How to Fix... Looping Sound with System Freeze problem

[OneTinSoldier]

sofad;575876']i would strongly recommend to update your open al wrapper:

download this!

a) Rename the OpenAL wrapper BF2OpenAL.dll in your Battlefield2 directory to something like BF2OpenAL.original

b) install the latest Creative OpenAL32.dll (see link above)

c) Copy wrap_oal.dll (version 2.1.8.1) from WINDOWS\system32 to your Battlefield2 directory.
Check with properties that it really is the latest OpenAL library from Creative.

d) Rename the copied file to BF2OpenAL.dll just to finish clean


of course its also always a good idea to have the latest drivers for your sound card installed:

european creative driver download

american creative drivers download


that dont might fix any of your problems, but to have the audioengine updated cant hurt and might be solve some issues.

reducing the sound hardware acceleration in the dxdiag screens is also sometimes a known sound issues fixer..

Thank you [R-DEV]sofad! This is the real fix people. I did the update, and then set my sounds back to HIGH and have been playing for a few days with 6, 7, and 8 hour sessions without any Looping Sound with System Freeze problem or any other problem!

You rock [R-DEV]sofad.

[gurgul]

It didn't work for me? (the sofad fix)

3 times Loop/CTD yesterday.

Gurgul

[Jaymz]

You rock [R-DEV]sofad.

This is true

[SocketMan]

I've posted in the the other thread "PR freezes my computer" that
I had a feeling it was PB (started happening when they had a major update around the same time that 0.6 patch came out)
I got so frustrated with the freezing I had to build another machine
Anyway to make a long story short, and I am not saying this will fix it, but try this:
1.Read (full page you'll see the point) of the link

RivaTuner and Battlefield 2142 PunkBuster - Guru3D.com Forums


2.Uninstall ANY hardware monitoring program that sits in the memory



P.S. not really related to the above IMO
And for the people that think it's sound related there is a new "beta" driver out for XFI
http://us.creative.com/support/download ... &x=11&y=22

[LordSquiffy]

I've been getting the same problem so at a members suggestion I stopped overclocking my GPU.........Guess what.....hasn't crashed since.

[Sgt_carbonero]

jaymz,

My gut feeling is that it could be the level of acceleration set, not the new sounds per se. That could explain why some people get it and some don't, but not conclusively. In my case, I changed nothing from .6 to .7 (i have xp,btw) and get it now and then. I dont think it could be the higher sound quality, but perhaps how the card is processing the effects in a new way (distant sound etc)? perhaps our older drivers aren't handling well the new secret sauces. I do think it is interesting though that most of us uneducated folk think in our gut it is somehow related to sound processing issues.

I have no overclocking. Really think someone should look into hardware acceleration.

BTW I really love the new sounds, you have really outdone yourself this time ))


I would normally say its an overheating card/something, but it doesn't appear to be.

Well done.

[SocketMan]

Sound is like video resolution you can run it at Resolution X or not.
Not run it then have a freeze. If your monitor can only do 1280x1024 you can't run the game @ 1920x1200 for an hour then have crash on you. Reducing sound quality for people with XFI is like telling people with 3 Ultras in Tri Sli to run the game at 640x480. Turn the sound of with the "no sound" switch it will still freeze.

[Guybrush]

Hi people.
This "total freeze with looping sound" problem has been a curse for my PR/BF2/FH2/BF2142 since somewhen around october IIRC. I've been rebooting countless times to get out of it. Heck, I would've preferred CTDs !
Not to mention it happened ONLY in BF2/BF2142.

I believe I have fixed it by switching my settings from XFi Ultra High or High to Hardware-High as recommended here, I'll keep on stress-testing PR but it looks more stable now, no freeze since I've done that. I'll edit this post in a week or two.

My settings :

C2Duo E6400
2 Gb Ram
8800 GT 512 Mb
Creative XFi XtremeGamer
All graphics maxed out with 60fps + all the time and vertical synch On
No overclock whatsoever

The story :

This total PC freeze was a wonder for me, I couldn't precisely diagnose its reason because a few things happened to me around the same date :

-My screen started not supporting slight resolution/refreshing rates mid-summer 2007. I know for sure the screen is guilty now, but I afterwards (second reason here) thought of the GPU.
-My previous GPU (7600 GS) ran without fan for 1-2 weeks at 125°C without me knowing. Many times during this period have I had huge slow-downs and safety reboots.

