odd sound issue causing game to hard crash.

[Unibob]

The past 2 weeks or so, I have been frequently experiencing a problem with the game suddenly having sounds quit working, spell casts, weapon skills, monster moves, you name it besides the area music, it quits working, then about 30 seconds later, the game hard crashes, meaning that I have to ctrl+alt+del if my system has the welcome screen disabled, otherwise I physically have to restart my system via /power/restart switch. This is getting extremely frustrating and annoying.

I have not made any hardware or software changes. I have reinstalled the game 3 times now and has not made a difference. all my video and sound drivers have also been updated.

I have ran malware, spyware, adware, and virus scans and all have come up clean. I am completely stumped as to what I can do and am about to give up on the game until I get it resolved as I can't do anything for more than about 45 minutes before it crashes on me.


Anyone with any advice or knowledge, please, help me, as I am lost at this point on what to do or what to consider.

Thank you.

[Jei]

Re: odd sound issue causing game to hard crash.

I had the sound effects disappearing on my from time to time. Usually in scenes with teleport crystals or rain :O But it never hard crash on me tho. It can stay that way for maybe 30+ minutes then the sound will just come back again.

[Sabaron]

Re: odd sound issue causing game to hard crash.

I have this problem as well... As with most hardware related issues, I simply accept it and move on. I get this effect most often in high-lag areas where there are a large number of characters engaging in combat. I've found that if I pause... and wait for the sound to start up again, the game will be fine, but if I push it by posting new sounds (such as menu/chat "clicks", spells, attacks, etc.) the game will crash.

I figured it was my "Legacy" sound card: an ISA Soundblaster 64.... I have always had this problem, though, it's not recent.

[Thrasher]

Re: odd sound issue causing game to hard crash.

Is it crashing just playing ffxi or is it crashing doing other things also ?
Running memory test 86 would be a good starting point and would rule out ram related issues. And have you had issues with any other games or programs?

You could try completely uninstalling the sound drives and reinstalling them, and you could try downgrading to the last version of your audio drivers that worked properly.
Also is this a pci sound card or is it integrated audio?

[Unibob]

Re: odd sound issue causing game to hard crash.

Is it crashing just playing ffxi or is it crashing doing other things also ?
Running memory test 86 would be a good starting point and would rule out ram related issues. And have you had issues with any other games or programs?

You could try completely uninstalling the sound drives and reinstalling them, and you could try downgrading to the last version of your audio drivers that worked properly.
Also is this a pci sound card or is it integrated audio?

Seems to be just FFXI that the game crashes in, I have played San Andreas, Madden '07, NFS: Carbon, and Flatout: 2 for hours at a time, and no problems with those.

Memtest came out error free after a 10 hour run with many, many passes.

I am in the process of wiping my sound drivers out completely and reinstalling them.

The sound card is a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS, so it is a PCI card.

[Thrasher]

Re: odd sound issue causing game to hard crash.

Personally I would try useing a older version of the drivers, I have read of other people having issues with creative drivers recently.

[Thrasher]

Re: odd sound issue causing game to hard crash.

Also thought of something. If your still having issues you could try removing it and seeing if your onboard audio has the same issues. Could your onboard audio been accidentally turned back on in bios (a long shot) or try moving your sound card to a different Pci slot (a very very long shot). And POL has a check file function that also might be worth a try.

[Unibob]

Re: odd sound issue causing game to hard crash.

well, I tried chaning PCI slots and that didn't seem to help any and I checked the BIOS and checked to see if by chance the on-board audio somehow got re-enabled, which it didn't, managed to play for about 2 hours before it happened again.

[Macht]

Re: odd sound issue causing game to hard crash.

Well this one is more complex since it sounds like you've done a lot already.

Don't know what Video Card you have but if it's a GeForce brand then depending on the series there is a limit of how high you should go in the ForceWare versions before you've gone to far and it effects performance and game quality. Same if you use a Radeon which about every one of them SE has stated is only supported up to Catalyst 5.13.

Sound incompatibility usually doesn't cause system crashes, however corrupted sound files do have a possibility of doing this. Try paying more attention of what area it is, there's been past reports of South San d'Oria, Ru' Lude Gardens, Lufaise Meadows, and a few other areas having something in their sound files that seems corrupted or bad and can cause some systems to crash.

