New Vista 64 PC almost ready to take this game back to store for a refund!

[raybee 10]

I have almost reached the end of my patience with this game since purchasing and installing it over the weekend.

I have a brand new PC with 64-bit Vista, 4GB RAM and a XFX GTX-295 graphics card so I know my system can handle it.

I was a die-hard fan of Operation Flashpoint and have been looking forward to Arma2 for a long time.

I shelled over my hard-earned cash in Australia for this game and since installing it have suffered crash after crash.

I have never experienced a game that has crashed as much as this one and have tried to google every answer known to man to solve it (am patched to 1.03 and have latest NVidia drivers).

I continually experience reeeeeeally bad lag, graphical bugs and regularly crash to the desktop for no apparent reason.

I so badly want to be a champion of this game but my patience for dealing with the continuous crashes is wearing really thin.

My game time is limited enough as it is without losing most of it to continuous game crashes to desktop, or at best "Arma 2 has stopped working"... (yeah no s__t...)

Is there some checklist I can run through to fix this game before I am forced to smash my desk and yell very loudly again as it crashes?

[Cann0n Fodder 10]

I can appreciate your frustration so I will try to add some feedback (I'm no expert).

Stable game play seems to be hit or miss on various systems. However if you had researched more thoroughly you probably wouldn't have purchased Vista and an Nvidia + SLI gfx card for this game. Consequently I assume you may have also missed some of the finer software tuning steps usually required for the game to run well out of campaign mode.

My constructive and also expensive suggestion to avoid crashes is to try the following.

Replace GTX295 with an Ati 4890 gfx card

Replace Vista with XP or Win 7

Add -xp command thingy to your startup icon (limits memory to software parameters)

Only select 'High' texture memory option (works best on 1GB gfx card)

Install Direct X version that ships with the 1.03 patch

Based on my own experience, friends experience + forum feedback, these changes usually always have a postive impact. Note all my friends with Nvidia Gfx cards experience the odd crash every week. Touch wood, I have not experienced one to date with the following system.

Win7 OS 64 bit

I7 CPU

Ati 4890 Gfx card (cat 9.7 driver)

Asus Deluxe v2 motherboard (latest bios)

Lastly if you have the patience to overcome the crashes and want to best ARMA2 experience money can buy at the moment. Buy an SSD and OC an I7 CPU to 3.8-4.0 ghz.

Good luck!

Edited August 17, 2009 by Cann0n Fodder

[ICE-Raver 10]

I know you just bought your PC but get rid of Vista 64 and your golden. Considering you just bought your PC you should be getting a free upgrade to Windows 7 unless that PC was built prior to july 1st.

In any case. Partition your drive if you can, and get Windows 7 RC which is free atm. Update your drivers and if you are running Hyper Threading, disable it. You failed to mention your CPU.

There are alot of tweaks for Windows 7 already posted in this forum so I won't relist them all, but most people have had much better luck with Windows 7 or XP for that matter over vista.

There is a thread here somewhere about people having issues with the 295's but I didn't pay much attention since I'm running dual 280's which have ran great for me. You may want to search the thread though.

I know I never got the game to run right on Vista. I put on Windows 7 and never looked back. Game runs great now.

Edited August 17, 2009 by ICE-Raver

[randir14 10]

Let me guess...you have view distance at 10,000.

[Radioactive 10]

I have almost reached the end of my patience with this game since purchasing and installing it over the weekend.

I have a brand new PC with 64-bit Vista, 4GB RAM and a XFX GTX-295 graphics card so I know my system can handle it.

I was a die-hard fan of Operation Flashpoint and have been looking forward to Arma2 for a long time.

I shelled over my hard-earned cash in Australia for this game and since installing it have suffered crash after crash.

I have never experienced a game that has crashed as much as this one and have tried to google every answer known to man to solve it (am patched to 1.03 and have latest NVidia drivers).

I continually experience reeeeeeally bad lag, graphical bugs and regularly crash to the desktop for no apparent reason.

I so badly want to be a champion of this game but my patience for dealing with the continuous crashes is wearing really thin.

My game time is limited enough as it is without losing most of it to continuous game crashes to desktop, or at best "Arma 2 has stopped working"... (yeah no s__t...)

