I had JUST finished everything, from all the puzzles to technology when my game constantly crashes. My roomate also has a game and hers isnt' affected. Here's the error:

error accessing 0x004057d7 (tried to access 0x03A8A08C)

That's not verbatim, but it's something really close to that.

I've tried the repair option which has fixed these types of errors in the past, but that will not work. I've completely uninstalled the game and reinstalled with no help.

I was really looking forward to letting my villagers do as they pleased, and now the game is toast. Help please!

Can you tell us more about the computer you run it on? Memory, video memory, directx version?

Running Win XP
my ram is 256
video memory is also 256
directx is 9.0c

Thanks for your reply!

oops....my regular ram is 512

posting a message to keep this on the front page so I might get a reply. thanx

Put the game on pause and quit it. Download the game again from where you bought it and reinstall to the same directory.
If that doesn't stop the error, you may have to run a ram test to see if your ram has a bad spot

alright...i'll give that a shot. Thanx

Okay, that didn't do anything for me either, and i don't think it can be a system issue b/c my wife's game works just fine, and mine always has up until this point. And the error is the same exact one each time. I've put up a search on the search engines and it comes up with nothing.
Any other ideas?

Is your wife's game on the same computer? If so, and she is not having the problem, I suspect that something happened to corrupt your savegame file at some point. A corrupted savegame file essentially loads bad data into the game, causing the crashes.

Ahh.. didn't realise you were playing two different games on the same machine - in that case, shouldn't be a bad ram problem. This might be a long shot, but you could try copying the *.ldw files from the game directory to a temp directory, then deleting them from the game directory and copying them back from the temp directory to the game directory (thinking of a possible bad cluster on the drive in this case). Otherwise, check the ldwlog.txt file in the game directory and see if there's any indication there of what might be happening

oops.. was obviously typing at the same time Barbara was replying.

So if that's the case, then....I have to start over? That would bite. haha

You could try the procedure that I described in this post to see if you can recover a working backup game, but it's possible that it is corrupted, as well. If so, starting a new game might be your only option.

Hi there,

Just started playing the game a few days ago, and I am now regularly running into the same error. I've found that if I restart the game, the error may be delayed for a while .. it must depend on some event happening.

Right now, I'm almost at the end of the game (Puzzle 16 left), and it looks like every time the Golden Child starts a mass event (like a party or so), the crash occurs.

Would it be helpful if I provided you with my .ldw files (and whatever you may need) to see if you can reproduce the problem and find the cause? I cannot find any error in the log file.

As additional information, I bought the game through MSN. My computer config:

HP Compaq NC6000
CPU: Pentium M 1.6 GHz
OS: Windows XP (5.1.2600) SP2 (all patches installed)
RAM: 512 MB

PM me if you'd like to receive any files from the game directory.

Cheers,

Khazan

Khazan, can you tell us what DirectX version you are running as well as the amount of video RAM you have?

It sounds like you are running out of video resources to me, but with out that info, we can't tell for sure.

Hi TheVillageIdiot,

Here it is:

- Video board: ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 Series AGP
- VRAM: 32 MB
- Running at 1024 x 768, 32 bits, 60 Hz

- DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)

Now, and I haven't tested this, I'm typically not running in fullscreen mode. I wonder if that makes a difference.

Cheers,

Khazan

PS = I did manage to get further in the game by letting it run for a few hours without having the game open. Got me through to the end ... however, I still have all the game files from when it was crashing.

Ok, I think you need at least 64Meg of VRam. That is good video card and fully supports DirectX 9 and the VRAM is dedicated, so all is good there. So I think your system is running out of recourses. I would make sure nothing else is running while you are playing VV and see if that helps.

Hi,

I'll give it a shot by going fullscreen. That should dedicate all resources to the game. I'll give you an update afterwards.

Thanks for the support so far.

Cheers,

Khazan

I keep getting the same error messages in 2 different games started at different times. The error messages did not occur until after the GC.

I have tried all of the same things as well. The message happened first when I only had one game. So I stopped playing that one and started a new one. Once I had the GC the error messages started popping up in the new game.

thanks

Hi again,

Finally got around to trying fullscreen ... and it still crashing ... but I finished the game, so I can live with it ... still weird.

Cheers,

Khazan

Please see this post.

Thanks!

Hi Warren,

I've PM-ed Arthur with no response yet. In the meantime, I did encounter an interesting experience. I opened the game, and as all my villagers were busy with some burials, I moved to a part of the village with no single villager in it.

I thought this would maybe prevent the crashing, as there would be no video action going on. Wrong ... it still crashed.

Cheers,

Khazan

Khazan, please see my reply to your other post here.

Hi Warren, Arthur and Ladycfii,

Just wanted to thank all publicly of you for your help. It looks like you have zero-ed in on the problem. With the downloaded version from this site, all seems to be well so far.

I want to thank you for great technical support. That definitely is worth a lot when you love a game but encounter an issue.

Cheers,

Khazan

Hi all,

I can now confirm it. The game ran overnight without a single issue.

Cheers,

Khazan

I have seen a few links for advice on how to fix crashes, but they apparently are all at an OLD form page so don't work! Could you please repost the links with the "ldwforums.com" pages link? The "ldwsoftware.com/uubthreads..." pages do not work and I need help with constant crashes happening after the Golden Child is born. Thanks.

Have a look at this post for instructions about what to do.