Hey folks,
Someone here was talking about a crash problem they had with Lord of Destruction. The one where the game crashes and you get an error code. I had the same problem, weeks after those posts, and... well, Max Payne, Throne of Bhaal, a couple big articles, Gen Con, sick baby, and more got in the way. Today I started thinking about playing LoD again, but I remembered the crash problem. NOTHING is worse than a crash like this in a repetitious game like Diablo 2 (damn save system) so I was wondering if it had been fixed or that poster had found/learned of a fix.

But I can't (am too lazy) to seek out and ressurect that thread.

Hmmm?

-Andrew
PS: I can't find a new patch, and I'm not a Battlenet-type guy. But I'll go there if that's what it the doctor ordered.

Sell your AMD, loser. You're always having problems.

That was me! And, unfortunately, it still describes me. Let me ask you a question, have you ever seen this after D2 crashes:

Unhandled Exception Error (C00000000000005)

If you have, then I'm afraid you are F'ed.

At least, I haven't found the cure yet. I'm hoping that it is a simple question of updating my drivers, but I'm not all that technically proficient (I can usually get games up and running, but after that I usually cross my fingers), so I haven't done it yet. If you update your drivers let me know how it goes.

By the by, I now have an OFP problem. The patches won't recognize my cd as the original cd, and thus won't run the patch .exe. Will this ever end???????

Yeah, I can't patch to 1.08 either, says its a different version of the game. Hmmm...

Have you tried playing in non-accelerated mode? I recall having to play through D2 originally in (not that different looking non-accelerated mode) cause I had an Nvidia card (at the time).

I wonder if these are video card problems. Or if the anonymous troll is right and AMD should have thought harder about making sure their processors worked with *future* Blizzard games. Of course, that MUST be AMD's fault.

Let's just ignore the fact that Diablo 2 worked with this AMD processor. It's the freaking add-on that doesn't.

Lout.

-Andrew

1.08 and LoD work fine with NVIDIA cards and 3D mode (though 1.07/pre-LoD did not), at least for me. Other than that I've been lucky I guess, no problems. I don't have an AMD CPU though, although I would have if at the time I was buying Dell had been selling them .

A guy at work had Diablo II still on his from back when it came out and tried to install LoD and it wouldn't recognize that he had installed it -- and wouldn't let him reinstall from his original disks either using his old keycode -- he had to use someone else's. There's definitely something a little screwy with D2/LOD, probably in relation to the copy protection.. I dunno.

--- Alan

Yeah, I'd guess a lot of problems these days are from evil copy protections schemes. Ick.

I work in Tech Support for a software company (geophysical survey software, not games). I'd say 95% of the calls we get are related to our copy protection stuff. We use a physical PC block that has to be plugged into the parallel port. It can be a royal pain in the butt to get a computer to recognize that there is a block plugged into its parallel port. So, copy protection on games could be worse. Imagine plugging in a different PC block every time you wanted to play a different game.

Dongles! Been there, done that. The Amiga had games with dongles, and I'm sure other systems did too. We've had betas from developers that came with dongles.

Dongles, to put it simply, are evil. They used to be a common part of the business software landscape, back in the 1980s, but I am somewhat surprised to see that they still exist. I hope we can hunt them all down and kill them.

The dongles, I mean. Not the people ;-)

My problem is actually a little odd. I can play for an hour or two, and then crash... with that message Rob is reporting.

That and the fact I can't update to 1.08 (due to a "version error") - though I haven't tried updating via Battlenet.

This isn't a big, big issue for me. I'm pretty busy anyway, but I kinda got the yen to play the game during downtime.

-Andrew

A friend of mine who still uses an Amiga has a whole drawer full of dongles.

And that's my weird phrase of the day.

--- Alan

I always call them blocks, cause saying "dongle" makes me feel dirty.

I agree with you Robert that blocks are evil. We're still using them because of the nature of our software. You have to buy our software for specific lengths of time, and the block was the easiest way to limit this when the software was initially developed. We are testing a blockless security system now.

The blockless security has new problems though. I had to read a foot long string of characters over a speakerphone to a guy in Australia the other day. It only took us 3 tries to get it right. :)

Bub - take this as you will, but I too got the c0..05 errors in d2/d2x. Highly annoying. Some weeks ago I installed new memory sticks following a lan party and have had nary a d2 error since. The odd thing being that there were no other signs of failing RAM.


As a side note, this is the first Bliz title I've seen that's generated non-trivial rumblings amongst the hard core gamers on bnet and around the net. Many are looking for 1.09 to fix a "seriously broken" game. I guess we'll see what they have in store.

