The online racing simulator
lfs locking up
(20 posts, started )
lfs locking up
Please help I have tried everything!
I have LFS2 I am running 1mb DDR ramm, a Nvidia sparkle GeFORCE fx5500 256mb DDR graphics card, K7N2 Delta2 motherboard with onboard ac97 sound both of which I have got as far as I am aware the latest drivers for, I have adjusted every setting in different variations that I belive should or could make a difference one at a time in the game but i still have the following problem:
The game starts and runs fine everything works fine I start to race then at different points in the game and at varying speeds etc the game will freeze as will the sound for a few seconds enough to put me into the wall then the game will catch up and all will work fine, this is happening at least once or twice a lap and make this game that looks really good impossible to play Please please Help regards Lee
Just a wild guess: You don't have other programs running at the moment you play LFS? For example the firefox browser with some neat plugins? Or an opened LFSWorld page?

I have a weather forecast plugin installed and every now and then when the plugin fetches the new weather data or the LFSWorld page reloads I see LFS stutter. Not as much as you describe here, but it is very noticable. So I shut down each program I can get a hold of and this usually makes the game run more smooth.
Have tried to disable everything including msn even took my usb mouse out because Ive had trouble with that on other agme in the past but with eveything that I know how to disable disabled still just locks at random.

This is seriously annoying Please please any ideas would be appreciated
#4 - Lible
I have same problem, when i load track, it wil freeze, also when joining to some hosts i get error, if it is freezing - i dont have much time now, so i wil explain it tomorrow.
Quote from ln1977 : Please help I have tried everything!
I have LFS2 I am running 1mb DDR ramm, a Nvidia sparkle GeFORCE fx5500 256mb DDR graphics card, K7N2 Delta2 motherboard with onboard ac97 sound both of which I have got as far as I am aware the latest drivers for...

I would certainly advise you to turn off your onboard sound within the system BIOS and then try to run the game without sound. If the game becomes stable you know what your problem is and all you have to do is buy a sound card. Onboard sound cards are famous for causing this type of crash, no pun intended

Ensure all your drivers are upto date...

P.S. It is possible that you won't be able to start LFS without a sound device present in your system, if this happens i think you should get a nice Creative soundcard anyway irrespective of whether it resolves your issue, i think it's a shame that you are running ac97 onboard sound with the other quality hardware that you have as that in itself will munch your system resources
Hello Ive just installed a creative labs sound card that I had from my old pc and hadn't got round to installing. I installed it and theres no difference to the game what so ever could you let me know exactly what i should disable because I think i havent disabled everything from the ac97 sound.
regards Lee
I have disabled ac97 audio in the bios and installed my creative labs sound card which is all good but the game port which i dont use and never have is telling me in device manager that there isn't enough resorses to enable the device and because of that when i try to install updates for the drivers its telling me that the device is corrupt:chair: again any idea's anyone this is getting so annoying it untrue please please please help me to get racing regards Lee
Did you make sure that turning off the on-board sound card fixed the problem before you tried installing the new Creative card? If not, you're just adding one more possible variable that could be causing the problem.
You prolly have drivers for various things floating around everywhere causing conflicts.
Once you are satisfied you have disabled your onboard sound through the bios, I would format your PC.
A re-install of Windows might just fix your problem.
I had a similar problem recently with lfs locking for a couple of seconds. The problem disappeared after I unselected Enable write combining from Control Panel-->Display-->Settings-->Advanced-->Troubleshoot.
Quote from Creole Kid :I had a similar problem recently with lfs locking for a couple of seconds. The problem disappeared after I unselected Enable write combining from Control Panel-->Display-->Settings-->Advanced-->Troubleshoot.

Try this, or if that doesn't work...

Quote from -SE1Z- :
You prolly have drivers for various things floating around everywhere causing conflicts.
Once you are satisfied you have disabled your onboard sound through the bios, I would format your PC.
A re-install of Windows might just fix your problem.

A rebuild in your case is probably the easiest and best idea if all else fails, ensure you use all the latest drivers and don't install software and other devices that you don't really need!

Good luck...
Lockups - Very similar problem - but not sound
Just started one night during a MP race. The game "stutters" for just a moment and it happens roughly every 5 seconds. The game worked great for awhile before that and I just can't think of anything that changed!

New PC (work computer) running Windows XP Media Edition. I used End it All to kill most non essential stuff. Its got to be running as barebones as I can get I think. AMD 64 3400, Nvidia FX5200. Plenty of power. It was using onboard sound and I killed that and installed a sound card. I can disable the sound card, run LFS with no sound, and the problem still happens. Installed the latest Nvidia drivers to no avail. This is one of those "weird PC things" that makes you want to throw it against the wall if it weren't for cool sims like LFS!
The problem with this type of error is that it could be a number of things that is causing the system to halt. At the end of the day, if the PC is rebuilt (software) then this will eliminate the possibility of there being some form of corruption within the operating system. However this in turn then opens up the possibility that there may some form of conflict between operating system and the harware within the system, that it why it is essential to update all drivers and if possible the firmware within your PC, primarily the system BIOS. I believe that you need to eliminate one thing at a time and ultimately if you want LFS to run smoothly without interuption and it is your main priority to have this game working properly you may be looking at replacing your mainboard for one that has a common chipset if that be the case. As i am a computer engineer, I could sit here and write all day about what the possible cause of the error could be but i'm off home, finished work at 6! Good luck...
Hello Im midway through re-fomatting and installing windows I'll then start again with everything from scratch because what I havent mentioned so far is that this is a new PC build and that I have had a few teething problems and have removed and replaced a few items of hardware/software a few times till I got everything how i wanted it to be, I had concidered reinstaling but didnt see itas a neccesity untill lfs didnt run properly I have had a few other glitchs that kind of lead me towards a reinstall, None of these are big problems but when all added together new windows could be worth the effort i'll let you all know how I get on asap many thanks to all of you that have suggested things and took the time to help hopefully I'll be racing with you all soon Regards Lee
My video glitches...
Forgot to mention this happens in Single player mode also. This is a PC from my work and its fairly new. Works great otherwise. I hate to/its not practical to wipe the drive and start over from scratch. I'll just keep messing with it I guess for now....

