Help with possible glitch in game

[Katoya]

HELP!

My current game takes forever to load and even longer to save. I am running XP and have installed all of the 'Improved' and Baulderdash patches to my game. I just finished Saradush and am off to the Oaisis - it takes forever to load (like 15 minutes) and once the Oaisis finally loads it won't let me save (or more appropriately it does let me select the option but the save screen never appears.) Sometimes I get a 'lack virtual memory' message.

Any idea what's wrong with my game? It was loading and running fine before this stage.

Cheers,
Katoya

[galraen]

It sounds like lour hard drive is full, or nearly full.

Open 'My Computer', right-click on the 'Local Disk C:', select properties, it will display how much free space you have. Ideally you should have 500MB or more, preferably 1GB or more.

If you're short on free space you'll have to un-install some programs or transfer some large files to CD/DVD. Sound files and graphic files can take up a lot of space, so if you have a lot of music, videos or pictures on the hard drive, transferring them may help.

It may also be worth while checking to see how much hard drive space is allocated to virtual memory. To do this, right click on 'My Computer', select properties, select the 'Advanced' tab, left click on 'Settings' in the 'Performance' box, then select the 'Advanced' tab. At the bottom you'll see it says 'Total paging file size for all drives' with the size printed next to it. You can change it, but I advise extreme caution. If you click on 'change' you'll see how the Virtual Memory is currently being handled. By default the 'System managed size' box should be checked. The dialogue box also shows 'Space available' (basically the free space on the drive', and at the bottom the 'Minimum allowed', usually 2MB, 'Recommended', and 'Currently Allocated'.

To change the space allocated you can check the 'Custom size' box and input the 'Initial size' and Maximum size' yourself, but I suggest using utmost caution. Whatever you do don't allocate more space than you have available, or anywhere close to it. Best idea is to let the system handle it, and make sure you have plenty of free space for it to play with.

[Katoya]

Originally Posted by galraen

It sounds like lour hard drive is full, or nearly full.

Open 'My Computer', right-click on the 'Local Disk C:', select properties, it will display how much free space you have. Ideally you should have 500MB or more, preferably 1GB or more.

If you're short on free space you'll have to un-install some programs or transfer some large files to CD/DVD. Sound files and graphic files can take up a lot of space, so if you have a lot of music, videos or pictures on the hard drive, transferring them may help.

It may also be worth while checking to see how much hard drive space is allocated to virtual memory. To do this, right click on 'My Computer', select properties, select the 'Advanced' tab, left click on 'Settings' in the 'Performance' box, then select the 'Advanced' tab. At the bottom you'll see it says 'Total paging file size for all drives' with the size printed next to it. You can change it, but I advise extreme caution. If you click on 'change' you'll see how the Virtual Memory is currently being handled. By default the 'System managed size' box should be checked. The dialogue box also shows 'Space available' (basically the free space on the drive', and at the bottom the 'Minimum allowed', usually 2MB, 'Recommended', and 'Currently Allocated'.

To change the space allocated you can check the 'Custom size' box and input the 'Initial size' and Maximum size' yourself, but I suggest using utmost caution. Whatever you do don't allocate more space than you have available, or anywhere close to it. Best idea is to let the system handle it, and make sure you have plenty of free space for it to play with.

Galraen,

Thank you so much for your concise and instructive post. I'll have to try that out. I did have to delete some files and I'll have to see if that will remedy the situation.

I also forgot to mention that I added the Ascension patch as well.

Cheers and All the Best

[fable]

You may also want to defragment your hard drive, which might account for speed issues, though not memory-related ones. Good defragmenters aren't hard to find, even among freeware and shareware programs, and one should be used as regular maintanence.

[Katoya]

I now have over 3 gig of space remaining on my hard drive and my load times are still taking approximately 15 minutes... I have also added the ascension patch to my game. I am at the Oasis - could this part of the game trigger this patch? I am really at a loss for what is wrong. Even with 3 gig free do you still think that is my problem?

Cheers,
Katoya

[galraen]

[quote=Katoya;960208]Even with 3 gig free do you still think that is my problem? /QUOTE]

Definitely not.

When you installed did you do a full install? If you didn't then the game has to access the CD/DVD when loading a new area. If that's the case then a that leads to another question. Are you having problems when accessing the CD/DVD drive when running other programmes? If not, then check your game CD/DVD, if it's become dirty or damaged this could be the cause of the problem.

[Katoya]

[quote=galraen;960224]

Originally Posted by Katoya

Even with 3 gig free do you still think that is my problem? /QUOTE]

Definitely not.

When you installed did you do a full install? If you didn't then the game has to access the CD/DVD when loading a new area. If that's the case then a that leads to another question. Are you having problems when accessing the CD/DVD drive when running other programmes? If not, then check your game CD/DVD, if it's become dirty or damaged this could be the cause of the problem.

Good question. My CD drive is a bit wonky at times. I have a Toshiba laptop and sometimes it take several opening and closings of the drive drawer to have the game disk recognized. I make sure the disk is recognized before I start the game. So, I don't think that is the issue. The game loaded and ran fine before I reached this stage. I have not installed any new software so I don't think that is the issue. I have not had the time to actually wait through all of the excessively long load times to see if I can save the game after I defeat the enemies at the Oasis. I can't seem to figure out what the problem is.

Thanks again for your assistance.