Cheat Engine

Rogue101 · Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2004 1:52 pm Post subject: still at it

Still working on narrowing down the range. Its slow going as my computer keeps needing to be restarted.

Worst snow/ice in 10 years currently as well. So I'll be working more on this in a bit, after more immediate concerns are resolved...

Dark Byte · Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2004 6:48 pm Post subject:

Here's something else you might try:
Use the pause option of cheat engine before scanning, and when done scanning resume the game.

It might be one of the threads of KotOR does something weird while scanning the memory, so, if it cant do anything weird the system shouldn't crash. (Although I'm not sure what will happen when you resume, Crash? or keep going...)

Rogue101 · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2004 5:02 am Post subject: Pause

I tried the pause option under your 'advanced' section.

Still froze.

Narrowing the memory range down more.

Somewhere between 07C00000 and 08800000

Going to 07CF0000 froze the system.

Going a little before 08800000 Did not necessarily freeze the computer, but the video output would stop for a few seconds.

Yet somewhere between 08000000 and 08800000 is a System hang as well.

In short...

00400000 to 07C00000 works correctly.
08800000 to 7FFFFFFF works correctly.

Between 07C00000 and 08800000 is something that is not working as it should...

Rogue101 · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2004 5:12 am Post subject: Followup

tried 08700000 to 7fffffff

Had an IRQL error flash on my screen so quickly I could barely see that is what it was. Ill try to get more details on this, but the memory dump wasn't fun to go through, rather not go through that again Smile

Rogue101 · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2004 5:24 am Post subject: IRQL

ok... it was the...

IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL message.

I know that one of the possible solutions is that I have bad memory.

My memory is fine. 3 checks with Memtest, and nothing came up.

Another possibility is an application is interfering, but I don't know what it is and it could be Cheat Engine itself for all I can tell. I've already shut down everything else I can think of.

Now i know why I've been going through all these college classes, to figure out why I can't cheat in games. Heh.

Dark Byte · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2004 9:27 am Post subject:

"IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" might also indicate a incompatible driver for windows xp. (unverified by microsoft)

Also, try out:
http://members.chello.nl/~cheatengine/CE4b.rar

It has a small show button in the memory region field, and when pressed shows all the regions and their protections. Could you make a screenshot of that window between 07C00000 and 08800000

Does it also crash when you use the memorybrowser on that memory region ?

Edit:
1: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/4915/?o=20 and check out the last message on that page. Perhaps it may help you. (The rest of that thread might be helpfull too)
2: If you have the option Plug And Play OS enabled in your bios disable it.
3: Try setting the priority of the scanning thread to idle. (and with the taskmanager the priority of cheat engine itself to idle)

Rogue101 · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2004 11:38 am Post subject: okay... on 4.1

http://home.comcast.net/~lan2109/Memregion.JPG

Just for laughs, disabled OS handling of the IRQ's via the BIOS on my motherboard, the guys process in that thread was far more complicated than it needed to be.

Intel has the only microsoft uncertified certificates on my computer, and over the years, I've seen that to be the normal way of things. Especially when you are updating drivers sooner than microsoft knows they are out.

upon disabling the OS handlng of the IRQ's, I had no screen blackouts when scanning onward from 08700000.

I couldn't go further back however due to the system still locking up.

When I do not use the Cheat Engine option to pause the game, I am freely able to view everything through the memory browser. Yet once I do use it to pause the game, scrolling past 07C00000 locks up the computer.

When the game is not paused through cheat engine, when I use the browser the regions are constantly shifting and changing within 07C00000 - 08800000. I don't notice this behavior when scanning through any other segment of memory. It literally dances all over the screen.

Idle thread still caused it to hang.

Saw no differance disabling Plug and Play OS through the BIOS.

Rogue101 · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2004 11:45 am Post subject: another video.

http://home.comcast.net/~lan2109/memjump.avi

just so you can see for yourself, if you needed to.

Dark Byte · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2004 11:55 am Post subject:

That memory region is protected using the "No Cache" parameter.

According to the docs this is what the No Cache protection does:
Allows no caching of the committed regions of pages. The hardware attributes for the physical memory should be set to no cache. This is not recommended for general usage. It is useful for device drivers; for example, mapping a video frame buffer with no caching. This flag is a page protection modifier, only valid when used with one of the page protections other than PAGE_NOACCESS.

This means that it's propably not memory that is used to store game variables in. (Propably graphics). I'll add a option in settings that allows you to disable scanning memory with that protection.

(I still think it's a hardware or device driver problem though)

Dark Byte · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2004 1:12 pm Post subject:

download it again:
http://members.chello.nl/~cheatengine/CE4b.rar

go to settings->scan settings and enable the "Don't scan memory that is protected with the No Cache option" option
See if it still crashes then

Rogue101 · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2004 1:36 pm Post subject: Works

Runs beautifully.

Great work!