Hope your fresh install solves your issues!
i had the same problem.
LFS locking up for a few seconds then running fine again ,over and over. Made the game totally unplayable as it would happen each lap and online it was even worse since it disconnected from the server each time it froze.

Think it started when i switched from an USB headset back to a normall one(plugged into audigy card)

Simply deleting LFS folder(after backing up my setups) and redownloading the game fixed it for me
Getting closer....
I hope! The system is getting a CPU spike every 5 seconds. Installed a utility that looks at system processes at the lowest levels.

It seems to be a Winders thing. The file that is creating the CPU spikes is ntkrnlpa.exe. Still doing some research on it.
Quote from ln1977 :I have disabled ac97 audio in the bios and installed my creative labs sound card which is all good but the game port which i dont use and never have is telling me in device manager that there isn't enough resorses to enable the device and because of that when i try to install updates for the drivers its telling me that the device is corrupt:chair: again any idea's anyone this is getting so annoying it untrue please please please help me to get racing regards Lee

Did you try to disable motherboard's game port in bios? Because if you didn't soundcard´s game port can cause problems
Had the exact same problem here, and it's mostly gone away, however it still happens once in a blue moon now.

System Specs:
AMD64 3200+
Shuttle SN95G5 V3
nForce 3 Ultra chipset
BFG GeForce 6800GT OC
512MB DDR Memory (cheap stuff)

Here's some steps I took to alleviate the problem:

Updated Video Drivers ( Though sometimes newest isn't best, if you have the newest, roll back a few versions and try )
AGP Write Combining : DISABLE ( This is done in your BIOS, this caused EVERY game to seize up on me. )

Disabled Power Saving and Screen Saver (if you have a wheel and pedals, chances are you may not be touching the keyboard/mouse for a while during a race, and hard drive spinups can cause massive IO blocking)

Clean up your startup programs!!
- No MSN Messenger or any instant messenger for that matter
- No Auto-updaters, Nothing that refreshes more than once a minute (eg. Samurize, MotherBoard Monitor, etc)
- NO STEAM!!! (grrr, resource hog!)

A couple of things I did in LFS that helped at one point, but don't seem to make a difference now:
- Removed Checkpoint/Split time display from screen (seemed to lock up when I went over splits, but not always)
- Enabled VSync and FPS Lock at the rate closest to VSync (what's the point of going beyond 75fps when you're just going to get tearing?)
- Changed Analog Input smoothing to a non-zero value (reaching for straws here)
- Nudged up the Sound delay/buffer setting ( I've had apps freeze up by setting the sound buffer too small )
- Tried running the game in a window the size of the desktop


Things that had no effect even though you think they should have:
- Minimum Sleep setting
- Visual Quality settings, both in LFS and in Video card settings


Note about AMD64 chips and temperature issues:
- LFS is a very mathematically intensive game, and when I first built my system, it ran fairly warm ( in the 52 - 58 degree range ). When LFS is doing very intense calculations (eg. calculating split times for all drivers, AI, damage) it's quite possible that the CPU is getting too hot and experiences a short thermal shutdown. I switched to a silver thermal compound, and my CPU runs in the 44-48 degree range, and it hasn't happened since I switched it a few weeks back.

The characteristics of the lockup actually seem like a thermal shutdown... still video image, looping clipped sound buffer, no hard drive activity, unresponsive inputs (my wheel would constantly apply whatever force it was last fed), inability to ALT-TAB, or CTRL-ALT-DEL, no response to Num Lock/Caps Lock change. It's pretty tough to seize up a system that much, and still have it recover a very short period of time later.

One of the things I tried while troubleshooting was loading up MotherBoard Monitor 5 and watching my CPU temp (updating as fast as possible), and also having the video card temperature on display from the Display properties panel ( not everyone has this ) while playing LFS in a window filling the desktop as much as possible. See if your CPU is getting significantly warmer while playing... thermal shutdown usually occurs at 80 degrees, if your CPU is ramping up slowly while you play, then there is probably a thermal issue (a little increase is normal from idle temps, but if it's still increasing steadily after 10-15 degrees, then there's DEFINATELY a problem. There's no reason for a CPU to go beyond 65-70 degrees)

That's all I can think of spewing out right now :P Good luck!
Hooray I sorted It.
:bounce8: :bannana_g :eclipsee_ :rock_band
Hello 1st off thanks to everyone who has suggested ideas and things to try to sort this out I have finally got the solution HOORAY I will try to ass this on to the best of my ability without boring you all:
The problem was the Driver for my USB to PSX adaptor which is a rockfire model px-205, when the adptors standard driver is installed and the adaptor is used with no direct power adaptor and vibrate on the vibrate doesn't work the lockups start and this is annoying as you can see from above posts the good news is that you dont need these drivers as windows will run the adaptor fine without a power adaptor at the sacrifice of vibrate which I can live with.

I will keep get a power adaptor then try the vibarate again and keep you all informed as to whether it works or not but, for now I am V. happy its all working get 50/60 frames a second now instead of the 19 odd i was getting and the world is a better place now that I can race.

Once again thanks to everyone Regards Lee

lfs locking up
(20 posts, started )
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG