WARNING TO ALL

[[xNet]DrDre]

ADMINS/MODS, this post should not be deleted, im posting it as a fair warning

----------------------------

i was playing mta for vc, and like it occasionally does the unhandled exception error and freeze.

normally id WINDOWS+L(XP) and login as another user, kill vc/mta/gta3 and relogin, but this time i wasnt so lucky

i clicked my 2nd admin name, and it all froze.

so i did wat i had to do, shutdown. this time it wasnt good..

i restarted my system, and as xp started to load, i got a nightmare blue screen

UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME

i have no viruses, and im positive, and boot sector viruses usually infect thru floppies, and none was in pc. so i turned off, rebooted in safemode.

again. reboot, command promp. again

complete pc lockdown, NOTHING WORKED. in panic i called my friend, he had no clue how to help, so i called a pc repair store, they estimated 1hr @ 75$ hr.

i have no money, so called friend back. i had him search google for the error msg, he came up with a forum about it saying use XP BOOT DISK and use CHKDSK /r to repair sectors and FIXBOOT to write new boot sector..

lucky enough all this worked after he made me some xp disk.

now ive never had a problem with my harddrive before, until i was running mta, and the forums said something bout direct memory access..

IM NOT SAYING MTA CAUSED THIS

but i will say i see nothing else that could of caused it, no viruses on my pc, it was not storming, i did not lose power.

i will make a backup of my important files, and then retry mta, if i ever have this happen again during mta, i will never touch it.

im not dissing mta, i think its the coolest program ever, it might not been mta, lets hope its not.

im only posting this as a precautionary warning. and if anyone else gets this problem ,please tell me and we might determine it is mta.

maybe the final release of mta will be neater in the memory hacking.

Regards.

DrDre

[Guest]

I think the easiest solution for this problem would simply to boot with the XP Disc, and repair reinstall Windows. That way all your files are still there, but all your Windows files are new and shouldn't have problems.

[-=DeNMaN=-]

sorry.. but i know it's not a good idea to login as another user if one user has a crashed.. What i usually do is CTRL+ALT+DEL and end the process and not the task, then disconnect on MTA and reconnect again, then load up Vice City again, and it's fine..

It's not a good move to switch users at all if one user has crashed their workspace cos it just complicates the issues with a problem hte machine already has to face.... I work in a school and i'v come across this before with other software packages..

I hope this helps you out cos i know it's a pain in the ass then it happens

so dont worrie MTA.. it's not your fault

[-=DeNMaN=-]

I think the easiest solution for this problem would simply to boot with the XP Disc, and repair reinstall Windows. That way all your files are still there, but all your Windows files are new and shouldn't have problems.

Thats one way to fix it, and i'v used that method afew times. Just remember to reinstall all the sercurity fixes like SP1 or Sp2 what ever you have

[[xNet]DrDre]

see my pc is store bought, no cd comes with it cuz system recovery is biult in (F10 onstartup)

so i tried using a XP Pro cdand that wouldnt boot.

But bout switching user, when mine freezes, it freezes completely, i can cad, but the game doesnt want to minimize, my only option is to reboot or log in as another user, and doing it has never hurt and has always solved the problem(takes a while and is annoying but works)

But see it wasnt windows that was corrupted, it was damage to the harddrive,(errors), and im not blaming MTA Creators, im jus saying, its a high risk of that been the cause, but im still not sure

[NiNjai]

try matching your ingame rez to your desktop rez + bpp. (16 or 32 bit)

[-[QC]-Alex]

hey [xNet]DrDre, the same thing just happen to me

While playing Mta :VC my computer have frozen and i had to push the reset button..... but after boot sequense and before xp load screen came up.. i have seen a blue message quickly pass but didnt have time to read it!!!! so i don't sure its the same error like you but that blue screen have never happened before

I have no software/hardware bug and no viruses for your info......

system spec:

Xp pro sp1 with all the windows update shit (brand new format for your mod)

Amd athlon xp 2200+

Msi k7n2 nforce 2

1024 ddr 333 pc 2700

Msi geforce 4 Ti4200 agp 8x

sound blaster audiogy 2

Sorry for my English, its because i speak french!

[me]

First of all: GOOGLE IT!

I found tons of results on this.

The first link/article: http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... -us;297185

(the official M$ one... check that one first).

Taken from: http://laptop.clemson.edu/Pilot/Support/unmount.html

REASONS

We believe this is happening because Windows XP is shutting down or going into hibernation mode before all files are properly closing. When the computer is turned back on, the files that were not closed are corrupted - sometimes preventing Windows from booting.

Interestingly, we frequently get several of these a day --- but have had no faculty/staff to bring one in. We suspect it may have to do with the way students are using their computers - perhaps they have lots of extra background tasks (such as file sharing) running and are impatient with waiting for a normal shut down.

Here are some PREVENTATIVE measures you can take:

1) Avoid hibernation mode - turn your computer off and wait until it has totally finished closing before closing the lid.

2) There are a number of issues related to disk caching that may help. One possibility is to turn off write caching on your C: drive in Windows. Here are the steps to do that:

Double click My Computer

Right click on your C: drive

Left click on Properties

Left click on Hardware

Left click on Properties

Left click on Policies

Uncheck: Enable write cacheing on disk

Left click OK

Check out this link too. It'll be a great help: http://www.techtips4u.com/kb/sw/SW00014.htm

And remember to use google!

Oh ya, and I'D say that it wasn't MTA that did this... (my very unproffesional, and probably wrong reasons): probably just an improper shutdown

MTA plays with RAM... Not hard drives/disk files (well, it does do a little with that, but less than VC [or most other software]).

The main reason I'd say this though, is that this problem happens to other people, with other programs. Even professional software...

