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CTD on reopening after Save

Started by evarburg, February 11, 2019, 01:21:08 PM

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evarburg

This is the Continuing Saga of the Wonky SC4 Install. (it has been going on for weeeks now, on and off, as I got discouraged or RL interfered.)

SO. The story so far. I consulted Those in the Know (you know who you are). Got various wise advices I tried to follow. Eliminated several explanations.  Got down (apprenhensively) to the hardware. My tech friend came and checked my computer. My hard drives. My head. Various Repairs ensued (while having coffee). We carefully reinstalled SC4. At first try, hurray, everything works. Friends leaves, proudly (and caffeinated to the gills.) I reopen the game just-to-check.

Exact same trouble : intro music, no images, then black screen. Or (on second try) direct CTD, not even the black window opening..

I reinstalled the game --all by myself-- to check my nagging thought : success... save... second try... CTD. [reminder : absolutely nothing in the plugins]

OK It now seems clear to me : Something Not Right is Happening on Save.

Anyone has an idea why or, better, how to deal with it ?

#DesperateInSc4Dom#

jeffryfisher

What kind of save? Were you opening an already corrupt city left from your earlier trouble? Was this a save-and-exit, or a save followed by exit-without-saving?
Hint: NEVER save-and-exit.
Modding PC games since 1993 (back when we needed hex-editors)

evarburg

(hi again  ;)

I had reinstalled SC4 fresh, and it had worked : open game, go, open tile, go, and, to exit the first time, Save and Quit (using the game button) ; after which I had the problem described above. Second time, new fresh install, same thing : first open, perfect ; DO-not-Save and Quit ; then reopen : same problem.

The plugins was empty (except for invisible Maxis vanilla, as usual when reinstalling the game), the region was a fresh empty sand box et the tile an empty tile except for a crossroad with water lines underneath, a pumping station, a fire station and a power station (all maxis vanilla)...

Andreas

#3
What was the result of the hard drive (and hopefully RAM) check that your friend was doing? You mentioned "various repairs", what did he do exactly? Now that the problem seems to be reproducable (saved city being trashed without actually doing something but clicking the "save" button) really sounds like a bad RAM module that garbles the data when saving...
Andreas

evarburg

Is it a city being trashed ? It looks like it's the SC4 program that is trashed : the opening sequence with music but without images and then no access to the region, black screen (and having to forcequit via MAc to exit from that dark abyss of hell...  :'( :'( )

I confess I don't really know what the repairs were about. My friend comes again soon, I will tell him of your hypothesis. Thank you for the suggestion !

jeffryfisher

If it's a hardware problem, then it's probably the power supply. If it's a game problem, then it's probably not closing completely.
Reboot the machine. Can you start the game now? After closing it, look in task manager. Is it still there? If so, then kill it. Can the game now launch again?
Modding PC games since 1993 (back when we needed hex-editors)

evarburg

Quote from: jeffryfisher on February 13, 2019, 09:39:17 AM
If it's a hardware problem, then it's probably the power supply. If it's a game problem, then it's probably not closing completely.
Reboot the machine. Can you start the game now? After closing it, look in task manager. Is it still there? If so, then kill it. Can the game now launch again?

Alas we did that first thing...

Andreas

I think the game reads the region images, population numbers etc. from the city files during startup, so when the game crashes right at the moment when the region should be displayed, it must have something to do with the saved city file. I doubt it's related to the power supply when it works fine with a new installation. It is a good idea to reboot the machine and try again, though, who knows what else might interfere with the process...
Andreas

mgb204

Quote from: Andreas on February 13, 2019, 12:15:20 PM
I think the game reads the region images, population numbers etc. from the city files during startup, so when the game crashes right at the moment when the region should be displayed, it must have something to do with the saved city file. I doubt it's related to the power supply when it works fine with a new installation. It is a good idea to reboot the machine and try again, though, who knows what else might interfere with the process...

Actually, we can do a simple test to prove if the Save File is indeed potentially an issue or not. Get things to the point where SC4 fails to load. At that point, go to My Documents\SimCity 4\Regions, then simply delete all the folders you find there. Now run SC4 once more, if the game is still misbehaving, it's not the save file that's at fault.

Could you check this and let us know what happens?

evarburg

Thanks Andreas ; and Robin, will do -- as soon as I stop coughing my lungs out. Arkh. &mmm

evarburg

#10
(Well, still coughing, but this takes my mind off it)

Here is the play by play.

(1) I don't have access to the Regions folder while the game is loading, but I deleted all regions after one test trial (to check it was still CTDying, which it was.)

(1) Launched again.  After what I thought was the usual CTD, I noticed that the game icon was still there and when I clicked on it, the game opened normally on the usual default regions. I opened one city, let it be called New City, Save and Quit.

