FritzDaKat

Well, here actually Whoops, just a readme, describing whats to come, but the release date is supposed to be this month sometime.

Well, if it's been happening all along, I think the first thing I'd suggest is to disable any resident scanners you may have running in the background (Anti-Virus / Spyware) probably good to run a check for spyware as well. I have a similar issue when running the game whle AV is checking every file that gets accessed for presence of malware,,, Anyway, in the event that doesn't help alot of people will suggest to just "run out and get the latest drivers, service packs, etc". I'd be tempted to do the same if it weren't for the fact that I've been dealing with the "Display driver has stopped responding but recovered" issue ever since I installed SP1. But in thinking of it, perhaps the studdering is simply a "lesser-case" of the display drivers not responding for a shorter period therefore not triggering the recover-mode and popping the error message up? If this is in fact the case, all we can do is wait till Microsoft, Nvidia, ATI or whoever the culprit may be come out with a hotfix or updated driver. (I've seen reports elswhere of ATI users having similar issues) On a brighter side however I will say that with SP1, the Direct X update and the beta 174.85 forceware drivers installed, the game is running as smooth as a baby's ar$e up till the eventual driver hanging or game crashing or any number of other strange video-related issues (which have appeared since SP1 in my case) So I guess, other than shutting down Antivirus/spyware apps while you play, the only worthwhile suggestion (least risky proposal) I've got for fellow Vista users is to be patient, wait for MS / Nvidia / Ati to get their act together and fix their buggy software I'm currently running thru the list of various whql & beta Nvidia drivers to see if any one of them will work properly, if I dont find one (3 to go  working from version 162.22 thru 174.85) I'll be uninstalling SP1, re-running the DX update and going thru the process again. Any positive or very negative reports on my progress will be posted in the Vista troubleshooting thread. last note In all cases, regardless of Card or OS installed, check to be sure that your installed vid card drivers are all current and of a relatively equal time in the "last modified" date (Within a week or so I'd say)

Well, the process I described was intended for Vista, however thats not to say that your Nvidia drivers are being correctly updated. If you come to a point where you decide to update your vid drivers again, after uninstalling them, check your system32 and drivers folder, perform a search for nv_* and see what might show up. I do seem to recall XP having a similarly "Evil" folder which hung on to old info like the "File Suppository " folder. At least worth checking into. However, even having the drivers updated properly (all showing nearly the same "last modified" date) has not solved my problem Thou I have at least been noticing a steady improvment in actual game performance (Crashing / errors aside) with the successive driver versions so theres a little light at the end of the tunnel. I'm starting to wonder if it's just a case of Nvidia hiring a fresh batch of coding-school dropouts ( ITT: Suma Cum Neva' to write their drivers in which case, we're all fubar, regardless of OS. Nvidia's been pissing alot of folks off for a while, I've even noticed a growing # of 3rd party modded vid. drivers getting released. (Google Nvidia drivers and check the first few pages, you'll see what I mean.) All I know is that right now, if someone told me that istalling the Sasser worm on my system would fix my frigging performance issues theres a good chance I'd try it as a last resort to the can of gas and book of matches I'm thinking more and more of these day's. New != Better

Sorry to hear it, thou for anyone to provide help there is some more info you should provide to assist in helping solve your issues. #1: basic system spec's. (Operating system, memory, video card, PC make / model if its off the shelf like a gateway, etc.) #2: Current version of ArmA you're running, (1.08 /1.12 etc. #3: If you have any addons running or if you're playing Vanilla

