Does lotro now require a 64 bit OS ?

I had terrible problems also. I was running 32 bit Win 7 (which I believe is what you are running). I wrote to turbine and received this..

"Thank you for your request. Please open the userpreferences file that is found in your Documents > The Lord of the Rings Online folder and within that file under the sectioned titled [Display] make the following changes:

Change AllowFakeFullScreen=True to False
Change SyncToRefresh=False to True
Verify that the number following Resolution= matches your current Windows desktop resolution
Change Antialiasing= to Disabled if set to 2x/4x etc. (e.g. Antialiasing=Disabled )
Change AllowDesktopCompositing=False to True
Under the section titled [Render] change the TextureDetail option to Medium (i.e. TextureDetail=Medium ).

Under the section titled [Troubleshooting] change the MaximumFrameRate option to 57 (i.e. MaximumFrameRate=57 ).

Exit the file and choose yes when prompted to save changes prior to launching the game to test these settings.

Some additional settings changes can be made from the in game Options menu (Note that after making these additional adjustments you will be asked to restart the game client once more so that it can save/apply these changes):

Under ADV Graphics disable the Player Mesh Combining setting.
Set Frill Distance to disabled.
Lower the Player Crowd Quality Control slider to 0.
Under Audio make sure that the selected sound playback setting is "Generic Software on..." and that Use EAX is disabled.
Under the Troubleshoot section lower the Engine Speed setting to Medium."

Although many of these changes degraded the appearance of the game, it solved the crashing. Rohan BTW is a lag fest and has been known for this since it came online. Can't wait to see what these massive battled in HD are going to be like (rolling eyes).

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Originally Posted by Rainothon

I'd be a bit careful with any info from a forum behind a swearword/pr0n website. What's up with that anyway? Folks on a pr0n/swearword website discussing LOTRO?:confused:

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It's a banned site, not a pr0n or "swear word" site. Basically it's another Unofficial LOTRO forum.

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Originally Posted by Gravitystorm

I had terrible problems also. I was running 32 bit Win 7 (which I believe is what you are running). I wrote to turbine and received this..

"Thank you for your request. Please open the userpreferences file that is found in your Documents > The Lord of the Rings Online folder and within that file under the sectioned titled [Display] make the following changes:....

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Nice one Gravitystorm, especially as it works :)

I decided to try it to see and so far *touch wood* I've not crashed once so if anyone else has the same problem this is a short term fix at least. I'll still upgrade my OS (I'm running 32 bit win xp not win 7) as it makes sense but it's nice to find that there is another solution as well.

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Originally Posted by manstan

With a 32 bit OS you will never use that 4 gig. You might have it, but it wont use it. With out a bit of tweaking that 32bit OS will never use more then 2 gig.

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This is utterly untrue. The 32-bit editions of Windows (at least those derived from the NT kernel like 2000, XP, Vista, etc) have always been able to address 4GB of RAM. The reason this is confusing for so many people is that the 4GB total is allocated as 2GB for applications, and 2GB for the executive (think kernel). A 4GB machine running 32 bit windows will most definitely use all 4GB if it needs it. But your application (i.e., LotRO) can only get at 2GB of it. The other 2GB is off limits to the user space.

The 3GB switch mentioned above (and that Turbine recommends that you don't use) changes this arrangement to allow 3GB for user/app space and 1GB for the executive. As Sapience mentioned, using this can cause other problems and Microsoft only recommended that it be used in specific use cases.

Really the best answer here is to simply upgrade the OS to a supported 64 bit platform. We've had 64 bit CPU's for over a decade now, and 64-bit desktop Windows OSes for nearly 8 years now. The benefits of upgrading are many.

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Originally Posted by kmcferrin

This is utterly untrue. The 32-bit editions of Windows (at least those derived from the NT kernel like 2000, XP, Vista, etc) have always been able to address 4GB of RAM. The reason this is confusing for so many people is that the 4GB total is allocated as 2GB for applications, and 2GB for the executive (think kernel). A 4GB machine running 32 bit windows will most definitely use all 4GB if it needs it. But your application (i.e., LotRO) can only get at 2GB of it. The other 2GB is off limits to the user space.

The 3GB switch mentioned above (and that Turbine recommends that you don't use) changes this arrangement to allow 3GB for user/app space and 1GB for the executive. As Sapience mentioned, using this can cause other problems and Microsoft only recommended that it be used in specific use cases.

Really the best answer here is to simply upgrade the OS to a supported 64 bit platform. We've had 64 bit CPU's for over a decade now, and 64-bit desktop Windows OSes for nearly 8 years now. The benefits of upgrading are many.

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Actually LOTRO won't really make use of 4 gb of RAM anyway... 2 sounds more like it, unless theres some crazy stuff going on in the moors. If you're using a 32 bit OS though you are not only limited by your RAM but also by your paging file, which is absolutely important for a game like this one.

