Lockups in version 2.4.4

[Indarien]

I have a Dell Inspiron 9100 with an ATI Radeon 9800 with 128mb of video memory.
Display drivers are updated to the latest available.
Running Windows XP SP3.

Fantasy Grounds 2 worked fine for versions 2.3.6 and lower. Upgraded to 2.4.4 recently and now I am running into a problem where the program will freeze entirely for 10-15 seconds, then start running again normally, then freeze again. It does not crash, but it is unusable in its current form.

I have tried the normal "troubleshooting" - scandisk, defrag, uninstall and reinstall, update video drivers, etc. The problem exists when I update to version 2.4.4. In fact, during the uninstall/reinstall process I tested Fantasy Grounds before running the updater and it worked fine.

If there is additional information you need let me know and I will get it for you.
In the meantime, is it possible to update from the CD install version to 2.3.6 and not update any farther? The rest of my gaming group has already said they will back-rev if necessary to keep us all playing together.

Thanks.

[Griogre]

Do you have a CPU monitor? If so, what is it doing during the lags?

My main computer had problems a couple of weeks ago so I ran a Sunday game on my laptop - a Dell Inspiron. The laptop had the same type of problems you mention, because it had to use *virtual* memory. That laptop had 512 megs of RAM.

How much RAM is on that computer?

[Indarien]

It has 2GB of RAM.
Pentium-4 processor.

Like I said, no problems whatsoever when using 2.3.6 or earlier.

The display works fine, it is FG2 that specifically locks up. If I move the mouse out of the FG2 window then I can do other things without any issue.

Processor utilization never goes above 50%.
If I look at Task Manager, the Fantasy Grounds process will cycle between "Responding" and "Not Responding" at approximately 10-25 second intervals.

Memory usage and processor usage are approximately the same as other computers running the same version of FG2.

[Griogre]

It may be your video card RAM, I also have 128 of video RAM (ATI Radeon X300 Mobility) on that laptop. Its possible you may be running out of video card RAM and having to use general RAM.

When I had my problem, I had also used my laptop to play in the game prior to the one I ran and didn't have any problems, it was only when I was running and actually had all the players connected.

[Indarien]

Well I find it peculiar that upgrading to 2.4.4 would cause this problem to arise. Until now Fantasy Grounds has been running great on this laptop. Also, the problem exists whether I am in character management mode, running a game, playing in a game, have players connected or not, it made no difference.

HOWEVER - if I run Fantasy Grounds maximized, it works fine for about 20 minutes, then gives me a C++ Runtime error and crashes outright. Which is a slight improvement over the previous issue of 10-15 seconds of stuttering every time I click on something in the program.

The solution of buying a new laptop or video card is not feasible. This problem just started occurring as of the 2.4.4 version and every other application works fine on this computer. Like I said in an earlier post, if there is a way to get the 2.3.6 version and use that and not upgrade beyond it, that will work for my purposes.

[Tenian]

It might be worth emailing support a copy of the crash log it generates after 20 minutes. Maybe they could tell you what the exact issue is / confirm it to be a bug.

[Griogre]

It may not actually be the version but the fact you campaign has grown enough to tax your RAM (this can probably be worked with). Have you started a new campaign gone to full screen and let it sit? See if it still crashes after 20 minutes or so.

[Indarien]

Rather interesting. It is something with that specific campaign, because following Griogre's advice any other campaign (including ones with the same ruleset) do not have this problem.

Since none of the other computers in the gaming group were having this problem, the fact that the campaign files might be the issue was not something any of us considered.

Thanks for all the help here guys. I really appreciate it.

[Griogre]

If you have isolated the problem to one campaign then create a new campaign and then make a copy of your old campaign for a backup. Open the old campaign in IE and see if you have any errors.

If not, then start copying sections over to the new campaign. I'd start with characters since they are typically a large and important section - and quite complicated.

[oculto]

Hi,

We play with Fantasy Grounds little more than one year and all our sessions flowed normally until the version 2.4.X of the program. Ever since, it's happening several problems related to the connection as, a lot of lag, sudden disconnections, difficulty to access characters, etc. This doesn't happen with all players, of a group of six, two only present related problems.
We use the ruleset 4E_JPG in it's 1.51 version, that worked normally before the version 2.4.X of the program. We already made the reinstallation of the program, besides removing entrances in the Windows Registry; recreated the campaigns; and one of the players got to reinstall the whole operational system, but until the moment everything was in vain.
I host de campaign and I hv a cable connection. Port 1802 is open.

CPU: AMD Sempron 3000+
RAM: 1GB
Grafics Card: nVIDIA Geforce 7300 LE
OS: Windows XP SP2

Have been happening something similar with anybody here?

[Indarien]

oculto,

Given that it turned out my problem was with the specific campaign and you have 6 players for over a year, my first suggestion would be to have the GM make a new test campaign with the same ruleset, (4E_JPG 1.51) have everyone connect to that and see if the two problem computers are still having issues.