Game crashes my PC

[wind0rider]

When I open Salem I'm able to enter my account and choose my character but then after the gui appeared my computer freezes completely and I need to force close it. Please someone help me.

[Procne]

Uhm, I think we would need to know the following:
- your PC specs (CPU, memory, graphics card)
- your operating system
- version of java

Also, if you could check CPU and memory usage in task manager shortly before the freeze

[wind0rider]

My cpu is a intelcore - i3 380M, my graphics card is the ATI mobility Radeon HD 5470 and my RAM it's 4GB DDR3. As for my operating sytem it's windows vista and the java is 32-bit.

[Procne]

Did you try selecting different character or create new one?

[wind0rider]

I did and the same thing happened. While it's saying "loading.." my computer freezes.

[MagicManICT]

The computer hard locks? The only way to recover is a manual reboot or power off/on or can you use task manager to kill the process? You should check in the driver settings to see if "VPU recover" is enabled. Try switching it and see if that fixes anything. (It could be one of the other 3D settings causing problems, too.)

Does this computer have an integrated graphics card? Was it properly disabled in BIOS and drivers uninstalled? Do you have the most up-to-date drivers for your OS and card? If you recently updated, there may be an issue with the driver. You might try changing to an older version or doing a clean reinstall of the current driver. (Sometimes drivers don't uninstall properly and leaves artifacts behind that interfere with normal operation.)

There may be an issue with the Java install. Please provide the exact version as Java gives you in the "About" information window from the Java Control Panel. You might need to do a clean uninstall and reinstall Java if an update didn't process properly.

[wind0rider]

I don't know if it hard locks, but what happens is that it freezes and ten minutes after it is functioning again but i can't close the game unless i use task manager.
The exact version of java it's "Version 7 Update 11 (build 1.7.0_11-b21).
About the driver I don't know anything.

[MagicManICT]

Probably not using the best term for it there. Sorry. By "hard lock," I mean the whole computer becomes unresponsive and the only choice is to reboot. Since just the client freezes, that can limit it to something within the client code and not causing hardware or drivers to freeze.

To find your driver version, you can go into the Control Panel, open the System item. Select the Hardware tab and click the Device Manager button. You'll have a list of hardware installed on your computer by category. Open the Display adapters sub-menu and double click your display device. Once that is open, click the Driver tab and it should give a date (date last updated or installed) and version number.

[wind0rider]

Yes, my computer hard locks but only for 10 minutes then i can use it again.
The date for the driver it's 25-08-2010 and the version number it's 8.741.1.5000. Thanks for the help finding it, it's not easy to recognize computer vocabulary since I don't use English for mine.

[Pjotr84]

If that's the date for the driver, there's definitely an updated one. Because you're using a mobility Radeon, you'd best check the website of your laptop's manufacturer. Some of them customise the graphics card to an extent, so your safest bet is to get updated drivers from their website and not directly from ATI.