troop

That is normal behaviour of ArmA(settings change>crash>settings lost). Once you change some gfx settings, its best practice to just exit ArmA, because it only save your changes, when its shutdown correctly. (You can also make manual changes to the config files outside ArmA) You should run the install with Administrator rights and also later run ArmA with said permissions. Once installed(run it once to ensure proper install), you should check your..\ArmA\addons\ folder, if the file is there before patching to 1.08. If it is not, you can try to copy it over from the DVD. Then, make an copy of the complete ArmA folder in case something goes wrong while patching to 1.08. If errors, you can easily delete the botched install and copy back this folder. No need to delete your ArmA profile which is stored separately. Since you got some incomplete install, I think its normal to crash from this reason alone. Texture problems and crashing can be mostly remedied by 'good' drivers, lowered settings and startup parameters for ArmA like maxmem=512 for example. Remember, ArmA is not officially supported with Vista at this point.

By now, you may have experienced several occurances of the AI become stuck behind gates, inside barns/buildings ect. Tip: For now (I really hope, this can be fixed somehow) try to move away ~100m from the AI soldier in his misery and save your game. Exit to mainmenue and resume the mission. (If first try does not work, change your position;..maybe save at the opposite spot of where you saved first) Chances are, upon load he will be reset a little, thus beeing freed again. This has helped in an mission, where the requirement of objective complete was 'all remaining soldiers must be' in THAT (sigh) Striker for the mission to progress. In another situation, several Soldiers became stuck in an large area surrounded by wooden fences with only two (rather large) entry/exits. They simply were unable to leave that area for whatever reason. (but had no problems to follow into the area) After I moved away said ~100m, saved and reloaded the game, the soldiers suddenly were >outside< the fenced area and now able to return to formation. Btw;..the grass is killing me. Literally. The AI soldiers of either side have NO problems whatsoever to aim and hit their targets (including me of course), while I cant see sh*T. -- Now, I dont know about you, but the grass is seriously spoiling my fun. Its unfair for me as player. In OFP, I had no problems to get killed by enemy AI, because I could at least fight back (prone, ya) In ARMA, I have problems, because I really become angry about that 'You cant see me, but I shoot you nevertheless'. - Dont get me wrong;..if *everyones* (including AI) sight would be blocked by the grass, I had no issues whatsoever..chances to hit/get shot equal because anyone would have to change stance to aim for target..but as is now.. Poll? Grass remove? Opinions?

For less to no crashing, try: visibility = 3000 terrain = low objects = normal texture = normal shading = very high [high]

Vilas, now that I've seen your setup... (picture) I fully understand, you want silent, smooth operation;..but also could be likely the victim of overheating components. The big fan in front of your PC will do nothing, but generate noise. To really *exclude* overheat as an reason for your GFX failures, you would need to remove your case from his 'prison' then open up the side panel and have that fan blow directly onto your mainboard. In a max of 30 minutes (including play test session) you know for sure. I cannot answer your question about why 1.00-1.02 did not behave strange for you and 1.08 does. MadDogXs suggestion of downclocking your GFX for an test would surely help if your PC case inside 'airflow' would be sufficient. I think, its not. imho.

Vilas, do I understand correctly, that you have 'only' 2 fans in total inside your case, which are the one inside the PSU and one onto your CPU? No additional PC case fans whatsoever? (Do you also have an pic of the case you use? ) - If this is correct, you really should add some 'blow' to your components. And yes, just for ArmA... At the very least, do as some mates already told you;..open the side of your case..and if this is not enough for prolonged play sessions, place some fan close to your GFX card. If your artifacts are then gone, you know exactly, what caused the corruption of images while playing. afaik, ArmA is pushing more, than any other game I know.

I was using O&O Clevercache Pro and O&O Defrag for a long time. - The combination of Systembooster and Ultimatedefrag *clearly* beats the above wrt to performance gains. (ArmA streaming) I did position my ArmA folder to the outer rims and it shows. Here, this was the original thread about it: http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....edefrag

Yes and especially in summertime and if your PC case has either bad airflow (creating 'heatspots' at critical components) or only one fan (PSU) you are in serious trouble. Just think about it;..if you would use watercooling (only as an example) to have cool *main* components (such as CPU, GPU, Northbridge, ect.) software monitoring will *only* show you those components temperatures...but not the temperatures of other critical parts, such as Video RAM. To get an idea, how those temperature hotspots can make your system fail, despite your *monitoring* tools report everything 'in the green', please check out these links. http://www.bigbruin.com/reviews05/nf4thermals/index.php?file=1 - http://www.flirthermography.com/media....ing.asp http://www.2cpu.com/story.php?id=4078 http://www.custompc.co.uk/thermal http://www.pcpro.co.uk/advertorial/aopen/pop1.html

