Vista- freezes roughly every 5 secs help!

[Pobby]

I got Spore today and was very disgruntled to find that my game froze very regularly- about every five seconds. My PC has all the neccessary system requirements, I am stumped as to what to do next.
Someone please help!

[stann65]

I am in the same boat there, be nice to know if theres a patch for fixing this before I take the game back to the shop.

[spottythunder]

Have you tried the usual stuff, changing graphics setting/screen resolution/closing all non-essential background programs?

I got spore today and i have all setting on max and it runs very smoothly, could you post your spec i know you say you have what it needs, but it might help somehow!

my spec: (working fine)
windows vista home premium 32bit sp1
4gb memory
Ati Radeon HD2400 256mb dedicated (1407mb avalible shared)

[IER89]

I have the same problem though i admit that my computer is scraping the requirements anyway. Ive found that when it freezes it can be convinsed to work again if u press control alt delete then press cancel. this will kick the game back into buisness though its not garenteed and after the fifth time it gets a bit annoying. atleast it will keep me going until a patch sorts it

[N1ghty2]

I was really looking foward to this game too .... I can get up to tribal but then it just crashes... LAME... specs are fine.... Also when i try to load saved games it crashes... Sigh... Dissapointing for the price of the game tbh..

N1ghty2

[stann65]

Originally Posted by spottythunder

Have you tried the usual stuff, changing graphics setting/screen resolution/closing all non-essential background programs?

I got spore today and i have all setting on max and it runs very smoothly, could you post your spec i know you say you have what it needs, but it might help somehow!

my spec: (working fine)
windows vista home premium 32bit sp1
4gb memory
Ati Radeon HD2400 256mb dedicated (1407mb avalible shared)

vista home premium 32bit
2gb ram
nvideo geforce go 7600
amd turion 64 x2 2.00ghz processor

[Xanvier]

ive got the same problem, ive tried changing all the settings and everything, ive even checked for updating my gfx drivers.

my specs are:

1.67 gigahertz Intel Core 2 Duo

NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600

2046 Megabytes Installed Memory

forgot, vista home premium too

[CapnCarnage]

spore doesn't work for me too.

my specs are:
Vista 64bit Home Premium
core 2 duo 3.16GHz
4gb ram
ATI radeon HD 4870 with catalyst 8.8


the game runs for about 30 sec before my pc completely freezes and i have to press the reset button to reboot my pc. I looked in the readme file, and the 4870 isn't listed as a supported card. If someone here also has a 4870, does it work for you?

[Pobby]

Looks like we've all got the same problem, I've double checked the specs and they're fine- however, it says in the manual to go to computer>DVD>autorun and then open it (rather than openning it from games), but it doesn't work.

[Mac88]

I have NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 and it seems most other people with this seems to have a freezing problem of some kind, is there anyone out there with a NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 that isnt freezing?

[Jennygalaxy]

my 6100 is freezing also

[stann65]

I had this issue with the geforce go 7600 here is the solution

http://www.tweakforce.com/modules.ph...=getit&lid=178

Downloads > Xtreme-G Mobile nVidia Drivers > Choose your OS

big thanks to Cthulhuian for this fix.

[Drbog]

Same problem.

[MWilde-Man]

Originally Posted by CapnCarnage

If someone here also has a 4870, does it work for you?

I run Spore on:
Vista 32bit Business
Core2 Duo 3 GHz
4GB Ram
ATI Radeon 4870 with catalyst 8.8

Game froze after roughly 30 secs. I now run it in admin mode (To make sure the game has write access) and in Windows XP Servicepack 2 compatibility mode.

I have tried for short times to play the game in windowed mode, and saw no freezes, but it's annoying to play in windowed mode, so I didn't try for long. Maybe I'll try if/when the freezes become too annoying

I Made it up to the space fase, but it still randomly will freeze in full screen mode, so I save a lot and try not to get too annoyed.

To change to admin mode gave the biggest improvement. (I could get into the main menu of the game without freeze )

Oh.... Besides the random crashes, it runs perfectly smooth until it suddenly stops.

By the way. I have a 700W PSU with a peak output of 840W... Maybe it has something to do with the peak output? Overheating of 4780? Make 70 deg C at idle, but doens't seem to get much higher

[Harkole]

I played another game that had this exact same issue, running on any AMD processor. Something to do with teh gateway timing on the duel cores (I may be wrong about that so don't sue me!) Any ways there is an AMD install for there duel core processors available from there website.

