WC3 - 98SE - Does Load, Crashes

W

Watcher

Spaceman
Ok, with the help of this board, I've been able to get Privateer 1 to work fine. Now I'm no to my second project... getting WC3, original to work. I've been at this for about a week now, with no luck, so I came here again. I searched through the old posts, and I didn't find anything that seemed similar, so I'm starting a new thread.

Ok, here's the situation. I can get the game to play fine with no sound. When I have it use sound, it will play the entire intro movie, but when I start talking to Hobbes, or if I go into the elevator, it will either crash out with a:

"A proccessor exception has occured. Your system may be unstable at this point."

or it will simply activate my PC speaker with a constant beep, repeating the last 1/2 of sound from my sound card.

I've tried everything from different sound card configurations, isolating memory area's in EMM386... and every old DOS trick I could think of, and they all still have the same result.

So here's the details of my system.
P4-2.2 (not overclocked), 512 ECC PC-800 Memory.
A-Bit TH7-II(RAID) - Raid controller is disabled
PCI video card (stb horizon... it's a new system, waiting for new card yet...)
SB Audigy Plat... configured on PCI IRQ 10, SB16 IRQ 7 (both are the only devices on their respective IRQ's)
3Com Net card.

And here's my a copy of my most recent MEM command, and autoexec.bat & config.sys.
MEM /c
Modules using memory below 1 MB:

Name Total Conventional Upper Memory
-------- ---------------- ---------------- ----------------
SYSTEM 41,696 (41K) 10,672 (10K) 31,024 (30K)
HIMEM 1,120 (1K) 1,120 (1K) 0 (0K)
EMM386 4,320 (4K) 4,320 (4K) 0 (0K)
DBLBUFF 2,976 (3K) 2,976 (3K) 0 (0K)
COMMAND 10,336 (10K) 8,768 (9K) 1,568 (2K)
SBEINIT 4,736 (5K) 4,736 (5K) 0 (0K)
MOUSE 25,424 (25K) 25,424 (25K) 0 (0K)
MSCDEX 16,288 (16K) 16,288 (16K) 0 (0K)
OAKCDROM 36,064 (35K) 0 (0K) 36,064 (35K)
IFSHLP 2,864 (3K) 0 (0K) 2,864 (3K)
Free 581,456 (568K) 580,736 (567K) 720 (1K)

Memory Summary:

Type of Memory Total Used Free
---------------- ----------- ----------- -----------
Conventional 655,360 74,624 580,736
Upper 72,240 71,520 720
Reserved 0 0 0
Extended (XMS)* 535,684,560 3,983,824 531,700,736
---------------- ----------- ----------- -----------
Total memory 536,412,160 4,129,968 532,282,192

Total under 1 MB 727,600 146,144 581,456

Total Expanded (EMS) 17,170,432 (16M)
Free Expanded (EMS)* 16,728,064 (16M)

* EMM386 is using XMS memory to simulate EMS memory as needed.
Free EMS memory may change as free XMS memory changes.

Largest executable program size 580,416 (567K)
Largest free upper memory block 384 (0K)
MS-DOS is resident in the high memory area.

Config.sys
DOS=SINGLE
DOS=HIGH,UMB
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS /V
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE 16384 RAM D=64 M5 VERBOSE HIGHSCAN /I=B000-B7FF /X=C000-CFFF
REM - the /X=C... is the address of sound card.
STACKS=0,0
FILES=50
BUFFERS=50
LASTDRIVE=F
DEVICEHIGH=C:\CDROM\OAKCDROM.SYS /D:MSCD001
SHELL=C:\COMMAND.COM /P /E:512

Autoexec.bat
@ECHO OFF
SET TMP=C:\WINDOWS\TEMP
SET TEMP=C:\WINDOWS\TEMP
SET PROMPT=$p$g
SET winbootdir=C:\WINDOWS
SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 H5 P300
SET CTSYN=C:\WINDOWS
LH C:\PROGRA~1\CREATIVE\DOSDRV\SBEINIT.COM
C:\PROGRA~1\MICROS~2\MOUSE\MOUSE.EXE
REM LH C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\DOSKEY.COM
PATH=C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND;C:\PROGRA~1\CREATIVE\DOSDRV;C:\;C:\DOS;
LH C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MSCDEX /d:mscd001 /e /v /m:20
pause

I am running this out of a shortcut on the desktop that is rebooting the system with this configuration, the pause is so I can get out of the autoexec.bat before it loads the command.com again (that's what the shortcut is linked to.)

So, any ideas? Any help would be appriciated.
 
You might want to try one of two things:

1) Go into the wc3 config by running the command line "wc3 -i" minus the quotes of course. This will open the installation program. Set your sound card for the SB16, and set the DMA (Normally low DMA being 1, and high being 8), and make sure the IRQ matches that in your soundcard's configuration.

2) The SB16 might work better on IRQ 5. It might take some creative moving around, like switching a device from IRQ 5 to the SB16's, but it won't damage anything. Then, run the installation program and set the IRQ to 5.
 
If what Saturnyne suggested doesn't work try this.

The short cut should be to the wc3.exe.

