Why does Diablo 2 keep crashing?

[Don Vito Corleone]

I am having a VERY aggravating problem with D2 and I hope someone can help me.

I recently reached Act II, Level 4 (the Arcane Sanctuary) and I am finding D2 has become highly unstable, to the point that I cannot proceed further in it. Every time I play this quest, the game crashes hard after 10-30 minutes. I am on the verge of giving up the game altogether.

The game locks up in both DirectDraw and Glide. It seems that crash occurs faster in DirectDraw than Glide. It also happens regardless of the various video settings.

Crash symptoms:
1. Image freezes
2. Sound/music loops, continuously playing sample in use just before the crash. Sometimes there is a high, steady beep afterwards.
3. Keyboard/mouse stops responding
4. Reboot is only possible via reset

This seems to me like possibly a heat issue, but my video card is not overclocked (the PCI bus is actually running underclocked at 31 MHz), my
system has very good cooling, and I can't see why a fairly simple game like this should cause bad heat problems when more complex ones do not. My
system is 100% stable other than this.

I also tried lowering my front-side bus speed to stock (100 MHz), but if anything this caused the game to crash MORE quickly (it crashes pretty much
instantly after the saved game is loaded).

My system:

Intel Pentium 3 600e at 738 on a Soyo 6BA+IV (Intel BX chipset)
128 MB Apacer Infineon PC133 SDRAM
3dfx Voodoo 3 3000 PCI, latest certified drivers
SB Live! X-Gamer, latest certified drivers
generic PCI NIC
30 GB Maxtor Diamond Plus 40 as Master 1 on HPT66 input
3.2 GB WD Caviar as Master 2 on HPT66 input
24x Panasonic CD-ROM drive
Win 98SE
DirectX 7.0a

I am running D2 version 1.02 (had same problem with 1.01).

Thanks for any assistance you may be able to provide.

p.s.: Is there a way to force Direct3D on a Voodoo 3? I am curious whether
this might help.

 

[ogn]

I am in the exact same boat. I'm in Nightmare Act 4. I cannot finish Diablo off. The game will crash, at least 20 times now. It wasn't this bad until I got here.
Elsa Erazor X
256 MB PC133
P3700@933 (crashes not overclocked also)
SB Live

All the updated drivers. Switched out a MSI 6309 for new CUSL2. Same crashes. This is sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo frustrating. It also crashed on my bp6 dual 333 in win98 when I tried to play it on that just to get by.
Matrox G400
128 MB PC100
Celeron 333 (x2)
No sound card.

Still crashed. Argggggghhhhhhhh...

 

[DeepSparklePupa]

I *used* to have the same lovely problem. The only hardware we have that is similar is our SB Live cards. However, given that the game crashed on a machine *without* a sound card....

Anyhow, I've fixed the problem and have run D2 **Crash-Free** for a week by running the game in windowed mode. Just append the text "-w" (no quotes) to the D2 shortcut. (right click the shortcut --> properties).

Don't know why it would run better in windowed mode, honestly. Only problem is that at 640X480, the window is damn small on a 1024X768 desktop. To get around this, I resize the desktop to 800X600 during gameplay, causing the D2 window to fill more of the screen. I'd resize the Desktop to 640X for play, except the opening screens of D2 are 800X600. Why on Earth Blizzard forced the game to 640X480 but made the startup screens larger is beyond me. Must've been some beaurocrat that made *that* decision.

-DSP

 

[ogn]

Tried windowed mode last night and still crashed twice. Tried uninstalling and reinstalling = still crash. Tried different hard drives (i have 2) = still crash. Tried updated SB Live driver and Detonator 5.22/5.32 = still crash. Tried different ram = crash. Tried patch 1.02 = still crash. Tried new mobo (VIA to i815) = crash. What's left?

Tried Win98 SE, WinME, Win2k = crash...

 

[DeepSparklePupa]

Holy CRAP!! Sounds like you have tried every daggoned fix possible....

Are you running in 3D or 2D mode?

