Module corruption study

[Thangorn]

Greetings Builders,

I'd like to present to you something that will be of great interest to those of you who experience problems with toolset crashes and module corruption. I am making a study of why my toolset crashes occur in the hopes that I can fix the problem

Usually when I experience a toolset crash, it somehow manages to corrupt the entire module rendering it useless.. Here's an example of how it works, at least for me..



Notice the first greyed out module. Notice how the size of the file has been significantly reduced due to the toolset crashing. Not too much trouble there due to my versioning system I only lost an hour of work..

Notice the next greyed out section. I experienced a toolset crash on that version. I'm mystified as to how, my usual regime which works well for me is I close and save the area I am working on, wait for my RAM usage to go down and then cross my fingers and save under a new file name. When I reopened the toolset I opened the corrupted version, thinking everything was fine since the crash had occurred despite my usual regime, I went ahead building little bits on the mod over the next three days.

I only realised my folly when I went to export an erf and the toolset had a brain explosion. The second crash must have caused further corruption as any of the areas I havent done too much building in when I tried to open it just made the toolset crash again. These corrupted mods cause seemingly random crashes whereas the non-corrupt versions seem much more stable as long as I take care of my RAM usage.

Not picking up on this is how I managed to destroy months upon months of work for the original 12 Moonsea builds I've done..

The moral of the story is. If you experience crashes and module corruption -:
1. Close and save areas before saving the module.
2. Give your RAM time to dump, seems to improve my success rates on saves.
3. Save under a different file name.
4. Do this every hour.
5. Report this stuff to the developers.

I'm not sure of this but can any of the more technical people tell me. If I improved on the amount of RAM, would it get rid of these godawful crashes and corruption? As far as I understand there seems a direct correlation, if I have too many things open in the toolset and try to save.. BAM.. vaporised..

[Wynna]

That's a good tip for recognizing a corrupt mod, Thangs. Thank you. I haven't had a total 'splosion resulting in mod loss in over six months, iirc, but having a little fact like reduction in size as a clue to corruption will help arm against future disaster.

As far as I understand there seems a direct correlation, if I have too many things open in the toolset and try to save.. BAM.. vaporised..

I confirm this correlation. Although I haven't had a mod wipe in the abovementioned six months, I get frequent 'Red X' crashes (wherein a portion of the screen, be it the area view or one of the creation tabs suddenly vanishes into white crossed by a red X) that have to be reset by restarting toolset. These almost always come as a result of having too many windows open at a time or trying mass changes on multiple tabs.

[White Warlock]

I'm not sure of this but can any of the more technical people tell me. If I improved on the amount of RAM, would it get rid of these godawful crashes and corruption? As far as I understand there seems a direct correlation, if I have too many things open in the toolset and try to save.. BAM.. vaporised..

RAM use is os dependent. I'm a bit rusty on this, but if i recall, WinXP32 can only give you the benefit of 1gig RAM simultaneous tasking. I cannot answer for Vista. What's your os and total RAM?


Btw -- my personal opinion, as to the cause of your crashes, would be driver conflicts due to duping of processes (more likely video processes). Before running the Toolset, open Windows Task Manager and check Processes. Click on Image Name (to alphabetize) and check to ensure only one process of each type is running (except for svchost.exe, which will have six or so running simultaneously). If you find any dupes, pick one of them (preferably the one with the smallest footprint) and End it. Do a quick check of your system's behavior (open/close display properties, start menu, and explorer). If all's well, give the toolset a shot.

[Thangorn]

no dupes WW..

I am running 2Gb of RAM (2 1Gb sticks) with an E6600 dual core proc, 8800GTS (320Mb version) and using windows XP..

[Avaz]

If I understand correctly, Vista 32bit can only utilize 2 gigs of RAM, while the less-popular 64bit version can use 4GB.

[indio]

Timely reminder. Thanks Dez.

Check this out. Will automatically backup your module under a different name each time.

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NW ... tail&id=67

I use it whenever I toolset now.

[White Warlock]

Aye, if you're willing to take the damage of upgrading to Vista, you'll be able to better utilize that extra gig of RAM.

Thanks for the info Avaz.

[MorbidKate]

Vista 32 can actually make use of 3 GB of memory. SP1 will now "properly" display the total amount you have plugged in but it will still only make use of 3GB. I Toolset with Vista Ultimate 32bit with 4 Gig plugged in and rarely have crash problems these days.

If someone is crashing very very often I'd have to strongly suspect the quality of the RAM or the BIOS settings for the RAM first.

My rig:

E6700
Vista 32
Nvidia 8800 GTS 320MB
500 GB Western Digital SATA II
Asus P5B Vista Premium

[Thangorn]

Well it seems I've found a new weapon on the war on-save/on-bake toolset crashes (for those of you who experience them).. in good time too.

It seems as my module gets larger the crashes come thick and fast. IN fact I can guarantee that past 300Mb I'm going to get a crash 40% of the time I save which will corrupt the mod file I am saving to... however..

Since I have been closing areas and saving them before my save of the module under a new filename. I have discovered that when I save under a new filename and it crashes, my last module folder is still there WITH MY SAVED AREA IN IT.

So when I open this folder in the toolset, I have lost no work and I can then resave the module as a new file module name again AND STILL LOSE NOTHING IF IT CRASHES AGAIN!

So I am quite jubilant as I now have an effective method of losing NO data.. At this point in time the Moonsea looks like it'll be rushing ahead in the building stakes as I can now be more inspired as I know I wont lose anything *crosses fingers and touches wood*

This is going to crop up again when I am scripting no doubt but if I save what ever I am working on (scripts, convos, etc.) manually before I save the module, I should be laughing.

[darrenhfx]

Hey that's great news Dez. I haven't had that many issues when saving the full TSM mod, maybe that is because I've been making sure to save each area as I finish tinkering with it.

Go Moonsea!