[Blokker_1999]

This problem is NOT MTA related. and what you are doing is not recomandable. switching a user during a lock up. The best thing you can do if you can not return to windows is press the reset button.

MTA access the memory to change values at mem adresses but can not touch the bootsector. It only changes the adressess from GTA.

One more thing : it is clearly stated that this software is in development and cvomes with no waranty what so ever. using this is at your own risk.

The entire team uses Win XP and the problem u have has never come up

[Evil]

I could tell ya exacly what this problem is! its not mta nor any programs its something added onto a website that will REMOVE your boot.ini and if you keep trying to boot with out anything to boot sooner later with all the hard rebooting will cause your drive to crash!!! so my suggestion is to stop looking at porn so much and you wont get this problem hehe i have ran into this problem many many times and this will cause many bad sectors on your computer. a way to prevent this when you format dont install java!! some say its harmless but read the source when ya visit a pornsite you will be suprized on what could be done:) micro$oft made a fix for this im to lazy to find it. btw i have lost about 2 drives to this problem and the only ones that crash after a good 3-4 hard reboots are maxtor drives. and your LUCKY you could somehow keep doing low formats and recover some sectors to get an os installed and a program to fix most the errors chances of being able to recover a drive is 1 out of 10

so be carefull

:Edit: yeah what me is talking about could cause it too. but there is many things that could cause this problem with all the new exploits learned about xp its realy hard to tell witch one would cause it there has been many hacking tools released the past month for hacking xp systems some of them have fixes if you look on the Micro$oft site most of them you will just have to wait till a fix is made

[renegade X]

This is definately a USER error; however, if you must do it again ever. Go into BIOS from reboot, and change your boot-strap interup to 19H. You will be able to go in a kill whatever is hanging up, and then change your boot-strap back to what is was.

[ijsf]

This has all to do with the stupid windows style of mounting and unmounting drives. If windows system completely crashes, you never know what will happen next reboot, although most times you are lucky.

As you know.. if you crash in Windows, your files could be damaged (wrong file size, or a wrong position on your harddrive). Files are covering a huge part of your disk, but not everything. Your Master Boot Record and other necessary parts to let your (Windows) partition boot up normally also got a piece of your harddisk.

Probably either your Master Boot Record was damaged, causing the boot error, or a part of your harddisk that lists all files/description of the partition damaged, causing Windows XP to crash.. not finding the necessary files to boot.. or both.

This is a pure HD-damaged-because-of-windows-crash problem.. and we all know how Windows reacts on that (another reason to use Linux )

The same problem with my system a while ago, i crashed.. rebooted, and my harddisk was empty.. except for the scandisk log file. The part which listed my files and such was damaged

If you crash.. wait until your harddisk stops reading or writing, it may help a bit. But switching to another user isn't smart during a crash in Windows.

[[xNet]DrDre]

well i know it most likely wasnt mta, but seems like u was getting me wrong

windows didnt crash, the game froze up(unhandle exception error shit) , but whenever my game gives that error, it freezes, and i cant alt tab. its like my ram is all eaten and hasnt got enough to alt tab, or cad, or to refresh the screen with desktop

but what evil said , i rarely look at porno, and i got high enough security to keep scripts from running (Microsoft Windows Update didnt even have permission to run!!!!!!)

But i guess u r right blokker, it does access ram, and i knew that, i jus didnt think of it, it proly was gradually gettign errors and i didnt know it

but i hope it dont happen again, sry for putting mta on the possible list..

[petebog]

windows didnt crash, the game froze up(unhandle exception error shit) , but whenever my game gives that error, it freezes, and i cant alt tab. its like my ram is all eaten and hasnt got enough to alt tab, or cad, or to refresh the screen with desktop..

Most people find that hitting Return two or three times, plus a little patience, brings them back to the Desktop. I'm not sure if Alt-Tabbing works anyway.

[Blokker_1999]

indeed, just hit return twice and u'll return because then it just clicks ok to end VC

[raiden]

You don't need to pay someone $75/hr to format your system.

[[xNet]DrDre]

lol i dont think my heart would be strong enough to format, jus format me lol...

but enter twice doesnt wannawork with me in all cases...

[me]

Plug your drive into another (working) computer, and see if you can access any files.

Also try using a boot disk, if you don't have access to another computer to play with

[Guest]

I've had MTA lock up a few times on me. It always just freezes within the game. All I do is hit esc and then I'm put back to the desktop and start back up again and I'm fine. So far I haven't had to do any ctrl-alt-del's.

[Guest]

Im sry i did not read everyones reply, but the cause of this system corruption could of just been due to the freezing of the game causing u to reboot, and that unproper shut down can cause a corrupted file. just my 2 cents..

[Asspalmer]

Im sry i did not read everyones reply, but the cause of this system corruption could of just been due to the freezing of the game causing u to reboot, and that unproper shut down can cause a corrupted file. just my 2 cents..

is it really necessary for you to have a 30+k sig graphic that takes up half the brower window? sheesh.

[Guest]

I had a Similar problem, but with far worse resaults.

Playing MTA, it would Freeze my system completly form time to time, having to Hard Reboot to get to do anything. So, I'm playing, it Freezes. I shut it down, turn it back on, Say's Primary Disk 0 not found. So I shut down the system to allow the disk to cool off. Start it up again about an hour later, still cannot be found. I take it out, try it in my other system. Nothing. So, I go to the Maxtor website, download the Drive Checking Utility, run it on the drive. It fails the Read/Write tests. So, I try to low-level format it. Thousands of errors come flooding by. So, I replace it with a 30GB 100/ATA drive...and still waithing for Dell to replace the 20GB ATA/133 drive.