I don't have this issue but it just seems so similar to the other game.

[econundrum]

Originally Posted by spottythunder

Have you tried the usual stuff, changing graphics setting/screen resolution/closing all non-essential background programs?

I got spore today and i have all setting on max and it runs very smoothly, could you post your spec i know you say you have what it needs, but it might help somehow!

my spec: (working fine)
windows vista home premium 32bit sp1
4gb memory
Ati Radeon HD2400 256mb dedicated (1407mb avalible shared)

ditto, I played for 8 hours lastnight, no stutter or freezes.

My spec: (working great)
windows vista home premium 32bit sp1
4Gb (3.2Gb available because it's 32bit).
nVidia 8800 Ultra
Quad core intel processor 2.93Ghz

My advice to the OP;

check driver versions, Check for mother board BIOS updates, and system device driver updates, defragment your disk, How much spare disk space do you have? Post your spec and Graphics card drivers. Do you have all updates for Vista installed? Do you have the Direct X updates from Microsoft a lot of games don't run well or stable without them.

Lastly what other software are you running? Do you have a virus checker running while your playing the game?

[Maelstrome]

Its not vista, its not your drivers, its SPORE and how it handles your drivers thats at fault. Make sure you sign the petition for a patch, and post a description of your problems in there as well so EA can have a look. (If they do.)

[econundrum]

Originally Posted by Maelstrome

Its not vista, its not your drivers, its SPORE and how it handles your drivers thats at fault. Make sure you sign the petition for a patch, and post a description of your problems in there as well so EA can have a look. (If they do.)

Guess I'm just lucky then that Spore handles my driver perfectly.

Signing your petition need not exclude taking perfectly sensible steps to do what you can to ressolve the issue yourself.

I have been gaiming about 23 years during which I have had numerous problems with new games. Most crash/reboot/Freeze bugs are ressolved by driver/BIOS/DX updates in my experience, although of course there are bugs that developers can address as well in many games.

For instance Bioshock was highly unstable on my system, despite my Graphics card driver being up to date. Then I discovered that microsoft had issued a DX-update for Vista, installed this and it's run smoothly and not crashed since as have some other titles that used to have problems.

With Oblivion it used to randomly reboot my machine, I found a BIOS update for my mother board that stopped that, again it hasn't crashed since.

It's always worth checking these things as well as asking technical support for help and waiting for a patch that may never come if the issue is a missing update on your system. If not your just cutting of your nose to spite your face.

[Mac88]

There is a post about game freezes with post 15 giving two links to downloads that will fix (or has done for my laptop and pc) the freeze issure. The problem is that although most drivers are up 2 "date" they are still not sorting the issues out that the game creates grpahics wise. The links provide drivers that fix this problem and are compatable with graphics cards

[MWilde-Man]

I'm probably not the first one posting this, but hey. Maybe it helps...

I haven't tried for very long, but this seems a sensible solution.

The Ati 8.8 Catalyst driver is switching the GPU core frequency between 500 and 750 MHz. According to a user in this forum, this is causing the crash.

At least it is for Sapphire Radeon 4870 series. And Spore is not the only problem. Seems that games that do not fully utilize your graphics card will cause the GPU to be clocked down. This will apperantly cause crashes at some point...
Seemingly this is a driver issue!

AMD Game Forums - Game Crashing the PC with HD 4870

[mflacks]

Originally Posted by stann65

I had this issue with the geforce go 7600 here is the solution

http://www.tweakforce.com/modules.ph...=getit&lid=178

Downloads > Xtreme-G Mobile nVidia Drivers > Choose your OS

big thanks to Cthulhuian for this fix.

This link tells me it's for administrators only. Any other options?

[Rebecca1208]

Haven't read the whole thread

Maybe your computers don't have enough memory? Too many programmes running without evening realiseing it? Wrong graphics settings? Faulty disk?

Exit any unessary programmes you may have running, like printer options or online chat rooms like MSN, or any anti-virus things you don't need. That'll free up some space. And on your actual computer, you may have too many programmes and applications that you never even use, delete/uninstall some of them. And also, change the settings of your game to low so that it frees up some space too. All of this should hopefully help stop it slowing down so often.

Hope this helped.

[flatfroggerx]

Originally Posted by mflacks

This link tells me it's for administrators only. Any other options?

You don't need specialist drivers, especially for nvidia cards.

NVIDIA & Laptop News | Latest NVIDIA drivers and related news | laptopvideo2go.com

Try there.