Just an update on my progress as I try to resolve this issue with old Nvidia drivers refusing to go the h%$# away. Good news, but it's a major pain in the arse to accomplish. Seems for starters, when installing new drivers, Vista has a way of parsing thru the updated .sys and .dll files, then picking and choosing which of these files it thinks best suits it's needs... meaning it will choose to keep an old .dll in place as opposed to using a new one if it feels justified. Â But it gets even more interesting when you delete the files manually out of the system32 and the (sub)drivers folder because they will seemingly reappear as if by some ancient and arcane form of Necromancy,,, Due to the fact that anytime Windows thinks it needs a driver, it parses thru #\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository and grabs whatever it thinks fits it's needs best. (Too bad it's like a fat girl at a spandex shop...) Unfortunatly for us, the naming conventions for the subfolders in the file repository are only a hair more logical than the clsid codes... (Thou all the Nvidia related entries have thus far begun with a nv_ but beyond that its semi-random-ish) Â So you think " Great, all I need to do is delete these folders and I'll be good to go right?",,, but remember, we're dealing with Microsoft here... Every one of these folders and each file within them are sole property of the SYSTEM Even having Administrative rights, you're stuck with them, untill you go thru the massive annoyance of first, going into the security tab under properties, clicking on the Advanced tab, followed by owner tab, then edit, then making yourself the owner of the folder (Theres also a checkbox below to do-same for all sub-contents but I doubt it would be a good idea to simply do the owner-fix for the fileRepository folder itself) After which, you need to close all the properties windows, then re-open them, again go to the security tab, add yourself (Administrator logon name) to the list of group or user names and modify the permissions, giving yourself "full control" of the folder. Only then will it let you delete them, and to make it worse, there were like 20 of these %#$%$ folders in my file repository (Down to 13 now) but untill you go thru all this garbage then chances are likely you'll keep ending up with old .sys files in-play. Â I suppose you could dig thru each of these folders and follow the "ownership / user rights" process on only the files that keep reappearing, but I'm just dumping any & all "nv_" folders to be sure. No wonder one of my favorite sites is called "annoyances.org" I'll update when I'm all done on how it's going ( 2-3 hours?) Please note, this is in Vista Home Basic (32bit), for Vista 64bit, there is another folder as well. I'll try to find the path for ya' all later. Â Update Well, cleaning out those nv_ file depository folders sure stopped the dreaded "Driver component that would not die" Monster in it's tracks, however it hasn't put an end to the nvlddmkm error... However, I did come across a much simpler method of "taking ownership" of a folder and it's subdirectories, in this forum topic here At this stage, I've tried a number of different Nvidia drivers to no avail, nvlddmkm keeps acting up within 5 to 30 minutes. SO I'm now in the process of downloading some "Unofficial / modified" drivers from a few sources in hopes mabey some Tech-head has found a solution. Again, I'll report any important points or positive resaults later (tomorrow-ish)

Simple question really, is there an entry for the target path to enable some form of built-in fps display as opposed to say,, running Fraps?

I was thinking something similar on the music line, basicly looping thru an assortment of tracks in-game but switching over to something more foreboding when the Yomies spawn. But unless you're Musicly inclined I think adding anything commercial to the DL would be considered copyright infringment. Mabey just add as an option for the player the ability to place a # of .ogg tracks in a "Music Box" folder of sorts with 2 sub folders for general play and Yomie-spawning, have it run like a seperate addon perhaps with a link to dl some .ogg converter and instructions on how to convert, properly name (The config.cpp can be pre-written to simplify the process, just have the player rename the track to match whatever sequence is chosen) and place the file, and of course how to pbo it. It would at least allow the player to choose theme music for themselves Just a thought. But f.y.i. the Quarantine-related addons when mixed with the extended event handler and the Hulk_OGG player take a fair toll on performance. (Thou this was pre-Vista-SP1 for me) --->Like this one I use<--- And RE: The radioactive zones. Another method used to detect radiation aside from geiger counters is a Radiation Dosimeter, a small badge pinned to ones shirt more info here. The Dosimeter might be more practical /feasible to get into the game, added like the watch or compass, etc.. The color of the badge would indicate to the player "how hot" the area they're in is and give some indication of an acceptable exposure time. I'm thinking this would make for some intense MP moments in the "Secure Area" campaigns, having all the players converge and run thru it like a relay race to keep the zone active, or have everyone rush it and try to beat the clock? (From all I've read over the years, it's my understanding that unless you're within x miles of ground zero you can withstand fallout areas and such for short periods of time with a "relative degree of saftey")

IIr, another less refined method of defragging the page file was to simply disable, delete the old and then restore the new, fixed size pagefile (also requires disabling everything possible in MS config to minimize need for pagefile usage & reboots between the steps.) At least I remember doing this back in the days of Ghost Recon, early OFP. But, I'd look around for additional verification as my recollection can be fuzzy at times.

