OFFICIAL CTD Thread AKA- Crash to Desktop

[Hawkx]

Since there is no Official Thread about the CTD Ive took it in my own hands to make one.

Ive done scientific research to find a solution for this common problem. In the end I've found out a coherent idea of what might be causing this. Continue to read on forth to see my point of scientific analytical thinking. *By the
way this is the crash problem were your game just suddenly closes with no error what soever.*

UPDATE: I color coded everything to make stuff easier.
Royal Blue = My Settings
Red = New Break through


Ive adjusted my setting to a Resolution of 1920X1200 W/ High settings From Video Drop Down selection

The Ground texture was Missing in a big deal.


Ive lowered my settings furthermore to a Resolution of 1920X1080 W/ Low Settings According to the drop down selection.

Still See that ground texture Error......


Lowered the Settings again to a Resolution of 1600X1200 W/ Low Settings

Still not doing the Trick


In a Desperate attempt to find the solution i then lowered my settings even more to this time the lowest possible in EVERYTHING!

FINALLY......EUREKA! I can see the ground textures


So this time i tried a Resolution of 1280X1024 W/ ALL HIGH SETTING plus to up the anti, I made the Anti-aliasing X8 (highest possible)

Hmmmmm It still works..


I believe that the problem of the Crash to Desktop is enter-twined with the ground texture problem. So i concluded that the problem is with the resolution and you need to lower your resolution. Of course this is only a test on my computer. If you have anything more to add about a similar problem please go ahead so that we can come to a conclusion and solution to this problem.

Specs Are
OS- Windows Vista 32 bit Service pack 2
CPU- Core 2 Duo T9300 2.5Ghz
Ram- 4GB
Graphics- 8700M GT SLi Combined
Hard Drive- 600GB

[SnipingCoward]

i am sorry to steal your thunder but this thread is neither official nor scientific

apart from you failing to mention that you are running in windowed mode, which drivers (versions) you are using, what setting in nvidia you have got
you also do not give a reason why you believe that the ground texture problem is related to the CTDs (which you do not give any detailed information on either, e.g. when it occurs, how frequent it is, how recreatable it is)

there is no explaination on why resolution might be responsible and how you got to the idea of changing it
why do you set AA to 8x when the rest is low?

your solution presented is not really what is desireable imo - but i guess thats highly individual since some prefere high quality visuals and others high resolution

I admit your approach to seperate the two problems is good and needed

I do like screenshots, they give a lot of information

I am very happy to see that you are trying to help yourself rather then waiting for others to do it for you!


lets try to get this thing fixed for you.
from helping alot of other ppl and having had issues like that myself I can say I have some experience in getting those things fixed, often however ppl will find the solution themselves and there appears to be alot of common fixes one should try to see if they apply/help

1. update your gfx drivers (esp. when having graphical glitches, such as the texture missing, wrong colors, wrong light effects)
- additional: when updating drivers the bf2 cache should be updated on mapload (shaders optimizing message) to force such an update can be helpful - do this by clearing the bf2 cache in "My Documents\Battlefield 2\cache" (delete the contents)
2. check if your system has overheating problems (can be fixed by drivers update too, sometimes, but generally dedusting is a good idea for testing puropse taking off the side panel of the pc is easy and quick)
3. consider a hardware failure (try using spare parts e.g. by lending from a friend or replacing douplicate devices like RAM bars, or removing one and then the other gfx card when in dual mode) there are also tools to help with finding defects (memtest.exe on vista to check the RAM, chkdsk to check harddrive)
- additional: if you are more into hardware you can have a look at the mainboard and cards and see if capacitors are leaking, bloating of rusting (http://www.mad-monkey.co.uk/resources/p ... acitor.jpg) this means grave system failure is imminent and the part needs to be replaced ASAP

as for CTDs
4. manually updating PB is known to fix random CTDs
5. running in windowed mode might help bf2 to dump an error message upon crash (which it doesn't in fullscreen)
6. driver updates as well are known to fix CTDs
7. certain settings are known to cause CTDs - getting "Textures" in video options to "medium" is known to help, so does "Lighting" (esp. in conjunction with low memory and/or memory.dll error)
8. certain devices are known to cause problems: Xfi Sound cards sometimes even cause BSODs - setting the device to "Hardware" and "Quality" to "High" at max in audio options helps here

