Laptop+Vista+RailWorks=SBHH?

[ChrisBarnes]

Hi all

Last week my PC broke unfortunately, and I thought my Railworks sessions were over until I get a replacement PC next year. Then I got out a relatively old Toshiba laptop, not a great machine, 2Gb of RAM and 128Mb of graphics memory, basically more than enough to run RW (albiet not comfortably). I set up my steam account on this machine and redownloaded the game, eventually it finished today. Now, an 8Gb download is always going to take a while, but it didn't help that Steam kept randomly crashing. I've no idea why. Finally RW downloads and I test it to check everything has downloaded correctly. Lots and lots of rubber banding, but otherwise it works. I decided to lower the resolution to improve the performance, now ever since I've done that RW ALWAYS gets an SBHH, whether it's when the main menu comes on or just randomly during play. I did find out via Autologics that the laptop needed a serious defrag and got an extra gig of hard drive memory just from that. Tried RW again, lowered the graphics settings with a lower resolution, load up Bath-Templecombe and voila, its nice again. Then when I take the loco out onto the line, while the route is running with good fps, all of a sudden the horrible *bing* sounds and it freezes with a SBHH message. I've run out of steam, I don't know what else there is to try out. I suppose what I'd like to know is do people get similar problems running steam/RW under vista basic 32bit, or maybe problems running RW on a laptop, or is all of this isolated to my laptop only? I have a feeling it might be the latter, as I was told by the person I got it from that it randomly closed Firefox and SDL Trados. Interestingly, the task manager shows RW using 800mb of memory, which astounds me considering I was running a basic route with low settings and it never got that high on XP, even when I ran TPR, which is huge in comparison! Oh well, seems like another one bites the dust.

Regards
Chris

[styckx]

I know RW sys requirements says 512mb of RAM and 64mb video but.. 2gb of RAM + Vista + Old laptop with "just enough" onboard graphics is just asking for problems with any game. Tons of swap file use, CPU is probably at 100% load, slice lunch meat with the spinning HDD, and OS is on the fringe of stabilty with a resource heavy game going even at low graphics settings.

I always wondered where RSC came up with those system requirements. They really should be bumped up a bit.

[rivimey]

I would tend to agree... it's probably a resource problem (running out of something) and RW doesn't cope gracefully with that. Though it's tempting to say add more RAM, 2GB should actually be enough for all but complex routes. I can run (albeit slowly) most routes on my own laptop with Win7 32 bit and 2GB, the graphics card there is an ATI x1400 with 128MB. This leads me to think that the problem is more likely to be the graphics card.

One way of testing the theory might be to create the simplest possible new route - flat terrain, a line of track running for a few KM - maybe a simple loop. Put a loco on it and see if that runs without crashing. If it does, then I'd point the finger at resources. If you're not sure how to do this, try looking on YouTube for Railworks track laying tutorials... there are several!

If that is the problem, unless you're very lucky there probably isn't a good answer. Cutting the graphics resolution down lots but running fullscreen will help quite a bit, and reducing detail levels will too. You might find your laptop's card can be changed for a better one but it's unlikely to make financial sense - even when they exist (and many don't) they're expensive. It is possible that upgrading the main RAM will help, though I wouldn't rely on it, and anyway many older laptops couldn't go beyond 2GB anyway.

Sorry to bear bad news...
Ruth

[bigvern]

RW will run fine on a laptop that is up to spec, certainly so far as route building or editing is concerned. My old Dell Inspiron (Intel 1.8 Dual Core, 2Gb memory and 512Mb Geforce 8400 graphics) coped fine with RW but choked on TS2009/TS2010. With the new laptop, custom build it cuts through RW like butter - no stability issues other than the known programme issues which can generate SBHH. (It also runs Trainz much better... ).

[ChrisBarnes]

Thanks for the replies

I do think it's a problem with this laptop, rather than laptops, vista and railworks in general. It is frustrating, however, that my dead XP 32 bit PC with 896MB of RAM and 256Mb of graphics ran fine with most settings on high. Another problem I think is that a laptop will probably be more difficult to open up and play around with than my old bulky desktop, and, as you say Ruth, it's not going to be worth buying replacement parts. Since last night I found out that it also closes down Microsoft Word randomly as well! I'm contemplating whether it would be worth installing FS 2004 if it's just going to crash everything I install. Guess I'm just going to have to do without, again. On the bright side, perhaps I'll have more of a life without being on my PC all of the time.

Thanks
Chris

[markpullinger]

Hi Chris, if it's crashing out on word as well, it is probably cooking - check the vents aren't blocked & that cooling fan is actually blowing air through the system.

[alexnick]

Hi Chris, if it's crashing out on word as well, it is probably cooking - check the vents aren't blocked & that cooling fan is actually blowing air through the system.

