Egamst3k

I have no idea myself. Happens to me every single time, too, and I'm running Home Premium.

Re: Op Not that I've noticed. I just barely tried to play a single-player (the vast majority that I play are SP's) and I mini-dumped 45 minutes in. Maybe if nVidia would get off their behinds...

Need more info from ya. If you're using a nVidia based graphics card, download their latest beta drivers (174.74 I believe). Previous versions have something going on that at almost random times during the game you'll get a minidump error.

... Well, seems I answered my own question. It only happens in Windowed mode. In Full mode, I can play with everything up Highest and no chop... How utterly weird.

Just downloaded the nVidia 174.44 Beta drivers, and the minidump crashes have all gone away... But now everything is laggy. Not "slideshow" laggy, but zooming in on big maps (like Aerolian Sector) to a single planet, there's significant and very noticable chop. Of course, it goes completely away once I'm zoomed out to where the planets are dots, or if I zoom in close enough to an object so I don't see much else, but I don't remember this before. I've tried different detail/resolution levels, but

Unfortunately, the biggest hitch is probably your motherboard. AGP cards just aren't made that much anymore (if at all), and while you can up the RAM all you want, if you don't have a decent GPU, you won't see too much of an improvement. Luckily, you can get a decent motherboard that supports PCI-Express cards for fairly cheap ( I'd go for that first, hit up a new video card (depends on how much you're willing to spend here, but the nVidia 8800GT, 9600GT, and 8600GT are good choic

Check the Technical FAQ's link at the top of these forums.

Did you download it or buy the DVD version?

Your router probably re-assigned your computer. Go into your router's homepage, check which address it's giving your computer, then check to make sure the port forwarding matches. I know my Router switched from 192.128.0.2 for my main computer to 198.128.0.5 on me, and all I had to do was fix the port forwarding address to the correct one.

Not that I know of. Tried it, still crashed. The most stable I've found are 169.44, the official released ones that came out about 2 weeks ago. Go to eVGA.com and download their driver version for the 8 series.

If you have any mods, disable the option to load them on startup, and see if that helps. Also, try turning off Pirates. Also, set things "High" not "Highest", and turn off your bloom. Other than that, it's been a continuous problem I've had as well (similar setup as yours) since I installed the game. I don't think there's a concrete "fix" for it yet, but maybe in the 1.04 patch.

It was probably the Illuminators. Their main weapon sounds sort of like a mix between a laser going through ice and a high pitched whine. Though... Without hearing what you heard exactly, I don't know. You could very well be hitting a big, and the easy thing to do would be to play Advent once until you get a few Illuminators and try them out. I don't find it terribly annoying, but it is a bit of an attention-grabber when a dozen or so Illuminators light up.

No, no one can tell you why you're getting a Minidump every 5 minutes, because you didn't provide any information whatsoever. If you're running a Vista machine with a nVidia card, try updating to their latest 169.44 drivers and turning Bloom off. If you're running an ATI machine, try their latest drivers. If you're running XP, no idea right now. Next time provide a bit more info on what's going on...

[quote] They should make it tied to the CTRL+number system or something.And if you try to have fleets cross with ships that are not in a fleet, good luck, they will probably get sucked in and you wont notice.[/quote] They do. Turn off the auto-join fleet option and you can Drag+Select ships and keybind them. I use Ctrl1 and Ctrl2 all the time. Even with them bound, though, I still have "ship amnesia".

I've noticed it. Earlier today I Alt-Tabbed out, only to come back to find an entire fleet no longer bound, and half of a second fleet not being selected. Not sure if there's a pattern to it yet.

Like several on here, I'm a nVidia user with Windows Vista 64-bit, and pre-1.03 the game would completely freeze every 30-35 minutes ro so. After 1.3, it didn't crash, as I could still hear the music and move the mouse, but the rest of the game froze after about the same amount of time. So after trying almost a dozen different video drivers and combinations of detail leves along with the fix suggested in the sticky above and still having the same problems, here's a combination I'm tentative to s

Just installed the 169.44 Drivers, the latest official nVidia ones, and they appear to have worked! Now I'm actually noticing other bugs that I didn't notice before because it crashed too often!

I've heard one report of success with 169.21 drivers, but SoaSE states that it will not work well with outdated drivers. Does anyone know the cut-off point to which problems start to occur?

Vista-64 nVidia Drivers which have not remedied the problem (Keep in mind, anything above 169.44 is not an officially released nVidia driver and is a Beta driver by nVidia. The latest, 174.53, is dated March 11th): 512mb 8800GT is my card. 169.25 169.28 171.12* 171.16 171.20 173.65 174.20 174.12 174.53 *Reported to be the most stable from the site I downloaded the drivers from.

I have not had the issue myself, but feel free to list your system specs to see if there's something in common. Maybe one of your game files is corrupted, and re-installing would fix it.

[quote]Alright, just thought I would check. FWIW I have an asus 7900GS and I have literally never once had Sins crash on me. The only weird thing I get is an occasional split-second white screen effect late in a game when things get very heavy. I'm using 169.21 on XP. I know IC mentioned that this seems to be an internal Nvidia bug and that people should wait for the next release, but, whatever is causing it is obviously not happening for my hardware/driver/os combination. Just as a thought

[quote]Yikes, beta drivers? You know that there is no actual naming consistency from Nvidia with those and half of the 'betas' you see are internal, card-packager-specific drivers for one particular revision of one particular update for one particular card, right?Have you been using a driver cleaner and rebooting before you go play with installing all these different versions?[/quote] Yup, fully aware. ;) But Nvidia is also incredibly slow to release their drivers. They have 169.28 lis

[quote]Well, the 1.03 update didn't fix my Vista/Nvidia hang issue. When I have all the eye candy turned up to the Highest settings, my computer hard hangs in under an hour. Reset button to recover. There aren't any minidumps, nothing in the OS event logs, just annoying hang! But again on XP on same computer, on all highest settings, works like a champ. Can game for hours without issue. There is still a huge issue with Vista and Nvidia!Stardock? Nvidia? anyone? Help!?Thanks,Jim[/quote]<br

[quote]Tell me, why does MediaDirect play open every time i quit out of the game?Without fail, it happens, can't imagine why except for a directory error.[/quote] That's a good question, too... Happens to me, without fail.

The 174.20 drivers are actually just 171.20 in disguise, so they're barely any different. I've tried several of the beta drivers over at Guru3D, and all of them have crashed eventually. However, today there is a 173.XX version up that I've yet to try that's supposed to fix a few problems, so we'll see if Sins is part of that. It's not a memory issue (I have over 4GB's, and it barely breaks 60% usage) or CPU usage (Q6600 here, and it only uses 1 core when playing anyways)... A