[tvboy]

It's ironic that Pixar, rooted in Apple culture, would allow this company called THQ to produce the video game for one of their most popular movies. They've been no help whatsoever with this very buggy PC game, that's supposedly for the Mac. The disc is a Windows/Mac hybrid, and manages to unpredictably bring my early 2006 Intel iMac with 2gb of ram, running Leopard 10.5.5, to a screeching halt. Right to the point where I have to perform a hard reboot. Their support suggested my video card was overheating, iStat pro said no, but I speed up the fans anyway with SMC fan control. Still craps out routinely. My son loves playing this game and I'd love to know what may be happening, or at least how to back out of it when it does freeze up and the audio skips like a broken record. Force quitting is not working, and the Console, (from what I can understand) records no crashes or kernal panics. I've seen nothing else about this on any forums, and read of only one other instance in a 1 star review from someone on Amazon.

[bobbob]

tvboy, on November 27th 2008, 10:03 PM, said:

Right to the point where I have to perform a hard reboot

That's an OS or hardware problem. An app can't do that. The hardware test disc might be of help, or Apple.

[Janichsan]

bobbob, on November 30th 2008, 08:09 AM, said:

That's an OS or hardware problem. An app can't do that.

Oh, believe me: a badly written app can do this.

[bobbob]

Janichsan, on November 30th 2008, 07:39 AM, said:

Oh, believe me: a badly written app can do this.

The OS should stop it and still be responsive. Maybe try SSHing into it after it locks up, then killing the game to see what's going on.

[yo-mike]

Maybe a simple trashing of the App. and it's associated pref file or un-install and re-install may help.
Are there any updates available?
What about disk repair/permissions too?

[tvboy]

Thanks for the suggestions...the crashes were becoming more frequent, so after posting my original question, I went back and trashed the app, (for the third time). I repaired permissions this time, AND ran TechTool Pro. I rebuilt the directory with it and defragged the hard drive, and just out of curiosity, reinstalled the game on a Lacie external firewire drive. I ran the game for hours over the rest of weekend and put it through its paces , (with the fans running slightly speedier) and to my amazement, it seems a lot more solid. No freezes at all. Only one instance when I was quitting where it seemed to freeze, then proceeded to do as it was told. Could a simple directory rebuild and defrag have anything to do with it, or was it simply repairing permissions? Interestingly, there was some slight graphical glitches when I didn't speed the fans up with SMC fan control...after, none at all.

[yo-mike]

tvboy, on December 1st 2008, 01:05 PM, said:

Thanks for the suggestions...the crashes were becoming more frequent, so after posting my original question, I went back and trashed the app, (for the third time). I repaired permissions this time, AND ran TechTool Pro. I rebuilt the directory with it and defragged the hard drive, and just out of curiosity, reinstalled the game on a Lacie external firewire drive.

TechTool was fine. I don't know why you would defragment your HD though. - - Usually that's only used to free up space on a highly used up free space HD (Should have 15% free space or more is best) Anyway, it shouldn't hurt either way. There's usually a short time after a derfrag that there's a noticeable speed-up - Though with such a fast Mac, you probably wouldn't notice anyway.
With my G4 I notice though.

Quote

I ran the game for hours over the rest of weekend and put it through its paces , (with the fans running slightly speedier) and to my amazement, it seems a lot more solid. No freezes at all. Only one instance when I was quitting where it seemed to freeze, then proceeded to do as it was told. Could a simple directory rebuild and defrag have anything to do with it, or was it simply repairing permissions? Interestingly, there was some slight graphical glitches when I didn't speed the fans up with SMC fan control...after, none at all.

Repairing permissions helps, and Repair Disk helps even more to add to it. Rebuild directory helps a lot too.
If you use Repair permissions, Repair Disk, and Rebuild Directory, (in this order) you really can't go wrong.
I'd trash the .plist file for Wall E too and tincker with the set up for it also, to find out what works best.
Good luck!

yo-mike

[yo-mike]

Just came to mind: Try running @ your Mac's native resolution.

[tvboy]

yo-mike, on December 7th 2008, 03:25 PM, said:

Just came to mind: Try running @ your Mac's native resolution.

Thanks! I did have one more instance of WALL E freezing and skipping audio despite all the things I did. I've just come to the conclusion that the graphics card MUST be overheating. I've been running the SMC fan control almost full tilt and cooling the GPU and CPU. Got the GPU as cool as 119F down from 139F, and I haven't had a crash in over a week while playing this game. Would the native resolution even matter though when the game sets it's own resolution when I launch the app?

[yo-mike]

tvboy, on December 7th 2008, 09:44 PM, said:

Thanks! I did have one more instance of WALL E freezing and skipping audio despite all the things I did. I've just come to the conclusion that the graphics card MUST be overheating. I've been running the SMC fan control almost full tilt and cooling the GPU and CPU. Got the GPU as cool as 119F down from 139F, and I haven't had a crash in over a week while playing this game.