B.T.W. if ya' do update your DX instalation (refuse to call it 9 or 10 anymore for fear of confusing ppl. lol ) be sure to either reinstall or update your video and sound card drivers as during their initial install they "set certain parameters" relative to DX at time of their install. It'll just help to be sure they all work together as intended. I've also had a similar issue where one of the driver components (nvlddmkm.sys iir) suddenly stops responding and black screens me since installing SP1 (Vista 32) yesterday but luckily so far It's been recovering. Also had my Gamma / brightness go nuts for a while, like the sun suddenly moved 500m from earth. GPU Temp's have been in low to mid 50's C. range may have hit 60? (Hoping it's not my Vid Card giving me hints / 7600 GT-256Mb) ***EDIT*** So after a few hours of digging thru a whole load of forums / websites dealing with this Nvidia v.s. Vista issue I think I've stumbled across a possible fix. Seems many ppl with all sorts of Nvidia cards and chipsets have been having all sorts of trouble with Vista (Why mine didnt surface till after SP1 I dunno,,,) NE way, in my particular case it seem the nvlddmkm.sys file (windows\system32\drivers) was not being updated properly when I installed different drivers. I ran across a particular thread (forgot the exact site) which stated as follows, So I looked and sure enough, my working copy of the nvlddmkm.sys file was older than the nvlddmkm.sy_ file in the update packages I had downloaded. Unfortunatly the Admin-command prompt- expand.exe thing didnt work for me, so I got brave and used a tool called move on boot to just delete the old file outright when I restarted next. (Made a backup of the old nvlddmkm.sys first just to be safe and had recently made a restore point ne way) ( Move on Boot is under the file utilities section here ) So, with the file deleted, when I first booted I got an error with nvapi.(sys/dll?) not responding, but it wasnt a bsod, just reduced resolution which allowed me to continue and reinstall the new beta drivers, which I'm glad to say finally updated the nvlddmkm.sys file  So I guess what I'm suggesting is that you check the details tab of the properties window for whatever Nvidia file you're having issue with and compare it to the details tab on the "same" *.sy_ file you will find in the driver update package you last installed.  Now I'm gonna go see if this actually fixed my problem (hasn't happened in 20 minutes so far, was happening with increasing frequency previously - 5-10 minutes) :crosses fingers :  UPDATE Didn't fix the display driver hanging up for me, BUT it was very much worth the trouble, game runs alot smoother.

Sir, you have answered your own question. (Couldnt help it.) And tyvm ofpdeadeye for the AA.info link

Hmmm, I'll give a shot at packing them together and setting time / weather variables in the init & get back to ya in the next few days. (Vaguely recall how the campaign structure works from playing with "The Partisan" in OFP, guessing ArmA isn't too terribly different in that respect.) Downloading them tonight when I'm not needing to surf...

Ack, FileFront doesnt support resuming of DL's Armaholic does thou, Times like this I almost miss living in Chicago area (Cable v.s. dial-up) My connection has a funny way of loosing server connection on a rather frequent basis so I'm forced to use a download manager. FileFront says,,, " " well, denied actualy, but about the same.

All sounds very cool, any possibility of it coming to SP as a randomized campaign? (Dial-up makes coop / online painful )

Nah, I've gotten this error in multiple spawn areas, Corazol, near Outpost, Gas station en-route to airport etc. edit: On foot as well as in vehicle The more I think about it, IIR part of the Init spawn triggers sqf So I had driven thru this section previously on the way to the secure area mission, this occoured on the way back meaning yomies had already spawned and cleared there once,,, Â I'd have to guess that whatever is supposed to recreate the marker later didn't finish what it was doing? But again, it caused no actual problem, Yomies still spawned, no deal breaker this.

