Ddhelp: illegal operation

[DoctorHawkeye]

Well I finally got planetside yesterday and after wipeing my hard drive, re-installing windows 98, and installing my vid, sound and a few other drivers, i installed Planetside. The instalation was crap, it crashed my computer about 16 times during the install but each time it got a little bit further in the installation. Finally it was installed and Station launchpad thingy was installed, but now I have another problem. Im not sur if it is only because I am either playing the Training thing(which i only did twice and this incident happened both times) and i am doing the Virtual training in the game. But After a few minutes of play either in training mode or in the VT in game(Emerald server btw) planetside terminates and this beautiful message appears:

Ddhelp
This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down.

(then under the details tab):
DDHELP caused an invalid page fault in module <unknown> at 0000:baa48b

Registers:
EAX=002a00ld CS=0157 EIP=baaba48b EKLGS=0010202
EBX=00000010 SS=016f ESP=007dfd38 KBP=007dfd4c
ECX=Flb95080 DS=016f ESI=00008dc2 FS=2547
EDX=00008dde KS=016f EDI=007dfd4c GS=2737

Stack dump:
(whole bunch of more numbers and letter code thingys here)

That is what I get, now im not sure what DDHELP file does but i know it is located in my Windows/System folder. Can anyone help me here?

Win98
AMD Athlon 1.0ghz
512 ram
Geforce 4 MX 440 64mb

[Agathon]

VVH (Hi There.)

You started with a clean machine, yet you had problems even installing the game, right? Did you experience problems installing anything else from CDROMs? Does the computer seem stable when not trying to play PS? How old is the CDROM? Have you had read or write errors with it before? Starting with a clean machine as you have done yet having such serious code problems in CDROM installed software makes me suspect your CDROM. I'd swap it out with a new one, rebuild your computer, and try again.

Before you do that however, I'd bring your game back the store you bought it from and tell them the CDROMs are damaged. If you got the game from most retail places, they will let you swap the game out with the exact same game back. This will give you a fresh copy and a fresh install code--Bonus! Try using the other CDROMs. Installation CDROMs are not usually bad, but they can be!!! I've even run across official win2k install OEM disks that are bad, so ANYTHING is possible. If it is possible to swap your game with a new one for free, do it! Try the new install disks.

If that doesn't work, replace your CDROM and rebuild your system. Then install the game with the old CDROM's and see if the problem goes away.

Good luck,

[SmilingBandit]

DDHELP is a DirectX program.

A few other things to do is update everything.

Everything includes: the BIOS on motherboard, video drivers, sounds drivers, Windows service packs and hotfixes, NIC drivers, latest DirectX.

Defrag and chkdisk your drive(s). Set your pagefile size to around 1024MB.

Try playing again and see what happens.

[Agathon]

Hello,

Yes, I'm assuming he has done all of those steps. Make sure you have all updated drivers and windows critical updates and driver updates. I never recommend non-critical fixes though, so avoid them if you can help it. Don't mess with your motherboard BIOS unless you really know what you are doing and are confident. Messing up the process effs you royally. I don't recommend people do this unless they know of a known problem. I didn't know that error was specific to DirectX, so know that I do know it:

When prompted by the game to install DirectX 9, did you decline? Go to a run box and type dxdiag. Press enter and wait for the program to load. Tell us what version of DirectX you are running please. Don't download DirectX 9.0a either. Stick with the regular 9.0 since I've had some irregularities with the latest "a" version.

8-)


*** The main reason I suspect his CDROM is because he said even the installation process was error prone. Either the CDROMs are flawed, or his CDROM is fried. He needs to check those two areas first imho.

[SmilingBandit]

It's at least a starting point

[DoctorHawkeye]

Well thanks for all that. I was thinking the discs my be bad but wasn't sure but the store i got it from (Game Stop) has a 7day return policy so ill look into that. First off i do have Direct X 9.0a so ill see if i can wipe that off then reinstall regular 9.0. If that doesn't work then ill look into new discs then into possibly a new cdrom drive, mine is only...... two years old but i have used it alot, ive cleaned the lense a few times with a special CD, but if the new discs dont work then ill look into getting a new drive. As far as a new system, im currently $700 in debt from a car i just bought from a friend so imma wait til i pay off the car and then get a good amount of cash on hand. Then as far as drivers are concerned, almost all are up to date(my motherboard one has an update available but for sake of wanting to play the game last night since i've waited more than two years for it to come out i decided to wait on that driver, ill get it now though and all critical updates for windows.)

Anyways thanks for all the help, ill go ahead and give your suggestions a try.