Unfixable looping sound crash bug.... Cannot play FF

[BobTheChainsaw]

Okay, my FPS is okayz and the blue screen seemed to go away. But as soon as I get five minutes into a game, it crashes and the sound loops over and over...

This has happened to me in other source games, but not nearly as much as it happens in Fortress Forever (except for garry's mod). It is guaranteed to happen every game, I can't play! Suggestions please. I tried setting my sound to medium, didn't work.

[Commander]

you should just make a single BobTheChainsaw Thread of Problems :D

make sure your chipset/audio drivers are all up to date (if they are, try older ones)

also, post your hardware specs and driver versions that you're using if possible

[BobTheChainsaw]

Um.... I uninstalled my ATI drivers and when I tried to reinstall... it, uh, didn't work...


I think I'm screwed.

[BobTheChainsaw]

...Christ, now I can't start FF.


FUCK.

[Commander]

have you tried the latest ATI Catalyst 7.9 drivers?

[MrBeefy]

is this one of those unfixable problems?

kind of doomed from the start, i'd say.

[BobTheChainsaw]

Kk... got the new drivers... gonna see if FF crashes

[Demasu]

is this one of those unfixable problems?

kind of doomed from the start, i'd say.
Yeah, it is. Every one of these threads that has a crash with audio looping, I've had, and they used to make me crash completely, but now it seems to fix its self. I don't know what caused it, and I don't know what I did to make it not completely crash, but nothing I did seemed to make it do anything different, and it seems completely random.

[BoltR]

Yep, it's a crash that I sometimes get myself, and Skanky has been getting constantly. I can go weeks without crashing like this, and then it happens a few times in a row.
It's something that the devs are currently trying to address, but it may be a HL2 engine issue.

Somethings you can try to reduce the frequency of the crashes:
-Run the game in windowed. Not only does it reduce the frequency, but if you are fast you can actually kill HL2 before it eats your computer
-Lower the sound quality
-Run the game with the parameter '-nosound', that seems to help Skanky a fair bit

[Skanky Butterpuss]

i get that fucking shit all the time. sometimes i have to throw my computer in suspend and come back to be able to ctrl+alt+del it and it leaves my desktop all striped and generally screwed up. im trying to tweak stuff so that it doesnt happen, to no avail. the -nosound let me get through one full round, so that was nice, but ive been playing tonight with the sound on and havent had it happen nearly as much as last night, nor as bad.
a few suggestions given to me:
-completely uninstall and install the latest drivers for your sound and video card
-make sure there are no viruses or spyware
-run in windowed, -nosound, 800x600 on high, trilinear filtering. (i havent yet tried it in 800x600, but ive tried the other stuff and it hasnt seemed to help all that much)

so yeah... good luck...

edit: oh! turning steam community off seemed to help me a bit. go to your steam options -> in game, and uncheck the steam community.

edit2: after turning the sound quality to medium, i havent had a crash like this in 2 hours! try that!

[BobTheChainsaw]

Arrrgh... got new drivers.... did nothing. How do I run in window'd mode?

[Sureshot]

-window in launch options, iirc.

[BobTheChainsaw]

Okay, gonna try that. If that wont work, nothing will.

[BobTheChainsaw]

Hey, I think it worked!

[BobTheChainsaw]

Nevermind, didn't work...

GOD DAMNIT

[BobTheChainsaw]

Okay, while all these measures improved the crashing (doesn't crash as much) I'm still getting plenty of crashes 5 minutes into the game.

[dr.flexyjerkov]

I can play fine but my mate can't and I think it may be due to the dreaded loopback sound problem. Whenever he crashes it is with a loopback playing.

Widely discussed here>>> http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=500297&page=75&highlight=looping+crash

People with on board sound tend to suffer but my dedicated card is fine.

[BobTheChainsaw]

It's weird, because sometimes I can play for 3 hours of constant FF and be fine, but other times I can't even get 2 minutes into a game.

[Lost]

It's weird, because sometimes I can play for 3 hours of constant FF and be fine, but other times I can't even get 2 minutes into a game.

Umm, well hell, go simple and blow out your CPU and vid card fans.