Try this line in the config.sys
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE 3072 RAM I=B000-B7FF
DOS=HIGH,UMB*

FILES=30
BUFFERS=30
Move the LASTDRIVE=F line to the bottom of the config.sys. Remove the pause.
*The DOS=HIGH,UMB needs to be below the EMM386.EXE line.
I don't think you need this line to. DOS=SINGLE

Did you try to use the short cut maker program which comes with in game? I believe that this game can be play in win98, but not ME, XP, and W2000.
 
Ok, tried the change to 3072 in the EMM386, and it tells me there isn't enough high memory to play the game (there's still 575k conv mem open, and 6k upper mem open, & 3.0 mb free ems).

I'll try the IRQ switch in the morning, but if I remember right, the reason I went to 7 was because of the same problem.

L8r.
 
whoa, I didn't notice that... the emm386 suggested below only allows 3 MB of memory to be available. Try this line instead:

DEVICEHIGH=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE RAM

also again, make sure that the game is detecting your sound card properly. Have you told the installation program what IRQ your sound card is at, or do you just hit auto-detect and hope for the best?

Try setting the sound card in the game, making sure to get your IRQ and DMA addresses right.
 
This is what Origins state what the error messege means:
"A processor exception has occurred. Your system may be unstable..."
Conflicting devices are resident in memory while the game is running. Create a boot disk for the game. (You can use the automatic shortcut maker or boot-disk maker!) and start your system with it before you run the game. If the problem persists, you may need to update your CD-ROM device drivers.

You need to clean up memory. These means removing things in the config.sys and autoexec.bat that this game doesn't need.
Get ride of these lines. You can use the REM command.
SET winbootdir=C:\WINDOWS
DOS=SINGLE
STACKS=0,0

Use a bootdisk to avoid thing loading from windows.
 
Taking a cue from the last reply, and using what you've posted in terms of your config.sys and autoexec.bat files, I have stripped them down to get rid of what you don't need. Here's what they should look like:


Config.sys
DOS=HIGH,UMB
DEVICEHIGH=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICEHIGH=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE RAM
FILES=50
BUFFERS=50
DEVICEHIGH=C:\CDROM\OAKCDROM.SYS /D:MSCD001

That should be all you need. If you're running the game in Windows, REM out the CDROM driver.


Autoexec.bat
@ECHO OFF
SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 H5 P300
SET TMP=C:\WINDOWS\TEMP
SET TEMP=C:\WINDOWS\TEMP
SET PROMPT=$p$g
SET CTSYN=C:\WINDOWS
LH C:\PROGRA~1\CREATIVE\DOSDRV\SBEINIT.COM
C:\PROGRA~1\MICROS~2\MOUSE\MOUSE.EXE
SET PATH=C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND;
LH C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MSCDEX /d:mscd001 /e /v /m:20

That should be it. Is the "SET CTSYN" line for your sound card? If so, then leave it. Again, if you're running the game in Windows, then REM out the mouse and CDROM drivers. You don't need to activate them in Windows.

If you copy and paste this into your files (they will work FINE. If they don't, remember to make backups of your original files first), be wary of line breaks. These forum spaces only extend so far and I'm not sure if it has put line breaks in where they shouldn't be.
 
Ok... AHH!!! Thanks for everybody's help. Now that I've got my DiffEq project done (college), I can now get back to more important things, like getting WC3 working.

Well... I'm now running off a boot disk, using a stripped down config & autoexec as was previously suggested. Still, occasionally getting a Processor Exception Error, sometimes getting the simple lockup.

I've tried: Getting the manufacturer CD-ROM drivers (Pioneer 106s); using a universal mouse driver (CTMOUSE, not microsoft), trying to use QEMM instead of emm386 & himem (that wouldn't even get the game to load.) Right now I'm back to the stripped down config & autoexec using emm386.

The odd thing is that I have the same problem when I tried to run it on my older computer, which was a PII-300, with a SB-Live (original). The only component out of my old machine that I'm using now is the hard drive.

I've checked the CD, and it doesn't even have a scratch in it. The game used to run on my 486-DX2, SBAWE32, but I haven't had that machine in years... :-(

Sorry to ramble, but I'm trying to give you guy's all the information I can in hopes of a solution.
:confused:
:confused:

L8r
 
I just tried one more thing. I created a directory on my hard drive, copied the entire DISK 1 to the directory, and removed the CD-ROM drivers from my boot config (actually this didn't make a difference in the outcome.)

I then tried to run WC3, and while I can get perfect sound from the install (-i) while running out off the hard drive, (I alway have gotten perfect sound from the install program, even in the beginning of all this), the game start's loading, . . . and then displays a screen imposed on the command prompt saying that my sound card is not configured properly.

I press a button, and it does a few more dots... and then beeps and says there's been a processor exception again.

Doh! At least I don't have to fiddle around in the game and let it unexpectedly crash now. With this configuration, it'll do it as it loads. :-(

L8r.
 
if you are running the game in Windows, do not run off a bootdisk. Let your computer boot normally with the modified config.sys and autoexec.bat files. It should work fine. Short of that, you might need a new sound card.
 
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