STALKER unplayable
 

Hi there

I have the retail 'Radiation Edition' of STALKER.

The game freezes almost as soon as the intro sequence ends. I've managed to get outside once in the last ten tries. It seems to lock my computer up completely and I have to hard reset it. No error messages, it just freezes the screen and 'hides' the mouse pointer. Even moving the mouse to the other monitor does nothing. Ctrl-Alt-Del does nothing either.

I've tried putting all the effects down to their lowest settings even though i shouldn't have to. It still hangs.

Any help gratefully received please as I am desperate to play this game! :)

Comp spec
X6700 quad core - not overclocked
8800GTX Superclocked (hardwired overclocking. card actually runs at 'stock speeds' x2 in Sli mode
2gig Dominator RAM
Fatal1ty soundcard
Raid 5

Re: STALKER unplayable
 

Stalker doesn't play nice with 8800's yet. You'll have to wait for the patch.

Re: STALKER unplayable
 

The game has no problems with the 8800, what it does have a problem with is Vista, are you running Vista?

And KILLER comp btw!

Re: STALKER unplayable
 

maybe you have a bad install.
uninstall... delete all old files and folders.
run a Scan Disk and Defrag...
try reinstalling then.
also turn settings down low and see if that helps.
if it does bring them back up slowly and see how your sys handles it

Re: STALKER unplayable
 

god, there's someone rich......... why am i so poor :(

try put a task manager on the other screen, and if in XP, put it under Processes. now try to play the game, if you can't play, look at the task manager for "XR_3DA.exe" is that using a lot of CPU? it should, if not, then you may having the same problem as me.

also, go to shared folder --> STALKER-SHOC\logs and post the ending of your log file

hope that helps

Re: STALKER unplayable
 

Your problem seems to be pretty common now.
I think one of my brothers co-workers has the same problem with STALKER.
I saw a few other threads here made about it too.

I hope GSC comes up with a patch for it.

Re: STALKER unplayable
 

I'm running XP Pro x64 at the moment. Knew I forgot to mention something in the post.

I just got a pay rise at work so I thought I would spend it on something I would use a lot. ;)

tried settings lower. The game took longer before freezing. It still froze though

Re: STALKER unplayable
 

It might be because you are running the 64bit version of XP.

Re: STALKER unplayable
 

In a word - bugger. I've got Vista Ultimate sitting in a box next to me. Worth upgrading to that do you think? I'm loathe to until all the kinks are worked out though.

Re: STALKER unplayable
 

The game also is having compatibility problems with Vista and getting alot of bugs and errors with it, though THQ is working on a patch that should be out pretty soon.

Re: STALKER unplayable
 

ARGH! Frickin patches!! I'm running Vista 64 bit and when I first loaded it up, it worked fine, I played for about 3 hours on wednesday. Then thursday gets here and of course I wanna play! So I launch the game and I got the black screen.....with audio.....so all I hear are the logos doin their thing and then the menu music. And thats all. *sigh* I wanna patch!! lol

SteVen, any chance you could pm me a link to where it talks about not playing with Vista nicely?? Thanks!

Re: STALKER unplayable
 

There is an article on Gamespy were they talk about the Vista Problems.

If you have a free partition, or second hard drive and a copy of XP you could always install it there

Re: STALKER unplayable
 

I have space on a different partition but I don't have another copy of XP.

I have to admit I don't really fancy shelling out for a 32bit version just to play the game either. :(:bawl:

Re: STALKER unplayable
 

Then just wait for the patch to fix the vista problems

Re: STALKER unplayable
 

Its right here

Re: STALKER unplayable
 

I have two log files in that folder, both of which are completely empty unfortunately.

Interestingly, I put up Task Manager as you suggested and loaded the game.

Whilst sitting on the main options screen, I noticed that XR_3DA.exe's memory usage was steadily climbing, even though I was not actually playing the game. When it got to around 80,000 I tried to exit the game and got a BSOD NV4_disp.dll error. Is this the infinite loop error I have been hearing so much about, I wonder?

Re: STALKER unplayable
 

That is a display driver for a nvidia card, try reinstalling your drivers

Re: STALKER unplayable
 

yep, tried that earlier. Tried the latest 97.92 and I have even completely deleted them and re-installed previous iterations too. Same problem.

Never mind