Funky NwN and Blue Screen of Death

Idonia · Post by **Idonia** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 12:36 am

Ever since I woke up this morning my computer's been acting funky. I hop in NwN and the graphics lag is HORRIBLE, I almost gnawed off my hand, you have no idea. Relogging and restarting didn't fix it, and the problem continued no matter what server I logged into (or how low I set my graphics). OI. So I just head into the toolset instead, and, another strange thing, I get a message (that I NEVER got before opening the toolset tons of times on this comp) telling me to change my desktop settings to 32 bit color if I want to work in the toolset like all the other cool people. So, I go and change my setting from 16 to 32 and start clicking around in the toolset.

BAD IDEA

I get hit with a blue screen of death.

oooookay.. so I restart the computer and change my setting back to 16. Still doesn't do anthing for NwN, which is weirding me out, since I changed nothing else on my computer.

Running a Norton Security scan right now. :/

Any ideas?

badjabadjabadja · Post by **badjabadjabadja** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 2:13 am

Mhmm.. sounds poorly

Could be any number of things.. best thing would be to get a tech to poke at it in person.. otherwise.. details?

Type/brand/make of 'puta
graphics card?
memory?
HDDs?
Operating system?
Ambient temperatures?
Anything added/updated hard/soft-ware recently?
Do small children/animals have access to the machine?
etc etc

Has your machine started (or been making..) odd clicking noises?

ALWAYS a good idea to back up important stuff when they go weird like this.. hard drives do die eventually.. sometimes with little or no warning.

It could be that your system has lost the graphics drivers.. (My old Radeon 9600 was unplayable with NWN until I changed to some alternate drivers.. so perhaps the problem is altered grafix drivers.. or perhaps a problem with NWN installation?). Do any other programs run properly? Is it just NWN being funky.. or is this a system wide weirdness?

Or could be that some pest has scrambled settings..
If Norton doesn't pull up anything.. post some more details & maybe someone technically capable will suggest something

Idonia · Post by **Idonia** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 5:20 am

I updated the graphics drivers but that hasn't helped.

Like I said, I havn't changed anything else to cause this and I've played perfectly fine on this computer for weeks. It all happened over night.

T'Holoth Shadowborn · Post by **T'Holoth Shadowborn** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 7:47 am

That happened to me. I couldn't find anything wrong with it, nor could the support guys. I ended up having to get a new laptop.

Lord Droke · Post by **Lord Droke** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 3:33 pm

Do you have an ATI graphics card, they can go buggy with NWN out of nowhere. It's happend to me out of nowhere. That's why I go with NVidia now.

Idonia · Post by **Idonia** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 6:19 pm

Really, Grant? Aw, crap. Two laptops in a row. :/ Yeah, I even cleared space on my hard drive and that didn't do anything.... I have a Nvidia video card.

T'Holoth Shadowborn · Post by **T'Holoth Shadowborn** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 7:17 pm

No kidding sister. Same exact problem.
Did you try running the game on single player? I was playing it single player when it happened.
Got the same message about changing the graphics setting (which was weird because I never got that before). I obeyed and blue screen got me.

Changed it back and still no love.
I ran into problems with Dell because they couldn't find anything wrong with it, just had that conflict with NWN and that wasn't really a reason to return a laptop BUT I was lucky with Dell because they had some 100% satasfaction guarentee.

If you have any other games try them out and see the laptops performance, also try running NWN in single player and see if it's still messed up.

Idonia · Post by **Idonia** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 9:27 pm

Oh, yeah. Starts acting up right when I put in NwN. :/ Think reinstalling it would help any? This would be such a bummer considering I lost my other computer not long ago. 8(

Xanthalas · Post by **Xanthalas** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 10:57 pm

This is common with drivers and what's called legacy-compliance. NWN is old, in the computer world at least.. And alot of newer drivers use what's called legacy software/drivers to maintain compatability. Unfortunately due to some configurations. This causes problems. And corruption is quite possible. What happens usually is when you boot windows. Your RAM looads up the Video Runtimes, this stays in RAM most often the entire time the computer is running. Unfortunately, if a corruption happens, You won't know until you shut down, and reload, (Since the RAM refreshes from the HDD and it's now corrupted on the HDD, it causes this problem) I have had it happen with ATI and NVIIDIA I have fixed it but it's a lengthy process since it involves removing the hardware, (Not physically, just in the OS management routines) Then deleting any incorporated software, then letting XP use a generic VGA processer as you reboot and let it re-find and reinstall the drivers and/or software, This is not something that is the easiest to do (Or explain) But it -sometimes- fixes problems like these. Another thing, and quite likely, is something physical is broken (Like the actual circuits,) Causing errors due to the protections on the software, (That's why "Blue Screen of Death" error messages call sometimes a message saying something about "Operation Fault" or "Protection Fault" etc. )

