Diablo II Problem

[TheBiggmann]

Hey, I just made a new computer and I put D2 in it and it works fine for around 20 minutes, sometimes more or less, and then it will randomly freeze. Sometimes you can just wait a little while and it will unfreeze but more often than not you have to restart the computer. Any ideas what this is?

Motherboard - ASUS M2N SLI Deluxe
Processor - AMD Athlon X2 4600+
Ram - 2x1GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2
OS - Microsoft Windows XP Home OEM
GPU - XFX Nvidia GeForce 7900GT
Sound Card - SoundBlaster Audigy 4 (still trying to get that to work...)
Hard Drive - Hitachi Deskstar80 Gig 7200 RPM SATA 3.0GB/s
PSU - Fortron AX450-PN

 

[Kromis]

Weird stuff.

I would also like to know how to fix such a problem. In my case, whenever I play CSS or DODS, sometimes the sound stutters and the game freezes and then it would resume. Sometimes, just out of no where, the game crashes to desktop. And when I play Counter-Strike 1.6, once in awhile when I play for awhile, the game would freeze and then the monitor would just turn black and the light on the monitor would be blinking!

 

[TheBiggmann]

bump

 

[cleverhandle]

Make sure you're patched up to 1.11b first off. You might also go through the D2VidTest and choose 2D (Direct Draw) mode instead of Direct3D. Diablo 2's 3D support is pretty funky - it was really designed for 3dfx Glide cards, which were the style at the time. 🙂 If that doesn't help, it's probably worth checking out that sound card you list as not working in your sig. If the sound configuration is screwy, that could crash out the game.

 

[Atheus]

TheBiggmann: Overheating is the most likely thing. Graphics card or CPU.

Kromis: Again, overheating, possibly the whole system but maybe just the motherboard chipset - I assume you are using onboard sound?

Either of you could have some other form of system instability like power problems, viruses, too much overclocking, etc, but the regularity of it and the fact that it works fine at first make me think of heat.

 

[crimson117]

Try taking Diablo II out of the question - run Futuremark on a loop for a few hours and see if that triggers a freeze.

And are you running Diablo II online? My asus a8v had a problem with a driver for the integrated Marvell Gigabit ethernet. Changing to older drivers helped a bit, changing to a dedicated linksys 10/100 card helped a lot 🙂

 

[TheBiggmann]

Well, I tried the vid test, I'll see if that works, haven't been on Diablo since I did it. Atheus, I don't overclock, and I have a good anti-virus that scans every night so I dunno about viruses. I guess I can't imagine I have a power supply problem because I have a pretty good psu I think. I just put a Zalman VF-900 on my 7900GT so I'll see if that changes anything but the vid card temps were pretty stable according to the nVidia control panel. I don't, however, know about my CPU temperatures, because I also get a stop error occasionally that reboots my computer that I've read can be related to heat problems. Crimson, yes I do run it online, if that tells you anyhting, and what is futuremark/how do I get it?

 

[Kromis]

Originally posted by: Atheus
TheBiggmann: Overheating is the most likely thing. Graphics card or CPU.

Kromis: Again, overheating, possibly the whole system but maybe just the motherboard chipset - I assume you are using onboard sound?

Either of you could have some other form of system instability like power problems, viruses, too much overclocking, etc, but the regularity of it and the fact that it works fine at first make me think of heat.

Yep, onboard sound! I don't overclock or anything since I have a crappy P4 Northwood 2.4 Ghz. I think its a heat issue then. My stock cooler for my P4 broke so my uncle super glued it back and snapped it back on. Haven't opened up my case yet.

 

[Molondo]

Go ask at the blizzard site. I think your dual core cpu might be the problem. I know for warcraft you gotta install something for Dualcore pcs or you will have problems playing the game.

 

[Atheus]

Originally posted by: Kromis
My stock cooler for my P4 broke so my uncle super glued it back and snapped it back on.

:Q!

Are you sure he knew what he was doing? Superglue holding it together would badly reduce thermal conductivity, and if there's any on the bottom face of the sink it would mess with the thermal paste.

 

[secretanchitman]

try turning off one core? while in diablo 2, alt+tab out of the game, open up task manager, locate diablo2.exe or whatever the game excutable is called, right click it, go to "set affinity", then UNCHECK core 1, leaving core 0 checked. that will disable the 2nd core for that game.

but remember, everytime you reopen diablo 2 and you want to disable one core, you have to do the steps i just said again and again. i dont know of a way to make it stick for just that one game/program.

 

[Nik]

Originally posted by: Atheus

Originally posted by: Kromis
My stock cooler for my P4 broke so my uncle super glued it back and snapped it back on.

:Q!

Are you sure he knew what he was doing? Superglue holding it together would badly reduce thermal conductivity, and if there's any on the bottom face of the sink it would mess with the thermal paste.

You're assuming the super glue is between the HS and CPU.

He said "super glued it back and snapped it back on" which implies two different actions.

 

[TheBiggmann]

I'm not sure what problem you're talking about with warcraft. I play warcraft more than D2 and haven't had a problem with it yet, so I dunno if it's the dual core but I'll try it, what the heck.

 

[Elixer]

I had the same issue. Running the game in 2d seems to have fixed the freezes. You can't change affinity for some reason though. Get access denied.

 

[topslop1]

I have a problem with Diablo II as well. I bought it, along with the expansion and I don't have the damn CD Cases handy so I can't play online with it. =[