This isn't a big, big issue for me. I'm pretty busy anyway, but I kinda got the yen to play the game during downtime.

I just saw Samarai Jack, and I am totally jones-ing to kick ass non-stop. The show totally made me hope that Throne of Darkness is a great game. Damn that Unhandled Exception!!!

Also, I didn't have any problems d/ling the 1.08 patch through battlenet. I don't think the d/l process is at fault, but I think the patch itself may be the culprit. I've seen some posts on the battlenet help forum pointing fingers.

Hmmm, I doubt it's a memory stick thing. I'm using top o' the line Crucial PC133 CL/3 SDRAM and I have no other real problems with any games.

Of course, failing RAM would be the next horrible thing to happen to me, if one believes in domino bad luck...

-Andrew

It's strange...We just replaced the RAM in my best friend's machine. There had never been any signs bad RAM, but when he got a new hard drive, it started going ballistic...After several hours, we narrowed it down to one bad RAM chip that he's had for ages, and it had never showed signs of failure before.

RAM is strange stuff...

"I'm using top o' the line Crucial PC133 CL/3 SDRAM"

RAM is so cheap right now that an old stick failing is almost a blessing. I just bought a new 256MB stick of CL2 PC133 SDRAM from Crucial for $50.19, shipped. I paid $170 for 128MB of Infineon-chipped PC133 from Mushkin last November. Urk.

"RAM is so cheap right now that an old stick failing is almost a blessing. I just bought a new 256MB stick of CL2 PC133 SDRAM from Crucial for $50.19, shipped."

Hehe, it's not cheap enough to make me want to buy it monthly! I got these CL3 sticks in June.
But Super is right, it's a hell of a great time to upgrade or replace your RAM.

Anyway, I really don't think this exception is a RAM issue. I spend easily 20 hours a week gaming (it's work) and LoD is the only problem for me.

-Andrew

Yeah, doesn't sound like a RAM issue to me, either, for what it's worth. I've seen lots of RAM problems -- this one doesn't sound like one.

Andrew, have you tried updating your drivers? I would right now if I could figure out how in less than two hours.

I have a Radeon, and I'm using the latest beta drivers.

Counter: Rob, have you tried playing it on software mode?

It stinks to have to do that, but that's how I played Diablo 2 with a GeForce. Anyway, I plan on trying a few things this weekend, I'll be sure to report back.

-Andrew

Try 7075 Radeon drivers, not the latest but they are the most stable.

Can you be more specific about the crashes your having?

Ive used both a TNT and a Radeon on Diablo 2 with absolutely no problems.

It seems the best answer would be to go to battle.net's self-help tech section and look to see if there are any similar problems.

Uninstall D2, reinstall, install expansion, d/l expansion patch manually. IMO

I have a TNT 2. I've scoured the battle.net help forum, and found others with my problem, but no real solutions. Also, I've had tech support send me 3 or 4 emails, but the new hotmail has eaten those (fricken fracken thing). There wasn't anything really useful, other than upgrade drivers.

Are you sure its not your Cdrom? Your installation problems remind me of my Kenwood 52x, the fastest, but least stable, drive on the planet. It simply would not digest the copy protection scheme, and oftentimes if it did, would crash back to desktop after a period of time.

I dont' have the expansion, though, so im just throwing darts in the dark. Cdrom incompatability with the safedisk stuff is the best i can think of.

Bub, I've tried some new things. I updated my drivers, no luck. I read on the Battle.net tech forums that some people changed/rearranged their ram and fixed it. I rearranged and added new ram, but it had no effect. I'm giving up. This is something that Blizzard has to fix as far as I can tell. Just for the record: this sucks.

Oy, Kenwood CD-ROMs... I loved my 42X when I bought it - it was really fast and surprisingly quiet, but every 3rd game I tried would crap out because of copy protection. The irony of having to find cracks for legitamtely purchased games was just a little too cute for me, so I returned it. This was quite a while ago too. I'm really surprised they haven't taken care of this issue yet.

-Matthew

Have you tried the no-cd patch from gamecopyworld? Just remember to save your original exe to put back in place for when you run updates (which seems to be a problem anyway).

-- Xaroc

The Kenwood drives feature Zen Technology multi-beam tech. EG, instead of a single laser, they have 7, so they can provide higher throughput without requiring loud 7,000+RPM rotational speeds. An amazing technical coup and a sound approach, but it didn't seem to work out. I had one of the first few 40x drives and they were very fast and quiet.. and also so problematic (see above, plus I had two of them fail on me) that I swore off the brand forever.

I'd advise everyone else to do the same.

http://www.zenresearch.com/zen_technology.html

But don't blame Kenwood. It's the Zen multi-beam tech that causes the problems.