except for the software that came with the system - Nero. Here are my system specs:Windows XP SP2 (Fully Updated)Intel Core 2 Duo @ 3.0GHz (2 CPUs)3326MB RAM (4.0 G)DirectX 9.0cNVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX (Latest Diver Dated 12/5/07)Sound Blaster Audigy Any help that the community could provide to me is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance,CPLRico (Fred)

 

[mobidoy]

Create a Dxdiag log and a report save as HTML using this tool System Information for WindowsExplain your problem and put your nickPut all that in an email and send it to the adress in my signature !

 

[cplrico]

Done - I sent the e-mail to you with the attachments. Thanks a lot Mobidoy - I appreciate your help. Please reply to me here or via e-mail when you can.CPLRico

 

[metabolic]

I too am following this thread carfuly because I have had the issues with crashing halfway in to loading. so any advice to give please refer it to this thread! THAT MEANS YOU MOBIDOY!!! Whats your doing for this game, and its community. To me is bigger then the release of the game itself!

 

[cplrico]

I'm far from an expert when it comes to computers, but after 26 years I've learned a thing or two (I had an Apple II+ back in the early 80s). I love gaming, and I've had to deal with many software issues in the past. However, my problems with The Witcher may have been the most challenging to date. Fortunately, I believe that I resolved the following issues tonight, and hopefully this post will provide some direction to those who are experiencing:1. The "Please install DVD The Witcher" problem.2. Crashes at loading screens.First off - I purchased the game retail at Wal-Mart (DVD). I do not have a downloaded version, and my operating system is Windows XP. For those that this applies to, here is what I did:I spent the last 3 evenings (Monday though Wednesday) digging through the forums regarding similar topics. For those of you who purchased the game recently, hopefully this is all you will need to read. I finally found some possible solutions related to a "Tages" search using the field in the upper right hand corner of the forums home page (next to the ?). After searching for "Tages", I found a thread from early November labeled "More Good News From Tages". Inside this very short thread is a link to another related thread with 7 pages of posts dating from late October to early November. It was in this thread that I found out what Tages is, and it ultimately led to my solutions.1. I first followed a link which led to the Tages website. Please forgive me - I'm not advanced enough to post the links here. If anyone can in this thread, I'm sure that others would appreciate it. After visiting the website, I downloaded the most current Tages drivers for Windows XP (32 bit version). The download was very simple, and the driver installation would be even easier. However, this is what I recommend: Once you run the Tages driver installation program, it first asks if you want to delete the current Tages drivers - I chose yes, then exited the program. Afterwards, I allowed the new Tages drivers to install after I re-installed The Witcher software using the DVD, and ran the program for the first time (you will see a box pop up saying that Tages drivers need to be installed). It appears that Tages drivers are on The Witcher DVD. Afterwards, the "Please install DVD The Witcher" problem disappeared. I could then launch the game with the cd already in my DVD/RW drive. However, my problems with the crashes at just about every loading screen in the game continued .....2. I then read through the Tages threads again, and found someone else who had a similar problem with crashes at loading screens. He (or she) installed the latest firmware for their DVD Rom drive. Prior to playing this game and reading the forums, I had no idea what firmware was, so I decided to Google it. I found a website named The Firmware Page at www.rpc1.org. I went into system and device manager, found the exact make and model of my DVD/RW drive(s), and downloaded the latest firmware zip file from this website. After unzipping it, I executed the program, designated the correct drive, and the firmware updated to my DVD/RW drive successfully. Please note - Make sure you have the correct make and model of drive with the corresponding firmware version. If you don't, I guess it can really screw up your drive.Since following these steps, I patched the game to 1.2, and haven't crashed once (yet). I honestly believe that the problems have been resolved.I hope that this helps - Especially those who recently purchased the game and haven't found the related posts dating back to October and November. Once again - If anyone in the community can assist with applicable links in this thread, it may be helpful to others. I'll try to check back here if anyone has questions that I can competently answer.Regards,CPLRicoMississippi, USA

 

[heroa13]

sorry but i dun really understand.. how can firmware help?i think mine is samsung cd/dvd combo

 

[cplrico]

At this time, I'm not exactly sure what firmware is. Hopefully, someone else in the community can explain it better, but it appears to be software that governs how a CD ROM or DVD ROM drive runs (possibly its spin rate, etc.). It's specific to certain makes and models of drives though, and doesn't have anything to do with its driver. However, firmware is downloaded and installed to your drive much like a driver would - Mine installed in about 2 minutes, then it asked me to reboot my PC.I could be wrong, but it appears that the Tages write protection software that is integrated within The Witcher DVD may be incompatible with older versions of firmware. I have a brand new PC that was built in November, but the firmware on both of my Optiarc DVD RW AD-7190A drives (D: drive and E: drive) was upgraded from version 1.01 to 1.04 with last night's download from The Firmware Page at www.rpc1.org.If someone else could explain better or correct me where I've been wrong in this post, it would be most helpful. Once again - I'm an above average computer geek, but far from an expert.CPLRico

 

[mobidoy]

A firmware is a program stored in the chips of your DVD-rom (cd-rom) that tells it how to operate. I wont go into details but this is a fairly good explanation of it.As time goes by, there are some changes in how cd or dvd are burned, the older your dvd/cd rom is, the most chances you will get that it will have problems to read newer discs. There are also some iicompatibility between different brands. So, the firmware updates the instructions so that it will read it.Hope that makes sens and clarify it a bit for you guys, if not, let me know...

 

[taltamir]

Once you upgrade to v1.2, ALL the crashing issues can be resolved by running the game in window mode.Just set the resolution to be the same as your desktop resolution and drag the window so it is centered perfectly (or almost perfectly) such that you don't see the "window" surrounding the game. I was completely stuck at the reverend of fire in act 1 (i even restarted, as soon as i talk to him the game crashed, and in many other spots)... after going to window mode I did act 1 and and act 2 without a single crash!

 

[matjune]

Once you upgrade to v1.2, ALL the crashing issues can be resolved by running the game in window mode.Just set the resolution to be the same as your desktop resolution and drag the window so it is centered perfectly (or almost perfectly) such that you don't see the "window" surrounding the game. I was completely stuck at the reverend of fire in act 1 (i even restarted, as soon as i talk to him the game crashed, and in many other spots)... after going to window mode I did act 1 and and act 2 without a single crash!

tried that. worked fine for about an hour. game crashed when i tried to change a location.

 

[tattooedbones]

My Witcher game has been running perfectly for quite some time now... as I got into Chapter IV, I started getting crash to desktops. I have a gaming-only XP SP2 machine, nVidia Geforce 8800 GTX, 2GB Dominator, plenty of cooling, etc. I found in a thread somewhere that the save games really pile up. I have a bady habit of hitting F5 all the time so I think mine was pretty bad. A quick look (My Documents, Witcher, Saves) I had over 5GB of Witcher saves, over 350 files. I deleted most of them and it seems to have improved the issue. I might be crazy. Also, good info in this thread about firmware updates & so forth. Playing through for the second time and making different choices w00t!