[MOHAA] Spearhead & Breakthrough nvidia crash fix

[Ned]

I recently received quite a few enquiries of help with a MOH crash issue where MOHAA would load fine but both of the expansions would crash on start up. I said to do the usual things... ensure patched to latest versions, reinstall game/patches, reinstall games/patches without using noCD files etc... none of this worked. I found the problem and I'm posting the info here in case someone else ends up with the same issue and they search the forums for an answer (some of us actually use the search function ).


The Problem.

Medal of Honor Allied Assault expansion packs crash for winXP/2000 users who own nvidia graphics chip cards and use series 9+ nvidia forceware drivers.
Standard Medal of Honor Allied Assault does not crash.



The explanation and fix.

One of nvidia's driver releases (around the 8 - 9 series) had a crash issue with MOHAA which was fixed in v93.71

from v93.71 release notes

Medal of Honor Under Windows XP / Windows 2000
• Problem
The Electronic Arts game Medal of Honor uses a hard coded buffer to parse
the OpenGL extension string. This can cause a system crash under Windows
XP and Windows 2000.
• Workaround
NVIDIA has implemented Medal of Honor application detection to work
around this extension string crash.

TROUBLE IS... the workaround is automatic when MOHAA.exe is used BUT NOT when moh_spearhead.exe or moh_Breakthrough.exe is used which means the crash issue remains with the expansion packs.



Here are two ways of addressing this problem.

1. install earlier version nvidia drivers than 9 series (not recommended)
-you could probably get away with this if you were using an older graphics card eg. series 6 or earlier-

2. use nHancer - Advanced Control Panel and Profile Editor for nVidia cards
- http://www.nhancer.com/ -

• install nHancer (v2.2.2 at time of post was latest)
• start nHancer

-look at the Profiles window
-depending on your current graphics card/drivers you may or may not have any listed profiles

-if you DO have profiles listed look for Medal of Honor: Allied Assault
-in the summary section to the right of this you should have ConfTxtClamp- ExtLimit:11A8
-if this is there then the problem is fixed
-start playing!

-if you DO NOT have any profiles listed or MOHAA is missing then do the following:
-select Add (under the profiles box)
-name the profile whatever you like eg. mohaa sh-bt
-select Add (to the right of the Executables box)
-use the Look in drop down window to find the relevent .exe files
-default loaction is C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\MOHAA
-relevent executables are moh_spearhead.exe and moh_Breakthrough.exe
-in the Settings window (to the right) ensure Profile is selected
-select Compatibility
-tick Conformant texture clamp and select Off
-tick Driver extension limit and in the box type 11A8
-problem is now fixed
-start playing!









For those who haven't played MOHAA Breakthrough, this is a great game in both singleplay and multiplay modes. A very underated game!

[Arkon]

Thats very good Ned But I know someone who had the problem of them crashing back to desktop with a ATI Radeon 9600xt which was also a driver issue only trouble is I cant remember which drivers worked best