[Hawkx]

To answer your question why i believe it is related is because that when i run in windowed mode i never get a crash but ground textures missing. When i run Project Reality in full screen i get a crash. The crash itself is very hard to predict when it might be 1 hour later it might be 1 min later it might be 15 minutes later. Note that it crashed one time for me when i started my system newly and only got 5 minutes of play.

As for the settings they are Stated on top of the pictures. Its 8X anti plus highest settings in Texture, shadowing, etc etc...

[Spinkyone]

You'll find that 90% of the time the answer to this problem lies in static & dynamic lighting / shadow combined with AA. All three set to medium should solve this and you should be able to run AA again. It's an overrun from a vBF2 issue and is due to compatibility issues with BF2 and some graphics cards.

There is very little you can do about this. I believe EA addressed the issue for BF2 by raising the threshold for this to happen and little else, PR now appears to be on this limit.

[Hawkx]

i am sorry to steal your thunder but this thread is neither official nor scientific

apart from you failing to mention that you are running in windowed mode, which drivers (versions) you are using, what setting in nvidia you have got
you also do not give a reason why you believe that the ground texture problem is related to the CTDs (which you do not give any detailed information on either, e.g. when it occurs, how frequent it is, how recreatable it is)

there is no explaination on why resolution might be responsible and how you got to the idea of changing it
why do you set AA to 8x when the rest is low?

your solution presented is not really what is desireable imo - but i guess thats highly individual since some prefere high quality visuals and others high resolution

I admit your approach to seperate the two problems is good and needed

I do like screenshots, they give a lot of information

I am very happy to see that you are trying to help yourself rather then waiting for others to do it for you!


lets try to get this thing fixed for you.
from helping alot of other ppl and having had issues like that myself I can say I have some experience in getting those things fixed, often however ppl will find the solution themselves and there appears to be alot of common fixes one should try to see if they apply/help

1. update your gfx drivers (esp. when having graphical glitches, such as the texture missing, wrong colors, wrong light effects)
- additional: when updating drivers the bf2 cache should be updated on mapload (shaders optimizing message) to force such an update can be helpful - do this by clearing the bf2 cache in "My Documents\Battlefield 2\cache" (delete the contents)
2. check if your system has overheating problems (can be fixed by drivers update too, sometimes, but generally dedusting is a good idea for testing puropse taking off the side panel of the pc is easy and quick)
3. consider a hardware failure (try using spare parts e.g. by lending from a friend or replacing douplicate devices like RAM bars, or removing one and then the other gfx card when in dual mode) there are also tools to help with finding defects (memtest.exe on vista to check the RAM, chkdsk to check harddrive)
- additional: if you are more into hardware you can have a look at the mainboard and cards and see if capacitors are leaking, bloating of rusting (http://www.mad-monkey.co.uk/resources/p ... acitor.jpg) this means grave system failure is imminent and the part needs to be replaced ASAP

as for CTDs
4. manually updating PB is known to fix random CTDs
5. running in windowed mode might help bf2 to dump an error message upon crash (which it doesn't in fullscreen)
6. driver updates as well are known to fix CTDs
7. certain settings are known to cause CTDs - getting "Textures" in video options to "medium" is known to help, so does "Lighting" (esp. in conjunction with low memory and/or memory.dll error)
8. certain devices are known to cause problems: Xfi Sound cards sometimes even cause BSODs - setting the device to "Hardware" and "Quality" to "High" at max in audio options helps here

1. I had the newest which is 195.62 but i Re-Updated so to say graphics driver to 195.62
2. No overheating problems if it did occur my system would have shut down with a blue screen. Also de-dusted my 3 Fans.
3. My computer is fairly new and i don't think there is a capacitive error i checked and indeed found nothing. I also did the tests there was no Error.
CTD Fixes
4. Updated PB
5. When i run it in windowed mode crash doesnt occur
6. Re-Updated Graphics Driver to 195.62 Lastest*
7. I find that irrelevant I have 4GB of Ram and 512MB of total Graphics. Found that Reducing resolution does indeed help, will experiment more with that today.
8. It is already High and my sound card is SigmaTel High definition Audio Codec.