Sounds to me as though your only option now is to turn those 3 CD's into fancy new coasters/frisbees/teething toys.

My window mode fix may not be the answer, as I realize now your problems didn't become severe until Act 4. Naturally, being the friggin sucky D2 guy I am, I've advanced no further than Act II

-DSP

 

[ogn]

I tried d2d only twice...you know the results.
I've got a voodoo2 that i've been to lazy to move over to my game machine but that is something else i can try. yes...i liked this game so much i've tried almost everything to getting working right...

 

[JellyBaby]

Savegame corruption perhaps (since it's happening only a certain point in the game)? You might try going back a waze and replaying. But I thought Diablo 2 didn't save that much information (I don't have the game)? Otherwise, wait for the next few patches like you should have done at the beginning.

 

[keebeen]

what are your settings for your swap file?
i've got 64MB ram and i set my swap file to 128MB permanent. This does NOT work. a 128MB swap file does not seem to be enough for diablo 2. i had the game crash numerous times too when i had a 128MB permanent swap file. I then adjusted the swap file size to 256MB and the game wouldn't crash anymore but it was extremely choppy... i seem to get the best performance when i just let windows manage the virtual memory... although the game is still pretty choppy.

 

[ogn]

I've got 256MB of RAM and am letting windows control virtual memory. Game is not choppy at all, just crashes.

 

[keebeen]

i thought win98/winme was only able to address 128mb or ram?? so what's the point of having more than 128 if you're running one of these OS's? or am i mistaken??

 

[randypj]

I am definitely not an expert, but I have been surprised at it being totally stable on my system. I am NOT using the no-cd hack, still running 1.00 (no patches), but have SCSI reader and am running the harddrives off a Promise Ultra 66 card. Possibly some load off the system resources? Oh, I do remember I locked up often in Hellfire. Finally pinned it down to RAIN. The only thing I know of that RAIN ever caused lockups with. Amazingly, in D2, I can pop in and out of the game, check email, back in, no problem.

I am running Win98SE, and am only almost finished with Act II.

BTW, does anyone know what the patches address? Any good info sites other than Blizzard?
--Randy

 

[DeepSparklePupa]

Guys, have you tried taking a look at your game log files? Each session of D2 is logged in a txt file in the Diabloii directory called d2{date}.txt

Take a look at one of those files in the case where the game hangs up with the 1 second sound loop, no hope of recovery.... Is the last line of the file something like:

"2000.07.18 22:20:17 requested 22 but 8 says it's an error in ui.cpp"?

Sounds like Blizzard needs to find an answer to this bug....

I've got details of my (our) problem and the route I took to get the fix listed at MrFixitOnline.com. Rather than retype all the crap I posted there, you can surf over to this thread in their D2 forums: http://mrfixitonline.com/readPosting.asp?PostingId=110336

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

I think I now know the solution (at least for V3 users). I believe this IS a heat problem, even though no overclocking is being used. A friend advised me that he cured this by opening his case and blowing a box fan in; alternatively one could use a 486 fan or a Tennmax cooler to cool the V3 directly. Strange that such a graphically simple game would cause overheating problems when much more complex ones do not, but hey. I have not tried this solution, but it certainly behaves like a heat problem and I imagine this should solve it.

 

[keebeen]

i've got a V3 and i put an old 486 fan on it from the very beginning... and i've never had these lockups or freezes in diablo 2... only crashes and laggy play because of memory problems...

so yeah... a fan may very well solve your problem...

 

[Pretender]

I don't have the game, but my friend had the same problem. If I remember correctly, he switched to software rendering mode. Since then, no crashes.
[edit]
Just asked him, and he said:
1st, download the newest reference driver at 3df(x).com (if you use a 3d card with 3dfx chipset) - remove the ()'s from the above site (x,com is a forbidden word)
2nd, go to the device manager and disable sb16 emulation
If it still isn't fixed, run the game in directdraw 2d mode (software rendering mode)
[/edit]