City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Bizarre sounds and frozen

Chad Gulzow-Man

By Chad Gulzow-Man,
Posted on: 2012-07-21 14:19 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs

 

Posted

I frequently get lots of loud effects or distorted sound, especially the sound of a jet engine taking off that I find no consistent source to explain, across multiple alts.

If the client has large memory or processing commitments - map load or tons of power use - it can often be frozen and require manual shutdown in process explorer.

No strange processes are running to explain this though I did recently install graphics drivers that for no reason included an nvidia sound driver and since then windows will not include the volume control in the taskbar at startup even if i continually use control panel to set it.

A game is not supposed to be some kind of... place where people enjoy themselves!

 

Posted

---System information gathered by CoH Helper version 0.2.0.2---

DxDiag gathered at July 21, 2012 14:19 (-07:00)
Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3 (2600.xpsp_sp3_gdr.101209-1647)
System Manufacturer: System manufacturer
System Model: Maximus II Formula
BIOS: BIOS Date: 08/22/08 20:50:34 Ver: 08.00.14
Central Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6300 @ 1.86GHz (2 CPUs)
Memory: 3328MB
.Net Memory Report: 2094MB out of 3327MB available
Page File: 5372MB (1118MB currently in use)
C Drive: (WDC WD5000AAKS-07A7B0) 8550MB out of 131061MB (6%) free
J Drive: (WDC WD5000AACS-00G8B1) 387944MB out of 476937MB (81%) free
D Drive: (TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-S223F) zero-size drive
Windows directory location: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DirectX Diag version: 5.03.2600.5512 (32-bit version)

Display Notes: No problems found.
Sound Notes: No problems found.

No problems found.
Input Notes: No problems found.

Monitor: ViewSonic VX2450 Series
Monitor's Max Resolution: 1920,1080
Video Device Name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti
Manufacturer / Chip: NVIDIA / GeForce GTX 560 Ti
Video Memory: 1024.0 MB
Driver Version: 6.14.0012.9610
Driver Date: 2/29/2012 4:58:00 PM
Driver Language: English

Sound Device Description: SoundMAX HD Audio
Driver File: ADIHdAud.sys
Driver Version: 5.10.0001.6480
Driver Date: 3/23/2008 6:08:14 PM

Sound Device Description: HD Audio digital out 2
Driver File: ADIHdAud.sys
Driver Version: 5.10.0001.6480
Driver Date: 3/23/2008 6:08:14 PM


WMI Information
Motherboard Manufacturer: ASUSTeK Computer INC.
Motherboard Model: (empty)
Motherboard Product: Maximus II Formula
Motherboard Version: Rev 1.xx
BIOS Manufacturer: American Megatrends Inc.
BIOS Name: BIOS Date: 08/22/08 20:50:34 Ver: 08.00.14
BIOS Version: A_M_I_ - 8000822
BIOS Release: 20080822000000.000000+000


Registry Information for Current User
Resolution: 1920x1080
3D Resolution: 1920x1080 (Not using renderscale)
Full Screen: Yes
Maximized: No
Screen Position: 0, 0
Refresh Rate: 60Hz
Vertical Sync Enabled: No


Physics Quality: None
Maximum Particles: 100
Max Particle Fill? 10.000
Physics Card Enabled: No


Anti-aliasing: Off
Anisotropic Filtering: 4x
Texture LOD Bias: Smooth
Water Effects: None
Bloom: 1.000 (turned off)
Depth of Field Enabled: No
Desaturation Effects (Sepia) Enabled: No
Shader Detail: Unknown (5)


World Texture Level: Very High
Character Texture Level: Very High
World Detail Level (Vis_Scale): 0.800
Entity Detail Level: 1.000
Shadows Enabled: Yes
Shadow Mode: Stencil shadows
Shadow Map Shader: Unknown (0)
Environmental Reflections: Disabled
Advanced Occlusion Settings: No
Ambient Occlusion: Off
Occlusion Strength: Off
Blur: Bilateral
Ambient Resolution: Performance