Specs Mainboard : ELITEGROUP COMPUTER SYSTEM CO.,LTD. 945G-M3 Chipset : Intel i945G/GZ Processor : Intel Pentium D @ 3333 MHz Physical Memory : 2048 MB (2 x 1024 DDR2-SDRAM ) Video Card : Nvidia Corp GeForce 7600 GT Hard Disk : Hitachi (320 GB) Hard Disk : ST3120022A (120 GB) Hard Disk : WDC (74 GB) Hard Disk : Maxtor (204 GB) Operating System : Windows Vista ™ Home Basic Home Edition 6.00.6001 Service Pack 1 DirectX : Version 10.00 So, previous update to SP1 with 169.25 forceware drivers gave much improvment to overall performance, but I began noticing some oddities afterward. Namely, I started getting alot of "Particle static", extra leaves on trees flashing in & out of being, specks of "stuff" flashing across the grass, in the Map, certain items would also exibit this trait of being "speckled" as well as weapons images in the breifing. But still, flashing specs aside, this is beter than pre-sp1. There were also some occasions (Usualy after 20 minutes or more of play) where my "display adapter stopped responding but has recovered"  Then hoping to get rid of them I went ahead and updated DX (The update is generic, not DX9 or DX10 just DX components of both are upgraded as needed in the update. - DxDiag shows you as having DX10 because your "DX" has been updated to that point, DX9 is still there, the addition of DX10 just enhances the functionality of your DX instalation.) While I was at it, I went ahead and updated my onboard Realtek HD audio drivers (1.90 release 3/18/08 - Never appeared on Windows update b.t.w.) as well as my Gfx drivers to the beta 174.85 from guru3d. The Spec's never went away (Thinking it could be my card acting up as the Vantec Iceberq cooler had been badly molested by an army of dust bunnies   ) Overall, it seems to be chugging along much better than before on the whole, and the display adapter not responding has seemingly cleared up. Thou, in many instances I see that according to Fraps, my framerates are equal or less than before (Upper teens-lower 20's with Video Options set to default "Very High" values  )  yet for some reason, even with the lower rates, the game seems to run more fluidly / framerates appear better than before regardless of the Fraps report. I'm guessing video is just buffering better w. SP1 And for those who dont know, it's really a good idea to at least reinstall your audio and Gfx drivers after updating / upgrading your DX instalation. IIR it (DX update) affects certain subsystem processes related to Gfx and audio, therefore reinstalling / updating those drivers help ensure proper handling of the aformentioned subsystem processes by DX9,10,36,42 etc... IIR* EDIT RE: particle specs  the updates didn't fix them...BUT they did improve overall & game perfomance. LINKS DirectX update - Microsoft link 174.85 forceware Beta from www.guru3d.com Realtek HD audio driver ver 1.90 ***EDIT #2*** : Just now had display driver stop responding once again simply while surfing the forum,,,, later that day,,, So I started hunting google on the issue of nvlddmkm.sys not responding, then recovering. Found it's a pretty common Vista / Nvidia issue where it seems certain driver components arent getting updated properly (Vista hanging on to outdated file after update is run) And althou manually forcing the new version of the nvlddmkm.sys into my system32\drivers folder has not completely solved my problems, I cant begin to explain what a drastic improvment I've seen in ArmA's performance. The Particles are still there but to a much lesser extent, frames are flowing much more smoothly, hang's are much more infrequent. Definatly worth looking into if you have a Nividia card and experience studdering. Just look in your system32\drivers folder for whatever .dll or .sys file is hanging for you, then find the "same file" from your current driver install package, check properties\details and compare dates. I'll bet more than 50% of you Vista \ Nividia users find an older file being used in place of the updated version. The main problem is that these files arent getting removed by uninstalling the driver directly. You could try driver cleaner or something, but I used MoveOnBoot which deletes the file when rebooting before windows has a chance to call it into use. Link: Move on Boot  is in the file or folder tools section. So once you get the offending file dumped then uninstall / reinstall the driver thou all may or may not be well, you should see a notable improvment in performance.  [soapbox] Methinks vocational schools should start focusing more on teaching and less on their profit margin per student....[/soapbox] ***Update*** Well, after updating to Sp1, the Latest DirectX patch, updating the Chipset drivers for my motherboard (inf files) and testing every version of driver released for a 7600gt since the 162.22 drivers, I'm still having problems Thou I will say that thruout the updates, it does seem as if progress is being made, the game runs much cleaner till the eventual driver hang or appcrash. So hopefully Microsoft will come up with a hotfix or Nvidia will release a driver that learns to play well with Vista soon. I've decided not to roll back to pre-sp1 simply for the sake of my p.o.s. dial up line and the thought of it taking another day to download the update again.

Well finally got the spawn related error to reproduce. Happened after leaving a Secure area mission on the furthermost SW town, headed north toward the Base to drop the truck off. Error as follows: '...; _spawn = (Spawns select _spawnIndex) |#|select 0; _spawnMode = call compile form...' Error select: Type Object, expected Array, Config entry Looking at it now, might be more related to a spawn area initializing as I sped into it? Dunno, but it looks like it didnt find something it was looking for. Nothing "Broke" so to speak, just an erronious msg in the top-left of the screen. Another oddity was when I dropped off the truck. The MG gunner replacement for the East side, south position never quite took his post, just stood there as Yomie-bait. Thou I think he spawned as the roaming base patrol passed by, mabey they blocked his path and he forgot what he was doing? Only time I've seen that happen thou. I've got screenshots, just a p.i.t.a. to upload them anywhere for me. of course this was seen right after I finished updating DX9/10, Vid and sound drivers so Lord only knows.

