Save you the trouble, I just did, but there's just an endless stream of warnings: "missing string", ..., etc. And a minidump before I got into the main menu.

All i want for christmas is to play entrenchment....But i suffer from a terrible affliction....ETMMD syndrome...(Entrenchment Ten Minute Minidump) Please Santa help, and i promise to be good next year.

Heck my my game won't even load this last save it just closes sins down. Not even a mini dump issue on that one. Most of my crashes have been minidumps.

My best prescription for ETMM is to upgrade your video card drivers, and/or turn down your graphic settings so your computer can handle all the new textures. Try both and call me in the morning.

I've got this minidump issue as well. I made sure to patch religiously previous to installing Entrenchment, and I still keep up-to-date. Vid drivers are the most recent ones, too. If it would help I'd be happy to send my minidump file somewhere.

Vista 64
Athlon 64 3200+
K8N Neo 2 Platinum
2gb PC3200 DDR
Sapphire x800 Pro 256mb
Etc. Etc. Etc.

Turning all of my graphics settings to Medium/Low seems to have fixed the problem.

I do think this is something of a sub-optimal solution, however.  Regular Sins ran fine even on my terrible video card, and it strikes me as odd that Entrenchment would have higher requirements...

We have many more textures, some of them quite large. That may have something to do with it.

Is it something thats going to improve? Or do I need to upgrade my video card? It is just the stock one that came with my PC. Tell me man... It was ten mins of beauty....

Its a shame I cannot play on highest quality, when my computer is a DualCore 2.4 Ghz, with 4 Go RAM and a GeForce 8600 GS...

How come ? I should be supposed to handle anything.. Hope you'll fix it

Hi,


this issue of the 10min doesn't look related to something that you might be doing on the game.

I have done the following, at approximately 9mins in the game I save the game, at 10min there is a crash, windows says "illegal operation..."

reload sins, load the saved game and continue to play for more 9min, save, at 10 min crash ..... and so on


note: I have an ASUS(ati) Radeon 9600XT , with all drivers update, and never had any problem in any other game.

After turning down every graphic setting, the game now works : - )))

"unicatsins" suggested just not using "highest" for textures, which apparently worked also.

As he said:

for me it was enough to lower the frist row (this with 3 buttons) from higest to high. The other settings are still on highest.

Maybe its just one of the 3 buttons, but iam not sure... I had to play after it worked. No time for testing

but i will try for my next game ...

Well, doing a quick calculation in my head there may be some 10 to the 10th power possible combinations of graphic settings

Which ones cause a chrash, which ones don't?

Yeah, with settings on high, the game works perfectly.. Less beautiful, but it works

Well done for the one who found out..

Perhaps the code should be modified so that it won't let you select settings that will cause your system to crash? 

BTW, I have a HD 4650 and I run this thing at max settings without issues.

OK this should be helpful in troubleshooting (hopefully)

Previously I ONLY had Ship Detail and Building Detail set to "highest." I turned them both down to just "High" and I haven't yet had a minidump after <10mins.

Thanxs santa Fraser....Dreams do come true...I turned down graphic settings...And now my ETMM is cured....

Ho Ho Hoshiko.  May the spirit of the season guide your fleets to victory

That's creepy but witty at the same time. Bravo

Thank goodness its not just me! I will try turning down the graphics - if that solves it then I need a new graphics card So far I havnt even managed to explore the (obviously greyed out) defense research options which is damn frustrating but a good way to increase your anticipation!

Turning the graphics options to medium solves the mini dump issue for me. Sucks but I am happy to drop the graphics for the cool extras. I like the bases and the small changes to the gui are noticible too.

With graphics on "High" solves the 10min minidump

For people who would want to not turn down graphics and still play i know the GeForce 9800GX2 runs fine on highess since that is what I use. But before buying at 600$ i would make sure it fits on your bord, in your case and that you power supply is big enough. It'S a hige card and it demands alot of power, both a 6pin and an 8pin.

My PC is a 'office' machine with crappy on board graphics hence the medium. Ran the original sins fine though. I played a few matchs with the AI set to easy so I could check out all the new stuff and found that once you have a starbase the easy ai's just decide to stay home

So the dev solution to this is to turn DOWN my settings? No to be an ass, but Crysis ran on high setting on my rig w/o a minidump. btw I can get games to run hours...just get a md for no know reason. Btw when it says send a report thats to MS not you correct?