Question on duo setup on one box

Tiroon · April 07, 2006, 07:35:40 AM

One gig ram is pushing it for two boxing on one comp. An upgrade to 2 gig would be plenty to solve any problems associated with running low or out of memory.

While you were away the DirectX requirement went from 9.0b to 9.0c. Run dxdiag to make sure your comp is up to date.

Like others I two box on one comp and about the only problem is that autofollow won't work well in the window that's not in focus and that a swimming or levitating character who's window is not in the foreground will always start to sink.

I am running it on XP Professional and use no third party software at the moment though I heard good things about wineq2. Alt-tabbing is no problem even when both accounts are zoning at the same time.

Gunzak · April 07, 2006, 08:58:42 AM

Direct X is 9.0c so its current. I upgraded the video card when I got home from work and started playing after reboots and such. Went about 4 hours before client crashed so its still doing it. About the only thing left is buy more memory or a second comp. Friend of mine owns a computer store and will sell me 2 512meg chips for about $50 each or 2 1gig chips for about $100 each so ill buy the 2 1gig chips giving me 3 gigs which will hopefully fix this problem.

Gunzak · April 08, 2006, 03:51:48 AM

Turned off mip mapping and dynamic lighting in options for both accounts and both crashed within 30 seconds of logging both in. I am at a loss as to what is wrong.

Gunzak · April 08, 2006, 04:07:38 AM

Rebooted to double check and with mip mapping and dynamic lighting off, which should save memory, it causes an instant crash upon second login. Gonna turn both back on and play around with setting a bit more.

Tiroon · April 08, 2006, 09:26:47 AM

Two gig should be enough if my experience is anything to go by. I run my two accounts with no more than that and if I stay in one location for a long time my HDD actually goes to sleep.

Just to be thorough:

Did you defrag your HDD?
Did you make hardware changes to your comp while you were away? Maybe deleting the *.ini files that contain the comp's specs are not up to date and cause conflicts. Deleting them (i.e. renaming then to .old) will re-generate those during patching.
Did you go to the advanced options of your patcher and make sure all expansions are ticked? Run a complete file check while you're there.

Gunzak · April 08, 2006, 10:44:51 AM

Made no hardware changes. Did a complete file check and no problems. I did not check my hdd for fragmentation. Checking it with diskkeeper found it 39% fragmented so gonna defrag it tonight. I totally forgot to check that. Gonna add more memory when I get my pay check as well as it needs it.

Chickennuggets · April 10, 2006, 01:25:32 PM

I can two box on my puter with only 512 memory, and the bottleneck for lag is my crappy stock dell video card. I don't think your problem is with memory though... it would just be super laggy till you lost your connection, I don't think client crashes are caused by lag but I wouldn't swear on that either. Do you use the default UI? Maybe something associated with that... just kinda grasping, I know how annoying crashes are when you really get going. Are you getting your client crashes while fighting? Summoning mobs... anything special in the zone? Crowded, empty...

Gunzak · April 11, 2006, 08:31:20 AM

It will happen right after I alt tab to another character doesnt matter if im fighting ot just sitting there getting a heal. I use the default UI. After defragging my hard drive I can usually go about 4 hours till one or both crash but it will always happen. If I play one character I get no problems at all. I am just looking for a temporary fix till I can buy a second computer as its pretty frustrating. ALso after one crashes if I dont reboot the machine it will usually happen again within 30 minutes but if I do I can get about 4 hours now.

Chickennuggets · April 11, 2006, 12:04:15 PM

Just another thought I had... do you have /log on or /log off? Maybe at some point the logs mess up writing to the right folder with 2 instances, and crash one. Probably not though, might be something else to try to just keep them off. Try keeping as many backround programs off as well. When I would load up more than one instance I would close everything except for windows, and systray. Never had any problems with computer stability or connection or anything turning everything off, and it helped on my sub-par machine. I'm really stuck on your problem though... will do some poking around on the internet a little later when the job slows down a little later in the day. I feel for ya.

Shieara · April 11, 2006, 03:09:40 PM

Kind of a no-brainer but I assume you have checked for viruses and/or spyware?

Another thing to try is disabling sound (not in-game, in the actual .ini file).

Other then that, honestly it sounds like a heat issue. You should have more than enough machine to run both instances of EQ with little to no problem. I have an equilivent machine and I 3-box on one pc sometimes.

Gunzak · April 14, 2006, 07:18:57 PM

I use Microsoft Anti Spyware, Spybot Search and Destroy and Norton Antivirus. There is no spyware or viruses on the computer that I could find. Sound is disabled in the 2nd account in the ini file, read about this on eq windows site. As for heat I leave the left panel of the case open and have a circular fan blowing on it the entire time as it does run hotter doing this. The log is on for the primary though not sure about the second account. I will make sure both are off. I do not run eqwindows as the game would crash every time I tried running it just past the EULA screen.

I did a complete file check on both accounts but maybe the first got corrupted some how even though it shows all files are there. If that was the case though I would expect the game to have problems while running one instance and it never does. I only have a problem running two.

Defragging the machine gave a noticable performance boost and now it typically only crashes about every 4 hours or so now when it used to crash around every 2 before. Just to keep it up I defrag the machine every day I play after running the game and I get a crash. I then turn off computer fully and reboot and can get another 4 hours or so before a second crash.

I am at a loss though. Some people in game have told me that by going from 1gig to 2gigs of ram they went from regular crashes to perfect performance and others have told me 1gig is more then enough. If the game was corrupt it should crash while playing either instance but it never does.

When it crashes it will be after hitting alt tab. I will get a black screen that stays there for a bit. Some times a window will pop up that gives an error message and one will close and other times I will hit ctrl alt delete and will see 3 instances of eq running with two having crashed. Closing the two that have crashed will then allow the remaining one to continue working. It is also not the same one every time. Some times my Beast will crash and some times my Druid will all that matters is who I alt tab to. The one I alt tab to will crash.

I am going to add another 1gig of RAM tonight and see if that clears things up. If it does not then I will uninstall both copies of eq and reinstall them, which will take quite a while having to update both, so this is really something i dont want to do. This may not even fix the problem.

Gunzak · April 14, 2006, 09:02:56 PM

I talked to a tech at my friends computer shop today and he thinks its also a lack of memory since the swap file is using 1.6 gigs while running two instances. I purchased another gig of RAM and will install it tonight when I get home. He also suggested I disable Norton Antivirus while playing and run a memory scrubber. I have been disabling the internet security function as it interferes with EQ and AO quite a bit and I did install a memory manager but this program doesn't clean up the memory it just alters the swap file and available physical memory. I will report back tomorrow if this fixes the problem.

Gunzak · April 16, 2006, 05:19:15 AM

Well it wasnt a memory problem as it crashed 2.5 hours after playing when i hit alt tab. I am guessing it is either my video card or a problem with everquest. I uninstalled everquest and reinstalled it and will see if that does anything. If not then the only two remaining options are to upgrade my video card or buy a second comp.