FreeLancer - Blue Screen

I love this game (FreeLancer), but I recently upgraded to a new PC (AMD64 3500+, NVidia4 chipset, Geforce 6600GT video) and I'm having problems. The game works flawlessly until I enter a jump gate. The little animation sequence proceeds like it's supposed to, but just as my ship is supposed to enter the new star system Windows bluescreens. It's just some generic "Windows has halted your computer to prevent damage" error message.

As far as I can tell, there are only 2 video driver versions that support my card (66.93 and 71.84). I've tried both and the problem is the same no matter which of the two versions I use.

I'm running Windows XP Pro sp2 and I have DirectX 9.0c installed. Is it the video card driver that's causing me problems or am I barking up the wrong tree? Other games seem to work just fine. And if it is the video card, can anyone suggest an alternative driver for me to use? I've browsed guru3d.com, but I'm not really sure what I'm looking for.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Update: This person seems to be having the same problems I am, but with an ATI card:
http://www.dna-drivers.com/forums.ph...ts&p=3658#3658 (look at the last post in the thread)

I'm beginning to think that it's not the video driver then? Can anyone suggest something else to try?

If it's not the video card (and it doesn't sound like it is), I would suggest either a problem with the game, in which case you should contact the game maker, or you possibly have a problem with your RAM. Check for updates for the game... that's the first thing I'd do.

If that doesn't fix it, download memtest86 and run that.

I love Freelancer as well. I'm using an old GeForce 3 TD card and have no problems. Most of the guys in my squad are using newer NVidia cards and also have no problems. I would say the blue screen is more of a driver issue than a game issue. Perhaps Freelancer is doing some esoteric operation that the video driver should support but doesn't or doesn't do it well. I've run into this in my own game programming adventures as well. Just because you check the device caps before you perform the operation does not guarantee the driver is bug free.

Try to update your drivers. The game is very old and I doubt any support is available for it. It's support lifecycle is more than over.

I suggest running driver cleaner after removing the drivers you currently have and installing either the latest dna or omega drivers (I had a similar problem with UT2003/2004 when I went to 64 bit). If that doesn't work, try a reformat because sometimes driver cleaner and fresh driver installs just don't replace all the correct files...I just had to do this myself actually.

Just played Freelancer online for many many hours and it never exited once. The game is probably one of the most stable I've seen in a long time. Let me know if you get the issue fixed or not. Perhaps I can help diagnose it - or you can by using the debug versions of DirectX and set the error reporting to high. If DX exits it should either dump something to the screen and/or create a log file. But normally blue screen means that this error did not come from DirectX but more from hardware drivers.

Thank you for the responses. And yeah, the game worked great for me on my previous computer. I've tried all of the official video drivers from NVidia that support my card, so I'm at a dead-end there. I'll try the latest Omega or DNA drivers and see where that gets me.

Thanks again, and I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Great. Now I cannot get any game listing from Freelancer. You having the same problem??

Perhaps the server is down or gone or maybe it has to do with all the server issues that MS has recently had. Not sure how Freelancer gets the master list of servers.

EDIT:

Found a way to cause Freelancer to find a server with a certain IP. When you launch the game it will be the only server shown in multiplay.

I'm going to make an MFC utility to make it easier.

Just put in the path of freelancer.

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Freelancer\EXE\Freelancer.exe

And then the switch

-s<ip>

where ip is the ip address of the server.

So essentially:

Freelancer.exe -s01.02.03.04.05

would show the server with an address of 01.02.03.04.05 in the list, if it existed.


The global server is down right now and should MS ever decide to shut the thing down permanently, this is handy information to have. I'd like to make my own lobby for this but I don't know the packet information that the game sends to identify itself as a server. If I did, I'd make a simple MFC interface so that we could launch games, host, etc.

Here is the EXE for the utility I was talking about.

When you run this program you only have to do two things.

1. Hit the change button and navigate to where Freelancer is located on your drive.
2. Type in the IP with the port number in the IP edit control.
3. Hit launch.

Freelancer will display the server at the IP you type in, if it exists, when you go to multiplayer.

This is the EXE only. The source is not very long and is a simple MFC program. It does not currently save the path information or IP information to disk.

Future versions will replace the edit box with a combo box so that you can select from the 10 most recent IPs you've used with the program.

It won't let me upload it. I didn't know we could not upload zips.
Contact me and I'll give you the program.

I've managed to fix the jump gate crash problem. It wasn't the video driver at all. All I had to do was disable 3D Sound in the in-game options and now it works just fine. Hopefully this information can be of use to someone else as well.

Thanks again for all your guys' help.