# Red Alert 2 - Freezes when video plays



## dpwallis (Jun 8, 2005)

I have a copy of Red Alert 2 which I have played on all my PCs for years. I have a second rig which is an Abit KV8PRo board and an nVidia 6200 graphics card, 500MB ram.

The problem I have is that the game will run ok until the little video in the top right hand corner plays in the middle of a mission. At this point the game freezes up permanently with 100% CPU usage and 'not responding' in Task Manager. I've tried all different solutions - ie disabling graphics accelleration as much as possible, different IDE drivers all to no avail.

Any ideas people?


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## Couriant (Mar 26, 2002)

define 'copy'

Also have you updated the game? I think the last update is 1.05


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## dpwallis (Jun 8, 2005)

By 'copy' I mean i have an original game, purchased from a retail outlet and it's registered and everything, ok?

Anyway - I nailed this last night to a direct sound problem. I've turned down the hardware sound accelleration to 'basic direct sound acceleration' (2 from the top) and it's working fine.


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## Couriant (Mar 26, 2002)

Well, that's interesting. I never seen this problem before. But I'm glad that you have found the solution


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## dpwallis (Jun 8, 2005)

Actually - it's worth trying this with DirectX games that play up on machines which really ought to be happy running them. I had a similar problem with Unreal Tournament and an old ISA sound card a couple of years ago. I tried the same thing and it sorted that out too.

I think sometimes when games freeze we assume graphics a little too quickly and forget that sound can cause lock-ups too. Maybe it's a credit to the sound card manufacturers and driver writers that it's a rare problem which is why we overlook it!

Roll on crushing my son's Allied forces with my Soviet might on multiplayer - just like I did with UT


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## Couriant (Mar 26, 2002)

lol, not Yuri huh? Oh that's the expansion


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## Cheezmeister (Jun 16, 2005)

Yuri OWNS Allied n' Soviet!

Just for future reference, how exactly do you go about lowering the sound acceleration? This sounds like a valuable trick to pull out of my *** when all else fails


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## dpwallis (Jun 8, 2005)

Go to Contro Panel and select 'Sounds and Auio Devices.
On here under the 'Volume' tab select the 'advanced' button for the 'Speaker Settings' option.
On the box that opens select the 'performance' tab and just slide the 'Hardware Acceleration' slider down 2 notches - to 'Basic acceleration'.

Then remember to click 'Apply' and close the whole lot down again or it has a habit of resetting itself to full when you run a game - and don't forget to put it back to full yourself when you've finished your game, of course!!!!


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## Cheezmeister (Jun 16, 2005)

Cool, gracias


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## Langly (Aug 6, 2005)

Windows XP keeps resetting my Audio hardware acceleration level each time i reopen RA2, ive been having the same freezing problems, Windows insistance on setting it back is getting very annoying.
Any way to get it to stop.


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## isildur100 (Oct 11, 2005)

Great news!!! I finally solved the video freezing problem!! 

If you have this problem, update your motherboard chipset drivers. It's as simple as that. I have a VIA chipset so I went on VIA's website and got their latest chipset drivers. And bingo, no more video freeze.


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