Are you running Vista 32 and find the game suddenly stuttering, then crashing with a Kernel 32 error, an Nvidia error, or sound card error? I dealt with those issues for 3 weeks before finally finding a solution that fixed all my problems. I still haven’t tried the game in multiplayer, but I have now been able to play all the single player missions in 1680×1050 resolution without a single crash.
The root of the issue: Like many Vista owners, I tried using a Creative sound card before deciding their drivers completely suck in Vista. I got much better performance using the Soundmax Soundcard supplied by Asus with their p5n32E-sli motherboard. So I uninstalled the Creative driver, installed the Soundmax driver, and went on my merry way, or so I thought until Frontlines just wouldn’t work. The cause of all the issues turned out to be legacy Creative driver files not properly uninstalled from the operating system.
The solution: Download the following files, but only the Nvidia driver if it supports your graphics card.
- Autoruns by Sysinternals
- guru3d-driversweeper
- GeForce Release 174 BETA 174.74
- The lastest AGEIA PhysX driver
Procedure:
- Run autoruns and see if there are any drivers for a sound card other than the one you are currently using. Autoruns will allow you to disable them from starting up. (They usually begin with the letters “CT” and have “Creative” in the description)
- If you have legacy Creative drivers loading, Press “ctrl+alt+del” and stop the cthelper process from running. Then run the Guru-3d driver cleaner in admin mode and remove the creative drivers. Alternatively, you could run the program after rebooting in safe mode.
- Install the latest Ageia Driver even though you probably don’t have the card.
- Install the latest beta Nvidia driver if supported by your system. Reboot.
- Uninstall Frontlines Fuel of War. Reinstall the game.
- Apply the 1.02 patch.
Results: Not one single crash since following this procedure. I turned down my advanced graphic settings as well, but am running the game at 1680×1050. For me this made the game playable instead of being a frustrating piece of junk. I might even be able to try multiplayer soon. Obviously this fix won’t solve everyone’s problems, but if even one gamer gets to finally enjoy this game then my fix was worth posting.
4-10-08 Update: I swapped my Crucial Tracer Ram modules that were running at 1066 speed with some Corsairs that were rated for 675 speed after errors reappeared. I ran them at 800 speed using 1.9v, .02 less volts than the Crucial. So far no single player issues. I will keep you updated, but all the issues may be memory related somehow.
[...] March 30, 2008 · No Comments Turnip solved his nagging problems getting Frontlines: Fuel of War to run under Vista and people sure seem interested. His pageviews for the day are likely to set a new personal record. His solution involves making sure any previous versions of sound card drivers are not being loaded by windows. Creative leaves a lot of junk even after you uninstall it. Go check it out at: Frontlines: Fuel Of War Vista Game Crash Fix. [...]
This is one reason I hate Vista and have gone back to XP – compatability.
Apparently, SP1 isn’t going to make life easier…Microsoft already has put out a warning about compatability…or lack of it.
Good point Paul. I should have mentioned I already upgraded to Vista SP1, should that make any difference. Starting over, I would go with XP over Vista. Too many heachaches with nothing gained except minor eye candy and a huge performance drop.
knowing are luck they will bring the new patch out and still having the same probalm just are luck …..maybe lol only 6 hours to go
Typical company stupidity. After installing today’s 1.02 patch I’m now freezing up again.
Edit: Found a new fix for this shit, but this is getting on my nerves. I’ll edit the article for 1.02. Once again I am able to play all the single player campaigns without stuttering. Unfortunately, I went and tried multiplayer last night. I experienced slowdowns, graphic issues, and lockups. This 1.02 patch has not fixed the Vista issues.
Everytime I play Gothic 3 on Vista 32 it crashes. I hate when that happens. I found a solution of this problem – use windows xp. I have installed it to the separate partition.
If you google the issue a bit, you will see that all the systems having crash issues are mainly running their RAM at 1066MHz.
I too experienced these crashing (rebooting) issues in certian games, while others ran fine. Benching my system in FutureMark, no problem. Running Warhammer Online = CRASH, BURN, REBOOT! I set my RAM speeds back to 800MHz, all crashing went away.
I believe the issue here is the small slice of system memory shared by the graphics card. This becomes even more of an issue running SLI. I believe that the drivers / cards aren’t capable of utilizing this shared RAM properly at speeds of 1066. I would also like to add that this appears to be game-specific as well. Some combination of the graphic engine in particular games and the graphics drivers themselves renders the cards incapable of utilizing shared RAM at 1066MHz.
Just my 2c.
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