If I recall there is a mod created patch that was focused to fix that bug they resaved the sounds cleaning out whatever noise or bug causes that error. I can't help you on were that patch is since I've never really needed it and stupidly neglected to try and get it.

Outside of that the other option is I would say is use Scandisk and have it do a thurough scan (This will take hours to finish and you should not use the computer while it's doing so, so plan it when the system has about 8-10 hrs of not being used). What this will do is check for bad sectors on the harddrive and quarantine that sector so no more data is written to a corrupted spot.

If you notice it saying that almost all of your drive is bad then likely it's been moved while on or rocked around to much and the drive is no good, you'll need to replace it if that's the case. Then also if it has SMART technology you should be able to get a monitoring program to check how well the Harddrive is performing to see if maybe it's not reaching the RPMs it should be at or if it has a lower then normal data transfer rate.

If you do have these error it's best to solve to ensure better system stability. Especially if the issue is video, harddrive, memory, network card, or CD/DVD drive related. If something is wrong with the hardware in any of those areas it can cause very bad performance for your system as a whole.

If you are wondering on Video Card drivers having any issues try looking at this thread: Wierd Transparancy Problem
Taskmage has posted some excellent pictures of what will happen if you use a driver version to high for that Video Card. Also further down I've provided a list of driver compatibilities with the game, the data is provided from Playonline and anyone can access that info as well by looking on the PlayOnline.com website.

[Unibob]

Re: odd sound issue causing game to hard crash.

as far as hardware, it seems everything is stable, video drivers are Forceware 91.74, as everything has ran flawlessly, so I haven't felt the need to upgrade.

I ran WD Datalifeguard Diaognostics, and ran the extended test, it ran for about 2 hours and came up clean.

when it comes to areas, it happens almost anywhere, espeially in the new ToAU areas, but it sometimes happens in Jueno as well.

[Icemage]

Re: odd sound issue causing game to hard crash.

Forgive me for asking the obvious but have you tried disabling music in FFXI config and running without any sounds at all to see if it is in fact your audio that's causing the glitch? It might not be the audio at all, but this would be a good way to test it.


Icemage

[Unibob]

Re: odd sound issue causing game to hard crash.

ok, I disabled the audio last night, ran fine for a few hours, so I decided to leave the game running and bazaar overnight. I woke up about 30 minutes ago and the game was still running smoothly, so I think that it is somehow an audio problem, I am going to troubleshoot my hardware today I guess.

[Macht]

Re: odd sound issue causing game to hard crash.

ok, I disabled the audio last night, ran fine for a few hours, so I decided to leave the game running and bazaar overnight. I woke up about 30 minutes ago and the game was still running smoothly, so I think that it is somehow an audio problem, I am going to troubleshoot my hardware today I guess.

Hmm, find it odd. Usually sound doesn't cause the system to crash, well unless for some really wierd reason the sound files were conflicting with I/O Ranges and IRs with another device.

If that's the case then hopefully a fix of just removing those devices from the device manager and having it redetecting might help. Sometimes that works, but I haven't had that kind of luck. It's usually more of a headache.

[Unibob]

Re: odd sound issue causing game to hard crash.

it never has been an actual "System" crash, but it is the fact that the game stays in focus when it crashes, not allowing me to do anything outside of it, such as alt+tab to try and knock the game out of focus and terminate it. I am going to see if I can find any type of software that tells what piece of hardware uses what IRQ slot/range and in fact see if there is any sort of conflict.

[Macht]

Re: odd sound issue causing game to hard crash.

it never has been an actual "System" crash, but it is the fact that the game stays in focus when it crashes, not allowing me to do anything outside of it, such as alt+tab to try and knock the game out of focus and terminate it. I am going to see if I can find any type of software that tells what piece of hardware uses what IRQ slot/range and in fact see if there is any sort of conflict.

The thing is though if it's only happening in FFXI then I have doubts of it being hardware. If you run music other games and such and this doesn't happen it kind of makes it less likely it's hardware. The problem would seem to be in how the system is decompiling the sound file, reading the files, or the sound files are corrupted in some way.