Gamma Correction: 1.000
Geometry Buffers (VBOs) Enabled: Yes
Suppression of FX When Camera Close Enabled: Yes
Close Suppression Range: 3.000
Show Advertisements: Yes

Audio Mode: Performance
3D Audio: Yes
FX Sound Volume: 0.157
Music Sound Volume: 0.105

Show Advanced Graphics Options: Yes
Overall Graphics Quality: 0.250
Reverse Mouse Buttons: No
Save Login Username: Yes
Transfer Rate: 105049 bytes/second
Current Game Version: 1950.201103080206.1
Installation Directory: C:\Games\Online\City of Heroes

Mod files in the Data directory
. has 2 files
.\Texts\English\Menus has 5 files
.\Texts\English\Menus\Examples has 12 files
.\texture_library\GUI\CREATION\HybridUI\LoginScree n has 6 files
.\texture_library\GUI\CREATION\Login has 2 files
.\texture_library\GUI\Icons has 4 files
.\texture_library\GUI\Icons\pack has 75 files
.\texture_library\GUI\Icons\Powers has 137 files
.\texture_library\MAPS\city has 1 file
.\texture_library\MAPS\Safeguard has 9 files
.\texture_library\MAPS\static has 5 files
.\texture_library\V_MAPS\Outdoor_Missions has 9 files
.\texture_library\V_MAPS\Static has 6 files

A game is not supposed to be some kind of... place where people enjoy themselves!

 

Posted

I don't think this has anything to do with your problem, but I did notice that your system drive is too full to keep windows happy. You're sitting at 3Gb of ram which is OK, but you may wanna consider going to atleast 4Gb if possible.

As for the sound, does it happen to correlate with Hasten activating? I have Hasten set to Auto (right click a power and it's Auto-fire) and if I forget to turn down the volume it can sound like an airplane just buzzed my head.

I also noticed that your sound drivers are a tad old, but it's possible that there aren't any newer ones as well considering the age of that hardware (from what I can tell atleast).

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by WanderingAries View Post
You're sitting at 3Gb of ram which is OK, but you may wanna consider going to atleast 4Gb if possible.
It's Win XP, 32-bit, which caps out at 3.25GB. An extra 256MB isn't really going to increase performance noticeably.

-----

The rest of the issue reminds me of what I used to see when I got a video crash: loud, stuttering noise for several seconds (or longer if I didn't Ctrl+Alt+Del out), though mine was often accompanied by a plain colored screen after a few moments, followed by a "CityOfHeroes.exe closed unexpectedly, blah blah blah" error message.

Just make sure you're on a recommended driver for your hardware (unfortunately, I don't follow the NVIDIA threads, as I use ATI hardware currently). Some drivers definitely work better than others when playing CoH, since it is an OpenGL game and all.

Main Hero: Chad Gulzow-Man (Victory) 50, 1396 Badges
Main Villain: Evil Gulzow-Man (Victory) 50, 1193 Badges
Mission Architect arcs: Doctor Brainstorm's An Experiment Gone Awry, Arc ID 2093

-----
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nethergoat View Post
it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

 

Posted

Free up hard drive space. Report back.

H: Blaster 50, Defender 50, Tank 50, Scrapper 50, Controller 50, PB 50, WS 50
V: Brute 50, Corruptor 50, MM 50, Dominator 50, Stalker 50, AW 50, AS 50
Top 4: Controller, Brute, Scrapper, Corruptor
Bottom 4: (Peacebringer) way below everything else, Mastermind, Dominator, Blaster
CoH in WQHD

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Chad Gulzow-Man View Post
It's Win XP, 32-bit, which caps out at 3.25GB. An extra 256MB isn't really going to increase performance noticeably.
I've had an installation show 3.5Gb before, but like you said there's not a Major difference. Especially when you have to take into account the graphics memory. I'd simply skimmed the report if you didn't notice and missed the x86 part.