Warcraft 3 Woes

[Annorax]

I recently got a new hard drive and upgraded from Windows 2000 to Windows XP Pro w/SP2. Now, one of my favorite games is Warcraft 3 (with TFT 1.17), but I'm having an odd issue with it.

Before the upgrade, the game ran fine, with no flaws. Now, the game still runs fine, but every now and then, right at the starting menu, right when the chains come down, it locks up and I need to press Reset to get it to do anything.

I am still using all the same hardware, just newer drivers. I have a Hercules Kyro2 3D Prophet 4500 64mb, which gave me no problems with the game before. I have a Soundblaster Live 5.1. I am running the latest drivers for the video card, and during installation, it seems Windows found my sound card, so I left those drivers be.

The game still plays fine. When it doesn't crash, it works perfectly. The only problem is that it will crash right at startup and lock up my entire system. To me it sounds like a driver problem, but I can't see what it would be. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

[kram 2.0]

I somehow doubt its a hardware related issue, in the sense that something isn't capatible with something else. The only possibility or way to see that is whether the operating system upgrade is overly stressing something out, such as the processor or video card, in which case, overheating is usually the symptom. Some gut feeling is telling me it's service pack 2.

kram

[DragonNOA1]

I don't know why but it seems like every post I recommend the latest chipset drivers. So make sure you got 'em!

In addition, do games play all that well on your Kyro2?

[Annorax]

Like I said, I recently did a clean boot of Windows XP Pro w/SP2. It seemed to detect all my settings, so I only installed the newest video driver. Warcraft worked perfectly fine before. I was just playing Neverwinter Nights with no problem.

Could it be my sound card? I am using whatever XP setup said was my card, and it plays MP3s and sound fine. I have an Sound Blaster Live 5.1.

On a hunch, I just let the game sit there for a bit afterwords, and Windows said something about "pmxdriver" (actually it might have been pmxdiag) or something similar, and that it failed to load or stopped working (sorry can't remember exactly). My screen was at a low setting, maybe 640x480 at 16 colors. It then crashed and needed a reboot.

[DragonNOA1]

Searching for pmx, the first three things that came back talked about it being a network driver. Do some searching on your own computer and find where the driver is, who its made by, and what program is calling it, when it loads, etc.

[Annorax]

I searched my machine and found two files: pmxdiag.dll and pmxdisp.dll. (well a bunch more pmx files, but these are some names I remember)

Pmxdiag says it's made by 2001 Imagination Technologies Ltd. but I have nothing on my machine made by that company, or not to my knowledge. It is version 6.13.10.6270 and says it's a Diagnostic DLL.

Pmxdisp is from my Kyro drivers, it says.

My ethernet card is a Linksys, I've never seen any pmx file associated to it.

[Annorax]

I got a closer look at that error message:

It said that the pmxdisp display driver stopped working normally. From then, Windows basically locks and needs a hard reboot. So it turns out that the problem is my video card.

My old hard drive has the same file, but version 4.12, while I am using the newest version 6.13. The new driver fixes some issues I've had, but for some reason sporadically crashes Warcraft. Is this a known issue?

I think it's time to go contact the vendor...

[DragonNOA1]

Good job, you narrowed down the problem.

If you don't want to install the old version of the driver, I really don't know what to tell you. Kyro isn't really the best in terms of graphics, and even tho you prolly don't wanna hear it, going with nVidia or ATI will save you lots of hard ache in the future. Kyro is slow and under powered with poor driver support. I searched around and saw other ppl with problems and even some saying that their drivers aren't digitally signed, which in the XP world can cause big problems.

[TeenPcknowit]

Originally Posted by DragonNOA1 Good job, you narrowed down the problem. If you don't want to install the old version of the driver, I really don't know what to tell you. Kyro isn't really the best in terms of graphics, and even tho you prolly don't wanna hear it, going with nVidia or ATI will save you lots of hard ache in the future. Kyro is slow and under powered with poor driver support. I searched around and saw other ppl with problems and even some saying that their drivers aren't digitally signed, which in the XP world can cause big problems.

Warcraft III is my favorite game to play on the PC, it seems your an rpg type of guy. Anyways, every once in a while warcraft will give me various problems too. Not connecting to battlenet (no the servers werent down...the software just acts dumb), the game minimizing itself all the time, never opening in the first place. I just re-install the game and it seems to work out : -/.

[Annorax]

The strange thing is I've never had a problem with the game. I did email Tech support for my video card and this is what I got:

Dear Customer,

A serious bug exists in Windows memory manager that causes severe 3D problems with Kyro based video cards.

Unfortunately, we cannot resolve this Windows issue, only the chipmaker can.

In the meantime, the only solution we can provide in this situation is to remove enough memory so that you only have 256 MB or less of RAM.

The error should only occur if you have more than 256 MB of memory installed.

Regards,
Hercules/Thrustmaster Technical Support


Which, of course, is absolutely no help. On Win2k the game ran perfectly with my video card, on XP it doesn't. I've also been playing Neverwinter Nights just fine, but Warcraft is the only one that crashes. Why isn't there a patch, and why can only the chipmakers fix the problem?

I've been helped more in places like this than from "official, trained tech support".