I tried this new thing called “Google Gadgets”, similar to “Yahoo! Widgets”. Basically little addons you can place on your Desktop.
I got this standard stopwatch thingy. I want a Desktop Stopwatch that I can activate the second I run a game, just to truly see how long it takes to lock up. The stopwatch would freeze up the exact second the lock up issue strikes, giving me the exact time.
I’m also writing down these lock up times using Visual Page, to give me an idea of what the lock up issue is doing.
Anyway, the other reason I posted this entry is because I made another surprising discovery. I played Super Mario 64, and it locked up within the first 33 minutes and 31 seconds of first turning it on.
Played Calamity, and it locked up again at exactly 1 minute and 50 seconds.
Calamity, and any game that has a main menu can’t be counted right. What I mean is, in order to get an accurate reading of how long it takes, as soon as I click to launch the game, I got my stopwatch, and I have to wait for the splash screens to pass, then load, then the main menu.
The time it takes to hit New Game or Load Game is also added to the time it takes to lock up, which gives an inaccurate reading.
So, why not just start the stopwatch the second I start a new game? This is tricky, and even harder when I have force-fullscreen games like Crysis and Fallout 3, and even harder in Crysis Warhead with it’s constant vehicle battles, and me having to toggle v_goliathmode on and off constantly out of game to keep from failing.
Anyway, I wanted to see if the main menu would lock up if I just let it sit there for as long as it took for SM64 to lock up. It surpassed this. So I resetted my stopwatch, and hit the New Game button and restarted my stopwatch.
When I hit 1 minute and 50 seconds mark.. no lock up. Played longer… and longer… it surpassed SM64’s lock up mark, all the way through beating the fucking game, with NO lock ups!!
It took 1 hour, 7 minutes, and 27 seconds to beat it from start to finish. Of course I had god mode on.
But what’s more important — NO LOCK UP!!!!!! Nothing. Nada. Zero. Zip! .. Wtf?
Am I thinking what I think I’m thinking? Is my lock up issue… dieing? Is it struggling to stay alive, but failed to piss me off in Calamity? (shakes his head) I’m not convinced it’s dead. If it was truly dead, then ALL of my games, nomatter how long I play them, would be lock up free.
It’s just as I feared though. Something that was on my hard drive is contributing to the lock up issue. Trouble is, finding it. I got thousands, if not tens of thousands of files and folders. Any one of them could be the culprit. And there also could be more than one file causing it. Multiple files… folders…games could be causing it.
It’s pretty much looking for a non-sharp needle in a haystack the size of an 18 wheeler.
I’m still planning to get a video card. But for the software-level issue, the only thing I can do is just reinstall one game at a time, see which one starts fucking up the others, and I’ll have my culprit.