I can post my 'AhA' experience in one (own test) mission, like there have been posted several similar situations already. 1. I had set up several OPFOR squads with AI skill 1.0 (= best) within/close around Paraiso, with my own squad to the north outside LOS to enemy. (Road towards 'Bonanza' ) 2. Ordered my squad to move to Bonanza and made my way alone to an building complex right above Paraiso; west side.. good overlooks for sniping. 3. I made sure to be *behind* an walls corner and only lean and fire *one* shot ~400m out and immediately unlean back to cover. Ai was set to be 'Aware' and I hit one regular Squad member. 4. 1 minute later, I leaned and fired second shot (AI had hit the dirt) which connected as well.. > unlean. 5. ~10 secs later, I heard: 'Engage that man' from my 12 'o clock, and immediately (wondering...) retreated around an second corner, switching to tactical view to discover, who the hell got my position! 3 OPFOR specops were coming for me;.. and now guess what: They pointed their weapons right at the position (and heres the quirk...even *through* the wall! ) I was just seconds before! 6. One of them did then come around the corner to gain LOS of my *former* position;.. then tracing around the *second* corner, where I had taken cover behind. I shot him..and immediately retreated once more. (The area is ideal for testing this! ) 7. Needless to say, the remaining 2 Specops immediately homed in on my *third* position. (ok, one shot fired; 25m distance to those guys) 8. What else? There were stairs on that particular building, so I retreated all around it and laid low on the roof. And here, they lost me. I heard 'Negative' after approx. 5 Minutes and they returned downhill towards their former 'Guard' position. 9. When I shot one of them in the back from the roof (and hit the dirt after the shot;..they could *not* have seen me! ) they immediately turned around and *sure enough* the last remaining Specop came right for me onto the roof via the stairs! 10. 'You are dead, Mr. perfect eartrack AI'

+1 BIS, please take note and somewhat tone down the AIs capability to 'eartrack' player 99% exact. 70% (?) should be ok for an *much* better and way less (sometimes) frustrating experience.

Edit: Scratch this idea;..see Maruks post below! Official hotfix on the way! Wild ride... The 'exchange ArmA.exe' (changing to 1.05 after patch to 1.08) part got my attention here;..something to check up for you guys. We need to check and compare the sizes of the different versions of ArmA 1.08 (505 and Atari) and *if* they are different, just try to exchange with someone else Arma.exe (working or not;..please include this info) 2-3 guys of either version should list, what they have got here: Only DVD versions! ArmA [505/1.08] exact size = ArmA [Atari/1.08] exact size = What gives? I will list later, since I'm @work.

Mr Guarnere, I got the reason, why the way you got it to work to patch up to 1.05 (good solution, btw! ) does *not* work the same way with 1.08. - I want to add, that under 'normal' circumstances, you do *not* need to carry out step 1 and 2 of your solution, thus only losing all of your custom keysettings and everything in your players profile. Thats a real pain in the A... -- Please read about it below and then retry. At least, you should get a little further in the process;..if not get it done finally. --- However;..you should thoroughly checkup your machine, why it is corrupting files in the first place, while patching. imo. If you need to repeat the copy/patching process *that* many times, something is clearly fishy... (use MemTest, Prime95, Orthos to checkup RAM/sharp settings/ overheating and Winsfv for transfer/CRC errors check) http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....;st=405 This solution will work *only*, if you patch up to 1.05, but will not work if you are patching from 1.05 > 1.08. Reason beeing, 1.08 is dependant on *already* patched to 1.05 .pbo files (see readme of 1.08) and if you just copy back 1.00 ~ 1.04 files, you will see .pbo errors as well. (assumed content[1.05] does not match; you will see the same error codes as if the files were corrupt) So, the best way would be to patch up to 1.05 (Euro only) and once this project finishes *errorfree* > do an complete backup of ArmA folder 1.05. From *this* folder, copy back any already patched 1.05 .pbo files, if something goes wrong with 1.08 patching. --- Edit: I just remembered, there are 'bi.bisign' (?) files for each .pbo files (i.e.: ui.pbo.bi.bisign) I am not sure, if those are patched as well [i assume] so it is best to always copy *both* files back; i.e. ui.pbo and ui.pbo.bi.bisign --- Apart from that, test your system, if it can operate 'bytecorrect' at all;...just create some really large archive files (Winrar, ect. 200-300MB each) and then *Winsfv* those archives;.. copy over to other drive/folder and again, check via Winsfv, if copied files are still valid. Of course, there are some other ways to make sure of valid, non-corruptive operation of your PC. ArmAs patching process just points out underlying weaknesses, thats all.

