Dark Messiah - 1.02 Patch @ Fileshack

If no other game is crashing then I wouldn't worry about it. You don't need 2 gigs of RAM to play DM. Use the old sticks to play DM, then switch them.

Don't be so quick to think that something is wrong with your 1 gig sticks. Just because they're incompatible with Dark Messiah doesn't mean they're defective. You already said that none of your other games were crashing.


*edit* Also. I'm just curious. Which Corsair RAM did you buy? (exact model)
 
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Well, once you find the spot with the honey you can't help but poke around abit while your hands are dirty anyway, so I thought I ought to double check other Source based games. Just like the DM multiplayer mode that I was able to run with only the occasional crash (no more than many other games) so is CounterStrike: Source fully playable even though the crashing frequency has indeed increased somewhat. However, once I fired up Half Life 2 the Dark Messiah pattern came into play right away. Crashes left and right within the opening sequences and while the error message was different (I got an ingame error message instead of an OS message) the nature of the crash is identical to what I'm experiencing in Dark Messiah.

On one hand it is no longer "just" one game that is causing problems but on the other hand it is not the entire engine that is at fault but apparently only when playing singleplayer games on the Source engine that the problems emerge ... this is really weird stuff :S

What I had was a set of TWINX1024-3200LLPRO and my plan was to simply get another set of the same memory but due to a really large CPU cooling heatsink I can only use 3 of the 4 RAM slots so I had to replace the memory instead of increasing it. So I bought the very similar TWINX2048-3200C2PRO pair instead.
 
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This is defiantly strange, it must be just a bad stick, as Corsair is reliable and high end brand.
Yeah you definatly want this fixed before you try a great game like Bloodlines. ;)
 
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Okay, once I got Dark Messiah working, at last, I really wanted to play it so I decided to stop looking my gift horse in the mouth and just play the damned thing before I continued my testing to find out what was wrong in the first place (besides, I had to wait until the end of the holidays anyway if I wanted to exchange my RAM sticks).

So I played it, finished it as a fighter and enjoyed it. Not using stealth or magic left me wanting for more so I started another run through as a mage. A simple test came to mind though and instead of playing with my old 2 sticks of 512 Mb RAM I put in a single stick of my new memory to test each stick individually ... and guess what? There is NOTHING wrong with the memory. I've reached chapter 8 as my mage and that means that I've played at the very least 6 hours with no crashes on each stick and since my old memory worked fine with 2 sticks as well, I can't lay the blame on the RAM slots either.

If I had any hair left it would definitely be turning grey by now. The only thing I have left to test is the dreaded complete OS reinstall. I'm currently building up my courage for such a massive and time-consuming undertaking.
 
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Now with the RAM sometimes is can be the way they work together or don't, so if your saying they work fine indivdually they still could have problems together.
Did you buy them as a matching pair?

How long has it been since you have reinstalled your OS and do you have a heavy turnover of games?

You already mentioned the starforce, which imbeds itself in your OS kernel, it sounds as if you probably do install and uninstall lots of software.
Also are you running AV?
Newly installed or version updates in the last 6 months?

Most of all don't exclude DM as it is/was buggy, though if your ruuning the 1.02, it certianly could have cleared many things up.

Sometimes it's a combination of thing, which I betting this is the case.
You have done so much in the last week or so I think you did the right thing in just playing, not only that but also I would play a few different games now for the next week or two, seeing if anything stands out before redoing or focusing on OS testing, since so far it seems isolated to games.

Well thats my 2 cents anyway. :)
 
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fatBastard() an intresting thing just happened, my computer started locking up during NWN2.
First I tried downclocking the gpu and cpu, then moved to drivers (had upgraded to 612 about a week ago) downgraded then back to 612, deaccelerated my audigy card in dxdiag, air hosed everything in the case.
As I was putting the hds back in powering up I noticed my gpu fan was not spinning, doh! :p

So I just thought I would mention another possiblity, is your gpu fan underperforming?
 
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Well, first things first:

About the RAM. It is a pair of Dual Channel sticks bought specifically to work together with each other and with everything but the Source engine they do.

I do indeed have a heavy turnover of games. I'm a Jack of all trades kind of guy and I like many different genres and play whatever I'm in the mood for. And yes, it has been a while since I did a complete reinstall of the OS because it is such a chore getting everything up and running again that I only do it when I absolutely have to (which is why I'm not yet ruling out OS instability/corruption as the source of my problems).

Regarding 3rd party software I can only say that I tried several times to play the game with all unnecessary processes turned off and that includes programs such as the firewall and the AV ... but then again: as soon as I played with my old RAM or with just a single stick of the new RAM I could run the game with no problems or crashes with all the usual programs running in the background.

With every RAM stick change I made I also verified the status of the various fans in my system and while writing this all temperature readings are nominal.

I've sort of run out of disc space so I've decided to add a new HD, or rather, exchange one of my older ones. Having completed the game 3 times now (as a fighter, as a mage and as an assassin) I have thoroughly enjoyed the 3 very different ways of playing the game and I really most congratulate Arcane for making all 3 styles fun in their own ways. However, with 3 times through the game and, unfortunately, having gotten bored with the multiplayer portion a long time ago, I'm no longer as "inspired" to find out what's wrong with my configuration (given that no other games I'm currently playing show any problems at all) so I don't really know when I'm going to be getting to the complete system reinstall thing.
 
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Have tried different memory timing values from BIOS, try slower and faster values to see if there is any difference?
 
Yep. In some cases there was no difference whatsoever and in other cases Windows wouldn't even start (the memory was simply too unstable).

I've even contacted "The Ram Guy" on the official Corsair forum and all he can suggest is a complete system clean and reinstall of Windows ... which is probably sorely needed but I simply haven't gotten around to it yet.
 
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