Out of curiosity; Does this SMC ware void the Apple warranty? (Probably not) You do have the 3 year plan don't you? I'd just run it without any hesitation - - Apple will have to foot the bill if anything goes awry. **Just keep everything backed up***

Quote

Would the native resolution even matter though when the game sets it's own resolution when I launch the app?

Oh. I didn't know if Wall E had it's own set-up menu. I guess not then.

Wall E was a great movie btw!

This post has been edited by yo-mike: 07 December 2008 - 08:58 PM

[tvboy]

yo-mike, on December 7th 2008, 09:57 PM, said:

Out of curiosity; Does this SMC ware void the Apple warranty? (Probably not) You do have the 3 year plan don't you? I'd just run it without any hesitation - - Apple will have to foot the bill if anything goes awry. **Just keep everything backed up***

Oh. I didn't know if Wall E had it's own set-up menu. I guess not then.

Wall E was a great movie btw!

No SMC is a great little app...I never thought I'd use it though until now. AppleCare is probably the best thing I ever bought...As much as I'm an Apple fan, it was unfortunate my old G3 went right around the time the first generation Intels came out back in January '06...and we all know how first generation Apple hardware is. My first one, from Mac Mall, the display went blank after about 3 hours. I spent all of February '06 trying to get Mac Mall to cough up a new unit, because Apple "repairs" everything and doesn't accept returns, even if it is defective. Then on the next one, the HD fan fan went after less than a year of use. I found that out with the iStat widget...fixed, no charge. Then just back in September the HD gave me the click of death, (after only two years!). Again, replaced no charge, and I was able to restore everything with Time Machine thankfully. The only crappy thing is that if Wall E does fry my graphics card, it'll be replaced with the same mediocre ATI Radeon 1600.

[yo-mike]

tvboy, on December 7th 2008, 11:12 PM, said:

No SMC is a great little app...I never thought I'd use it though until now. AppleCare is probably the best thing I ever bought...As much as I'm an Apple fan, it was unfortunate my old G3 went right around the time the first generation Intels came out back in January '06...and we all know how first generation Apple hardware is. My first one, from Mac Mall, the display went blank after about 3 hours. I spent all of February '06 trying to get Mac Mall to cough up a new unit, because Apple "repairs" everything and doesn't accept returns, even if it is defective.

You should call Apple tech support about any problems, then they should provide you with a service number to take your Mac into a Apple sales and service shop. United States Apple Tech Support 1-800-275-2273

Quote

Then on the next one, the HD fan fan went after less than a year of use. I found that out with the iStat widget...fixed, no charge. Then just back in September the HD gave me the click of death, (after only two years!). Again, replaced no charge, and I was able to restore everything with Time Machine thankfully. The only crappy thing is that if Wall E does fry my graphics card, it'll be replaced with the same mediocre ATI Radeon 1600.

I think the graphics card is soldered on, and they'd have to give you a whole new logic board with the new graphics card. Hey, at least it would all be new.

Regards,
yo-mike

[Smoke_Tetsu]

The interesting part here is that Wall-E isn't even that demanding of a game. I can even run it on my Mac and at a good clip. I'd hate to see what Quake Wars would do to that GPU.

[tvboy]

Smoke_Tetsu, on December 17th 2008, 06:44 PM, said:

The interesting part here is that Wall-E isn't even that demanding of a game. I can even run it on my Mac and at a good clip. I'd hate to see what Quake Wars would do to that GPU.

Yeh, I get that feeling as I play it. Tell me though, could a scratch or dirt on the DVD bring the game to a halt? I'm noticing that this game tends to seize up when the action has to switch over to the disc.

[yo-mike]

tvboy, on December 17th 2008, 08:18 PM, said:

Yeh, I get that feeling as I play it. Tell me though, could a scratch or dirt on the DVD bring the game to a halt? I'm noticing that this game tends to seize up when the action has to switch over to the disc.

I don't know if a tiny scratch could do that much. I run Mac OS 9 Apps. from really light scratches on CDs and I don't even have any probs there. Have you tried running it from a DVD/CD Master Disk image you can create? Try that. Otherwise, I don't think this sounds too good. I'd be concerned.

[edddeduck]

Janichsan, on November 30th 2008, 06:39 AM, said:

Oh, believe me: a badly written app can do this.

An app can cause a hard crash by asking the drivers do do something that causes them to crash causing in turn your Mac display to hang.

Perfect example :- Battlestations Midway and 10.5.5 due to a bug in the updated ATi drivers the drivers would crash when we told it to draw the sky box shader! This would actually (due to the driver bug) hang the entire card. This meant you needed to reset the machine at the switch (or via remote ssh) the machine is still running just the card has crashed.

Luckily we made a work around for the BSM 1.0.3 patch and ATi fixed it in 10.5.6 but yeah you should not be able to hang a Mac but if the OS and application join forces anything can and sometimes does happen!

Although in this case it was not poor coding by anyone just a collection of different styles and methods non of which are wrong but when put all together caused a crash.

Edwin