That's a good point. I managed to improve the performance and stability of my (not dissimilar) laptop by putting it on a flat surface, and raising it up on 2p coins so that there was more air circulating underneath it. If I take if off this mounting and actually place it on my lap, resource intensive software like Railworks does not run as well.

AN

[ChrisBarnes]

Thansk guys, I didn't even notice there were vents underneath it, I'll give that a try.

Regards
Chris

[ChrisBarnes]

Ok, as a precaution I've put the coins under the laptop, it does seem to be a bit cooler now than before. I ran RW again, this time with Auslogics BoostSpeed showing me the CPU, RAM, Disk and Network usage. I watched the RAM usage rise to 1.3Gb out of 1.87Gb available, but it was stable. Same for the CPU, it rose to 57% usage, but remained quite stable. Network usage was negligible. Then *bing*, SBHH. I check the graphs to see which of the 4 was overused and it seems that the only one that went to 100% is Disk, with a split second spike in the graph. The other 3 did not rise beyond where they were before SBHH. So, it seems the problem, then, is this "Disk", which I'm guessing is the Hard Disk Drive? This would seem to make sense, as the laptop I think is reading off the HDD, whereas when I ran RailSimulator of the DVD disk on the same machine just over a year ago everything was fine (did SBHH even exist in RS?).

I think I might be getting somewhere with this, a .dmp file will be sent to RSC aswell. Any more help and advice would be grand.

Chris

[Makeone]

Most if not all modern games install to hard-drive and run from there. RailSimulator was no expection to this. Railworks needs Steam but that i'm sure you already knew, to operate, but it runs from hard-drive. The 'bing' comes most likely from swap-file, ie. railworks tries to get data from swap but HDD can't keep up with the request and RW dies, i had similar problems with WCML-N, especially at Glasgow end of the marvelous route. Swap-file usage combine with Vista...that can't be a very good combination. One can always increase swap-file size, but i doub't that that's the problem, more like access time/transfer speed-sort-of-issue.

[ashgray]

Hi Chris

I've just bought a new computer, firstly because the old one was knackered and secondly, because I wanted something that would run Railworks well. I bought another Dell laptop! The difference is specs, and there are a few things you could do to improve your system to get RW running better. Firstly, ditch Vista and upgrade your operating system to Windows 7, which uses memory far more efficiently.

2 GB of RAM isn't really enough to run RW and everything else in the background - you'd find a noticeable difference if you upgraded by buying another 2 GB of RAM. Another benefit, if your bank accountnwill stretch to it, would be to replace your hard drive with a fast SATA drive - 7,500 - 10,000 speed.

Ash

[ChrisBarnes]

Hi guys

Since I last posted I've found out that the processor speed of this thing is a fairly measly 1.73GHz, JUST within the minimum specs (which as Bill has said are probably out of date anyway)

I would love to ditch Vista, and either go back to XP or Win7, I just can't get on with it. To me, it just seems like some flashy graphics were added, along with some new annoying features (is it possible to turn the "permission to run" window off?) and lacks the stability of it's predecessor XP. To be honest though, I would rather live with it than buy an upgrade for around £100 for this laptop, especially when a new desktop I hope to get by the end of the year would have it anyway.

2Gbs certainly wasn't ideal when I ran it on the old desktop, with less than half of that, 896mb, but I could still run it with nearly full settings happily, and I hardly ever got a SBHH. Also, the test I did didn't show the problem to be lack of RAM. At the moment, all I know is that the "Disk" whatever that is, is the most likely cause of it. I just hope the support email I sent will get a reply, in the past anything I've emailed to RSC never got a reply. Being able to read the .dmp would be good, if it gave me an indicator of my problems, and with it being 1Mb big rather than a few Kb, I suspect it will reveal alot of information. If it's a swap-file problem as you say, Makeone, then it would seem I've hit a dead end, but we'll see when the reply comes from support.

Just like to say thankyou to everybody who has helped so far, to me it just goes to show how good our community spirit really is.

Regards
Chris

[reider2906]

I always get the same problem with my main machine after a harddrive wipe, it runs out of memory during a flight usuually in my flight sim-just as I come in to land and the system is under most pressure drawing all the scen + all the other planes and airport traffic. I open the control panel, go to the virtual memory and set it to maximum advised. Memory problem is no more, simple as and works every time. Its worth a try,

Steve

[ChrisBarnes]

Thanks for you help Steve, I've increased the virtual memory, although I'm not sure if that was the problem but nevermind. I gave up on all of my games, RW, MSTS, FS2004, Jurassic Park: OG the laptop just crashed them after about a short while of being in the 3D world of each game. The only game that works without problems is the still fantastic Worms: Armageddon. Not a RW issue then, it seems to me. Shame a 8Gb download was wasted, hopefully I wont need to do that for a long time.

Regards
Chris