new crashing problem

[ggerrietts]

This morning, before I left for work, my wife and I played about half a game of Rise of Nations. Everything went swimmingly, except that I had to leave just as we were getting to the Enlightenment Age.

This evening, I came home and tried to fire up my CTW campaign. It tried to load, then crashed to desktop almost immediately. I tried a Quick Battle, and got the same result. I got my wife to put up a multiplayer game, and I tried to connect: another crash to desktop.

I went to the tutorial menu and tried to play the very first tutorial. No crash, it played just fine. Played Skill test 1, and it plays just fine.

My system is an Athlon 1900+ with 1GB DDR 266 RAM, one 40GB HDD, a GeForce 4 4400Ti, and a Creative SB Live 5.2, all on a more or less generic motherboard.

Since this morning, I've only changed one thing on the system: I unplugged my iPod's cable. After the problem started, I also removed the firewire adapter, but the problem didn't go away once I had vanquished the Apple taint from my system.

I have also reinstalled RoN, and patched to the newest version. That didn't help either.

Does anyone have any ideas? Do I need to re-OS (please tell me no)?

[Cosmos]

I have the same problems exactly.

[ggerrietts]

Well, the good news is I solved them. The bad news is, Cosmos, you may be unhappy with how I solved them.

Brief background: a couple weeks ago, I had to move my soundcard around after updating the motherboard BIOS because it seemed like one of the PCI slots had died on me. When I installed the FireWire card, I had similar problems. Throughout the time of operation, my iPod and its associated FireWire connection seemed a little dicey.

So, after re-OSing my box, I discovered I still had the problem. Today, I replaced the motherboard, and everything's just fine now. Better than fine, in fact, but the important fact is the symptoms have disappeared.

Now, I can't tell anyone that replacing your motherboard will solve your problems, but that's what I had to do, to solve this particular problem.

[Cosmos]

I don't see how this could have made the game worked. As 9 out of 10 of my games work well. Its just RON that is the only major problem.... My Asus Mobo is supposed to be one of the best manufacturers in the world... I dont know if anyone else has had problems with Asus, if you have please say.

[ggerrietts]

If you're not having problems, it's probably something different, then.

Like I say, I wouldn't venture to guess that what solved my problem would necessarily solve anyone else's. But if you've replaced the OS, and re-installed Rise of Nations, then it's a fair bet RoN is using some hardware facility that none of your other games are -- and that feature isn't working right on your system.

[Skanky Burns]

Out of curiosity, what was your previous motherboard and your new motherboard?

I get exactly the same symptoms, but interstingly enough we share a similar system.

CPU: Athlon 1GHz
Memory: 512Mb
Mobo: Asus A7V kt133
Sound: Soundblaster Live
Graphics: GeForce Ti 4600
Driver: 40.72

[ggerrietts]

Previous motherboard was a PC DDR 266 (made by www.pcchips.com.tw); it was cheap but it did the job. Was based on the SiS 735 chipset.

New motherboard is a Soyo KT333 Dragon Ultra Platinum, based on the VIA KT333 chipset.