Build Terrain Crashes PC

[llfalcon]

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying, but I do truly have 3G. I started with 1G, configured as two strips of 512k, and two vacant slots. My PC requires matched pairs. Rather than throw out 2 512k-strips for the sake of installing the 4G max, I simply added two 1G strips, for a total of 3G.

That was March 1 or thereabouts, and no signs of trouble until the dang
Terrain thing. I use other graphic applications without issue, every day, but they probably aren't the hog that AHD is.

I'm going to try to do the memory check tonight, make sure I have the latest video driver, etc. I realize it must be something peculiar to this PC since everything works fine on others, but I was just hoping that someone had seen this issue and could say it's this or that. Guess not.

If I can get the memory checked and it does come back as ok, and I do all the other troubleshooting I can think of, I will remove the new memory to see if it works. While slow, I did get AHD to run on a PC with only 1G, so I should be able to test it.

Thanks for the help.

[Baylink]

If I can get the memory checked and it does come back as ok, and I do all the other troubleshooting I can think of, I will remove the new memory to see if it works. While slow, I did get AHD to run on a PC with only 1G, so I should be able to test it.

For what it's worth, my sister and I are running HDS8 on probably the most unsupported configuration in the world: P3-933, 512MB, Win2k. Even the dollhouse renders aren't really all that bad, and everything else runs quite nicely.

[llfalcon]

Larry, I was thinking the same thing about perhaps the other applications just have not accessed that particular memory address.

What is good alcohol? Makers Mark? Absolut? Tanqueray? or are we talking about denatured alcohol? something else all together?

Thanks to all for the support and suggestions. So far no luck. I ran the memtest thing last night, and everything passed. I updated the video driver, but that wasn't it. As soon as I find time, probably Saturday morning, I am going to pull my PC out from under this desk and do as y'all suggest, taking out one set of memory, then the other. Heck, the additonal 2G was less than $50, so if I need to match that up, fine, so be it. I love AHD8 so much I'll probably buy a new PC if I have to! Or I could just continue to run it on my spouse's older PC with the 1G (he might not like that!). It doesn't run well at all on my new laptop. I bought it earlier this year before I got into AHD, and didn't know about the integrated video card issue. It renders some really wierd stuff.

Once I find the cure, I'll post in case it happens to some other desperate soul. Please, PC Gods, don't make me call Dell suppport...

Thanks,

[Baylink]

What is good alcohol? Makers Mark? Absolut? Tanqueray? or are we talking about denatured alcohol? something else all together?

I'm a bourbon man myself, so I'm fond of Evan Walker.

For this, though, you're looking for technical-grade isopropyl alcohol: 98% or 99, the remainder is water, which is what you don't want. Most drugstore isopropyl is as low as 70%

If you're feeling froggy (and rich), you can also grab a bottle of Stabilant-22a, also known as Tweak, which is reportedly the coolest stuff in the known universe. [ looks ] Wow; it's not as pricey as it used to be.

Jerry Pournelle, who along with being a notable science fiction author, used to write a monthly column in the late, lamented Byte magazine all about small computers and how they made his life happily miserable, absolutely swore by this stuff.

[llfalcon]

Well, the bad news is the problem does not appear to be the memory. I went ahead and removed the add-on memory, leaving only the original, and the PC crashed. I took out the original, put in only the add-on, and the PC crashed. I put all of it back in, reversing the original order, and the PC crashed.

In a last-ditch effort to avoid calling Dell, I uninstalled, rebooted, reinstalled. Opened a New File, left the terrain perimeter in place, tried to do a 3D view of just the lot - KABOOM!

$%#@&*^!!! Where's that Makers Mark, Absolut and Tanqueray we were talking about earlier....?

[don3211]

Dell very quickly identified the problem. They had me disable Dual Core processing. And lo, I had dirt and grass.

That's odd. I believe a number of people in this forum use dual core or quad core processors. Please keep us updated.