Discussion for autosave freezing

[donald_wong_ooha]

I'm opening up a new thread to discuss the freezing that happens during autosaves, since the other audio thread is mainly focused on the constant audio stuttering problem.

So me and 2 of my friends have this problem, but 2 other friends do not. There's not really anything special about the 2 that don't have this problem. The only things I can think of is that one of them has a SATA drive and the other one has 2 gigs of ram.

Some related symptoms are that quicksaves also take a few seconds and also freeze up the system. Sometimes taking a screenshot does the same thing. Also, some of my quicksaves have corrupted thumbnails associated with them, which makes me suspect that there is some problem with the screenshot generation routine which may be the basis of this bug.

Any other thoughts?

 

[NJRoadie]

Autosave crashes

I also have the autosave crashes. I hit an autosave, the CD-ROM fires up, I hear the windows fatal error sound and then I am booted to windows.

I crash at random, too.

I wonder if it might be related to the audio problem, as I sometimes get stuttering right before a crash.

These problems have made the game unplayable.

 

[donald_wong_ooha]

Can you try taking some screenshots in different parts of the game and see if you have freezes/crashes doing that?

 

[donald_wong_ooha]

Here's something I found on planethalflife. This might be a workaround to the problem. Unfortunately, I'm still at work and can't test it out.

I believe if you change the auto save files located in your half-life2/SAVE folder, it disables the autosave feature. Change only the files that have autosave in the name to read-only. There are 4 of them.

 

[appoooh]

Here's something I found on planethalflife. This might be a workaround to the problem. Unfortunately, I'm still at work and can't test it out.

I've tested this and it works. You get a "path unavailable" error in the console when the client tries to autosave and can't.

 

[donald_wong_ooha]

Just confirming that making the files readonly works for me too. No more annoying autosaves that freeze the game. I just have to quicksave myself to make sure I don't lose any progress.

One thing I did notice is that the quicksave has a similar problem. When I press the quicksave button, the game will freeze and stutter as if it were autosaving. However, if I immediately press quicksave again after it finishes, the second quicksave is almost instantaneous. This leads me to think that the problem is not with the disk access at all, but with the engine gathering data to save.

 

[nausicaa]

Hey this works !! At last no more crashes !

 

[nbk]

I am one of the few who also get the problem. I will try to screenshot in some spots to see what happens.

**Screenshots are fine.

 

[Flyingbig]

You guys are the best, i am off to try this, if this works i owe ya bigtime!!

 

[Flyingbig]

Well it does help the issue but instead of a big pause all i get is a quick stutter thats pretty quick and abit easier to live with. Think i'll still wait for an official release that lets me disable autosave for good and hopefully fix the sound stuttering issue at the sametime. Timeout

 

[Rbentley100]

at last someone has found out how 2 disable autosaves thanks for the info, im prty sure my problem is when it takes the screen shot for the save as if I do any kind of save at all, auto quick or 'not quick' if too much is happening then my computer crashes, yet it crashes after hte save when it is taking the screenshot for the save. Im prty sure this is related to the fact that I only have 256mb of ram though, well im off to try lol, hope it works

 

[donald_wong_ooha]

I used to get corrupted screenshots for my saves as well, and I have 1 gig of RAM.

 

[Griifin]

I used to get corrupted screenshots for my saves as well, and I have 1 gig of RAM.

same here gone thru all fixes so iv deleted the lot and redownloaded can sum1 verify HL2 file size its tellin me 838mb and 100% surely its bigger than that.

 

[Cyan Leader]

Well, the problem is that crashes when I save normally which is vey anoying.

Let's hope Valve release something to fix this on the future.

 

[Cyan Leader]

*double post*

What exacly should I do with the 4 files to stop autosaving?
I moved them for another locacion but the game created new ones...

 

[Rbentley100]

select them, then right click on them, go to properties then select the box 'read only'.

This wrks my laptop now runs hl2 max textures at 1400x1050 smoothly

my specs are

dell inspiron 8200
p41.7ghz
geforce 4 440 go 32mb
256mb ddr


this just proves that you do not need an amazing computer to run this game, although since my card is only direct7 compatible I miss out on quite a few fancy graphics affects lol

 

[KiLLeRRaBBiT]

*double post*

What exacly should I do with the 4 files to stop autosaving?
I moved them for another locacion but the game created new ones...

Change only the files that have autosave in the name to read-only. There are 4 of them.

hmmm.. i will try this to.

 

[NJRoadie]

Still crashing

I changed the autosave files to read only and still crash randomly. I do not seem to crash during autosaves, but the loading sequence seemed slow and ready to crash. I also crash during quicksaves (f6). The strange thing is that the saves work> I hit f6, crash to the windows desktop, go back into the game and the saved game is there.

 

[gambo2166]

Thx helped big time!!!!!!

 

[Cyan Leader]

Well, the anoying thing is that on my PC, autosave, quicksave and normal saving, all of them crash.

This is really anoying =/

 

[Dark_cloud]

sv_autosave 0 in console or
sv_autosave "0" into autoexec.cfg

 

[Rbentley100]

well if your problem truely is autosaves crashing then all types of save will crash.

Ways I have discovered to save with no crash

1. Turn face a wall, this way only 1 texture and no huge world to render

2. make sure nothing is happening in the background

3.make sure you HD isnt loading something else

90% of the time this will save with no crash

as for the crash and still saves, the problem I think lies with the screenshot somehow(although by the sounds of things not with just taking a normal screenshot) so Im guessing your computer makes the save, tries the ss and crashes to desktop but since it has already made the svae then it is there for you to load. Im running win 2000 so I get a blue screen of death lol and this means the save appears on my load screen but cannot be loaded


thanx dark_cloud that is a simpiler solution


I would like to point out this is only 1 specific problem so if this doesnt work then you are suffering from a different probelm from the rest of us

Im now off 2 enjoy a great game running smoothly and NO CRASHES lol thanx all for your help

 

[NJRoadie]

Helps a little

The suggestion about facing a wall and saving helps. I crash about 25% of the time when doing this, rather than 100%. I can get through loading sequences with the autosave disabled.

The patch did nothing to help.

The game is still very laggy during heavy action sequences. When the bad guys drop exploding barrels and shot a lot it is like having a latency of 800.

I am not satisfied with these workarounds and really hope a fix addresses these issues.