GTA San Andreas problem!!!

[luvskyy]

I need help here... Everytime when I enter the Four Dragons for the mission it will restart the whole pc automactically... I try few times still the same... My pc specs are P4 3.0Ghz, 1GB ram, Galaxy 6600 GT.. is this enuf information??... can anyone plz help me out... Thankx a lot...

[Crypton]

Could be a number of problems...

First, what power supply do you have, and how many watts?

Second, do you have a "self built" pc, or even if you dont, are you able to access your BIOS and know how to use it? I ask this because changing things can mess things up so I want to know this before attempting to go this route..

Third, are you running the latest drivers for all your hardware such as most important ones Sound and Video., Also what version of DirectX are you running?

Last, Could be a bug in the game, or even a software conflict with your drivers for your hardware vs. the game itself.

// Regards,
Crypton

[luvskyy]

the power watt is 450 watt.. and i know how to use bios system... my dx is 9.0c... maybe is my soundcard since it is onboard coz my sound blaster live creative sound card was faulty so no choice has to use the onboard one...

[Crypton]

ok, you can a couple of things.in your BIOS, I need to know some settings and information first.

- How much memory is on your Video Card?
- What Brand/Model is your Video Card?

I need to know what the following settings in your BIOS are set as:
(you may or may not have some of them and the layout of the BIOS may differ from mine)
(My main concern is not the layout, but the settings of course.)

Broken into hierarchy view. * represents item of which I need to know the value

The rest are either a Category or Sub Category (According to my BIOS) Again yours may differ, so please do your best to locate your settings and values and post back the info.

If you do not have one, please just write N/A for it.

Advanced BIOS Features
- Video BIOS Shadow *

Advanced Chipset Features
-- Dram Clock/Drive Control
--- Dram CAS Latency *
--- Bank Interleave *
--- Dram Timing *
--- Dram Command Rate *
- Memory Hole *
- System BIOS Cacheable *
- Video Ram Cacheable *

AGP and P2P Bridge Control
- AGP Aperture *
- AGP Mode *
- AGP Driving Control *
- AGP Driving Value *
- AGP Fast Write *
- AGP Master 1 WS Write *
- AGP Master 1 WS Read *

Fequency & Voltage Control
- Spread Spectrum *

[DuffMan]

^^Crypton the PC expert! --->Is there anything this guy can't do! :D

[luvskyy]

First of all thanks for your help.... My video card is Nvidia 6600GT 128 MB Galaxy(brand) PCI-Express... the bios setting tat you want i couldnt find as the bios system is totally different... however my mainboard model is Intel D915PCY...

[Crypton]

Well I overviewd the PDF for that Mainboard, but it was not helpful as to what the "tweaking" features of that board are. Are you running the latest version of the nVidia Drivers?

Get them at http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp

Version 77.77 is the currect nVidia release drivers.

[luvskyy]

I tried that before... but it is still the same... sorry that I miss something out.. Actually when I loaded GTA:SA from Doherty then I went to The Four Dragons for the mission : Ketchup Fender... at first I was able to play the missions there... the problem(auto restart) occured when i saved and loaded back the game... then it started to restart everytime I enter the Four Dragon.. besides I couldnt open my real player(I dun know is there any relevance here), i could only open my real by double clicking on the file... do you think is a sound card problem or my software??... Really thanks for your help...

[Crypton]

Sounds like a software issue, but not even sure if a driver could be the problem. Could possibly be a bug in the game itself.,

Games are tested on a ton of machines before "releasing" it but you cannot test anything on every setup and the ammount of different ways to setup a machine using different hardware is almost unlimited.

It is very possible that when the game was saved it could have not "completly" saved it correctly and rendered the save game corrupt in that place where you are trying to load. But it can very well be a video card issue, seeing as when the game loads it has to render graphics and load the game into memory,

http://www.memtest86.com/

Go there and download memtest, (put on a bootable flopy disk) and boot the pc with it and do a complete test of your ram memory. Just to rule out hardware issue with your ram sticks.

It could be your sound however.. As you stated you are wondering if it is, you can try disabling sound in the BIOS and then booting the PC and load the game to see if you get the same problem. Alot of onboard sound have been known to have problems as they are not meant for gaming, just casual pc usage. Not DX9 compliant perhaps?

[luvskyy]

Thanks Crypton... I think it is a bug... or maybe sound card problem... anyway i can play now except i didnt saved at the four dragons casinos but saved at Doherty... when I changed my soundcard I post the result... Thanks anyway... u have help me a lot...

[EricBlade]

I am having a problem, as well. In the "Up, Up, and Away!" mission, it will crash about 2 seconds after stepping on the red pad to the gun mount. Emailed tech support like a week ago, no response yet :-S

[DuffMan]

Most likely a graphics card issue, try updating your game with the latest patch, I know the patch update is to censor the nudity/hot coffee mod,b ut you never know may be a bug fix, but highly unlikely as they would list it.

[EricBlade]

Yeah, I'm going to try the patch. There are some bugs listed as fixed, but nothing like what i'm having.. :(

Using a Radeon 9550, with what I think is the latest version of the drivers.. downloaded them about a week to two ago..

