No Sound, Game Hangs Computer after 15 - 25 turns

[pamslover]

Nice looking game.

Tried ver 1.2 and had problem with music stopping and complete computer freeze about 20 to 30 moves into the game. Seemed music related. Sound infernal loop?????

Bought Ver 1.4 last night and it does somewhat the same thing. Always on her turn. About 15 moves in, Die rolls - she starts to move - then everything freezes. Ctrl Alt Del does not work. Must hold power button to shut down computer. Music does not work from the begining. Game often stops about 15 to 20 moves into the game.

Fairly consistent problem = give me some ideas to help you find the problem.

WinXP Home SP2
Net 1? I think

[Don]

Hi,

The problem that you describe (a hard freeze that won't respond to a Ctrl + Alt + Del) is not something that can be caused by a user mode program like Bliss, at least not under Windows XP. Because Windows XP runs programs in User Mode and the Operating System in protected mode, the failure you describe cannot be caused by a program, it has to be caused by something that runs in protected mode such as a driver. Even if Bliss went into a hard infinite loop, the computer would still respond to a Ctrl + Alt + Del. Often a particluar program (such as Bliss) will use the computer in a way that causes a problem that doesn't show up otherwise to become visible. I think that is what is happening here.

This means that the problem could be in one of three general categories.

1. There could be a hardware problem with the machine.

2. There could be a problem with OS corruption or a kernel mode virus / trojan

3. There could be a problem with a driver.

Of the three #3 is by far the most likely. Since you are having trouble with sound, I would check with the maker of your sound card and see if there is a newer version of the sound card driver available. Another really good thing to do would be to go to the Microsoft Update Site and see if there are any recommended or optional downloads for your machine. Often, Microsoft will have updated drivers for your hardware.

The fact that the game freezes while a player is moving could indicate other problems as well. The player movement is based on Windows Timers. On occasion, these can fail due to interrupt conflicts or other bad driver behavior.

I wish I could provide more specific help, but what is being described here is based on a computer problem and is not something I can help all that much with. Feel free to write back if I can answer any questions though.

Good Luck

Don

[pamslover]

Don,

Thanks for the insite but I think I need a bit more help in how your program interacts with my computer. I updated sound drivers and still have the same problem except it seemed to go longer before the crash. I disabled all the sound features except backgound music. I still don't hear the backgound music.

Last night I got to the point where an activity asked for music but did not play. I did some investigation with the windows media player that showed up in the middle of the game board. WMP indicated it could not find the file to play. It was looking for a wma file. The files installed are mp3 files. Could this be part of the problem. Is the media player timing out when it cannot find the backgound music? Then causing the crash?

I need some more suggestions on where to look.

Thanks

[Don]

Hi,

I think I may be able to help a little here.

The game uses two playlists in Media Player. They are called Bliss and Bliss Background. You can see them by starting Windows Media Player and going to the library tab, then look on the left under playlists.

If your playlists are referencing wma files, but there are mp3 files installed, this indicates that the low bandwidth version of the game was installed first. Then at a later date, the high bandwidth version of the game was installed. The first time the game is run it creates the playlists. After that, it leaves them alone because the user can customize them to add their own music or delete music that comes with the game.

When the high bandwidth versioin of the game was installed (and the low bandwidth version uninstalled) the format of the music files changed, but the playlists would not be updated because they would look like the user had customized them.

To get around that problem, simply delete the Bliss and Bliss Background playlists from within Media Player, telling it to remove them from the database and from the computer. Just Right click on the playlist name and choose delete.

Then when Bliss runs again, it will rebuild the playlists. This will probably make the music play properly, but there still may be a problem because of the hang you described that required a hard power down to get out of, although it is possible that updating the sound drivers may have fixed that.

Please let me know if this works out or if you have further problems.

Thanks,

Don

[pamslover]

Don,

Getting closer. Sound is working. Game plays much faster than before. However it still crashes. Much later in the game and now I can hear it crash. Sound repeats like a machine gun with infinte ammo. Same lock up = will not shut down. Suggestions please.

[pamslover]

Don,

I have a Presario 700 notebook computer and installed new drivers for the sound card. These came from HP. Could there also be drivers that I need from Microsoft. What should I be looking for?

[Don]

Hi,

This could be pretty difficult because the problem may not be with the sound driver. Any driver in the system could cause it. Have you visitied the Microsoft update site?

If you haven't done this already, I would suggest you go to http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com and download anything that Microsoft suggests that you need. You will need to be running Internet Explorer and not another web browser to do this.

Let me know if this helps (or if it doesn't)

Thanks,

Don

[pamslover]

Thanks for the help. Went to the MS web site but it did not indicate any needed updates. Reviewed all previous updates - very long list. Installed MS Update software to automate the process and it found a needed Net 1.1 SP 1 update that was missing. Installed that and the security update that went with it and we are in working order. Now for the real test. lol

Thanks