^ No problems with 1.2 (voiceovers) and 1.08 (here) Much better! bardosy;..I *really* love your campaign. In every mission, just everything falls into place. Very(! ) well done and quite enjoyable. Now, *we* are longing for more. Thank you!

^ *Very* good suggestions in there, PicVert! WinXP is way less restrictive wrt hardware/driver calls of (especially)ArmA(and other games), than Vista is. The 'newer' Vista security system prevents a lot of 'normal' operability, you had (and take for given with Vista as well) with WinXP/games/software/hardware/driver calls.

ArmA working perfect from 1.06[Atari] patching throughout 1.08, with latest patch working best (most performant/errorfree) so far. See specs. (Main PC, LG DVD-RAM GSA-4165B drive on EIDE, Raptors on SATA) Microsoft driver 5.1.2535.0 for DVD --- Second PC working perfect from 1.04[505] patching throughout 1.08, with latest patch working best (most performant/errorfree) so far. Opt170 [2.60GHz] [WinXP SP2] MSI K8N Neo 2 Platinium /S939/NForce3/AGP (8.22 V5 Unified Remix) 2GB Corsair XMS Kit CL2 TWINX2048-3200C2PRO NVidia Geforce 7800GS+ 512MB AGP (160.03) Samsung 1634N (160GB/16MB cache) Audigy 1 Platinium Lite-On DVD-RW SOHW-812S drive on EIDE, Samsungs on EIDE Microsoft driver 5.1.2535.0 for DVD --- Third PC working perfect from 1.00[Morphicon] patching throughout 1.08, with latest patch working best (most performant/errorfree) so far. Third PC (brothers) very much similar to my second PC, but has for GFX card 6800GT (160.03) Lite-On DVD-RW SOHW-812S drive on EIDE, Samsungs on EIDE Microsoft driver 5.1.2535.0 for DVD (Reasonably perfect too; lower settings, of course)

This solution will work *only*, if you patch up to 1.05, but will not work if you are patching from 1.05 > 1.08. Reason beeing, 1.08 is dependant on *already* patched to 1.05 .pbo files (see readme of 1.08) and if you just copy back 1.00 ~ 1.04 files, you will see .pbo errors as well. (assumed content[1.05] does not match; you will see the same error codes as if the files were corrupt) So, the best way would be to patch up to 1.05 (Euro only) and once this project finishes *errorfree* > do an complete backup of ArmA folder 1.05. From *this* folder, copy back any already patched 1.05 .pbo files, if something goes wrong with 1.08 patching. --- Edit: I just remembered, there are 'bi.bisign' (?) files for each .pbo files (i.e.: ui.pbo.bi.bisign) I am not sure, if those are patched as well [i assume] so it is best to always copy *both* files back; i.e. ui.pbo and ui.pbo.bi.bisign --- Apart from that, test your system, if it can operate 'bytecorrect' at all;...just create some really large archive files (Winrar, ect. 200-300MB each) and then *Winsfv* those archives;.. copy over to other drive/folder and again, check via Winsfv, if copied files are still valid. Of course, there are some other ways to make sure of valid, non-corruptive operation of your PC. ArmAs patching process just points out underlying weaknesses, thats all.

About 'Default' Texture setting... Ahh ok, thanks guys for pointing out. Got it wrong.

'My game works fine all the time' (1.08; 4+ hours flight test session) Edit: CodeSkyWolf, you really should update your chipset drivers; you are using the oldest avaiable. Nforce 3 250 5.11 Try those (if you want; full backup before) used them on MSI K8N Neo 2 Platinium without problems. Nvidia Unified (nforce 2/3/4) 8.22 (v5) http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1271

bardosy; when I first time fired up 1.08, I got the same result that you've shown in your vid and I did not change my gfx settings(from 1.05), which were at 1920x1440x32 (medium/high settings ingame) The blocky visuals did not recover(on their own), until after I reset gfx to low res (800x600x32) everything else ingame on low and then shutdown ArmA and restart. After this gfx were normal and I set them up to former values, that I had before. (But using the new 'Default' setting for textures, whereas before I had set 'Normal' ) Try this. With your gfx card, you will not get this 'Default' option though;..its implemented for cards with 512MB and above vidRAM. Dont worry. Also, with 1gig of RAM you're a little on the low side;..did you increase your virtual RAM settings? (2-4GB) Better yet is to add an additional gig of RAM.

