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Some CTD fix Tips

Posted: 2010-02-16 21:58
by Metal_militia_103
Hi everyone, I wanted to share some tips that I've found for CTD (crash to desktop) and performance issues with the new .9 release. If this is in the wrong section, please move.

I wish everything would simply just work perfectly, but obviously that's not the case. So with some work and patience, I'm sure you can get your game running properly.

I run:
Vista 32 bit
3.25GB RAM
ATI HD4850
Quadcore Q6600

In .87 I could play everything on high except textures - which were set to medium. It ran smooth with little or now performance and crashes.

Here's how I got mine straitened out

- keep texutres at medium, but lower aliasing to 2x
- set terrain to medium
- play with the resolution to see what works best for a frame jump on your system
(remember to bring up the console hit the ~ key (to the left of the 1) and type rendererdraw.fps 1 to show frame rate)

In windows:

- try removing any antivirus or firewall software
- ensure your graphics card is set to use the program to determine AA, filtering etc.
not forced by the card
- a tray icon for graphics cards such as Catalyst Control center should be disabled
- remove any kind of remote software - logmein, pc anywhere etc. The software uses a mirror display driver that caused some issues.
- ensure display adapter drivers are up to date
- ensure audio drivers are up to date
- ensure monitor driver is installed (not just the default plug and play monitor)
- run in compatibility mode for XP sp 2
- run as administrator

I also reinstalled everything from scratch ensuring that i removed all traces of .9 and previous versions from my system.

BF2 -> (run BF2 once before installing patches to create config files) 1.41 patch -> 1.51 patch -> PR part 1 -> PR Part 2.

BF2 is resource intensive so ensure your system doesnt have non-sense running in the back ground. Task manager can show you whats running.

I also used BF cleaner which keeps things tidy as well. There are some issues with performance of the new maps with many many players. Be patient as I'm sure the dev's are working on this.

Hope this helps guys and thank you devs for .9

Re: Some CTD fix Tips

Posted: 2010-02-16 22:11
by karambaitos
Metal_militia_103 wrote:
In windows:

- try removing any antivirus or firewall software
i hope you didnt mean uninstall antivirus (you can disable it while in BF but make sure to turn it on if your going to surf the internet) but the windows firewall causes more problems than it helps

also AA can cause some problems (vista) and it can produce a black PB screen shot in vista (dont know if its fixed in 1.5)

Re: Some CTD fix Tips

Posted: 2010-02-16 23:50
by Metal_militia_103
karambaitos wrote:i hope you didnt mean uninstall antivirus (you can disable it while in BF but make sure to turn it on if your going to surf the internet) but the windows firewall causes more problems than it helps

also AA can cause some problems (vista) and it can produce a black PB screen shot in vista (dont know if its fixed in 1.5)
True, you definitely want to have antivirus while surfing, but some AV have firewall/IDS built in and it may be wise to rule that out.

Re: Some CTD fix Tips

Posted: 2010-02-17 01:51
by SnipingCoward
good post, thank you
Metal_militia_103 wrote:BF2 -> (run BF2 once before installing patches to create config files) 1.41 patch -> 1.51 patch -> PR part 1 -> PR Part 2.
i am not aware of a patch 1.51 - i asume its a typo but please correct it as it might cause some confusion
BF2 is resource intensive so ensure your system doesnt have non-sense running in the back ground. Task manager can show you whats running.
- in vista i advice to turn off visual effects/themes (aero etc.) as it eats up quite some ressources

- manually updating pb is also adviced since it doesn't seem to hurt but can occasionally fix issues with ctd, md5 mismatches and the likes
- some should also consider overheating especially when there are artifacts like no ground texture, black textures, flickering, check patterns rainbow colors, or shiny surfaces, lags, fps drops right before the ctd or reboot

Re: Some CTD fix Tips

Posted: 2010-02-17 10:18
by SnipingCoward
another thing one should try is to run pr/bf2 in windowed mode - this will eventually give an error message instead of a mere ctd - that error message will narrow the problem down and assit in fixing the problem significantly

- to run in windowed mode:
right click on the short cut, select properties, find the "Target" line and append "+fullscreen 0" at the end (without quotations)