Crashes with occasional runtime error. Last crash erased all progress :( help???

[nickcb]

Specs included at end of post


So i've really enjoyed the game so far, it had occasionally been crashing on startup (I'm running it from steam), sometimes with some kind of "Visual ..... "runtime error, but nothing that was too serious.
The recent crashes though had started to occur in game, and the two most recent started me back at the beginning of the level, and then most horribly erased all my progress to date. I looked for the save games in the UserData as indicated in one of the forum posts but I only found a default.dgu file here:
C:\Program Files\Valve\Steam\userdata\17459807\18500\local


Could someone diagnose this, and if possible get me back to the point where I had just finished the focal point level. It took me about 5 tries, and then just as I completed it, and it was going to go to the victory screen it crashed... (


Thanks!



SPECS:

Running from Steam

Operating System: Windows Vista™ Home Premium (6.0, Build 6001) Service Pack 1

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) Duo CPU T2250 @ 1.73GHz (2 CPUs), ~1.7GHz

Memory: 2046MB RAM

Page File: 1313MB used, 682MB available

DirectX Version: DirectX 10

Card name: NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600

Manufacturer: NVIDIA

Chip type: GeForce Go 7600

DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC

Display Memory: 520 MB

Dedicated Memory: 248 MB

Shared Memory: 271 MB

[jeff]

I'm sadly not familiar with any "Visual... " runtime error when running off of Steam.* Can you more specifically record the error message next time it happens?





Also, the game shouldn't crash at all.* If it is crashing there is likely something wrong either with the drivers,*the version of DirectX, a*conflict with anti-virus, or hardware issues.* We know of no game crashes that are still in the software itself at this time.* It is also possible you have a corrupt version of some of the Steam components and that can cause problems if that happens too.* Uninstalling Steam and reinstalling Steam can help there, though obviously that's a tedious process.





It sounds though like the latest crash happened when it was trying to save out the data to the hard drive.* There likely isn't anything that can be done to get that data back if it was lost during the crash I'm sorry to say.





Additionally this is an unusual error that I haven't*heard of before from users.* My take is that I would be concerned that you may have a hard drive problem that is acting up when you try saving data to the hard drive.* You may want to try checking the disk with one of the utilities in Windows to make sure you don't have bad sectors.


**


I can share with you the cheat code (type "=enzyme" in the main menu to unlock all levels for the next play session) and then you can access any level you want.





If you complete one level during the time the*cheat code is on, I believe it will unlock the next level when you come back and the cheat code is not on.* I haven't tried this in a long time, so I'm not as sure about it, but it may be worth a try so you don't have to replay all of the levels to get back to where you were playing.





As for your save games, they all are stored in the default.dgu file.**The saves are compressed and are very small.





If you have reason to believe it isn't a driver, hard drive, or Steam related issue, you can send your output of DxDiag.exe and msinfo32.exe (use the older nfo file format if possible please) to info @ hiddenpath.*com and reference this post please.





Jeff*