Who we gonna call?

[Can't_Stanz_It]

Hey follow wraith wreckers, what's the deal with this game? We all start it up and after the opening cut-scene (get'n us all hyped up) it crashes harder then Chevy Chase's career.

I guess I just want to know when Atari is going to patch one of two things. 1. The erroneous broken code that floods the virtual memory this game pulls 'causing it to spurt out error obscenities like some kind of binary torret's. Or, 2. The damn SecuRom that causes this to happen that only stops the people who bought the game honestly, to begin with (I mean come one -- trying to stop pirates is like putting a 2-week background check on a gun. The only people it hurts are the honest ones. The others will just steal it and take there shot).

At first I thought it was my comp. I more than meet all the minimum requirements EXCEPT my processor and the on board memory of my graphics card. That's a big except -- I know. But here's the deal My processor is a P4 Hyper Threaded Duel 3.0 GHz, 800MHz FSB with a 2MB L2 Cache. So, Unless this game intentionally locks out duel I don't necessarily think that's the prob (People have already reported running this game with less. And Fallout 3 runs max-out with-out a hitch). Mainly, cause though it states Duo processors on the min req -- it also says "*Duel Core such as the Intel Pentium D 805 aren't supported". Mine isn't that. And, it doesn't say duel is flat-out not supported.

As, for the graphics card I have a 8800GTS 320MB. Again, it's a High-end Mid-range but the game on the back says "*Does not support 256MB". So it should be fine.

So I got'a ask -- which do I need to upgrade to get this game to stop crashing and run? Or is this on the game's side of the field? Because when I could get it to run (I got through the firehouse), it ran great. Leaving me to believe It's more the game, and less my machine. And I'd hate to drop a **** load of money on things that aren't going to fix it. Or on one when I should've bought the other.

Any advice or insight would be greatly appreciated =D

[kalniel]

Sounds like you need a compatible processor, but try making sure all your drivers are up to date etc. first.

[Can't_Stanz_It]

Yeah, If it was one or the other, I was leaning to that one. So thanks for the reasurance. But, still -- my processor is equal to alot of duo ones. It just a duel -- not a duo. And, from what I heard -- there are people running this on P4's.

It's just hard to know whether buying a new one will actually help -- when I see suprior machines getting the same errors, how are you suppose to know which way is up?

Thanks for the reply.

[kalniel]

It's really hard to tell with these kinds of errors - when you have an intermittant error (you managed to get it to run for a while you said) it can be for any number of reasons.

Sometimes it's software, and driver updates will fix, but often the problems are exaggerated if your hardware isn't up to scratch either, especially in the era of multi-threaded games.

The author of tweakguides puts it really well, this is from his conclusion to a Fallout 3 guide, but the same principle applies:
Upon its release, Fallout 3 has received much praise, and paradoxically, also much damnation and anger. The praise is understandable, however the anger is not. It appears that a lot of people are having problems running the game, experiencing a range of problems, and in some ways, this is very unfortunate and I can sympathize. Nothing is more frustrating than buying a game you really want to play, only to be confronted with lots of crashes and issues which prevent you from enjoying it. However as someone who has been gaming for over 20 years, over half of that on the PC, as a person who has been tweaking and tinkering with computers for equally as long, and having written over 40 game guides, I feel I have to point out certain facts to some people.

No game is completely optimal or bug free. Virtually every game in existence has some bugs or quirks, many of which may never be resolved. However in the many hours I've been playing and testing Fallout 3 while writing this guide, changing every setting in the game, sometimes many times over, starting and restarting it literally hundreds of times, I have not yet experienced more than a handful of crashes. Of these, several were crashes on exit which is a known issue with the game, and was recently patched; all the others were 'expected' crashes due to changes I made to certain .ini variables as part of my testing. Otherwise, the game has performed flawlessly on my very modest system. In fact my longest session of Fallout 3 has lasted for over 2 hours without a single glitch; I've not had a single crash during normal gameplay, and it plays very smoothly at maximum settings - here's the Video proof. Now before you get all upset and start yelling that just because one person has no problems, doesn't mean a game is problem-free, take a look at this Performance Review of Fallout 3 over at Techspot, where the author specifically states: "I am yet to encounter a single crash while playing Fallout 3, and more remarkable was the fact that we were able to vigorously test 18 different graphics cards without a single glitch."

While Fallout 3 is not perfect by any means, and there are indeed some known issues with the game which will require patching (e.g. the 'micro-stuttering'/skipping bug), it is nowhere near as buggy or crash-prone as people are claiming it to be. Indeed every single major game which is released these days is labelled as being the "buggiest game ever", with hundreds of people flooding the game's forums to complain about how shoddy that particular game is, demanding patches and refunds in angry post after angry post. I'm not exaggerating either, it's now occurring for every single major game released, and quite frankly, it's become somewhat of a joke in my opinion. When I play every single one of these games, and write guides for them, testing them for hours and hours, I'm thoroughly confused as to how people can claim they are so buggy when I see no evidence of it. Either I'm the luckiest person alive, or there's something else at work here.

