Generals Zero Hour Crash

[Gracia Bradshaw]

versince using the original zero hour sometimes you get that stupid crash and the "technical difficulties" error

so now that everyone is using modern computers and it's all considered top-notch for the old zero hour

why does it still appear sometimes while playing?

mostly it happens on mods so maybe because sometimes there are excessive amount of units on the map? or alot of visual effects?

aside from all that, today i was playing contra 008 with my brother over LAN , we were playing a 2v2 on the lowest difficulty and we both crashed at some point in mid-game,also i was playing on challenge and it crashed several times ,sometimes in the middle of the game , sometimes after the start of the mission,recently it crashed when i used alt+tab

so why does it happen? both of the running machines were really advanced compared to zero hour requirements

As far as I know, Generals only utilizes one processor core. Anything above that will not have any effect on the game performance. As players progress in the game, more and more stuff is going on, which slows the game down and may sometimes crash the game. Challenge versus Air Force general, however, is known to crash frequently. It's a map-related problem which I am trying to fix.

"When you get to your EA Games folder (Or wherever your ZH folder is), right click the ZH folder, click "Properties", look in the "General" tab where it shows "Attributes" down at the bottom, click "Advanced" and uncheck "Allow Files in this folder to have contents indexed in addition to file properties". Hit "OK", then "Apply" and you're good to go."

I was wondering if there are any generals I should avoid having as AI? I've been getting three of these serious errors today. Funny thing is, I was playing the exact the same map where yesterday, I played a 3v3 AI match and it lasted over three hours until I won. But today, I played the exact same map, and the game crashed after about 45 minutes.

I've personally never noticed a general obviously causing a crash. There is no efficient way of analyzing AI scripts. The reason for the crash may not be caused by the AI or a thing used by a general. It could be the game engine failing. If you believe a specific general is crashing the game, look at your previous games and avoid those generals.

I still keep getting crashes, I don't get it, when I just began playing the mod (v009) everything was fine, but it seems like the crashes come more often now. I played Poison myself a couple of times. Also, the 'lag fix' doesn't really do anything for me, I run windows 7. I do have another PC with 16 GB memory (currently playing the mod on 4GB) do you think that might 'extend' gameplay duration?

Also, I DID have the the Tiberium Redux mod installed and that gave me the same error as I am getting now, so I uninstalled that, and uninstalled ZH and Generals and tried to start from scrated. I am still getting this error. Would be something simple as a resolution error?

PS: My resolution is set to 1600 900 because I have a wide screen monitor. When I filled out the options.ini that's the resolution I entered. I notice however after launching the game and going into the options menu, it' still set at 800 600. Weird huh? I thought if I exited the game, set my desktop to 800 600 and THEN tried it, it would fix it. It didn't, it must be a bad file from that Tiberium Redux, but I deleted all the folders! o.0

I'm not so sure about this next suggestion, but maybe it's with your copy of Generals. Or overheating, it may be possible, depending on the number of fans your PC has and the weather where you're living. Meh, I really have no other suggestions, since I cannot test on my PC (I'm running a Win7 Ultimate Edition 64 bit on specs way different from yours).

Overheating to measures so great that you can't play a 2003 game on such a computer is totally out of the question. You didn't read the error at all. It always says that errors may come from viruses, overheating software, etc., but none can affect ZH nowadays.

Yes, we've all experienced overheating, but only with those games our computers can barely run on minimal detail. This summer I've pretty much tortured my PC with StarCraft II and hi-detail Kane's Wrath. But that is only because I don't have an air conditioner at home, while everyone else has one.

Overheating on 7 almost 8 year old games on a computer with 2,8 GHz and 6 GB RAM, as trunkskgb has, is impossible. Plus, that error window is written like that for people who don't know what to do when the game crashes. Viruses and overheating hardware are only implied to be the cause, but no viruses specifically effect generals.exe or generalsZH.exe, and overheating is possible only if you can hear your PC moan. I've had dealings with that error window before, but those errors turned out to be only wrongly written mod stuff.

@trunkskgb, did you make sure you manually deleted all Tiberian Dawn Redux files from that folder? If not, you may have put the game in the same directory as you did before, along with left-over files from the mod.

No need to hear the PC moan... And for the virus, well. there's one that can affect all exe files (but not all at the same time, but at random), Sality. It doesn't outright kill all exe files, but it kills enough to necessitate either a full reformat (of all partitions), or a manual MS-DOS deletion (unless you have an anti-virus that cleans everything, including the boot-sector, accessible only through MS-DOS, before Windows boots up).

AAAARGH! Now I'm just confused. Can anyone explain what the interface that is used before Windows boots up is called? And am I right in assuming that it is the one being used to access and clean boot sectors of viruses?

I think we're steering a bit too much away from the initial meaning of this topic. If trunkskgb has an antivirus with an active protection service (like Symantec Endpoint Protection), then he couldn't have Sality (who knows how old that virus is?). If he doesn't, than he is pretty much on his own now, presuming he has Sality. MS-DOS and NT are not the same, story ended.

trunkskgb didn't answer to any of our possible solutions, so maybe it's best that we wait until he says: did he manually delete all mod files, or if not - did he install Generals in the same directory as before; is Generals patched to 1.08 and ZH to 1.04; is the game legit.

I deleted everything, and started from scratch and it still gave me an error. I then remembered that "another" folder is created in the Application Data folder where data is stored. I deleted that, and Generals worked. The patches I have for my games are from the original Westood FTP site that I have saved on my external storage device from years ago. They are legit. After I had Generals working, I played it for a few days using fan made maps. Bay of Pigs 2 to be exact. I then got bored with that, so I installed Zero Hour. I launched the game, and I got in. I made it all the way to the skirmish mode where you pick bases and colors and everything. I said to myself that it works, and I exited the game. The VERY next time I launched ZH, I got that error again just after the loading screen after the EA movie, and the opening intro.

hey there, i know this reply is very late haha, im having exactly the same problems, and about the overheating issue, its not my laptop overheating, but the cooler my laptop, the more of a chance i have of my game running hahaha, dont ask why, i havent found any solutions to this yet, my zero hour is on 1.4 or 04, something like that and i have bought it from retail, not cracked either, with no mods, i dont have a solution to this, but im only posting to share my experience and hope that when u find your solution, you can share too.

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