I ran the Game in settings of 1920X1200 Res and medium settings no Anti-A
And Finally still got this


I also checked out the Vanilla version of Battlefield 2 and i also found that the error is persistent there too. I ran it in Windowed mode


In all I found out my components is not to blame for the error. It might be that the error lays with the software the coding of something. It also cant be my Install of BF2 because the error is not apparent in lower resolutions. It might be the Operating system Vista 32 bit.

[Hawkx]

You'll find that 90% of the time the answer to this problem lies in static & dynamic lighting / shadow combined with AA. All three set to medium should solve this and you should be able to run AA again. It's an overrun from a vBF2 issue and is due to compatibility issues with BF2 and some graphics cards.

There is very little you can do about this. I believe EA addressed the issue for BF2 by raising the threshold for this to happen and little else, PR now appears to be on this limit.

Nice Idea i tried it out but in windowed mode i still had the error of missing ground textures.
Settings at-


Ground texture error-

[Spinkyone]

Nice Idea i tried it out but in windowed mode i still had the error of missing ground textures.
Settings at-

Ground texture error-

Good now try it with AA off, you should be able to try to raise other setting other than lighting. You also importantly need to wipe your shaders in MyDocs since some of these changes don't register and you need to force optimisation.

It was a well known issue on the EA forums around the time of the Nvidia G80 series launch and 2142 in particular is still bugged with this lighting issue.

[Hawkx]

Good now try it with AA off, you should be able to try to raise other setting other than lighting. You also importantly need to wipe your shaders in MyDocs since some of these changes don't register and you need to force optimisation.

It was a well known issue on the EA forums around the time of the Nvidia G80 series launch and 2142 in particular is still bugged with this lighting issue.

Blathering problem isn't it. I hate Battlefield 2 engine.... I wiped my sharers clean and made sure the sign of optimization is present when entering this server.

[Spinkyone]

Blathering problem isn't it. I hate Battlefield 2 engine.... I wiped my sharers clean and made sure the sign of optimization is present when entering this server.

As if to prove a point:



There I recreated the exact same error with a similar graphics card at 1920x1200.

Steps to solve:
1. Forget Windowed mode it's pointless
2. Don't ever run BF2 in 1920x1080 it isn't supported.
3. Double make sure sure you wipe your shaders in Documents\Battlefield 2\Mods\BF2\Cache and delete everything in that folder.
4. Set all Static + Dynamic lighting to medium, disable AA and force it to optimise shaders.
5. Now exit the game start up again and apply AA and optimise again.

Oh this also proves the ground issue is nothing to do with PR crashes as it is a vBF2 bug that was never fixed. Your PR issues with crashes is likely to be something else.

[Hawkx]

As if to prove a point:



There I recreated the exact same error with a similar graphics card at 1920x1200.

Steps to solve:
1. Forget Windowed mode it's pointless
2. Don't ever run BF2 in 1920x1080 it isn't supported.
3. Double make sure sure you wipe your shaders in Documents\Battlefield 2\Mods\BF2\Cache and delete everything in that folder.
4. Set all Static + Dynamic lighting to medium, disable AA and force it to optimise shaders.
5. Now exit the game start up again and apply AA and optimise again.

Oh this also proves the ground issue is nothing to do with PR crashes as it is a vBF2 bug that was never fixed. Your PR issues with crashes is likely to be something else.

Thank you for your reply. Your test actually confirms that my idea is correct that the problem is indeed in certain resolutions and the problem lies within battlefield 2 engine. If anyone else is having this problem avoid high resolutions. I'm conducting more tests at the moment. As for the Crashes what can be causing that Ive also found another error ill post the pictures up soon.