(2) relaunched. CTD. The game icon shows up then disappears.

(3) reboot windows.

(4) relaunch. Game opens normally on default region. Go to city --which has been saved correctly it seems. Ah ? This time, Do not Save & Quit. Test again. Game open normally.

(5) suddenly have a bright idea. Put back the sandbox region I've been using this last year as a test ground. aHA ! CTD.

It was a corrupted region, then ??? Be still my heart.

(6) checking the hypothesis : put in another region of mine, untouched for at least two years. Game opens correctly.

(7) Be still my heart, part II. Go to mayor menu to do anything, hey, let's try planting trees or whatever

(8) and then I get the exact same problem that initiated the current Spiral of Doom weeks ago : blinking menu items

But this time I managed to screencapture them more adequately. The blinking disappears when the item is plopped but reappears as soon as the pointer is moved.

(imagine the things blinking very rapidly.)

PS : And while I'm at it, a pict. of the system performance or something I found to that effect (?)

jeffryfisher

Quote from: evarburg on February 15, 2019, 07:49:35 AM
(1) ...I opened one city, let it be called New City, Save and Quit.

(2) relaunched. CTD.
Don't do "Save & Quit". Don't do "Save & Exit".


EVER.

The explanation why is in the Simtropolis forums (and probably here too) if you care enough to search.
Modding PC games since 1993 (back when we needed hex-editors)

Andreas

I vaguely remember some issues about the "Save and exit" button as well, so I always just do a "Save" and then quit without saving. So far, I never had any troubles regarding broken files, so let's keep fingers crossed. Anyway, after rebooting Windows, the game seems to load fine, and even the saved stuff shows up properly? Maybe it's Parallels that somehow doesn't behave correctly after playing the game, so only a fresh reboot "fixes" things? The icon blinking and graphics artifacts look more like a graphics driver issue than anything else, though.
Andreas

evarburg

I do also vaguely remember now that Andreas hints at it. But there never was a problem before, that's what I don't get. Sometimes I did Save with Control+S then Exit, sometimes I used the game buttons, and everything always worked fine...

Now, if it is a graphic driver artefact... (what is a graphic driver ? she whispers hoarsely) what can I do about it ?

Andreas

I meant the graphic card driver, but I don't know how exactly Parallels works, so I cannot tell where exactly you need to look for updating and/or configuring the drivers that Windows is using.
Andreas

evarburg

My tech-savvy friend and I will explore that avenue. But he seems rather doom&gloomy about it, like "If it is the graphic driver, we'd better install Windows 10 on the partition, perhaps its graphic driver would be more able to cope with SC4."

Opinions about that ?

Andreas

A native Windows installation certainly would avoid any troubles that Parallels might produce. It's a bit of work (I suppose), but I guess there's a reason why Apple developed "Boot Camp" after all...
Andreas

jeffryfisher

#17
Quote from: evarburg on February 15, 2019, 07:52:02 PM
My tech-savvy friend and I will explore that avenue. But he seems rather doom&gloomy about it, like "If it is the graphic driver, we'd better install Windows 10 on the partition, perhaps its graphic driver would be more able to cope with SC4."

Opinions about that ?
Whenever possible, get the right drivers (for all hardware) directly from manufacturers. Download the most recent driver that supports DirectX-9c on your graphics card.To get DirectX-9c support, you might need to plumb the depths of "older versions" of the driver for your card.

Don't go to Win-10 unless you own a digital version of SC4; the disk version will not run on Win-10 without some serious power-user fiddling.


BTW, What kind of machine are we looking at here? Is this a laptop, or is it a full-sized case?

When your tech-savvy friend visits, have him read this entire thread. There are still several seriously important questions we've asked that have gone unanswered (because you don't know what task manager is, and you don't know what a power-supply is, and you don't know what hardware was "fixed", and you don't know how to lookup the version of the game you're running, and you don't know what command line switches are being used in the SC4 launcher or shortcut, and you don't know how to find the log file etc).

We can't help you very much if you keep us starved for diagnostic info. For instance: There's a very important SC4 launch option (switch) to limit its execution to one CPU core. Without it, you'll CTD frequently.
Also, if you're using the disk version of SC4, make sure that Windoze update KB3086255 has been uninstalled and has stayed uninstalled.
Modding PC games since 1993 (back when we needed hex-editors)

evarburg

it is not a laptop but a desk computer (iMac, OS Yosemite). And I will certainly have my tech-savvy friend read this thread.

BTW, for what it's worth, I realized I know what the task manager is  ;) My Windows emulation is in French so I get confused, once in a while...