Knights of the Old Republic 2 - Keeps crashing

[Toasty_Squirrel]

Yes, I've tried posting in more "official" forums for this problem, but they have so few visitors that I could probably code out KotoR3 before I got any good answers. Thus I figured I'd roll the dice in one of the best tech forums I know of ;)

I've started playing KOTOR 2 again (for some reason) but now with a fresh install I'm having serious stability issues with the game. I'm not sure what's going on with my system, I think it might be a video issue, but I really can't say. The game will run perfectly fine for random amounts of time (5 minutes - 2 hours tops or so) and then all video will halt and my monitor will shut off as if it's gone into standby mode.

Audio continues to play for a few seconds after that, but then it starts skipping/repeating and eventually my computer just reboots. On rare occasions (happened twice out of over fifty crashes), I'll keep video but the screen totally distorts the image so it looks like I'm looking at a bunch of lines that (color wise) resemble whatever was on-screen before it crashed.

I just recently updated my video driver (in the hopes it would solve the problem); I don't recall what the version is but it was a new build as of January 2008. I ran a system scan from the KOTOR2 configuration and it said my video failed and that my driver wasn't recent enough... which I seriously doubt, given my driver is 4 years more recent then the game itself.

Does anyone have *any* suggestions? The game is still playable, although really annoying. In the 1.5 hours I played it this morning, it crashed on me seven times. System and OS stability is otherwise fine. Interestingly, I was also playing the original KotoR and had the same problems. I even cloned my hard drive, booted off the *new* drive and the problem still persists, so it's not drive related.

Thanks everyone!

System specs:
OS: Windows XP 64 sp2
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 +3500
Video: ATI Radeon X700
RAM: 1.5gb
Sound: Audigy Gamer
Harddrive: 40+ gigs free
Game version: 1.0b

[Leviathan41]

First of all, I'm assuming you have the latest patch for KOTOR2. It looks like a fairly minor patch, but it may help: http://www.fileshack.com/file.x/6703/Star+Wars:+Knights+of+the+Old+Republic+2+v1.0a+Pat ch+-+US

Have you checked your video card temperatures? Is it possible the video card is overheating? Do other games work fine? Do you get a message in the system log when the crash occurs? If so, post it here. Get there by Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer and check the Application or System sections for errors.

[Toasty_Squirrel]

Hey Leviathan :)

Yes, I already have the most recent patch, but thanks for asking. Other games have been working great; in fact I've been playing Crysis and Gears of War on the same system without any problems. Also, just for note, the crashes happen even when I turn *ALL* of the visual settings in KOTOR2 all the way down and off in some cases. Last play time since doing that: five-minutes-twenty-six seconds from load to crash.

I checked through the event viewer and I found some entries that are video related and could very well coincide with the crashes.

Source: ati2mtag
Category: CRT
Type: Error
Event ID: 45062
Description: CRT invalid display type.

However as I've been looking through the log it's been showing up at other times as well that predate my installation of KOTOR1 or 2. There's another error that could be related by the same source; though it doesn't show up nearly as regularly:

Source: ati2mtag
Category: DAL
Type: Error
Event ID: 43033
Description: Edid checksum error.

Thanks for the help, let me know if there's anything else I can provide that might shine more light on the weirdness.

[IrishAssassin]

Was it ever working without crashing? Did you update your video card drivers recently? It could be a driver not playing well with older games.

[Toasty_Squirrel]

Was it ever working without crashing? Did you update your video card drivers recently? It could be a driver not playing well with older games.
I did update my driver recently, however this was *after* I'd been having the problem. I updated in the hopes it might help. But to answer the other question, "no" I haven't had KOTOR2 running without crashing on XP64. The last time I installed it was on W2Ksp4 a few years back. Back then there weren't any problems.

[Leviathan41]

Try uninstalling then re-installing your monitor drivers (try the Windows update drivers), it's worth a shot.

[pejsaboy]

My brother has been having similar trouble with Neverwinter Nights [another Bioware game] since he switched to XP x64. I'd be very interested in the solution to your problem if/when you find one. If it happened to work for my brother's problem also, I guarantee he'd be stoked about it :)

He's tried GPU drivers, sound drivers, myriads of different settings both in-game and in the .ini files, and nothing. I wonder if it's just something in Bioware's code that's hatin' on 64-bit o/s's?

[Toasty_Squirrel]

Try uninstalling then re-installing your monitor drivers (try the Windows update drivers), it's worth a shot.
I tried that yesterday. Oddly enough the process wreaked havoc on my system. I was actually *unable* to install new drivers once the old ones were installed. They kept coming up as a disabled "standard video driver" and a disabled "video driver". After nearly an hour of uninstall/reinstall with the drivers so absolutely no luck, no matter the driver version, a "roll back driver" finally recognised it as ATI X700. From there I was able to "update" it to Catalyst 7.6. This has actually fixed the CRT error I mentioned above, but not the DAL.... and unfortunately not the game crash.

I thought it had, I got in about 2 hours of game play yesterday then it finally crashed, same this morning but only after <5 minutes.

I think I read somewhere that the KOTOR games totally hate Vista, perhaps this might be a problem that's leaked over to x64?

[dfonda]

This isn't gonna be any help but...

Thats a pretty old game now, although my ATI card a 1950pro worked the game didn't recognize it.

When the game starts and checks your system what does it tell you about your GPU?

You wouldn't have a spare Nvidia GPU laying around you could try do you?

Between the old game and Vista and the ATI card....

[mkoersvelt]

If your running XP 64 it might be an issue? Wonder what Vista would do??
Older game / new PCI card?
If you had an older card to try, I'd be intrested to see the result.

[pejsaboy]

My brother said that the game will run just fine on his 8600gt, but the 8800gt won't do it. Maybe its something with the new G92 core. Anyone on 32-bit xp with a G92 GT that can test for lockups in KOTOR or NWN?

[Stratus_ss]

KOTOR and NWN runs fine on both my 7900gs and my 8800gts but its the 640 meg version not the g92.

KotR doesnt detect either video card but still all is well. For the 64 bit os try running in win98 compatibility mode if you havent tried that... sometimes it actually helps

[dfonda]

My brother said that the game will run just fine on his 8600gt, but the 8800gt won't do it. Maybe its something with the new G92 core. Anyone on 32-bit xp with a G92 GT that can test for lockups in KOTOR or NWN?I'll check with my 8800 GT just as soon as I can.

EDIT:

Runs Max settings 1600x1200 perfectly. Rig#1 in sig.Winxp32bit

All my normal stuff running in the background including SMP folding. So it seems fine I played about 10 minutes, and since I never finished the game now I'll have to get back at it. I did buy it in the bargain bin just last summer tho.

[uzibear]

the kotor's are the most addicted i've ever been to games; i've played them over so many times, with so many mods; i have to realize that i can't get much more out of it ....tear... ;)

btw: hell of a modding community, and some really great mods; google "taris upper city emporium"