[SnipingCoward]

thank you for replying so thoroughly, that also helped clear up the situation

it just came to my mind that i never read anything about you reinstalling BF2 and/or PR
1.a) please try reinstalling since there might be corrupted files
1.b) if you find the time and can spare bandwidth redownloading (using a download manager) the BF2 patches or md5-sum-checking the old ones would help eliminate the possiblity of a corrupt download
2. check in your "System" control panel how much ram is being recognized, what is your page file size, what is the overall memory size and usage when testing?
3. earlier i was refering to nvidia settings - you have not responded to that yet, right click on the desktop and click "nVidia Control Panel" - there you will see "Manage 3D Settings" - please check both General and App specific for BF2.exe (generally setting to "Application controlled" is adviced esp. for testing purposes)

edit: 4. looking at your specs again I was surprised to see "M" versions of gfx cards in SLI-mode
I suggest you try a different video driver from here: http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/ (search their forum for suggestions which one might be optimal)

[maarit]

i got this problem.
i got some random ctd`s after hours play,30 min play.
so i started to find the problem with windowed mode but all ground textures was vanished.
i never get ctd when run in windowed mode.
graphigs setting all low,all off.still i get ctd with fullscreen.
i lowered my ingame resolution...no ctd anymore,even windowed mode has now textures.

works fine now...allthough,i cant play lashkar,beirut,etc cos frames per second is just too low
but i can play just fiine yamalia and old maps exept fallujah.

[Hawkx]

thank you for replying so thoroughly, that also helped clear up the situation

it just came to my mind that i never read anything about you reinstalling BF2 and/or PR
1.a) please try reinstalling since there might be corrupted files
1.b) if you find the time and can spare bandwidth redownloading (using a download manager) the BF2 patches or md5-sum-checking the old ones would help eliminate the possiblity of a corrupt download
2. check in your "System" control panel how much ram is being recognized, what is your page file size, what is the overall memory size and usage when testing?
3. earlier i was refering to nvidia settings - you have not responded to that yet, right click on the desktop and click "nVidia Control Panel" - there you will see "Manage 3D Settings" - please check both General and App specific for BF2.exe (generally setting to "Application controlled" is adviced esp. for testing purposes)

edit: 4. looking at your specs again I was surprised to see "M" versions of gfx cards in SLI-mode
I suggest you try a different video driver from here: NVIDIA & Laptop News | Latest NVIDIA drivers and related news | laptopvideo2go.com (search their forum for suggestions which one might be optimal)

1a. Reinstalled numerous times...no help
1b. Where can i get that? If possible can you give me a link please. And if i reinstalled battlefield 2 what would be the point?
2. all 4 GB are being recognized.
3. All the options that give application controlled are selected

New error is that when people try to hit you your motion blur becomes black in 1920X1200 Resolution with Medium settings



Nvidia control pannel...

[Spinkyone]

For how to MD5 check your files see this: https://www.realitymod.com/forum/f10-pr ... rrupt.html as I cba typing all that out.

Honestly though the ground texture issue is about as old as one can get in that it's been about for 3 years now and has NOTHING to do with PR CTD's that I know of once it's been solved as I said previously.

If you do have a moblie or laptop version then yes that can affect how some of the overlays work, as to the solution I really don't think there is one. But the main thing for all overlay modes is it is never helped by running windowed. Other people have had issues in the past with the bleed effect, hell there one a few topics down. It is either a result of SLI or Nvidia control panel settings getting in the way. Disabling them all or setting "let the application make up it's own god damn mind" normally works.

[Hawkx]

For how to MD5 check your files see this: https://www.realitymod.com/forum/f10-pr ... rrupt.html as I cba typing all that out.

Honestly though the ground texture issue is about as old as one can get in that it's been about for 3 years now and has NOTHING to do with PR CTD's that I know of once it's been solved as I said previously.

If you do have a moblie or laptop version then yes that can affect how some of the overlays work, as to the solution I really don't think there is one. But the main thing for all overlay modes is it is never helped by running windowed. Other people have had issues in the past with the bleed effect, hell there one a few topics down. It is either a result of SLI or Nvidia control panel settings getting in the way. Disabling them all or setting "let the application make up it's own god damn mind" normally works.

