Rare Freeze issue - Updated 7-9 8:30 PM

This message was edited 15 times. Last update was at 08/18/2009 21:53:15

UPDATE - July 9th, 8:30 PM

FIGHT NIGHT Round 4 has been on the North American shelves for a couple of weeks and has now hit the streets world wide as fans of the series battle their way to ring supremacy. There's been a lot praise for the game and the community has been very vocal with what they love about it along with areas that they would like to see improved.

For the complete update, check out the Inside EA SPORTS Blog - Q& A with Mike Mahar: http://insideblog.easports.com/archive/2009/07/07/fight-night-round-4-q-amp-a-with-mike-mahar.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage

DLC and patches coming - http://blog.fightnight.easports.com/archive/2009/07/07/downloadable-content.aspx

Matt Mahar Blog - http://blog.fightnight.easports.com/archive/2009/07/07/fight-night-round-4-post-launch-update.aspx

UPDATE - June 29th, 1:40 PM

With regards to the freeze issues in Legacy Mode that some users are experience, the dev team are working to re-create the issue on our end and determine the next steps towards providing a fix once the exact reason for the freeze is nailed down.

We appreciate the community's patience as we work around the clock to resolve the issue.

UPDATE - June 26th, 10:30 AM

Good news. The devs have been working around the clock and have a fix for the issue which will be patched following testing of the fix and the appropriate approvals. Here's a note from EA_Baron from his poll thread:

Firstly, apologies to all those FN4 fans that have been impacted by the freeze at the start of the game. We have found a code problem with how we dealt with playlists that caused this freeze – this is not hardware related. We have a fix that solves it and are arranging a title update / patch as soon as possible (this generally takes 2 to 3 weeks to get through the various stages and available on LIVE). To avoid the freeze, please ensure you have less than 35 playlists on your console or streaming from an external source such as a PC via Windows Media Center. Thanks again for the communities dedication and support !

UPDATE - June 25th 9:30 PM

For the people that are currently dealing with the issue it looks like we have some resolution. Here's a post from EA_Baron on page 10 of this post.

Good evening, it’s definitely better than this morning.

We have finally managed to recreate the freeze on some of our machines !

The issue seems to point to playlists (yes some forum members have said this already). The playlists could stream from the PC to the Xbox 360 using Windows Media Player or another media application. If there are a high number of playlists (this will vary from console to console, but seems like 35+) in the library and the Xbox 360 is granted share permissions to the library, the title will freeze on some consoles.

We can now focus our attention at working out why this is happening and what is the best solution for it.

For users that are experiencing a freeze that they feel is not related to the above, please PM me as we will continue to investigate.

Furthermore, if you are experiencing the issue we are tracking please try these specific troubleshooting steps to temporarily fix the issue.

1) If you have media streaming, shutting this down seems to help
2) If you have local custom soundtracks you are trying to play when starting FN4, this may cause the freeze, in fact even having too many on the X360 seems to cause a problem.
3) If neither of the above two work, try disconnecting your online connectivity
4) Last resort for some users seems to be to remove the HDD or format it

UPDATE - June 25th 1:30 PM PST

Just wanted to provide a quick update that we are in the midst of working with community members to help narrow down and address the issue. Thank you to everyone that have assisted with the temporary work-around suggestions that have helped fellow users troubleshoot the issues.

For those that have attempted to troubleshoot with no success, please feel free to email me directly at aquinto@ea.com or leave a PM with user persona EA_Baron or persona FightNightSupport.

Obviously the work-arounds are not optimal and we are continuing to work very hard to address the issues that some users are currently experiencing. We appreciate everyone's feedback and especially appreciate those users who have stepped up big time to assist the development team in resolving the issues.

Kind thanks, folks!

UPDATE - June 24th 9:30 PM PST

Thanks to everyone for posting their information. We are working hard behind the scenes to firstly reproduce this problem and find out a solution to it.

The demo freeze that we investigated seemed to be hardware related, nothing within the game code could be seen to cause the problem, however we continue to dig deeper to see what kind of similarities exist. Based on discussions with affected users, the problem seems to lie somewhere between audio data and online configurations.

Please PM me directly if you are open to working with the FN4 Dev Team to dive deeper into this issue, as we need your help, unfortunately we can’t recreate the freeze issue on any of our hundreds of kits
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

We are aware that some users that have had freezing demo issues also have the retail version freezing on them as well. We are continuing to troubleshoot this on our end to determine specifically what the cause is.

The freeze issue seems to be an HDD related issue and specific files contained within. We are still investigating what it is about these specific files on specific HDDs as it is happening to a very small number of users.

What seems to resolve the issue for some is to disconnect your network cable and reconnect once you are past the freeze screen or reformatting your HDD (save game files to Memory Card)

If your are having a freeze issue, please send me an email with the following information:

Type of Xbox 360 - Elite, Pro or Arcade?

What dashboard version are you running on your console? Can be found in ‘System Info’

When did you purchase your console?

HDD Size

Remaining Space on HDD after the download

Connection Speed

Router type/Model

Wireless or Cable?

What time and date did this occur?

Do you have other games that freeze on the machine?

Troubleshooting

What is your Gamertag?