I fully understand. I did notice the change in gfx quality from 1.00 to 1.05 and somewhere here expressed my 'concern' where this sacrifice would lead to. Now we know. There was an hefty price (gfx quality) to pay for the vast improved performance of 1.08. While this is hard to put up with, I think at an later date (~1 year) BIS could easily change it back as it was with 1.00 or at least give the customer the choice to use some 'Ultra' settings. Right now, as we can see in the troubleshooting section, too high settings cause all kind of errors, because even the most powerful PC is unable to run ArmA with max settings;.. errorfree. I'm fully confident, this will change over time (8800 being too new technology, 1st generation DX10 hardware) If rumors are correct, the 2nd generation (nvidia) DX10 hardware (9800) is 3 times as powerful as current 8800GTX;..but its just not here now and it will take at least 1 year, for derivates of this new powerhouses to spread. ArmA, just like OFP before it, is/was way ahead of its time thus bad performance had to be swallowed(1.00). imo. Come an extention(if any) it would be the right time to implement some 'Ultra' setting again.

insomnianshadow, did you experiment with the 'digital color vibrance' settings(driver), provided you got an Nvidia card? Also, did you experiment with different HDR values like '16' and '32' ? I am asking, because vanilla ArmA without changes does look somewhat bland, granted, but with 'digital color vibrance' set to 'medium/high' and in addition HDR to 16 or even 32 *vividly* enhances the ArmA looks. imo.

...vista 32... enough said.

Symbiot;..you should know better, dont you? If not (it was already explained in another thread) let me explain to you again, how this whole patching thing works. --- BIS (Developer) creates game (ArmA) BIS (Developer) looks for Publisher to distribute game. BIS (Developer) delivers game to publisher upon agreed contract *unprotected* and in return, will get royalties from Publisher for sold units. ---break--- Publisher (Atari, ect.) does everything else from packaging to *protecting* 'game' with copyprotection of their choice. They sell it to you. There are/can be bugs;..either in the 'game' directly or in the CP, the *publisher* decided to slap onto game. Publisher report *game* bugs to Developer;..Developer (idealy) fixes bugs and again, delivers an *unprotected* patch to the publisher. ---break--- Publisher now decides to either *keep* the original CP, or *update* it as well for *better* (cough) 'protection'. --- One patch install and works just fine (1.05) and the next one (1.08) does not anymore. Who is to blame then? BIS (Developer) delivered on their part (1.08) and pretty damn well so, if I might add... Kick some securom nuts;..not BIS. Btw;..I own 3 different versions of ArmA;..yours (505/UK 1.04) as well as (Atari/1.06) and (german/1.00) Installed on 3 totally different PC (2 mine; one brother) guess what? All three installed and played 1.08 well;.. *except* my main PC, which throw me an securom 7001 Did the fix provided by securom as indicated by Maruk and it works for me on this PC as well. Did you try it? Unfortunally, there are *also* reports, that this fix only works partially (read; once without reboot) or not at all. There is nothing, BIS can do about it at this point. Its an new version securom CP and either Securom or the Publisher needs to fix this (incompatibility) mess. And with an 320/584MB patch, they *better* come up with an hotfix soon;..not the complete package again.

Please dont exagerate, sickboy. There is only one working fix for securom 7001 that works right now. As for Symbiot, he was just a little lazy, no?

And in addition, with infantry shooting at you as well (as of 1.08, I feel like swiss cheese all too often; now that the vehicles open fire on you so fiercly) you could just scratch flying choppers in ArmA at all. (imo) Right now, we are forced to readapt to real standoff tactics with choppers, where pre-1.08, you could just happily zip over some crowded battlefield while dodging some occasional Shilka. Not anymore;..gets you killed in seconds. Move from hide to hide, bob-up, shoot, hide again. --- I really like it (now), much more challenging and rewarding;... but also, there is an sour negative. You can just forget about using AI teammates now. While formerly they were unable to dodge Shilka fire, its absolute certain death now. Not happy with that.

Know the friggin' feeling. Lets keep shooting... heliosjet, one more try, 1.08, no reinstall involved. - Set your DVD drive to PIO only mode. (Disable DMA transfer; Windows disable in devicemanager only should suffice) - Open Explorer and select your ArmA DVD. - Highlight one or more *big* files from the DVD and drag them to desktop... (do not use copy/paste;..really drag them over) - ... immediately after the copy process begins, doubleclick ArmA with '-nosplash' parameter. - You may need to repeat the last two steps 2-3 times. - Hardcore version: if ArmA still does not start up, repeat above copy operation with two small Explorer windows... to really saturate the copy process. --- And yes, this try is directly related to another securom specific error.