Hey, it worked for me before! ;)

[Blashy]

It is a tricky crash. I can play EP1 without a single crash and with the same settings I crash in FF.

There are SO many different solutions for various people its just dumb luck to find one that works for you.

[BobTheChainsaw]

I set the game to Dx7, and it seemed to work... I think. Maybe I just got lucky.

[mervaka]

cool, keep us posted.

[RogueA]

The only thing that seems to make it not crash for me is to set it to -nosound. And trust me, I've pretty much tried everything.

[Thunderknight]

-nosound fixes the audio bug for me, but then I get Bob's error.

Going to try running it in Dx8 first, then Dx7. Here's hoping this'll fix it...

[dr.flexyjerkov]

I don't have the option to allow a change to lower DX levels than 9. It's greyed out.

[mervaka]

put it in the command line:

-dxlevel 70

[Thunderknight]

Yeah, somebody should probably explain how to do things like "-nosound" and changing Dx levels...

For future reference...


1) Create a shortcut to Fortress Forever

2) Right click on the shortcut and select "properties"

3) Click on the Shortcut Tab

4) Where it says target, put -nosound or -dx## at the end of the target (Note: ## represents Dx level. So, say you wanted to run the game in DirectX 7, you would put -dx70). Make sure there are no quotes around it, otherwise it will not work.

5) Load up the game and enjoy (hopefully).

[StatisticZ]

put it in the command line:

-dxlevel 70
I tried putting that in console, and it said unknown command, except I put "-dxlevel 60"

[MrPooHead]

* Right click on FF in "My Games" in Steam
* Choose Properties
* In the window that appears, click Launch Options
* In the text box that appears, type '-dxlevel 70'
* Press OK to close all the boxes

Reboot steam and try it

[BobTheChainsaw]

Just got done playing 2+ hours of fortress forever. No crashes.

[dr.flexyjerkov]

dx 70 does seem to fix most issues.

[RogueA]

Sadly, it seems only -nosound is going to let me run the game. Ive tried Dxlevel 81, dxlevel 70, and a host of others, as well as windowed mode and every other trick in the book really. It'd be nice to play with sound.

If any dev thinks you can help me, take a look at the mdmp files I posted in the mdmp thread.

[BobTheChainsaw]

just played another like, 2 hours. No crashes. Dxlevel 70 worked! Woohoo!

[PoMo]

I can play every other Source game with details at whatever level I like and have no issues. FF crashes randomly any time from connecting to a server to 1 hour later. The only constant is that it will crash. I haven't tried lowering dxlevels or playing without sound... but TF2 is coming out now, so I might just play that until FF 1.1 comes out.

Good luck to the devs, but I can't keep wearing out my PC's reset button.

[Thunderknight]

Ok, I've tried just about everything (lowering the Dxlevel to 7, lower audio quality, drivers, reinstalls, the works).

Hell, I even set it to no sound, and wouldn't you know it.


The. Game. Still. Fucking. Crashes.


The irony of this is that I have -nosound enabled, and yet it still freezes (with the audio looping, I would guess). What the hell.

I just gave the SDK base a reinstall... Here I go...


Ok. After trying that, now I can't connect to any other servers. Wonderful. :confused:

[Blashy]

The crash has nothing to do with audio.

The audio loops because the whole system is hanging.

It is a hardware video card compatibility with source on some source based games.

They've been aware of it for more than one year, so it is obviously not an easy solution.

[barronofhellion]

Umm, well hell, go simple and blow out your CPU and vid card fans.

Hey, it worked for me before! ;)
if out of canned air , use a demoman

[Thunderknight]

Umm... Here's the situation...

I completely wiped FF and the SDK base off my computer. I reinstall both, and decide not to touch ANYTHING in to do with the settings. I try to load a game. Crash. "Fucking hell". I try to reload the game and FF won't start up at all! I freaked. "This is bullshit! Whenever I try to fix the fucking problem, it gets worse! What the hell did I do to deserve this"?!


So, I decide to try other games and see if they don't work. So I load up CSS, and not only does that fail to load as well, but it sets my screen into 800 x 600 and won't let me change! AHHHHHHH! So now I'm really pissed off. So, out of desperation, I shut down my computer (through the button, because I was afraid of it saving that ungodly setting and refusing to let me change it).


