Problem with Freelancer staying in memory

StarTrader · wrote on 27 Mar 2010, 23:32

Has anyone else had this problem and hopefully found the cause? ….

With my mod active:-

1. When playing, the game gets jerky. Sometimes it clears after a while, sometimes it stays jerky.

2. When quitting, the last Freelancer screen is displayed and the cursor changes to the normal system cursor but the desktop does not show and it is impossible to “feel” your way around. The only way out is to reboot.

3. Sometime, after quitting, freelancer.exe stays in memory - it is visible in Task Manager - and other applications are very slow until I click End Process to kill it.

Any pointers / help??

DwnUndr · wrote on 28 Mar 2010, 00:50

Does this only happen with your mod or with vanilla freelancer or another mod as well? This will tell if it is your computer/setup or something you have done in your mod (like an exe hack).

Gisteron · wrote on 28 Mar 2010, 11:32

I have that issue sometimes, too. it seems to be an internal problem, not a mod problem, as it does not depend on if I have my mod activated or the 88Flak or the BSG-Dawn of War or several other mods known to be working fine.

Sushi · wrote on 28 Mar 2010, 18:55

This happens with FWs 18.xx as well as the entirely re-designed FW:ToW. Not sure why, though.

Cannon · wrote on 28 Mar 2010, 19:39

Hmm, happens sometimes on discovery too. I assumed it was my fault due to my client side changes.

M0tah · wrote on 28 Mar 2010, 20:38

Huh, I’ve actually never experienced this problem. Maybe it’s due to certain firewall or antivirus software?

Sushi · wrote on 28 Mar 2010, 21:10

I have neither. I just run in Windows 7. It also did this for me in Windows Vista, too.

StarTrader · wrote on 28 Mar 2010, 21:36

Heheh - glad I’m not the only one who has it.

I just tested plain FL 1.1 and it’s not happening.

So I think it’s one of the exe hacks I applied in our mod.

It’s going to be hard to find I think. I’m running XP with Service Pack 3.

DwnUndr · wrote on 28 Mar 2010, 21:42

Next test would be with your regular mod but use vanilla exe’s with renamed version numbers. That will tell you if it is an exe hack or something else.

Huor · wrote on 28 Mar 2010, 22:49

I once used windebug to see where the problem comes from and all the trials where the game stayed in memory had something to do with the chat interface - at least that was where the debugger did a break.

As i had no clue why he couldnt close the chat and i have no further code of the game (and i am not very good in assembler) i couldnt search any deeper in this problem. But as far as i could find out it always had something to do with the chat - dunno why - but it was so…

StarTrader · wrote on 28 Mar 2010, 23:40

Now this is odd…

I switched to plain FL to test and of course deleted the C:\Documents and Settings(account)\My Documents\My Games\Freelancer\Accts folder - which contains the saved games and restart.fl.

I tested lots of stuff, copying changed .dll files, Freelancer.exe and FLServer.exe from the mod - no jerkiness and no memory stiction.

When I went back to the mod I again deleted the accounts folder, and had to create a new character. No more jerkiness from the default startup character.

Could it be a problem in one of the saved games?

Can you guys who have this problem try moving your accounts folder (I guess you don’t want to delete it if you’re running a server) and see if you lose the problem?

jase240 · wrote on 29 Mar 2010, 03:25

savegame corruption would make sense…. it happens, also an old CPU would cause it.

Gisteron · wrote on 29 Mar 2010, 07:14

savegame corruption is likely listed in the flspew (for easier seeking).
recently i have played the dawn of war, did not chat at all, did neither even do too much, just look around bout who is online (haven’t been up there for some time). i have gotten this issue again and i think noone of you suspects that i have any savegames of this mod on my computer but only on the bsg-galactica.com server. also once i give in the shortcut to go standby, after several minutes my computer in fact goes standby and afterwards i can kill the freelancer process manually without it interrupts anything else. i guess it is some exe hack or maybe a combination of those.

FriendlyFire · wrote on 29 Mar 2010, 14:00

jase240 wrote:
savegame corruption would make sense…. it happens, also an old CPU would cause it.

A CPU’s age has nothing to do with it. If your CPU started producing erroneous results in this way, your computer wouldn’t run.

This is all probably caused by restart.fl’s tendency to break stuff.

currican · wrote on 29 Mar 2010, 18:19

I get this when I quit and restart FL quickly and when I exit the game too quickly.

I think the memory dump gets the hic-ups and stops. Shortly after I’ll get a windows dialog saying “Freelancer.exe has stopped working blah blah.”

StarTrader · wrote on 3 Apr 2010, 12:10

This is a slightly different problem, after quitting Freelancer it stays in memory forever with no error message and no error window. I have to kill it from Task Manager.

In the meantime anything else I run, browsing, OpenOffice, Photoshop, etc. runs very slowly and jerkily. It would be good to find the cause, deleting the FL Accts folder cleared it but it came back after playing a couple of games.