[AC2] Hard-locks from ACII

[Freyar]

This just started rearing it's ugly head at me. At first it happened when delivering the letters after Ezio's father was imprisoned, now it's happening less than 5 minutes into a second attempt.

Win7 x64
2x GeForce 9800GT (SLi)
nVidia Drivers 196.21
X-Fi Titanium Audio Card (PCI)

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Event logs report nothing specific since it's a hard lock with the audio repeating in the buffer. "Shutdown unexpected" is the best I could get.

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It seems other people have these hard-lock issues as well. I took a look at other warnings that might be cropping up, but there's nothing I can tie in to figuring out this crash.

[eydeeb]

I suggest you temporarily remove your sound card and try the onboard audio. This could rule out or prove that the sound card/driver is responsible.

You could also try disabling SLI and/or updating/downgrading nvidia drivers to check possible video card issues.

[Freyar]

Should I mention the on-board was disabled in the bios? Windows doesn't even see it.

I could try downgrading one step. Upgrading to a beta set is something I don't relish.

[eydeeb]

The whole point of my suggestion was to remove the hardware and enable the onboard in the bios. Then let Windows detect the onboard sound, then you should install the latest drivers for the chip. If the game issue still remains, you know your sound card is OK. If the problem disappears, you can complain to Creative so they can fix it.

After the testing, you can uninstall the onboard audio, disable it in the bios and put the original card back.

[Freyar]

I just tested it on another system.

Core i5 750 (2.67Ghz)
GeForce 8800 GTX
4GB 1333hz
Realtek Audio Chipset


The same issue is appearing.

[Freyar]

I've sent in a ticket with Ubisoft, hopefully I'll get more than the cut-and-paste "We need system.nfo and dxdiag". I also hope I get a response quickly.. looking back at the response times for previous tickets, they took up to 15 days to get responded to.

[Freyar]

I got a response, though it was the usual copy and paste citing drivers, along with the wonderful notation that my system may not meet the minimum requirements.

[Furyo]

In other words they have no idea, and for all they know it's your computer.

Gotta love PC gaming :)

[Freyar]

In other words they have no idea, and for all they know it's your computer.

Gotta love PC gaming :)

Eh, I'm just underwhelmed by the support so far for it. I mean.. the issue seems common-ish. Good news is that if I pull the process off core 0, and 1.. I can play without issue.. albeit at a worse framerate, and I have to remember to set it each time.

[Jito463]

There's a simple utility I found some time ago, called AffinitySet, that will change a program's affinity to a single core on the fly (defaults to the first core).

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=XSVBDRE1

You edit the affinityset.txt file, and add the executable name (ac2.exe?), then launch the affinityset.cmd file and let it run. Then launch the game like normal, and the .cmd file will eventually loop back around, and set the affinity for the process to the first core.

I use it for programs that I can't permanently adjust with imagecfg (due to copy protections, or online games that will balk at the adjusted file), but still don't play nice with multiple cores.

[Freyar]

I hope you won't mind if I pass. Megaupload is not a place I trust. :)

Got a response back from support. They asked for dxdiag, system info files.. of which I already had in there on the opening "post" because I knew they'd ask for them. Now they waste four days.

[Jito463]

I can upload it somewhere else, if you like. I just uploaded that now, it wasn't something someone else put up. I chose that, instead of the usual "Rapidshare" link, as I've had issues with Rapidshare's site before.

*EDIT*
Or, if you're more comfortable with doing it another way, you just need to find process.exe & sleep.exe (which are included in the linked file), then use the batch file below (named AffinitySet.cmd), and create an accompanying file (named AffinitySet.txt), in which you just place the names of the executable files (one per line).

Example of AffinitySet.txt file:
ac.exe
bf2.exe
doom3.exe

Etc, etc, etc.

@echo off

echo.
echo Affinity Set
echo.