Is there some checklist I can run through to fix this game before I am forced to smash my desk and yell very loudly again as it crashes?

Your problem

I found it

[purgi 10]

If you got an i7, disable HT. Yeah, bites but made a huge difference on my machine.

With regards to crashing - same problem here, appears to be an i7/200 series GTX issue. Hopefully they can resolve it. Rarely play singleplayer, mainly MP. Sometimes I've logged onto a server and before I can actually do anything, crash. Sometimes I can go for an hour or two. Frustrating and never occured during 1.2 to me, hopefully they can find and resolve the issue.

[raybee 10]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Yes it is an i7920 CPU and no I don't have view distnace at 10,000 - more like 5,000 since trying to drop down all of my graphical settings to avoid frequent crashing to destop (which still hasn't helped).

I have only been playing the single player campaign so far but will give MP a go to see if it runs any better. Fingers crossed...

I do intend to upgrade to Windows 7 sooner rather than later, but I really balk at the idea of having to upgrade my OS just to make a game run properly... even if it is a damn good game.

The reason I went with Vista 64-bit was to get access to the extra RAM that I assumed would help most games (and for database development which loves the RAM) but it sounds like perhaps I was misguided...

Anyway thanks again for the feedback.

Will soldier on for a bit longer with it before throwing in the towel completely.

[delevero 10]

There is a general bug with Core i7 and any nvidia card in the 200 series, it CTD very much since it run out of memory its a 100% arma bug.... and by the way patch 1.03 make the game more unstable for most players especially playing multiplayer.

By the way there is an arma bug that the game does not properbly recornise the ram in your machine or your video card they are working on it.

Just like arma 1 the new arma2 have a huge amount of bugs from day1 with arma 1 it took me 1½ year before i could play the game in fullscreen...

But yes your computer is good enough for playing the game perfect, i recommend changing to windows7 you will get more speed in almost all games that you own..

You just have to wait for a patch that fix the problem.

[Jonney Napalm 10]

Hi raybee, welcome to the forums, sorry it's not for a better reason.

I too am suffering from the same CTD's as you and have spent hours and hours, since release infact, trying to bottom out theses problems.

I have a very simular system to yours, apart from I have 6Gb of ram and I now run Windows 7.

TBH I had better framerate on Vista than 7, sorry all you Vista haters ;)

I seem to have got my game running stable'ish for the time being.

I can play a good session on multiplayer servers with a half decent framerate (30-40 ish) for most of the time.

I've not really gone back to 'campaign' mode as I re-installed and can't be bothered to lag my way back through it.

That's only an asumption as I haven't really tried it.

Anyway I'll post all my settings and you can see whether any of them help.

Firstly I'm running the 190.38 Nvidia driver and I'm patched to 1.03.

I have all the settings on the Nvidia control panel set at default and I have disabled Hyper Threading in the bios screen.

My .CFG file is as the game detected and looks like this:-

language="English";

adapter=-1;

3D_Performance=-4194304;

Resolution_Bpp=32;

Resolution_W=1920;

Resolution_H=1200;

refresh=60;

Render_W=1920;

Render_H=1200;

FSAA=2;

postFX=1;

HDRPrecision=8;

lastDeviceId="";

localVRAM=1948971008;

nonlocalVRAM=1948971008;

and my settings look like this:-

Visability - 1600

Quality Preference - High

Interface Resolution - 1920x1200x32

3D Resolution - 1920x1200 (32)

Texture Detail - Normal

Terrain Detail - Normal

Post Process effects - Low

Video Memory - Normal

Object Detail - Normal

Interface Size - Very Small

Anisotropic Filtering - Normal

Shodow Detail - High

Aspect Ratio - 16:10

Antialiasing - Normal

I may be able to up some of these, but to be honest, I'm like you and have almost given up on this game so I can't really be bothered to try anymore. This game has already deleted a large portion of my life tweaking it and not playing.

Not ideal, as I sure our set-ups can play this faster if it was optimized properly.

Anyways, back to waiting for another patch/and or new Nvidia drivers.

I wish you luck, and if you do make a break through, come back and let us know.

Jonney.