The default is already like that i cant set the other options because there is no such option to let the program choose. Disabling SLI also doesn't fix the ground texture problem.

SumChecks are-
513a415dbca69f995e866a9dc7cbd305 *BF2_Patch_1.50.exe
a0d2f0e6733a3eab524d65588a04dc40 *pr_0909_full_part1of2_setup.exe
88b8fb0c60e5688f69ea5f5e4a56ab55 *pr_0909_full_part2of2_setup.exe

[SnipingCoward]

ok, thanks again for the screen shots

as for the md5-crcs: you can get them from download sites (some of them are providing them), since you have got the exact md5 sum you can also simply google it - you will find something like this
Games On Net File Library :: Battlefield 2 Patch v1.5 - BF2_Patch_1.50.exe
if your md5 matches with their md5 that means your file is OK


from what I have seen the cards use ~1.2GB as shared memory
you reporting that the 4GB were recognized doesn't add up
either you are having more overall RAM in that maschine or vista is not showing the actual ram available

please make a screen shot of the "performance" tab from the task manager (while having the ground texture bug)

[Hawkx]

Heres the Task Manager snap shot

[SnipingCoward]

very good, from the screen shots i can see that your ram is hitting its limit (with only 8kb left, which is virtually none) but the page file should make up for it since its 6GB in size and 1.8GB are used
all that together makes a ram usage of 1.8+3 = 4.8 GB when running PR (while having 3 GB available RAM)
that is quite alot

from your previous screen shots i can see that you are using some visual effects by vista and for testing purposes i suggest turining them all off - see this guide on how to: Follow these tips to boost Vista performance
go to the section "Adjust visual effects settings" - as recommended setting i suggest "best performance" (it will look like win98se though xD

also kill all unneeded background processes (messengers, quick launchers etc. - "Process Explorer" Process Explorer and "Resource Monitor" can help you identify the nasty resource hogs [order by "private bytes"])

you might not see an instant improvement when testing with the max resolution but maybe you can get one step higher then when it worked last time (i.e. go from 1024xXXX to 1200xXXX)

the high ram usage also explains why there is such a high "disk usage" in the resource monitor

[Hawkx]

very good, from the screen shots i can see that your ram is hitting its limit (with only 8kb left, which is virtually none) but the page file should make up for it since its 6GB in size and 1.8GB are used
all that together makes a ram usage of 1.8+3 = 4.8 GB when running PR (while having 3 GB available RAM)
that is quite alot

from your previous screen shots i can see that you are using some visual effects by vista and for testing purposes i suggest turining them all off - see this guide on how to: Follow these tips to boost Vista performance
go to the section "Adjust visual effects settings" - as recommended setting i suggest "best performance" (it will look like win98se though xD

also kill all unneeded background processes (messengers, quick launchers etc. - "Process Explorer" Process Explorer and "Resource Monitor" can help you identify the nasty resource hogs [order by "private bytes"])

you might not see an instant improvement when testing with the max resolution but maybe you can get one step higher then when it worked last time (i.e. go from 1024xXXX to 1200xXXX)

the high ram usage also explains why there is such a high "disk usage" in the resource monitor

That Made it worse

[SnipingCoward]

1. interresting, but a pitty, in what ways exactly did it make it worse?
i see that you gained 200MB ram (less usage as before)
however i dont see you running the game (in task bar)
are you using the steam version?

as you say there is no improvement at all i think we can drop the idea of insufficient RAM causing the CTD/texture bug

2. let's try this:

Under compatibility "disable desktop composition

- in compatibilty tab of your short-cut properties tick "disable desktop composition"
- clear the bf2 cache too (yes, again )


edit:
3. when using a widescreen resolution append "+widescreen 1" to your shortcut's target line
4. use the 196.21 drivers, i have a friend confirming to have no probs with them (v196.21 Windows 7/Vista 32bit | NVIDIA Desktop - LaptopVideo2Go Forums)