Crashing to blank blue screen help

[Clawe]

Ive been looking all over the place for a fix to this, I cant find any. Maybe everyone here can help. Im trying to play Thief 3, I had it installed once, and I cleanly uninstalled it, at some point formatted my hard drive, then installed the game some months after, this is a clean install. I can play the first mission all well and good, but at loading screens sometimes I hear a click inside my computer, my screen goes blue and I have to hardboot it again. I don’t think it’s a hardware problem because ive been playing Quake 4 on max graphics with no problems, I can play everything from The Sims to Doom 3 and I will never experience so much as a lock up. Thief DS is just…rebooting me constantly. I cant even get passed the first level. It only happens when I enter new areas through. I have also set my graphics to the lowest possible settings, it makes no difference. I tried a reinstall, deleted with add remove programs, deleted the folder and I removed the registry from Regedit. I do have one mod installed, a texture pack from John P’s but it was crashing before and after the mod. Why is thief crashing me to a blank blue screen and rebooting me?

My specs

Pentium 4, 3gz duel processor
1.5gig of RAM
Radion 9800 pro 256 (Drivers are up to date at 5.11, I did try to roll back to the 5.3’s that used to work, it didn’t help at all)
Its installed on my second hard drive
Windows XP sp2

Thief also lags like crazy, odd that Doom 3 on ultra gives me no lag, but this does.

Id really appreciate any help, im a computer person, been programming in college for over two years now, this one is stumping me. If you know a fix, even if its complicated I could more then likely do it.

[Peter Smith]

First, I would try disabling hyperthreading if you have it on. That is a BIOS setting. Then I would try to disable the second processor or at least make Thief run on only one of them using the task manager. Then I would search the forums for ATI driver issues. I think there are some that work and some that do not, but I don't have an ATI card so I have no personal experience. Find and install one that is reported to work. Finally, check the FAQ at TTLG if you have not done so. Something about SP2 rings a bell, but I cannot remember what. Good luck. Let us know how you do. Maybe we can come up with more ideas. As for Thief running slowly, Thief TDS is a real resource hog, so it is not surprizing to see it run more slowly than, say, Doom3. There are lots of system tuning tricks to try. I would hope, though, that whatever solves the crashing problem might also fix the performance.

[theBlackman]

http://www16.brinkster.com/salvage/thief/darkengine.htm Hyper threading and cure.

[Clawe]

I got to make this quick, need to head of to college for the day. I tried to turn off the second prosesser however I cannot shring thief DS, not even a ctrl, alt, del will keep it shrunk, it will shrink then immediately remaximize, so I cant really do anything.

Got to run, will post more later this afternoon.

[Clawe]

Aww to heck with going to classes. Going to college means getting days off.

I tried to shrink the game, but it was auto maximizing on me. I edited the DEFAULT.ini file so that I could play windowed. This allowed me to use only one CPU, unfortunately I still crashed, however this time I got a message!

Windows said: Windows has auto shut down to prevent damage to your computer.
Then it gives me a bunch of memory locations in quotes. Tells me it preformed a memory dump and that I would have to restart. I did see in the error though, that windows created before it sent me to the blue screen of death, that it thought I was using Windows NT, and in fact im using XP. Could that be the problem?

[Salvage]

XP is built on NT, so that's probably why it said NT.


Question: what is the Thief 3 exe file named? I'm going to update my page as multithreading causes other problems with T3 on AMD processors.

[Clawe]

Originally Posted by Salvage

XP is built on NT, so that's probably why it said NT.


Question: what is the Thief 3 exe file named? I'm going to update my page as multithreading causes other problems with T3 on AMD processors.

It loads into memory T3Main.exe and t3.exe, main taking up most of the memory.


EDIT: This is wierd, when i changed the setting back to full screen the game started to shring and stay shrunk.... now i have no idea if its going to continue working, but i started over on clean saves and reset DEFAULT to its origional state, and added a no cd patch...and its working. Maybe my CD drive is just getting old? Ill post again later if its still working, last time it took me untill i got to south quarter for the first time for it to start crashing.

EDIT 2: It did it again! i saw it happen this time. I got past the castle front, the game was playing great, then i could hear my hard drive, then click..and it was gone. This is perplexing

Edit 3: Well i just tried to laod it 3 times with three blue screens, i think its the quicksave doing it. Im going to go try to conferm.

Edit 4: Your all probably laughing right now, its like a bug report update. I narrowed down the problem to the Quick saves, by loading a save game at the exact same point (i save once normal then quick save on exit) i was able to load, go through the second half of the game, and get back to the opal. No garentee this is the direct cause, or why loading the quicksave crashes but normal saves dont. Im guessing quick save saves a corrupted file. I will update if i can get into the Pagans level uninterupted by a crash, if so i think the entire problem is quick saving!

Edit 6: Althrough it worked alot longer, after i shut down and tried to reload, it crashed again, it could just be save position 1 or somthing.

Edit 7: Its crashing after i uninstalled the mods (texture packs), no matter what i do, it dies. Unless anyone has an idea im uninstalling it, Thief DS is unplayable. Is there a tech support place that would respond to me at all, seeing as in Ion is gone and Eidos never bothered to reply to my mail?

[Peter Smith]

I suggested that you disable hyperthreading in the BIOS. Did you try that? That may prove that hyperthreading is the cause. If so, then tBm linked you to a fix to the hyperthreading problem so it is disabled only for Thief. Did you try that? None of this requires access to the OS while the game is running.

[Clawe]

I did try to set it to one CPU, but thats only the first step on that website. If h.t is the case, then is it possable that the game was once playable. When i got this game when it came out i played it through with no problems, whats changed is how much RAM i have since then, and im installing on my E:/ secondary drive instead of my C:/ main. Maybe my game install disc is dirty or somthing. I can try the hyperthreading thing but i dont think its going to work.

[Salvage]

AMD dual core users are having remarkably similar problems(crashing in inexplicable places) and disabling multithreading works for them. It may work for you as well.

[Clawe]

I got mad and uninstalled it, but im going to try again. Do i have to do anything differently then what i just did for thief gold (i baught it for 2 bucks, i missed this game!), meaning can i just ctrl alt del and turn off CPU 1 leaving CPU 0 on?

[Salvage]

Yeah, that's the temporary fix. Just find all running processes related to Thief 3 and set their affinity to 1 cpu in that way.

[yhyamak]

Hi Guys :
I've Fixed The Blue screen Problem When it's Appear And say to you : Lap Lap Lap... ati3duag.dll and Memory Dump In Thief 3 : deadly Shadows
How To solve The Problem:
1- go and search in the internet on Thief 3 patch v 1.0 (you will found it quickly)
2-Install The Patch
3-go to your BIOS and Disable All Your processor Cores but Leave one Only
4-Now I'm Playing The Game Correctly What About You? See ya