I've read that BF2142/BF2 engines are extremely sensitive to GPU core stability. Especially 2142 in which I started experiencing this freeze problem.
Basically, I could play at most 1H of 2142 if the game hadn't been launched in 24-48 hours. Typically, after a hard reboot, the game would last 2-20 mins.
Same thing was happening in BF2/FH2/PR/whatever mod, but with a longer "lifespan" of about 90 mins after a reboot and 2+ hours on a day-fresh boot.

I figured my supposedly heat-damaged GPU was the cause of all this, and since I wanted a better card anyway...
I bought an 8800GT for the new year and mounted it last week. It didn't solve the screen or freeze problems.
Because the PC had been completely off power for 1-2 days, I could play 2 hours of 2142 and a full afternoon and evening of PR (6-8 hours ?) before freezing again.

So, although I have been watching this thread and related ones for quite some time, I didn't want to try any of the solutions before mounting the new GPU.

I tried X-Fi High >> Freeze but got rid of the Qinling river sound bug, when you can hear it everywhere.
Tried X-Fi Medium >> Ugh, awful sound.
Tried Harware High >> Acceptable sound, so far so good, no freeze.

Therefore, the XFi is definitely what to look at.
I bought this soundcard especially for BF2 series, you get a better awareness of ambient and footsteps sounds with it, it's a shame I have to lower my settings to allow the game to run.
I get knifed more easily now.


Question remains : what has happened within BF2/2142 sound engines around september/october to cause this awful problem ?
How come I have been able to play in XFi Ultra High with normal stability until then ?

Thanks for the OpenAL update devs
Thanks everyone for feedback, we are not alone !

[Sadist_Cain]

Thank you [R-DEV]sofad! This is the real fix people. I did the update, and then set my sounds back to HIGH and have been playing for a few days with 6, 7, and 8 hour sessions without any Looping Sound with System Freeze problem or any other problem!

You rock [R-DEV]sofad.

Ditto.

In fact I start cursing everything when I could constantly hear a merlin from the city, it just wouldn't stop "F*&"!ing sound bug!!!"

Walked around the corner to find a nicely parked merlin ... Load up the RPG

Havn't had the bug since...

[WeeGeez]

I have a buddy that is/was having the same issue. He has an NForce 4 motherboard with a built in Gigabit NIC. On a whim he forced it to run at 10/100 Full duplex, and ran PR/BF2 for several nights now with only ONE crash. It used to crash on him after about 30 to 45 minutes of playing each night, but now he has gone several nights in a row with only the ONE Freeze loop/crash. Not sure if that will be of any help to anyone, but it might help someone. Good luck to yous.

R

Hi, I think I have the same system as your mate, how did you change that full duplex thingy?

I had one thought for this Crashing thing, my temperatures of my GPU... they seemed to be at 75 when under full load, so I cranked my GPU fan speed upto 100%. I'll get back to see if that does the trick.

Also whats started happening since I changed my graphics settings higher (well sort of, only setting on medium is "Textures")is my AA keeps turning itself off... I have to ALT-TAB to make the AA activate again. I Hope this was because of the high temperature, because I really don't want to buy myself any more new hardware.

[=HR=Drayu]

That download link is to a oalinst.exe Do I install that and then copy it?

ALSO, is this just for the XFi cards or does it apply to the Audigy 2 cards too?

[=HR=Drayu]

anyone?

[Guybrush]

About the openal, It's pretty explicit the way it's described in the quotes.
Didn't solve the problem for me, but it's worth the try as you'll have your sound engine updated after that. It is being used regardless of your sound card or settings I believe.