T'Holoth Shadowborn · Sat Aug 11, 2007 11:55 pm

if a corruption happens

if a corruption happens...a purging is required. There must be no heresay left on the device lest the machinespirit become anegered (blue screen) again.

Imp I can't match Xai's technical approach on it but I don't think uninstalling and reinstalling NWN would hurt anything. It's worth a try right?
If not Xai's description sounds bang on.

Trinity · Post by **Trinity** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 2:59 am

*Trinity flails arms and legs about*Ete'O'Eh?

Xanthalas · Post by **Xanthalas** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 6:00 am

T'Holoth Shadowborn wrote:
if a corruption happens
if a corruption happens...a purging is required. There must be no heresay left on the device lest the machinespirit become anegered (blue screen) again.

Imp I can't match Xai's technical approach on it but I don't think uninstalling and reinstalling NWN would hurt anything. It's worth a try right?
If not Xai's description sounds bang on.

Reinstalling NWN migiht work. Sometimes tileset hak's get corrupted, and only set off certain videocards. If a main sourcefile regarding textures/videodisplay got corrupted. Could cause issues. Hard to say without getting my own hands on something.

Trinity · Post by **Trinity** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 2:47 pm

Imp have you tried doing a restore before you started having problems?

Idonia · Post by **Idonia** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 6:19 pm

Restore?

Lir'ana · Post by **Lir'ana** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 6:37 pm

Rofl. as long as your restore isn't corrupted as well you should be able to jump back to your last known working setup ect..

Idonia · Post by **Idonia** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 7:04 pm

ROFLMFAOWTFBBQ LIR'ANA

I have no idea what you guys are talking about

LOLALOL

T'Holoth Shadowborn · Post by **T'Holoth Shadowborn** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 7:29 pm

Hit start, then search and then look for system restore.

Basically it reverts your computer to a previous saved point.

Imagine a bookmark in a book. You read ahead a few pages, get lost so you can flip back to the book mark

Only this is going back in time to how your computer was set up X days or weeks ago.

Pick a date that was a few days before NWN shit the bed and "restore" it back to that date. It's all straight forward.

Idonia · Post by **Idonia** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 11:19 pm

That seems to have fixed it! Thanks!

Idonia · Post by **Idonia** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 11:24 pm

Oh, wait, no, spoke too soon.. :/

T'Holoth Shadowborn · Mon Aug 13, 2007 12:29 am

I can see your brain.

Idonia · Post by **Idonia** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 1:36 am

Lir'ana · Post by **Lir'ana** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 3:33 pm

If that didn't work I would try it once more and maybe even reinstall NWN. Course if that doesn't work you could always reformat and start with a fresh slate

Xanthalas · Post by **Xanthalas** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 4:20 pm

Lir'ana wrote:If that didn't work I would try it once more and maybe even reinstall NWN. Course if that doesn't work you could always reformat and start with a fresh slate

Quite akin to fixing a car with a dead battery, by buying a new car. This is however more likely to fix the problem at least.

I postulate that perhaps the video card is malfunctioning. I'll put a little step by step guide for you Imp and hopefully it will address the issue. I'll contact you .

Spellbinder · Post by **Spellbinder** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 7:14 pm

Another possible cause could be a faulty stick of RAM. I use to have 2 GIG but now have 1.5 GIG and was getting the blue screen of death. After reformatting my HD, then thinking it was the HD since it would then blue screen while installing XP buying another HD and still having the problem it turned out that one of my 512 mb sticks of RAM was garbage and caused the problem

Perhaps something similar is occurring.

Badtznik · Post by **Badtznik** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 12:03 pm

Not sure if this helps, but it sounded like a hardware problem.

Turn off the power.
Plug out your graphics card, and plug it back in.
See if it works.

You might want to check if the fan on the graphics card is working or not.

Good luck!