Game Crashes and flashing screens

[DRG]

There have been a number of reports of crashes and brief instances of "flashing" on the screen and now one where some screens appear as almost a negative image. It's already getting difficult to find all the comments about this as more and more posts come into the forum so I'm starting a new one and we'll pick up from here

QUESTIONS

For those of you that have had cases of the game crashing at some point have you been running in both Windowed and Full screen mode when this happened or only Full screen?

Has anyone who has seen the screen " flash" briefly ever seen this in windowed mode

We ARE trying to fix this genetlemen but we have to find the problem first. The more info we get the quicker this gets solved

[MarkSheppard]

Has anyone who has seen the screen " flash" briefly ever seen this in windowed mode

No. Only in Full Screen.

We ARE trying to fix this genetlemen but we have to find the problem first. The more info we get the quicker this gets solved

Don't worry too much guys; every game has these annoying
bugs which only show up when it's been released; Silent
Hunter 3 shipped with bugs that made the rain not show
up, for example.

[Vitez]

I have occasionally screen flashes only in Full Screen mode. But that is a minor problem because it doesn't affect the gameplay.
The major problem are crashes with soundFX turned on (as already described in the "Game crashes with XP" thread).
That happens in both full screen and windowed, DirectX and GDI, 640x480 and 800x600, mouse clicks on and off, win98 compatibility mode on and off. I even tried turning hardware acceleration and all audio codecs except the MP3 one off, but without positive result..

hope this could help

[MadSlob]

I have had the flashing screen syndrome today in full windows mode but more than that even when the game has been closed down i still get the screen flashing at times which doesn't seem to recurr after a reboot..Anyone else had this problem???Have attached sys info etc... best regards MD

[Mobhack]

MadSlob said:
I have had the flashing screen syndrome today in full windows mode but more than that even when the game has been closed down i still get the screen flashing at times which doesn't seem to recurr after a reboot..Anyone else had this problem???Have attached sys info etc... best regards MD

Your DirectShow filters have this section, that mine do not

WDM Streaming VBI Codecs:
NABTS/FEC VBI Codec,0x00200000,2,1,,5.03.0000.0900
CC Decoder,0x00200000,2,1,,5.03.0000.0900
WST Codec,0x00200000,1,1,,5.03.0000.0900

A quck google gives
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...odecfilter.asp
wher it states "The NABTS/FEC VBI codec decodes NABTS (North American Broadcast Teletext Specification) teletext from data in the vertical blanking interval (VBI). It also accepts hardware-decoded NABTS data. The codec delivers forward-error-corrected (FEC) SLIP packets."

So - this thing is a possibility. You may find that removing whatever application is updating your clock (??) may resolve this?.

After all - according to the blurb, it is intercepting the video refresh and you are getting periodic flashes on the screen?

Does this application do things to (say) a on-screen clock? - or some other graphical output? - in which case it may be writing directly to (or be affected by our) direct use of the hardware palette on the video card.

Teletext? - some sort of TV function on your card is enabled?

Cheers
Andy

[MarkSheppard]

Hmm it might be a bug with the latest NVIDIA drivers; I found
that video playback of any kind Windows Media PLayer, or
WinDVD were completely hosed and washed out until I disabled
DirectDraw....

[Stirling]

Here is a list of my video codecs (attachment).

[MadSlob]

Thanks for the reply...Dunno how you figured it all out...the problem is that i haven't a clue about these filters...I will roll back my nvidia drivers and see if this makes a difference..As i have said it doesn't affect gameplay nor my enjoyment of the game but we know what perfectionists you all are and so it was worth mentioning.... best regards MD

[MarkSheppard]

I had a bunch of DirectShow filters installed on my computer,
so I decided to wipe my windows installation and start from
scratch; I'll try out WinMBT with this fresh install and let
you know if it's the DirectShow filters that are causing
the problems.

[MarkSheppard]

Direct Show filters might be the reason for the screen flashes...because I haven't had any flashes on screen since I wiped my HDD and reinstalled fresh after removing my useless
video capture card.