The simple truth of the matter is that PC gaming is a dual-edged sword. The very fact that a PC allows us so much freedom of choice as to what type of hardware we use, and what type of software we install on it, also results in much greater potential for a wide range of problems. PCs are not a 'plug and play' gaming machine, and never have been. If you want to just pop your game in the drive and play without a second thought, you'll need to do your gaming on a console. As a PC owner you need to be under no illusion that a PC requires regular optimization, maintenance and great care as to what you install on it. That's where I've tried as much as possible to give PC users the resources to do exactly that through my free guides. Ultimately however, as a gamer you have two choices: complain endlessly, blame the 'greedy developers', constantly beg for help and keep scratching your head over 'mysterious' crashes and issues. Or bite the bullet, learn more about your PC, learn how to configure, optimize and troubleshoot it properly, and wave goodbye to your PC gaming woes.

[Can't_Stanz_It]

Oh, I completely agree. Very well put. And, I never blame the devs for stuff like this. If anything it's usually the SecuRom or other anti-piracy that blocks communiqué from hardware to software -- simply 'cause it doesn’t recognize it and flags it as piracy attempts.

I'm not saying that's the case. Just saying -- if it's not the hardware it's most likely that. And that's usually a producer decision (not devs -- another example of producer decisions would be features taken out to get a game on the shelf for example =P).

But, this game is awesome when I can play it. And, I did read more about ram. I have 2 gigs (but do to the "black hole" effect) it recognizes just under that. I wouldn't be surprised if that was it. So I'm gonna put some more ram to get it above 2 (hell, sometimes the cheaper fix is the way to go. Keep it simple and is it plugged in -- the two mechanic adages that have served me well); then, let yins know if it worked.

f.y.i. for those who need to know: the "black hole" effect is with win-32 bit OS's. Where, you may let's say have 2 GB of DDR RAM. But in the System menu it says you only have 1.88GB or something like that. It's because the OS must secure RAM to ensure proper operation. If a program were to ensue more RAM than the OS it could crash the CPU. So it sets the RAM proportional to your total aside to ensure that doesn't happen (even if your bios shows the correct amount).

Also, on WinXP OS it will not recognize (from what I've seen) more than 3GB of RAM as the black hole take the other gig aside when 4 GB are in. So, going for the 4GB may be a waste of money.

[neildittmar]

From what I can tell and what the devs explicitly state, there are only two points where SecuRom is used with Ghostbusters. First, the game activates with SecuRom upon installation. After that, a disk check is done when the game is launched. If you're getting past those two points (and it sounds like you are), I doubt the DRM is causing the problem you're facing.

That CPU could very likely be what's shutting you out of the game though. It's important to realize that the P4 is not a "duel", "dual", "duo" or otherwise. It is a single core processor with a technology called "Hyperthreading" enabled. Unlike a true dual-core processor, the P4's with Hyperthreading only contain one physical CPU core. When you look at the CPU under task manager or other processor monitoring programs, you see it appear as two. This is because Hyperthreading technology allows the "unused" cycles of the single core P4 to be used to process additional data. However, the maximum amount of performance you'll obtain with this is nowhere near what a true dual-core processor would provide. For comparison purposes, the Pentium D 805 that's not supported is actually a true dual-core containing two Pentium 4 processors. In short, though some folks might be able to get the game running through some ini file hacks, your Pentium 4 CPU is not supported by the game.

You cite that the requirements state graphics cards with 256MB of RAM are not supported and this is true. What you also have to take into consideration is the physical requirement of 512MB of graphics RAM that's also stated. 320MB was kind of an odd number for graphics RAM (the 8800GTS being the only card containing that amount, or anything between 256MB and 512MB I believe) and it's very likely that the devs simply didn't take this into consideration when listing the requirement and the subsequent "no 256MB" addendum. Nevertheless, the requirements specifically state a 512MB video card as a priority, despite what the actual GPU core is. Yes, I know the 8400 listed is many degrees lower than the 8800GTS you have. That doesn't change the fact that 512MB of graphics RAM is required though. You might be able to get the game running in a 320MB footprint by lowering settings and possibly ini file hacks, but unfortunately your video card is still unsupported so nothing is guaranteed.

All of that said, it is very possible that either one or both of these issues are preventing you from running the game. If I had to take a guess as to which one is the most likely candidate, I'd guess the CPU like the poster above. However, it is entirely possible that just a processor upgrade may not be enough. To get you into minimum system requirements territory, you need both a supported dual-core processor (as listed in the requirements) and a video card containing 512MB of onboard video RAM.