In case anyone ELSE is having problems with San Andreas, here's a list of the rest of the fixes, besides removing the hot coffee content:

Added support for 720p and 1080i HDTV resolutions (may also do 1080p, not sure)
Version Number displayed on game title screen
Issue fixed on machines where the OS has been updated (one OS installed over top of another) and has 2 registry keys that point to the users "My Documents" folder (we incorrectly used to assume the Win2000 folder, now correctly uses the last installed OS
Crash when entering advanced display options with only 32 meg of video ram (32 meg of video ram is not supported and will only allow use of 640*480 in 16 and 32 bit
Crash when entering advanced display options on a dual monitor machine after
Destroyed cars now are correct colour
Dirty cars now able to get clean
Numpad 5 key is now mappable when re-defining controls
Issue on all machines where certain collisions caused parts of the audio system to crash (sound effects, cutscene audio - only radio keeps going) - users know this as "Rain / Thunderstorm bug"
Improvements to DVD streaming
Audio problems in interior / exterior transitions and getting in / out of cars fixed
Some fixes to ensure reverb is not present at certain save points
Improvements to dance game timings
Crash occuring when using "user radio files" while the frame limiter is disabled

...

[EricBlade]

well, good news, bad news.

good news: there was a driver update on 10/12, only a couple days after my last one.
bad news: rockstar still hasn't replied to my email, been about a week now.
worse news: the patch combined with the newer drivers apparently keeps it from crashing windows, but the game still freezes.
great news: at 8x6x32, with all features forced to maximum, gta is playable now, whereas it wasn't before. and looks wonderful :D

[Crypton]

Definately a good thing it is running, however, do you have Virus Scanners installed such as Norton? If so you may want to disable it as well when trying to play. Not that it should have any effect on playing at a higher resolution, but it would not suprise me the least bit as I have seen some strange things going on with games lately and programs.

[EricBlade]

i typically leave AVG and Gtalk running, even on a cold boot, but normally play with whatever i had loaded whenever i decided i was going to play. With a gig of RAM on here, I don't usually run into issues (except with Sims 2 which sucks about 600MB) ;)

I'd really like to finish this game, I played the entire series over the past 3 weeks, and want to finish this .. argh. Might have to find a save game after this mission :(

[EricBlade]

i typically leave AVG and Gtalk running, even on a cold boot, but normally play with whatever i had loaded whenever i decided i was going to play. With a gig of RAM on here, I don't usually run into issues (except with Sims 2 which sucks about 600MB) ;)

I'd really like to finish this game, I played the entire series over the past 3 weeks, and want to finish this .. argh. Might have to find a save game after this mission :(


good news..!! I finished the mission.. but without getting anywhere near the red dot. I was poking around and accidently got in a position where the two gunships were shooting at me, but actually hitting each other, or they were shooting themselves, or something.. and they both blew up, and it let me in the chopper. yay :D

[Crypton]

With a gig of RAM on here, I don't usually run into issues
Has nothing to do with memory issues m8, it has to do with the "FACT" that virus scanners "conflict" with things. You can have 3GB of Ram and have problems with virus scanners running.. Its not a memory issue.

Software Conflicts and Memory Issues are entirely 2 seperate things.

[EricBlade]

i've never seen it happen.. at least not on any operating system with seperate memory spaces.. unless it triggers some kind of copy protection or something on the game itself.. *shrug*

anyway, happy to be past it. I did try it without ANYTHING running, and it still had the problem :-S i shut off the virus scanner whenever i think about it, since i've not seen a virus since oh, about 1987 or so... and it's not my computer, so the owner insists it has a scanner. :-S

[Crypton]

well im not here to argue it, it is a known fact, you can look it up online, but regardless, just because you have not seen something personally, does that mean it does not happen or is not possible?

If you work on as many PC's as I do all day long, you would see lots of things as I do, and I have seen plenty of things go wrong simply because a Virus Scanner was interfering with something. Most the time it is due to access permissions and the scanner protecting a file from being changed or a file from being called on. But it can cause more than something simple like that, including preventing an application from running at all.

[EricBlade]

oh, i'm certainly not here to argue either :D the insight is appreciated.

[Crypton]

:)

I need to start playing this game again, I get so caught up in others, GTA is definately an all time fav, GTA:SA is great, will be even better with Multi Theft Auto for GTA:SA http://www.mtasa.com/

[EricBlade]

:)

I need to start playing this game again, I get so caught up in others, GTA is definately an all time fav, GTA:SA is great, will be even better with Multi Theft Auto for GTA:SA http://www.mtasa.com/

I think the best thing would be if you could somehow run GTA3 through the San Andreas engine. With the map, improved radar (the GTA3 radar didn't really show when a road was over another road, which got me totally lost.. I never got beyond the start of the second island, because i couldn't find my way around!) , and better controls (especially with keyboard) that'd be awesome. :D

[Crypton]

I think the best thing would be if you could somehow run GTA3 through the San Andreas engine. With the map, improved radar (the GTA3 radar didn't really show when a road was over another road, which got me totally lost.. I never got beyond the start of the second island, because i couldn't find my way around!) , and better controls (especially with keyboard) that'd be awesome. :D
Ya that would be good, but possible to make a mod to redo the radar and such., the controls, well not sure there is much that could be done about that, but running through GTA:SA engine might not really be needed if there is a coder interested in trying to mod the interface ingame to show more objects.

Once the Blue Platform for Multi-Theft Auto is complete there will be an SDK released, which im sure will be useful for peeps to code in their own plugins such as newly defined controls, UI, ect.

[EricBlade]

well, sure, but it's specifically GTA3 that I want to go back and finish.. but the radar in it was screwing me all up because i couldn't tell roads that went over each other.. whereas in VC and SA they appear raised, in GTA3, the roads all appear flat. :( so i ran the first mission on the second island about a dozen times, got lost out of my mind each time, and gave up :-S