[interox 10]

Update your INF drivers, sound drivers and LAN drivers. I had a day of crashes to desktop [arma2.exe has stopped working, the only game I own that crashes regularly BTW ] so I sat down and double checked my driver updates. The giveaway was the slight sound distortion before the last crash and having found updated sound drivers on the gigabyte website [ UD5 MOBO ] I decided to do the other 2 aswell.

Not crashed in the last 6 hrs so its looking good. BTW I'm I7 920, VISTA64 and XFX 295 too.

Only one side effect is my TS is not working correctly since updating sound drivers but thats wandering off topic.

Since 1.03 my settings are all on highest possible except

pp disabled

af normal

aa high

view distance 10000

res 1900*1200 [both settings]

Goodluck.

Edited August 18, 2009 by interox

[TechnoTerrorist303 10]

Install windows 7. Any 64 bit operating system will give you access to your ram not just vista so it's all good. Also, you won't be installing win7 just to make this game run better, LOTS of things will run better as a result.

[CrazyAviator 10]

I disagree with Vista being the problem. I have run my Vista x64 with 4gigs and an nVidia 8800GT for over a year flawlessly and now my system is going to hell with CTD's and BSOD in ARMA2. Thats not the OS fault, its the games. ARMA2 actually runs pretty well when not crashing. I can turn my settings to High and some Very High but the system crashes more often with this set.

My next task is to reinstall the new video drivers in safe mode. If that doesnt work Im ditching the game due to unplayability.

BTW: I have a 6400+ (3.21GHz) AMD cpu

[Katrician 0]

As said Vista 64bit is not the problem, I run ARMAII with only 2 GO of ram and got some CTD on the last mission from the campaign with all towns liberated and many AIs everywhere on Chernaruss.

I have finished the campaign with patch v1.02.58134, without problems, also I didn't expect 60fps, but got an average 25/30fps sometimes going as low as 11fps in the most demanding missions.

To finish the campaign I used to save game frequently so a CTD could arrives it was not such a big deal, I restarted the game and loaded my last save and resumed the game.

I don't know if you build yourself your configuration; but I put Vista 64bit on its own partition 30Go, I suggest putting it to 40Go to be the best.And partitioned a 100Go partition (E:) where I put all applications, like ARMAII and it works like a charm.

I don't know about your video card, but be sure to be up to date with your motherboard bios version, check your bios to see if it is well tuned, update drivers for the rest of your hardware, search the web about your hardware to know if some parts are well know for problems or compatibility, try other games to see how they're work etc...

ARMAII can be very frustrating at times and the campaign is what it is, but you'll discover many jewels in it, since you came from OFP like me and didn't experience ARMA sequel.You could try a CRCTI mission that you can try without connecting to a multiplayer party, just use lan and play! you gonna enjoy seeing all the units (almost) and see how AI works, this is an eye opener after the campaign.Good game ;)

[ICE-Raver 10]

Well with Arma it seems everyone has a different story.

I can only speak from my own experience and that is vista/arma ran like crap. Switching to windows 7 worked miracles for me.

[the_snake 10]

I to am having major crashing issues. The game is CTD without any form of warning or reason, there also is no error message ever. I am also having bugs with the skin of objects not being displayed. And even more frustrating sometimes after the game CTD the I will lose some unknown number of saves so I will have to replay about ¼ of a mission only to have the game crash again. My system is brand new and the only program I have on it so far is winamp and AramA 2. This started in the 1.0 version so I updated to 1.2 ,the problems got even worse so I updated again to 1.3 and it got even worse. I have tried up dating the all the drivers and that has not seemed to help.

I also tried to figure out the “proper place†to file the compliant but was unable to do so.

I am sick of trying to figure this out I really wish the people at Bohemia Interactive would take the time to do a real comprehensive beta test to make sure the end product works so countless people have to put up with this crap.

Any help would be great

My system specs are:

Intel Core i7 920 @ 2.67GHz

ASUS CG5290

9gb of DDR3

GeForce GTX 260 with 896 gb of ram

running Vista 64 bit home Premium w/ SP1

further system details can be found at http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9366642&type=product&id=1218092150864

[Albert Schweitzer 10]

Running with Vista64 and works smooth here.