RE: [GD-Windows] Win98 lockup problem

[Andy G. <an...@mi...>]

I remember we use to have this sort of behavior if you exited the
application without cleaning up D3D / DDRAW correctly - ie: making sure
all the ref counts went correctly down to 0, cleaning up DirectX before
the main window is destroyed etc... Yes Win9x was very sensitive to
these things. We even had our exception handler clean up DX so that when
the application crashed with an error, the system remained stable
(ish!). Try the debug runtime and see if you have leaks, try looking at
the ref counts before the final releases etc...

Andy Glaister.

-----Original Message-----
From: gam...@li...
[mailto:gam...@li...] On Behalf Of
Antonio Tejada Lacaci
Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2003 11:58 AM
To: gam...@li...
Subject: RE: [GD-Windows] Win98 lockup problem

Some OpenGL drivers are known to use DirectX for certain things, so
don't
rule out that the something in the DirectX runtime/driver is the only to
blame for your problem.

I believe Nvidia's OpenGL driver uses directdraw to lock the frontbuffer
surface or something along those lines. On my TNT2 in Win98 there used
to be
a problem where the OpenGL driver was leaking some direct3d object, so
the
second time you'd run the OpenGL app it would fail to start ("ddhelp
caused
an invalid page fault..."), and the only solution was to launch a
DirectX
application (windows media player) *before* any OpenGL application (so
the
OpenGL driver wouldn't try to deinitialize DirectX at app's end, because
it
was already running when the app started).

Did you try the OpenGL renderer on an ATI card as well? (I don't know if
they use DirectX in their OpenGL driver :? ).

Regarding debugging it, you could be lucky and it could be the DirectX
runtime waiting for some unsignalled object, but if as you say the whole
system locks up, I'm afraid you are stuck somewhere in the driver or
kernel
layers (I would bet some spinning loop in the DirectX kernel layer or
the
Win16 semaphore). I think that SoftIce is your only way to go (and tons
of
patience).

> -----Original Message-----
> From: gam...@li...
> [mailto:gam...@li...] On Behalf Of
> Daniel Vogel
> Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2003 11:28 AM
> To: gam...@li...
> Subject: [GD-Windows] Win98 lockup problem
>=20
> I'm seeing a problem here where most though not all Win98/ME machines
will
> cause the system to lock up after trying to run another D3D app after
> Unreal
> Tournament 2004 exits. The bug is on both ATI and NVIDIA and happens
with
> both DirectX 8.1 and 9.0b but doesn't happen with e.g. Unreal
Tournament
> 2003. I tried running killhelp.exe (which no longer seems to be part
of
> the
> DirectX 9 SDK) without success - is it supposed to work on a machine
with
> DirectX 9.0b installed? What is interesting is that D3D apps will also
> crash
> if I start the game with the OpenGL renderer but not if I pick the
> software
> renderer. This means both the OpenGL and D3D renderer must do
something
> that
> leaves the machine in an unstable state though I can't figure out
what.
>=20
> Remotely stepping through the code the app terminates (without a trace
and
> without locking up) in Direct3DCreate8 on second run with the D3D
renderer
> and locks in ChangeDisplaySettings with the OpenGL one.
>=20
> Anyone got any experience tracking down a problem like this? Luckily
Win2k
> was already around when I made the switch from Linux game development
to
> Windows so I'm not too familiar with all the idiosyncrasies of Win98
:)
>=20
> -- Daniel, Epic Games Inc.
>=20
>=20
>=20
> -------------------------------------------------------
> This SF.net email is sponsored by: SF.net Giveback Program.
> Does SourceForge.net help you be more productive?  Does it
> help you create better code?  SHARE THE LOVE, and help us help
> YOU!  Click Here: http://sourceforge.net/donate/
> _______________________________________________
> Gamedevlists-windows mailing list
> Gam...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gamedevlists-windows
> Archives:
> http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_idU5



-------------------------------------------------------
This SF.net email is sponsored by: SF.net Giveback Program.
Does SourceForge.net help you be more productive?  Does it
help you create better code?  SHARE THE LOVE, and help us help
YOU!  Click Here: http://sourceforge.net/donate/
_______________________________________________
Gamedevlists-windows mailing list
Gam...@li...
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gamedevlists-windows
Archives:
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=3D555