:ExecutableList
echo * Executable list from "AffinitySet.txt" ...
for /f "usebackq delims=" %%a in ("AffinitySet.txt") do @ call :ProcessRunningCheck "%%~a"
echo . Sleeping for 30 seconds...
sleep.exe 30
goto :ExecutableList2

:ExecutableList2
echo * Executable list from "AffinitySet.txt" ...
for /f "usebackq delims=" %%a in ("AffinitySet.txt") do @ call :ProcessRunningCheck "%%~a"
echo . Sleeping for 30 seconds...
exit

:ProcessRunningCheck
echo ? Process running check on "%~1" ...
process.exe | find.exe /i "%~1"
if %errorlevel% equ 0 echo + Process running.& call :AffinityCheck "%~1"
if %errorlevel% equ 1 echo - Process not running.
goto :eof

:AffinityCheck
echo ? Affinity check...
process.exe -a "%~1" | find.exe /i "Process : 0x0001"
if %errorlevel% equ 0 echo + Affinity correct.
if %errorlevel% equ 1 echo - Affinity not correct.& call :AffinitySet "%~1"
goto :eof

:AffinitySet
echo = Affinity setting to Processor 0...
process.exe -a "%~1" 01
goto :eof

rem Version:
rem
rem Author: JakFrost
rem
rem Created: 2006-02-26
rem Updated: 2006-02-27
rem
rem Purpose:
rem
rem Check a list of executable names to find if they are currently running
rem as processes, then change their affinity to limit their execution to only
rem Processor 0.
rem
rem Reason:
rem
rem In multi-processor or multi-core systems the default process affinity
rem is set to all processors and this is normal and desirable behavior since it
rem allows the operating system to dynamically move processes between
rem processors to equalize load. However some games and applications
rem experience undesirable behavior, such as jittering graphics, unstable
rem sound, network disconnections, freezes, crashes, and other weird behavior
rem when their processes are executed on one processor moved to execute on
rem another processor while the process is still running.
rem
rem Dependencies:
rem
rem find.exe - Find Utility from Windows
rem
rem sleep.exe - Sleep Utility from Windows 2003 Resource Kit
rem http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...&displaylang=en
rem
rem process.exe - Command Line Process Utility by Craig Peacock
rem http://www.beyondlogic.org/solution...processutil.htm
rem
rem Usage:
rem
rem Ensure that a text file called "AffinitySet.txt" exists in the same folder
rem and that it contains names of the executables that you want the affinity to
rem be changed for. Add additional executable names into this file as
rem required.

[Heatseeker]

I had two system freezes, once in the second assassination and once during a cutscene with Leonardo (before you go after the 3rd guy) at wich point i decided not to punish my pc anymore.

Dont bother with afinity or SLI, i have a core 2 duo and a single 8800 GTX.
Im using the latest beta (197.25) from nvidia wich i hoped would increase performance (it didnt).

Waiting for patch...

[rebb]

1 System Freeze, and lots of instant Crashes to Desktop without Error Message.

I can see why they would want to protect that with the Anal Probe DRM it uses ...

[Freyar]

The guy that's handling my ticket doesn't even know this is a Windows 7 system, despite having all the information there.

This is getting more stupid by the day.

[venom4911]

i was having this same exact issue...game would lock up my entire system and the audio would get weird, like go into slow mo and keep repeating. it seemed totally random too. sometimes i could play for 2 hours other times it would happen within 5 minutes. i never had a game lock up this many times on me before...

i tried everything...updating video and sound drivers, going back to stock settings (i was overclocking a bit) but nothing fixed it...

i think i figured it out though...i had changed some of my nvidia control panel settings (forcing afx8, max rendered frames to 0 and forcing vsync off)...i reset everything back to defaults and the game hasnt locked up so far...played it for 4 hours last night with no issues...

im thinking the game just doesnt like when you change any of those settings...not sure which one was causing the lock ups but im just glad it seems to be fixed

so if you changed any of your nvidia control panel gfx settings i would reset them back to defaults and see how it goes...

-edit-

nm didnt fix it, its just so random...just played for about 20 min and it happned...then i played for 10 min and it happened again...so weird last night i played it for 4 hours with no problem...i have no idea what it could be...maybe ill try messing with the gfx setting in game...

[venom4911]

so the same issue was happening with other games too and i found out what was causing it...

a day before i installed AC2 i switched my chat client from trillian to digsby...when playing games digsby was somehow causing the video driver to crash. 95% of the time it would completely lock up my pc but a couple times the video driver was able to recover from the crash and the screen would just flicker...

not sure whats up with digsby but since i switched back to trillian my pc has been stable as ever when playing games...