Computer boots back up. Everything seems normal. "Let's try this again". So I load up FF and wait for the inevitable crash. Nothing happens. "Well, lets err on the side of caution and load up a map so that it doesn't hang while connecting to a server". Map loads fine. "Hmm, this is too good to be true... I bet it freezes while connecting to a server". So I pick a random server.


And lo and behold, it works perfectly. I kept waiting for that inevitable crash, but nothing happened. I got some bad hiccups where I thought I was going to crash, but it worked fine.


I don't know if this will help people, but try it anyway. Re-install the SDK base and FF (in that order). Then, DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING UNDER OPTIONS/CROSSHAIRS AND TIMERS EXCEPT FOR THE FOLLOWING:

Name
Allow developer console
Sensitivity
Audio quality (set to medium)

Perhaps this may work for some of you, perhaps not. Who knows, maybe I just got lucky and it worked once. But give it a shot anyhow.

[Xpheyel]

I don't know why but I've pretty much stopped crashing after messing with options (changed to windowed, then 800x600 windowed, then back to 1024x768 fullscreen).

[Widespread Panic]

-dxlevel 70 worked for me.

[Gibsauce]

-dxlevel70 also worked for me.

Also ran an integrity check on the SDK Base prior to adding the dx switch. May have helped, dunno...

Game ran solid for the last 2 nights through hours of gibbing including 2 hours prior to this post.

Game looks like crap in comparison to what it looked like with dx9 but oh well (Spies are much tougher to see, challenging!). The engine renders objects much slower and at a much shorter distance now. But meh, at least I can enjoy the awesome bloodbaths while the devs work on a patch though. Much thanks for posting the temp fix...for some of us at least! :D

**EDIT: In case devs were wondering what my specs and settings are.

Prior to crashing:
* Resolution: 1280x1024
* Windowed/Fullscreen: Fullscreen
* Model Detail: High
* Texture Detail: High
* Shader Detail: High
* Antialiasing mode: None
* Filtering mode: Trilinear
* Dx level: Default (9.0c)

Ran smooth, averaged 42fps during huge battles, everything looked good but randomly crashed with looping audio without an error. Also some crashes were so severe that I had to perform a hard reboot.

=====

Current settings (Have yet to crash with these):
* Resolution: 800x600
* Windowed/Fullscreen: Fullscreen
* Model Detail: Medium
* Texture Detail: Low
* Shader Detail: High
* Antialiasing mode: None
* Filtering mode: Bilinear
* Dx level: 70

Getting rediculous fps (140+) but like I said, it's fugly and objects (Boxes, debris, lights especially) don't render until I get fairly close to them.

It should also be noted that I tried changing my audio to medium but I still crashed. This was also prior to the dxlevel switch. Running at High atm, sweet booms to my ears!

=====

PC Specs:

*OS: Windows XP Pro SP2
*P4 3.2GHz Dual Core
*2GB Ram
*ATI Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB (Running Omega CAT 7.1 drivers) Tried installing newer drivers but they were incompatible (Mobile aka Laptop).
*Crappy onboard C-Media Sound Card (Yay for irresponsibly expensive headsets...that taste good to cats T_T ).

GL to those still crashing and here's hoping devs narrow the bugs down soon...and gib them! :D

[Thunderknight]

Umm... Here's the situation...

<Big ass story>

Perhaps this may work for some of you, perhaps not. Who knows, maybe I just got lucky and it worked once. But give it a shot anyhow.


I take it all back. Still crashes.


*Hits head off wall*:mad:

[Foxglove]

Resorted to the -dxlevel 70 fix and it has worked for me also.
No crashes for 24 hours but as Gibsauce says its not as "pretty" to look at.
Small price to pay as the crashes were doing my head in and now I at least get to finish a round out.....Demoman ftw !!

[Thunderknight]

Possible fix for the audio-loop-crash...


Try lowering sound acceleration under the dxdiag thingamajig.

So...

Click run

Type Dxdiag

Go to Sound

Lower sound acceleration