Where does the locking up occur? Title? Menu? Gameplay?

Does it always lock up at the same spot?

Does disconnecting the network cable help?

Is you console connected to a PC? Does disconnecting it from the PC remedy the issue?

Does removing your HDD remedy the issue?

Do you have custom music or streaming music on your system? Does moving that to a memory card and deleting it from your HD remedy the issue?

Does it still lock up without a profile signed in?

X360 users who are having the freeze on the title screen try to transfer their custom music to a mem card and deleting them off their HDD? This seems to help that issue.

also be aware that the ps3 version dont have custom entrance music. hope we get a response on why we didnt get that feature and what are your plans if there are to solve that.

Its the 120G HDD. Thats were the problem lies.....cuz I have one and so do many others experiencing the same thing

Please fix this...I paid for game ...LEt ME PLAY IT!!

I have a 20gb so it's probably not the 120gb. I've tried deleting tiger woods data because maybe thought it was the gamerface. Someone else was saying netflix or nhl 09. Who knows?

think I might have found a solution. I deleted all my music and it started right up. I had custom soundtrack for ncaa and nhl which may have conflicted. Hope this helps ea

I have reports that this is working though some have music and it works.

Maybe something fishy with some kinds of custom music. Thanks for your feedback.

We will continue to investigate to see if we can determine the exact issue.

Glad people are enjoying the game. Was 2-0 at heavyweight WC until I got taken down by a body punching maniac!!! lol Good times.

xbox.SRH615gamer wrote:think I might have found a solution. I deleted all my music and it started right up. I had custom soundtrack for ncaa and nhl which may have conflicted. Hope this helps ea

Ding Ding Ding you hit the Jackpot man .I deleted all my custom songs i put on mlb 2k9 and now it works... finally.. thanks alot man.

on ps3 my game frezzes everytime i get a msg or if one of my friends sign in or out

it starts gettin all slow motion

im not the only ps3 user with this problem either

Please continue to report all of these common occurrences with game on this thread and we will report to EA about it.

hi

i have also that freeze thing

(The demo works fine, but the retail freezes at the first screen)

my config:

Type of Xbox 360 - Elite, Pro or Arcade? - PRO

What dashboard version are you running on your console? Can be found in ‘System Info’ - NXE ( the new Dashboard with newest updates )

When did you purchase your console? - February this Year

HDD Size - 60GB ( i got the Problem also without the HDD connected !!! )

Remaining Space on HDD after the download - ~19GB

Connection Speed - 16.000mbit

Router type/Model - Linksys

Wireless or Cable? - Cable

What time and date did this occur? - every time

Do you have other games that freeze on the machine? - nope

Troubleshooting - Freeze at the first screen - after 10 seconds everything is freezed up ! i must power off the console

Where does the locking up occur? Title? Menu? Gameplay? - First Screen ( every time )

Does it always lock up at the same spot? - yes

Does disconnecting the network cable help? - YES ! i can reconnect the cable after the first screen - and can play online etc !

Does it still lock up without a profile signed in? - yes - with or without - it doesnt matter

i hope i can help

Well the demo just wouldnt work, I seen loads of my friends playing and was so envious, It would bring up the screen " Fight Night Round 4 " and sometimes would freeze where you have to restart the console or would no freeze the console but stay on that screen. However I only recently got a 120 gig HD and all othert games are fine, I tryed unclipping the HD and walaa it works, But there is very little point in playing the game without being able to save.

Im possotive its the 120 giggers that the problem. It needs fixing sharpish coz its only 2 days till release here and whats the point in buying it if it wont work. Carnt believe EA let this problem arise. Ive been waiting ages for this game and carnt even play the thing. Ill try unplugging the wireless connection and see what happens then.

Please sort this out before Friday UK release, Please please please. Ive notts in my stomach now.

Right yeah man its working after I unplugged my Wireless piece from the back, So yeah to the EA rep on here hope this helps you guys fix it, Its deffo seems to be something to do with xbox live as Im sure when you load every game up it logs in and out of live very quickly, so this is where the issue may be.

Good Luck guys I hope you get it sorted.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 06/25/2009 12:55:51

Thanks for the info on the wireless device-- we're looking into it now.

Do you, by chance, have custom soundtracks for other titles? We believe that custom playlists for other titles may be causing the issue with the retail version of the game. Read through the thread for more information and let us know if this still doesn't help anything.

I had the same freezing at the title screen with both the demo and the retail game. This morning (after reading the other freezing thread here), I deleted all of my custom soundtracks (I had 40-50 for NHL 09) and it loaded fine. Problem solved...

Oh, except for the hours of work I put into the custom soundtracks for another one of EA's franchises that I blindly support. Way to punish us for being too loyal, EA!

Well I went into the NHL09 game memory and removed about 4 items in it, Game saves etc etc, Well everything in there and still didnt work, I then tryed unplugging the wireless thing in the back and it works fine, I then plugged the wireless back in and its all good, LoL Im a bit gutted like coz I had the deom for ages just sitting there and id given up on it. But yeah deleteing all NHL stuff did nothing, Removing the wireless did, or just unplug your connection if you have one.

Electronic Arts

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EA SPORTS Fight Night Round 4