Game locks you up at start - fix here

[Seenu]

Ok lots of people, including me have had an issue with the game lately.

What happens is that you start the game and the game will lock up your PC as tight as a drum and than time out on you.

After troubleshooting I have come up with a fix. The Horizons.exe process gets bugged and acts like a "real time" process thread when talking to the database during game start up, this can also stop many network cards (or nics) from accessing the CPU - the game locks you up there until you time out and get a connectivity error.

So here is the fix - run Horizons in windowed mode and have the Windows Task Manager up before you start the game.

When the game starts find the Horizons.exe thread in the process list and right click on it, there will be a little grey menu that will pop up, and at the bottom of the menu is the "Set Priority" option. Chose the "Below Normal" option - WHAM FIXED - and the game loads.

The only downside is that with a below normal thread will hurt performance just slightly.

After you are safely in the game you can set the priority to normal if you like - if the game stops on you when you recall or use a teleporter than just leave the priority at below normal.


Seenu Spelfury

[tramsan]

I'm afraid to say this only helps part of the problem for some of us - like me. I routinely run it as a below normal process, and no go.

[Seenu]

Being me - I was hoping to get to the bottom of this problem. I started by reseating my memory and CPU - no effect. Reinatslling the game and all drivers - no effect.

Then I remembered that I had updated to the newest sound blaster audigy drivers recently - I rolled back the drivers and now the game has fired up several times in a row without a hitch. Of course - doing so hoses the SB Audigy applications so I just reinstalled my entire machine.

It would seem that the new Soundblaster drivers dont like Horizons very much. :-l

[mbaucco]

I tried the priority thing with no luck, but I too have recently upgraded my audigy drivers, maybe I will try rolling them back.

Thanks,
Matt

[mbaucco]

Can anyone point me to some older drivers? I can't find any at Creative's web site

Thanks,
Matt

[Avarr]

I recently had this problem as well, after installing a Soundblaster XFI card in my PC. Sometimes when I would log in, everything would be fine, and other times the game would lock up almost immediately after it loaded the "Event" screen. I have not found a solution, but I have found a work around in my case. After checking what I was doing differently between the times I could log in, and the times I couldn't, I found only one difference. Microsoft Instant Messenger. If I open and log into that before starting HZ, everything works fine. If I don't, HZ locks up. Not sure why it works, maybe something to do with MSIM being part of .NET.

[tramsan]

Seenu's (and many other's) issue was traced back to the sound card drivers. Try installing an older driver release.

Starting MSIM might reset some state in the sound card that makes HZ go boom.