Golf Sim Clubhouse Forum

Dar;
Not a senior moment. See attached.
Cheers, Dave

Dave! I can't remember what version you have. If its the Collectors edition there's a patch for it in the utilities. May not hurt to install it even if you don't, that is if you still are having problems.

SteveHorn wrote:Dave! I can't remember what version you have. If its the Collectors edition there's a patch for it in the utilities. May not hurt to install it even if you don't, that is if you still are having problems.

Steve; Thanks for mentioning this. My Forum History of Game issues here is short but complicated, but eventually in trying to resolve various issues I ended up installing the Downloadable version. The Installer program shown in the background of the picture (previous post) is from that version of PGA2000, (provided in the "Utilities Section" here). Is that the Collector's Edition?
Dave

Dave, you've probably already told us, but what version of Windows are you using?

Anyway (XP in W2000 comp mode) I loaded Greenbrier and tried everything I could to make it glitch... no go. Anyway, as long as that swooped arrow is showing up when you point your cursor in the area of the player or shot meter, you should... emphasis on should... be ready to go. (I usually point the cursor inside the shot meter close to where I want my 2cd click; the arrow disappears on the first click but it seems to help me focus on my swing better.)

Indy Anna Jones wrote:Dave, you've probably already told us, but what version of Windows are you using?

Anyway (XP in W2000 comp mode) I loaded Greenbrier and tried everything I could to make it glitch... no go. Anyway, as long as that swooped arrow is showing up when you point your cursor in the area of the player or shot meter, you should... emphasis on should... be ready to go. (I usually point the cursor inside the shot meter close to where I want my 2cd click; the arrow disappears on the first click but it seems to help me focus on my swing better.)

Judy;
We have to stop meeting like this!
Thanks for taking the time to respond to my posts. Your response here gives me the opportunity to summarize my problem for all who are interested in this issue:

1) My original Titanium Edition, installed 4 years ago on this PC, had no problems (however I had only played the original courses).
2) When I had a minor problem with a "Designer" course, that I had downloaded, Dar suggested I install the 3.3.4.5 patch.
3) After patch installed, got error message when trying to start game, and game would not load
4)Tried to reinstall game from original discs but, could not. CD/DVD player did not recognize discs
5) Downloaded and installed, online version of PGA2000, and played several original courses (and practice hole tested several others) without problems.
6) Later noted that, when playing certain "Designer" courses , (I had downloaded about 10 at this point) out of curiosity, they all seemed to have some "Freeze Up" issues.
7) Dar suggested I use Win2000 mode, unfortunately this caused instant unrecoverable freeze up on the 2 original courses I tested (literally had to pull the plug on the PC).
8) Switched back to XP mode
9) Further analysis of the "Freezes in XP (up until now) indicates that they are related to swing activation (player click or bar click) for the human player, and vary from course to course. For example, Arcadia Bluffs - no problem. Bali Shandra - use player click or click very carefully on the swingmeter. Greenbriar - 3 problem holes (I can recover and move on) all other holes seem OK. Black Widow - first shot is always OK, but second shot freezes and all recovery games continue to freeze.
At this point my wife would scream "too much information!"
And I would reply "Them's the breaks - I guess!"
Cheers, Dave

If I had working originals I'd be happy to burn a set and send them to you, but my originals stopped working and I'm playing with copies that one of my friends here sent me. Just my own experiences, I've never had much luck with large games I've tried to dl (even when purchased new from the creator)... it just seems like there are too many things that can go wrong.

Any suggestions I could make would be from an essentially computer-illiterate person when it comes to inner working of files and systems. Most course problems I've had have been corrupted files/cds corrected by dl'ing originals from the available source, be it here or one of our predecessor forums, but since that's your starting point that's not a viable solution.

An open question for someone more knowledgeable than me. In the PGA are certain .dll and other files that are involved with the animation and drawing of the screens; a couple that I can see are animator.dll, RenderEngine.dll, coursedata.dll. Could a corrupt file here cause the problems Dave is seeing, or would this simply render the game unplayable? I don't understand why some courses play without ANY problems, some with a few, some are unplayable unless it's a library issue of some kind. Sorry, this is way over my head.

About the only thing I could suggest right now... and it's not getting at the root of the problem unless the problem is libraries... is to dl some of the older courses from '99-'01 that use mostly stock libes and maybe 1 or 2 custom libes and see how they perform. May I suggest White Fox Woods by Pyecraft (2005)... a very nice "A" course that only uses stocks.

Indy Anna Jones wrote:.
An open question for someone more knowledgeable than me. In the PGA are certain .dll and other files that are involved with the animation and drawing of the screens; a couple that I can see are animator.dll, RenderEngine.dll, coursedata.dll. Could a corrupt file here cause the problems Dave is seeing, or would this simply render the game unplayable? I don't understand why some courses play without ANY problems, some with a few, some are unplayable unless it's a library issue of some kind. Sorry, this is way over my head.

I think a corrupted .dll file would be more likely to render the game unplayable... not intermittently.

Something is unique on Dave's system that is causing a problem others do not experience. It could be a number of things. It could be a marginal mouse. It could be something to do with the video card. It could be memory availability. It could be cache allocation.

For this problem to show up sporadically across different courses makes me think it has something to do with the size and complexity of the game screens being rendered at the time of the freeze... but that is just a guess. If that was the case, then courses with dense object concentration on the game screens might be more likely to cause this freeze.

A few more questions Dave...
-What mouse and mouseware do you use?
-What is the memory size on your video card?
-how much RAM do you have on your system?

Dar

Dave! It could be you need to adjust your hardware accelleration of your graphics card in the display located in your control panel. You may also want to consider slowing down your mouse a little to give you better control in moving it around.

For windows XP to adjust hardware acceleration go to display in your control panel. After opening display go to settings tab and click advanced in the bottom right. Then click the troubleshooter tab. You should then see a slider setting for the hardware accelleration on your graphics card. I would move it to the middle if its set on high. You should probably check the enable write combining below the slider. Hope this helps. You should find a mouse in the control panel also with a simular type slider to adjust the speed.

Thanks to all for the current suggestions. Lot's of good stuff there and I will work my way through it systematically. With so much going on with the Game these past few days (crashes, reinstall, freezes, some course downloads etc.), I forgot the basics and did not post my PC specs; so here they are:
AMD Athalon dual core (4200+) processor with 3 gigs mem, 300GB hard drive. Video is NVidia GeForce 6150 LE (256 meg integrated). Operating system is Windows XP SP3. Mouse is the original wired mouse provided by HP. I'm already running it real slow, as I fool around with digital art and photo editing programs so need a slow mouse for accuracy and control.
Cheers, Dave

Dave,
If you think it will help, I'll be glad to copy my 3 disks that came with The Titanium Edition.
Just PM me your snail mail address.