It's a rather strange problem, so I don't really expect anyone to know a fix for it. But I thought I'd try anyway.
The issue is, that every time I load Siwa Oasis my computer crashes approximately 5 to 10 seconds in, as in stops responding completely and a hard reboot is required. It's only this map, and every version I've tried acts exactly the same way. Stock, stopwatch, you name it. Has been this way since I reinstalled the game a few months back, though it has worked on this computer before.
Another issue I have, which others seem to get as well, is that the game randomly crashes every once in a while but won't lock up the computer. I thought I'd mention it in case it's related, but I don't really care about that one as it's not really common.
There is one fault I'm aware of hardware wise with this computer. And that's the video card. One of the ram modules has a problem in it, and it causes strange things to happen when I approach the 150mb mark. Under that mark, everything is just dandy for any game I happen to throw at it. Though, in most games it's just in the form of graphical tearing since it starts rewriting the location of pixels, but won't actually crash. Also, given how dated this game is.. I assume it doesn't use nearly that much video ram.
Temperatures remain fine during normal gameplay and when it crashes, power is stable on this system, and OS maintenance is kept up with.. I also strip processes and services aside from an antivirus and firewall before playing to rule out any conflicts.
I've tried reinstalling the game, playing on 2.55, 2.60, and 2.60b with the same results. PunkBuster is also updated and I've tried the PK3 cleaner you guys have.
Specs for this system are as follows:
Athlon XP 2400+ (2ghz single core)
768MB DDR RAM
GeforceFX 5500 256MB 8x AGP
Windows XP
Sure, it's a little dated. But it could be worse.
I'd appreciate any thoughts you might have on resolving this.
-Athoram