Thanks for responding, Yoshiro. I'll detail everything I can to make sure you have all the info you need:
When I first installed the game a few months back often my system would lockup while in the menus just trying to adjust my settings.
I tried: moving/removing my soundcard, different nVidia drivers, different OpenAL drivers.
Solution: Avoided the menus at all costs
Edited the .cfg files instead. Used Gamespy to go into games.
Occasionally while playing RO:Ostfront the game will hard-lock/freeze while playing. I could never get a minidump because the system froze before it could write one.
I tried: Changing the threading options of my Dual Core chip, changing the threading options of the nVidia drivers, different drivers, a new soundcard, upadted AMD drivers, different chipset drivers, the 91.28 beta nVidia drivers, running sound in Safe Mode, running with Software sound, deleting/reinstalling RO:Ostfront, re-downloading Ostfront, deleting the .cfg files, deleting/reinstalling Steam, cleaning, defraging, chkdsking, turning AV and other background programmes off, turning all the startup files off, ... lots of stuff
Solution: I had absolutely no idea what to do next but re-read some old posts and changed the rendering programme from D3D to OpenGL. Menus look aweful, graphics aren't nearly as nice (some flickering, no motion blur) but I wandered through the menus changing things without a freeze, and just played another round without any problems.
My system (posted above) is running Windows XP SP2. I have no funky firewall or other software running (to be honest the only thing that starts up is my AV and I've tried playing with the AV off. It's NOD32). I have as many extrenuous services and background applications turned off that are not necessary for Windows, I have the latest DirectX (I've tried installing it numerous times), I'm still using the 91.28 nVidia drivers since it didn't seem to matter which I used... my system is pretty new but the below games have all worked fine at maximum settings:
World of Warcraft
Chronicles of Riddick
Quake 4
Call of Duty 2
Tomb Raider: Legend
Trackmania Original, Nations and Sunrise
SiN Episodes: Emergence
Need for Speed: Most Wanted
Star Wars: Battlefront II
Like I said all those games run flawlessly.
I gave up overclocking almost a year ago, so everything is running stock and nice and cool. Have a good quality 600 Watt PSU, numerous fans, cool ambient temperatures... I really can't think of anything else to tell you, other than the fact I love this game - any other game I'd probably have stopped trying
Anyway, OpenGL appears to be a half-decent solution, but the image quality and the menu bugs unfortunately make the game feel less polished than I know it is. Doubt there's anything there that'll help - you'll probably look at it and wonder why I'm having issues - which is exactly what I'm doing
I've done searches on the 'net and found a smattering of people who have trouble with the UT2k4 Engine
Recent Post Here. I've sent an email to the guy asking whether he solved the problem (he said he has issues with Ostfront, UT2k4 and America's Army - I only have Ostfront so can't test out any other UT2k4 games).
Whew - that's a lot of words. Anyway, if there's any D3D adjustments in the patch I'll just hope they somehow address the issue since I'm sure nobody can know what they are - I'll just keep my fingers crossed.
Thanks for reading, Yoshiro
