Game freezes or gets stuck at the end of the month

[Neags23]

I've been trying for a few days to start a new universe with little luck. I follow the same procedure every time. I create a smallish league (12 teams) and sim for 30 or so years and expand. Then I rinse and repeat.

I let it sim over night and every time, around the 60 year mark, I add minors and sim for another 20 years before I'll take over another expansion team or a bad team.

But every time, I'll come back expecting the universe to be waiting for me, ready to go, and it's still simming, but stuck near the last day of a month. The most recent league was stuck on Jan 30th. I let it sit for about 6 hours and came back and it actually made it to Feb 28th, but is stuck there and has been for about 3 hours. It's not even using any cpu power.

I don't think it's a hardware thing, as I have plenty of disk space and RAM. Plus, it does the same thing on a 2nd computer.

I suppose it could be corrupted or something, since I end up having to go kill the OOTP process since it's frozen. But how'd it get corrupted in the first place?

I've tried disabling FaceGen and renaming my Faces.dat file to Faces.old. Not working.

Windows XP
1 GB RAM
6300 dual core processor
GeForce 7600 GT Graphics Card


Any ideas? Guess if I get no response I'll try reinstalling or something...

[magnet]

IMLE, 1 GB of RAM is nowhere near enough when the database gets huge. My PC takes around 15 minutes to even LOAD the TCBA file (130+ seasons of history). I wouldn't dare to try and sim it. I know that when pulling in a historical import league with a full real-life history import, the latest a 1 GB PC has been able to successfully complete is somewhere in the 1950's. Mine hangs up in about 1946.

Well, that was a lot of rambling, but the only answer is really, IMO, get more RAM. Or, turn down the detail of the stats kept in the database.

[Neags23]

That doesn't really make sense, though. The system has plenty of memory to run other applications at the same time.

If it was a RAM issue, the computer itself would be sluggish, or I might get a virtual memory warning. The game isn't using any more RAM in the task manager than usual (about 350 mb).

Also, I have a program that monitors memory usage and available memory -- I never dip below a reasonable amount (about 400 mb).

Not to mention that 1 GB is the recommended amount and 4 times the minimum requirements. That, and I've gotten this to work before. Just seems not to work 4 out of 5 tries.

I'm trying another one today, and I'll see if it freezes. Eventually I'll bite the bullet and get another 1 GB stick, since I've been meaning to, anyway. I just don't believe that's the issue in this case.

[Neags23]

Yep, frozen again. Different computer this time, although, it only has 1 GB, too. This time June 24, 1965. Not using any CPU power.

If it's a memory issue, shouldn't the game crash or something? Or wouldn't I not be able to be typing this message due to a lack of memory?

I backed this one up 2 years ago, so I think I'll try to restore the backup and sim again to see if it gets stuck in the same place.

[Neags23]

Apparently this is an issue with a portable hard drive. I use one to play the same league between 2 computers. I pointed the game to an SI directory I put on the PC and everything worked fine.

So apparently this is either an issue with OOTP not liking portable hard drives that much (which is pretty impossible to support/fix, I know), or it's my hard drive.

Either way, this particular issue can probably be closed unless anyone wants to investigate playing on an external HD.

[magnet]

I run OOTP2007 on one gig of RAM, and I get virtual memory warnings ALL the time, regardless if anything else is running.