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RC1: Spontaneous reboot

by John Olsen · in Torque Game Builder · 06/01/2006 (10:39 pm) · 16 replies

I was running through the Fish Demo Tutoral, and as soon as I tried to run the demo screen with the fish swimming back and forth (step 5 in the PDF files) my computer will play it for a few seconds (long enought to bounce back and forth a couple of times) then do a hard reboot. I tried it a second time, and rebooted a second time.

I installed to the default directory. I'm running dual headed of my single video card, but that's never been a problem before. If anyone wants me to zip up the project or send the full DxDiag for my system, let me know. Here is a little bit of the config information from DxDiag:

Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: VIA694
System Model: AWRDACPI
BIOS: Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1800+, MMX, 3DNow, ~1.5GHz
Memory: 1024MB RAM
Page File: 243MB used, 1685MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.2180 32bit Unicode
Card name: C.P. Technologies Inc. RADEON 9200SE
Manufacturer: ATI Technologies Inc.
Chip type: RADEON 9200 SE AGP (0x5964)
DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_5964&SUBSYS_2073148C&REV_01
Display Memory: 128.0 MB
Current Mode: 1280 x 1024 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor: Plug and Play Monitor
Monitor Max Res: 1600,1200
Driver Name: ati2dvag.dll
Driver Version: 6.14.0010.6517 (English)
DDI Version: 9 (or higher)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Date/Size: 2/22/2005 18:36:24, 224256 bytes
WHQL Logo'd: Yes
WHQL Date Stamp: n/a
VDD: n/a
Mini VDD: ati2mtag.sys
Mini VDD Date: 2/22/2005 18:36:04, 986624 bytes
Device Identifier: {D7B71EE2-1A24-11CF-496E-7900A0C2CB35}
Vendor ID: 0x1002
Device ID: 0x5964
SubSys ID: 0x2073148C
Revision ID: 0x0001
Revision ID: 0x0001
Video Accel: ModeMPEG2_C ModeMPEG2_D
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Torque 3D Owner Matthew Langley
Torque
#1
06/01/2006 (11:10 pm)
Feel free to zip up your project and send it to me :)

mattl (at) garagegames (dot) com

Torque Owner Gregory Stewart
#2
06/02/2006 (5:15 am)
Although you're completely on your own here, you may wish to try updating your video card driver from ATI's website: http//www.ati.com

Torque Owner John Olsen
#3
06/02/2006 (9:53 pm)
Emailed zip of the project should be on its way.

Here's something interesting to add. I updated my video drivers, and the tutorial project refused to even load. I started over on the tutorial, and if I so much as leave it sitting in the editor for ten or fifteen minutes my system will reboot. I had progressed to I think step 5. I'm trying just the default editor now with nothing edited to see if it still reboots me.

(edit) It seems stable when I run the default game builder, but if I so much as make a new project based on Fish and add a couple of bitmaps at specific depths, it will die within a few minutes without even running the level. I'm wondering if it has something to do with the fish project type, so I'll try an empty project and see how far I get.

Torque 3D Owner Matthew Langley
Torque
#4
06/02/2006 (11:04 pm)
I'm betting it has to do with an issue I ran into with image sizes and TGB not internally doing things right with image maps,s o if you force in an image a certain size and your graphics card doesn't like it, TGB will choke. Now image maps s hould be set up to handle that (Melv spent a lot of time adding a lot of features), so I'm guessing it's just something that surfaced and hopefully should be a quick fix :)

Associate Melv May
#5
06/03/2006 (11:50 am)
John,

For it to be a hard-boot, I suspect that there's a driver susceptability that TGB is finding. Let me see if I can help narrow it down a little...

Could you go into "games\common\prefs.cs" and change the line...
$pref::T2D::imageMapShowPacking = 0;
...to...
$pref::T2D::imageMapShowPacking = 1;
... and then exit normally.

Can you then simply run-up TGB and when it's settled-down (and before it crashes), drop-down the console and type...
echo( "MTS=" @ getT2DMaxTextureSize() );
... and hit "enter" and simply exit normally.

When you've done this, could you post your "console.log" file to my profile email?

NOTE: You'll probably want to restore "$pref::T2D::imageMapShowPacking" when you've done this to remove the blurb from the console.

- Melv.

Associate Melv May
#6
06/03/2006 (11:51 am)
Also, could you email the project you sent to Matt?

- Melv.

Associate Melv May
#7
06/03/2006 (2:29 pm)
Got the file, thanks Matt!

- Melv.

Torque Owner John Olsen
#8
06/04/2006 (6:49 pm)
I'm emailing the full console.log file that shows the packing for everything. It reports MTS=2048. (It's not loading the exact same project, so let me know if you want it to load the one that was emailed.)

Associate Melv May
#9
06/04/2006 (11:42 pm)
John,

As long as you are getting the same problem in that project; I don't need to correlate the log file with the project or anything.

I've got the log file BTW. :)

- Melv.

Associate Melv May
#10
06/05/2006 (3:47 am)
John,

I've looked through the log files and there doesn't seem to be anything that indicates a problem. I really suspect that there's a problem with your driver but without further information I'm unable to help out.

I guess I would try running under both OpenGL and DirectX. If you get the problem under DirectX then you could try running a graphic stress-tester app, possibly something like 3D Mark to see if you've got a driver issue.

- Melv.

Torque Owner John Olsen
#11
06/05/2006 (7:06 pm)
Switching to D3D mode stopped the reboots. I had it crash with two different sets of video card drivers. I don't know whether it's the TGB calls into OGL, or how OGL talks to the video drivers, but there's some bad mojo lurking in there somewhere. I don't know if other OGL apps crash my system since I don't use any other OGL apps. If some other non-Torque OGL app makes it barf, that pretty much would nail it down. Got any ideas on what could be used to check that?

Associate Melv May
#12
06/06/2006 (12:23 am)
It woudl be interesting, if not conclusive, if you could download the TGE v1.4 demo and see if you have problems with that in OpenGL mode.

With regards to testers in OpenGL; somebody on these boards may be able to point to a good one or you can google quite a few but I've always found that mainstream games (that support OpenGL) are damn good ways of stressing the card.

In case anyone else has the same card around here, could you post which driver version you are using?

- Melv.

Torque Owner John Olsen
#13
06/06/2006 (4:51 pm)
Here's my driver information. This is what it upgraded me to when I chose "Update Driver" through the device manager. I didn't download it manually from ATI.

Tul Corporation, RADEON 9200SE
ATI Technologies Inc
2/21/2006
1.231.0.0

Associate Melv May
#14
06/07/2006 (12:37 am)
Thanks John. I'm really sorry I can't provide any further help. If any other clues turn up then please let me know.

- Melv.

Torque Owner Dylan Sale
#15
06/07/2006 (12:49 am)
I've always had bad luck with the Update driver feature in Windows. Last time I used that on an ATI card it wouldnt change from 4-bit colour in 640x480. I turned off auto-check for the driver install thing and downloaded the lastest ones from www.ati.com and it fixed the problem. Might want to try that.

Cheers,
Dylan

Torque Owner Jason McIntosh
#16
06/07/2006 (7:09 am)
My testers are having crashes at random times, too. I will have them try the D3D mode and see if the crashes persist. I'm using an alpha at the moment, so maybe this is unrelated but my gut says it's the same issue. Probably bad drivers with OGL.