Errrrm, I was more thinking of converting tunes on my HD to .ogg but hey, knock your socks off. My tastes go far & wide beyond Slayer thou. Might play with Slayer one day and Joy Division the next (Yes, they actualy did have a few adrenalyn-pumping tracks) I also play Quarantine in SP alot so I was thinking of extracting theme music from a few Zombie movies as well

No doubt, 2 shining examples of how to really encourage people to pour alot of hard work into making additional content for the game in a row... @ Mark: I havent been able to dl it yet, but thank you in advance, if anything for the effort of putting it all together as you have so that when I get done with te long que of dl's I have running I'll be able to dl it too.

It's not too tricky for changing basic paramaters, just make a backup of the original somwhere and,,, Ack, no wonder so many ppl complain of MP cheaters (Now that I think of it. lol) FINALLY a bright side to having a 2.6 kbps dialup line, I sure dont worry bout' cheaters in online servers ,,, ,,,

It's not the broadcast so much as the error message I've seen in 3 out of 5 friendly fire incidents since 2.3 in which it seems like the penalty script tried to run for one of the AI. Â I'll try to get the full error copied for ya' next time I see it. The other error seems to kick when moving from spawn zone, spawn clearing "outer-zone" and beyond, then back in to spawn zone "too quickly" (Less than 20-30 seconds). I'll throw down some road cones and double check what lines need to be crossed for the error to pop up once I get DX9 updated. Â (4-5 hours) ***Edit*** MEH! Now I cant get it to reproduce either. I'm sure it will sooner or later thou, Ready on the fraps key

Cant wait to see a finished example of this, So sick of the cheesy pop-metal stuff, need me some Slayer in my Game. The Hulk Ogg player helps, but has no repeat or shuffle yet Â

That really sucked .. who reads that crap? Germans Silly! So, how is the performance hit if any with this addon? (Crap-tastic dial up line here, so I hafta be picky. )

Well, unlikely, but mabey a bad bit or byte in the download? Try downloading again. Vehicle store, North of where you spawn by the Hangar building, Flag has some oil drums next to it. Weapons are in the shop at the Harbor on the South side of Corazol, again, Oil drums and a sandbag fortification next to the correct flagpole. Try walking "into" the flagpole, then while keeping the crosshairs right on it, hit enter (Or scroll mouse wheel) to bring up the action menu, you should see browse shop there.

No need for a screenshot. The "spawn error" is nothing to be concerned over really. There are sort of 2 sections to the spawn area. #1 where the Yomies spawn #2 Another area, about 20m greater in diameter than the spawn area (overlaid) When you enter area 1, the yomies spawn, when you exit area #2 it kills off the yomies / makes them dissapear. I'm guessing the error (I get it too) is due to having left area 2 but heading back into it too soon, i.e. the Yomies in the area havent all been deleted as of yet and suddenly theres a player in the area while the cleanup script is running so wham, theres an error. OR it could be simply from entering / leaving /entering a spawn area (#1) during the spawn cycle (IIR, the Yomies spawn at about 2-3 per second, and if theres 40 in a spawn area it would take 20 seconds for them to all spawn. so if you run in and out within 10 seconds, etc. u get the idea I'm sure. OffTopic: Think Im gonna go watch my entire George Romero collection while the DX9 update downloads (6 hours...) P.S. prepare to be dissapointed by the remake of Day of the Dead, thank god I've got a VHS rip Mabey I should make a sound pack? (Have nearly every Zombie movie made since 1968 on my PC ) Or would that cut too close to copyright infringment?

Linux, Windows 3.1, 98se etc.? If it's Vista, SP1 might fix some issues. Also the 174.85 beta drivers have been getting a good response in general. With SP1 when my framerate tanks out now it seems as if the buffering is doing a much better job of smoothing the gaps out, much more fluid and shorter spans of "tank-ed-ness". I'll have to get back to ya' on the 174.85 drivers as I'm on dialup and they're taking forever to DL. Seems theres a recent update for DX9 as well (Again, crappy dialup so wont DL that till tonight.) Most reports indicate that when combined, SP1, DX9 update (wether or not you have DX10 installed if you can believe it) and the beta drivers seem to be doing alot of good.