Torque Freezing When Switching Windows
by Valador, Inc. · in Torque Game Engine · 10/20/2008 (9:58 am) · 2 replies
I'm having an issue with Torque on several of my machines that I can't seem to duplicate anywhere else.
The first sign of problems for me is that Torque takes much longer to start up when you run it than it should as per what I've witnessed on other people's machines. Where theirs will start up almost instantly (when DSOs are compiled already), mine takes up to two minutes to actually come up. From there everything runs fine except when I task-switch out to another application in Windows. No matter if I'm running Torque in window mode or full screen, if I switch to another application and then switch back to Torque, Torque sits there hung-up for up to two minutes. After the wait I get control of Torque back and everything runs fine... until I try to task-switch out and back again. In general I'd say this is annoying, but bearable. Unfortunately when I'm trying to debug something with breakpoints in Visual Studio, this makes life a living hell because of the constant swapping back and forth between Torque and Visual Studio. It's pretty much impossible for me to debug anything.
The part that's driving me batty is that I've tried this on several of my friends machines and theirs all work perfectly. I also have a laptop on which it works perfectly. I've gone through 3 desktop machines of my own and every single one has had this problem. The first is a 3 year old Dell XPS desktop. I'm not exactly sure on it's hardware specs other than it being a Pentium IV and using a GeForce 8600 video card. The second was an Alienware Area-51, Intel Core 2 Extreme 3.2 GHz, GeForce 9600GT, 4GB RAM, NVIDIA nForce 790i motherboard. The third is a Dell XPS 630, Intel Core 2 Extreme 3GHz, GeForce 9800GT, 4GB RAM, NVIDIA nForce motherboard.
So the only thing really connected about these three machines is that they're all Dell-spawn and I've been using the same monitors (DVI), keyboard and mouse (both USB) on all of them. However, I've plugged the monitors, keyboard and mouse into a machine where Torque works fine and it continues to work fine. I'm not convinced it's a Dell thing necessarily because I've successfully run it on other Dell machines (XPS desktops and laptops as well as Inspirons).
This problem happens with TGE 1.4 and 1.5. It happens with all the demo missions that come with Torque. It happens with our own Torque-based software. It even happens with a Marble Blast demo I downloaded. On the 3-year-old XPS it also happened with TGEA 1.7, but I've tried running the TGEA 1.7 demos on my new XPS desktop and they're working fine now.
I feel like I'm cursed as every new machine I get has this problem with Torque, but everyone elses machine I try it on has it work properly. Please, someone else tell me this has happened to them.
The first sign of problems for me is that Torque takes much longer to start up when you run it than it should as per what I've witnessed on other people's machines. Where theirs will start up almost instantly (when DSOs are compiled already), mine takes up to two minutes to actually come up. From there everything runs fine except when I task-switch out to another application in Windows. No matter if I'm running Torque in window mode or full screen, if I switch to another application and then switch back to Torque, Torque sits there hung-up for up to two minutes. After the wait I get control of Torque back and everything runs fine... until I try to task-switch out and back again. In general I'd say this is annoying, but bearable. Unfortunately when I'm trying to debug something with breakpoints in Visual Studio, this makes life a living hell because of the constant swapping back and forth between Torque and Visual Studio. It's pretty much impossible for me to debug anything.
The part that's driving me batty is that I've tried this on several of my friends machines and theirs all work perfectly. I also have a laptop on which it works perfectly. I've gone through 3 desktop machines of my own and every single one has had this problem. The first is a 3 year old Dell XPS desktop. I'm not exactly sure on it's hardware specs other than it being a Pentium IV and using a GeForce 8600 video card. The second was an Alienware Area-51, Intel Core 2 Extreme 3.2 GHz, GeForce 9600GT, 4GB RAM, NVIDIA nForce 790i motherboard. The third is a Dell XPS 630, Intel Core 2 Extreme 3GHz, GeForce 9800GT, 4GB RAM, NVIDIA nForce motherboard.
So the only thing really connected about these three machines is that they're all Dell-spawn and I've been using the same monitors (DVI), keyboard and mouse (both USB) on all of them. However, I've plugged the monitors, keyboard and mouse into a machine where Torque works fine and it continues to work fine. I'm not convinced it's a Dell thing necessarily because I've successfully run it on other Dell machines (XPS desktops and laptops as well as Inspirons).
This problem happens with TGE 1.4 and 1.5. It happens with all the demo missions that come with Torque. It happens with our own Torque-based software. It even happens with a Marble Blast demo I downloaded. On the 3-year-old XPS it also happened with TGEA 1.7, but I've tried running the TGEA 1.7 demos on my new XPS desktop and they're working fine now.
I feel like I'm cursed as every new machine I get has this problem with Torque, but everyone elses machine I try it on has it work properly. Please, someone else tell me this has happened to them.
#2
It turns out that the issue was with the monitor, of which I've been using on all machines where I encountered the problem. The monitor I'm using is an Apple monitor with a usb/firewire hub in the back. The hub ended up being the culprit as when I unplugged it Torque started working fine.
The reason I didn't figure this out before was that when I plugged the monitor into another computer to test it, I neglected to plug in the hub, thus it worked fine. However when I came back to my machine I plugged the hub in and thus it stopped working. I had tried unplugging my keyboard and mouse from the monitor hub and directly into the machine, but that didn't work. It seems that even if nothing is plugged into the hub the Torque problem still happens.
I'm not sure if it's specific to the Apple monitor hub or if plugging other USB/firewire hubs into a machine would cause it as well. Why a USB hub would be causing Torque to freeze when context-switching, I have no idea. Anyone have any insights?
10/20/2008 (12:29 pm)
Well... after months of messing around with this, trying to get it to work, two hours after posting my long, detailed story I figured out what was causing it.It turns out that the issue was with the monitor, of which I've been using on all machines where I encountered the problem. The monitor I'm using is an Apple monitor with a usb/firewire hub in the back. The hub ended up being the culprit as when I unplugged it Torque started working fine.
The reason I didn't figure this out before was that when I plugged the monitor into another computer to test it, I neglected to plug in the hub, thus it worked fine. However when I came back to my machine I plugged the hub in and thus it stopped working. I had tried unplugging my keyboard and mouse from the monitor hub and directly into the machine, but that didn't work. It seems that even if nothing is plugged into the hub the Torque problem still happens.
I'm not sure if it's specific to the Apple monitor hub or if plugging other USB/firewire hubs into a machine would cause it as well. Why a USB hub would be causing Torque to freeze when context-switching, I have no idea. Anyone have any insights?
Torque Owner Valador, Inc.
Valador Inc