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[hollowsteps]

Hello all, I'm completely new to the forum. I noticed I can't post in the bugs forum but I'm not sure if the problem I'm having is a problem with DF or my machine.

I'm running off a laptop in Windows Vista, which points to it being a problem with vista just to start out with, however the game runs okay normally and saves/loads without crashing.

Ever since I discovered an underground cavern my game has randomly crashed when playing. I can't really pinpoint when or why but I lose quite a bit of progress when it does and my fort is doing excellent so I don't want to lose this particular fort. There is only 1 guaranteed way to crash right now and that is to press 'm' to get into the military screen. I don't make it there and the game crashes within a second or two.

Is this a bug tracker issue or just a problem with my computer? I doubt the military screen would cause a surge in CPU usage or anything that might facilitate a problem but I thought I'd ask before bogging down the bug tracker with my attempts to run DF in a suboptimal system.

[GRead]

It's not you, the bug reports forum was shut down in favor of using the new bug tracker
You can sign up for it if you'd like to report\view reported bugs. The sign up is a bit cryptic though; after you've submitted the form it will send you an e-mail (and not tell you that it did so). The E-mail should contain the activation link for your account.

[Melagius]

Same thing happens to me, but after a while I could use "m" again. Unfortunately by then I got destroyed by a shell/body invincible beast combined with goblins destroying most of my farming floors. Drawbridges are for nubs.

[hollowsteps]

So melagius, were you also getting random crashes in addition to not being able to use 'm' and it cleared up? I'm looking for a ray of sunshine that I'll be able to play without saving ever 15 minutes.

[Bronzebeard]

Hullo! I'm new to the forum, too. I haven't had any crash due to the military screen, but I can attest to a drop in performance as soon as you hit an underground cavern (I've accidentally dug into one below my latest fortress). I run on Vista Ultimate and the only crashes I've experienced have been from alert congestion, when dwarves are, for whatever reason, spamming that they can't do this or that eight times a second. After 15 or so minutes, that results in a crash. As far as not being able to handle the game, what are your machine specs?

[[5th]Lupin]

If I recall, the military screen will crash the game if one of your soldiers equips a dagger. Try dumping and forbidding it.

[hollowsteps]

Thanks for the idea lupin, one of my dwarves had a dagger but dropping it didn't fix anything.

My system specs are:
Windows Vista Home Premium (32bit)
AMD Athlon 64 x2 dual core tk-55 1.80ghz processor
3 gb ram
ATI Radeon x1200

I wish there was a DF for ubuntu ;_;

[Bronzebeard]

Ah. Mine:

Windows Vista Ultimate (32bit)
Intel Core2 Quad Q9300 @2.50GHz
4 GB ram
Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS

I can run nearly every game in full, stunning settings with no lag but alas - DF with Mayday's tileset proves too much for my machine. Unless you have your own big iron for a computer, I think a bit of lag is part of the ride...

[hollowsteps]

It's not the lag that bothers me, it's my inability to do anything on the military screen. I've got 2 goblin ambushes at my walls and I can't outfit my military.

[Quatch]

Well, how stable is your computer with other high performace applications?

The most common random crash that doesnt take down your computer would be bad ram. You can make a bootable CD to scan your ram for errors. I think this is the one I used last time, but no garuntee. (look for the free download)http://www.memtest86.com/

That said, it's probably a bug. Archive the region and come back to it after the next version comes out?

[Quatch]

Sorry for the double post, but I wanted to make sure you got a notification about this.

Try this workaround: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=53371.0

It'll help rule out some sort of military bug.

[silantrath]

I've had troubles that sound alot like yours... does your screen look like photo negative hashbrowns when it crashes? random, square "chunks" everywhere? hitting "m" caused the game to crash in one of my forts... but I've had less problems as v. 0.31.02 and v. 0.31.03 came out. Now it's not nearly as frequent, but still happens sometimes, and I haven't had problems with "m" in any other forts. specs;

windows 7 home premium
Intel I7 920 @2.67 GHz (8 cpu's)
6 gigs ddr3 kingston ram
EVGA NVidia 9800GTX half gig vid card

there was lag in the first to versions of DF 2010, I'm assuming pathfinding issues. after I updated to .03 I noticed an immediate fps jump in one specific "trouble" fort.

when I first started having those crashes, I was worried my cpu was overheating, or my ram was getting corrupted or something... this system wasn't cheap, and I hope to hang onto it so I can upgrade as time goes by. Bios said my CPU was operating within normal temps, and I don't have these problems until I run DF. Sometimes it happens after I finish playing DF and move onto something else, but if I never start DF I never have a problem. I'm no genius computer tech, but that sounds like a memory leak to me.

[BurnedToast]

daggers are bad news this version. You said dropping it didn't help, but maybe he picked up a new one? Try forbidding (or better yet atom smashing or selling to traders) every dagger in your fort.

Also, melting items has been reported to sometimes cause crashes too.

Edit: unless you're having problems with other things too, or the computer starts hard crashing/BSOD/rebooting/etc then it's probably a DF problem. The new version is unfortunately fairly buggy.

Silantrath: if you're worried about temperatures download a monitoring program (I recommend speedfan but there are many others) and run it and DF (windowed) at the same time. The bios is no good for checking your CPU temp since it drops quite rapidly when not under load and in the time it takes to shutdown and boot into the bios it will be back to normal even if it was overheating.

[o_O[WTFace]]

Destroy all daggers.  Daggers are astomsmash on sight no exceptions.  Do not melt things, ever.  Do not let your stockpiles fill up.

Thats what worked for me when I was getting frequent crashes, similar to yours. 

If you are using the DF accelerator, alt tabbing or certain popup things will cause a crash with garbled ASCII everywhere (for me).  If not you should be

 

[hollowsteps]

<3 Quatch you saved my favorite fort to date~!