Another 2 days of flawless PR and 2142 experience, I think I'm all clear, I would never have been able to play 5 hours straight like that with my XFi on High or Ultra High.
I have felt the loss of awareness in Hardware High tonight : I could barely hear and locate british APCs up until 50-100m.
Somehow, the way the sound is blocked until they are visible is more realistic now. The way I could locate vehicles from VERY far away before just wasn't realistic but I had grown used to it I suppose

Still, this issue remains a mystery : what the heck happened to cause the X-Fi to freeze entire systems from october ?

[=HR=Drayu]

thanks for the reply, but I guess I still am unsure about this being just for XFi. Is it usable on Audigy 2 ZS cards?

As for installing, the quotes say stuff about copying files, says nothing about executing the .exe file first.

[sofad]

thanks for the reply, but I guess I still am unsure about this being just for XFi. Is it usable on Audigy 2 ZS cards?

As for installing, the quotes say stuff about copying files, says nothing about executing the .exe file first.

b) install the latest Creative OpenAL32.dll (see link above)

if you download the oalinst.exe and its sayd that this is the openal installer and point b) tells you to install that update, what do you think how it will be installed?

and yes, thats an overall sound update, independend from your soundcard, but it will also fix some problems that are related to audigy2 cards.

[=HR=Drayu]

sofad;575876']i would strongly recommend to update your open al wrapper:

download this!

a) Rename the OpenAL wrapper BF2OpenAL.dll in your Battlefield2 directory to something like BF2OpenAL.original

b) install the latest Creative OpenAL32.dll (see link above)

c) Copy wrap_oal.dll (version 2.1.8.1) from WINDOWS\system32 to your Battlefield2 directory.
Check with properties that it really is the latest OpenAL library from Creative.

d) Rename the copied file to BF2OpenAL.dll just to finish clean


of course its also always a good idea to have the latest drivers for your sound card installed:

european creative driver download

american creative drivers download


that dont might fix any of your problems, but to have the audioengine updated cant hurt and might be solve some issues.

reducing the sound hardware acceleration in the dxdiag screens is also sometimes a known sound issues fixer..

I am not trying to be a ****, so I apologize if it is coming across that way. But the way it is explained above says nothing about downloading an .exe file and then installing it. You say download this and then talk about a .dll file, to me that seems as if I am supposed to download a .dll file. If part B in the above quote said something like install the openal32.dll file by downloading and installing the .exe found here, it would make more sense to me.

Once again, I don't mean sound like a prick on this, but I just want to get it right and be able to play PR as it should! Also, thank you for clarifying that it can be used with the Audigy 2 ZS line as well.

[sofad]

updated my original post to be more clear on this point..

[=HR=Drayu]

sofad;575876']i would strongly recommend to update your open al wrapper:

download this!

a) Rename the OpenAL wrapper BF2OpenAL.dll in your Battlefield2 directory to something like BF2OpenAL.original

b) install the latest Creative OpenAL32.dll (download the oalinst.exe from the link above and execute the .exe file)

c) Copy wrap_oal.dll (version 2.1.8.1) from WINDOWS\system32 to your Battlefield2 directory.
Check with properties that it really is the latest OpenAL library from Creative.

d) Rename the copied file to BF2OpenAL.dll just to finish clean


of course its also always a good idea to have the latest drivers for your sound card installed:

european creative driver download

american creative drivers download


that dont might fix any of your problems, but to have the audioengine updated cant hurt and might be solve some issues.

reducing the sound hardware acceleration in the dxdiag screens is also sometimes a known sound issues fixer..

Just requoting, Thank you!

[fubar++]

This is small remark about this freezing issue. There was one similar freezing/looping problem just an other day when I was watching a movie with MoviePlayer Classic. So this time it didn't relate PR or BF2 in any way. But it might have something to do with Punkbuster as reported earlier. If you open your Task Manager and choose Processes tab you can see that there is program running called PnkBstrA.exe (at least I have). It is there from start up even if you haven't used BF2 at all, and I don't know why it is there and what is doing.

I haven't had much time to explore if there is any relation between Punkbuster and freezing problem, but it seems likely that Even Balance has (again) created something they can't handle quite properly. But it needs further research to give any verdict...

[Dragunov]

I've updated my BF2OpenAL and still get the freezing. Anybody else have something to try???