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Originally Posted by kmcferrin

This is utterly untrue. The 32-bit editions of Windows (at least those derived from the NT kernel like 2000, XP, Vista, etc) have always been able to address 4GB of RAM. The reason this is confusing for so many people is that the 4GB total is allocated as 2GB for applications, and 2GB for the executive (think kernel). A 4GB machine running 32 bit windows will most definitely use all 4GB if it needs it. But your application (i.e., LotRO) can only get at 2GB of it. The other 2GB is off limits to the user space.

The 3GB switch mentioned above (and that Turbine recommends that you don't use) changes this arrangement to allow 3GB for user/app space and 1GB for the executive. As Sapience mentioned, using this can cause other problems and Microsoft only recommended that it be used in specific use cases.

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No I'm afraid it is true that that the 32bit "consumer" versions can't use 4GB of RAM in practice. It is no weird glitch that the OP gets displayed 2.94GB of useable RAM. The reason for this is the PC architecture, communication with devices works through memory mapped I/O, that means part of the 4GB physical address space cannot be used for main memory because it is used to communicate with devices like the graphics card. Depending on configuration, more than 1GB become unavailable because of this.
This "masked" memory can only be used with memory remapping and, for a 32bit OS, PAE to extend the physical address space. And the latter is the problem, while all windows kernels since XP support PAE, only the server variants actually support accessing memory above the 4GB limit (so basically an artificial limitation).

More details:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_GB_barrier
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory-mapped_I/O

This is all about physical addressing, the /3GB switch is a matter of virtual addressing. Virtual addressing is completely independent of the amount of RAM, and its limits are a matter of how it's implemented, but in a pure 32bit environment it is still impossible to give a process a flat 4GB virtual memory if it is supposed to run efficiently.

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Originally Posted by Lynx3d

No I'm afraid it is true that that the 32bit "consumer" versions can't use 4GB of RAM in practice. It is no weird glitch that the OP gets displayed 2.94GB of useable RAM. The reason for this is the PC architecture, communication with devices works through memory mapped I/O, that means part of the 4GB physical address space cannot be used for main memory because it is used to communicate with devices like the graphics card. Depending on configuration, more than 1GB become unavailable because of this.
This "masked" memory can only be used with memory remapping and, for a 32bit OS, PAE to extend the physical address space. And the latter is the problem, while all windows kernels since XP support PAE, only the server variants actually support accessing memory above the 4GB limit (so basically an artificial limitation).

More details:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_GB_barrier
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory-mapped_I/O

This is all about physical addressing, the /3GB switch is a matter of virtual addressing. Virtual addressing is completely independent of the amount of RAM, and its limits are a matter of how it's implemented, but in a pure 32bit environment it is still impossible to give a process a flat 4GB virtual memory if it is supposed to run efficiently.

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Now you're playing on the "from a certain point of view" card to make your statement accurate. Whether the memory is available to the end-user applications or is restricted for system purposes (i.e., memory-mapped I/O) is irrelevant. It all gets used, and having the full 4GB on a 32-bit OS is most definitely a benefit.

But as I said, the best answer is to move to a 64-bit OS and be done with it. In this day and age, there really is no excuse.

I'm afraid you haven't understood, the memory mapped areas do NOT point to system RAM, but get redirected to deviecs.
So 32bit windows can NOT use all of the 4GB, neither for applications nor itself. Those 1.04GB missing in the system info of OP's configuration are never used by anything. Not until he either uses a 64bit windows, or a server variant of some 32bit windows which supports >4GB RAM (through PAE) and hence doesn't refuse to use memory above 4GB.

If you don't believe me, I just stumbled upon a MS knowledge base article that repeats pretty much all i've said:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605

It even clearly states that 32bit Vista is limited to 3.12 GB total available system memory (due to "potential driver comptibility issues" they say...), but depending on configuration, it may only be 3GB or even less.

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Originally Posted by PaulJK

Firstly, I'm a casual player and have recently got the lotro bug again so much so that I purchased a quest pack and bought RoR edition for extra/new content. I have been VIP before and would like to do so again for more content but ever since I installed RoR and some recent patches the client crashes, with alarming regularity. It is better in non mounted combat regions it seems but can still crash. Prior to installing RoR I had no problems at all and the client would rarely crash. Luckily most times it crashes now is in passive situations like entering or exiting buildings but it has got me killed on numerous occasions as well.

My system is intel i5 cpu @ 2.8ghz, 4 gig ram installed (2.96 gig shown available by windows) and a 1 gig Radeon HD 57xx gfx card. OS is xp 32 bit home edition.

I have searched for possible causes and solutions and read so much that my eyes hurt. End result is that I am non the wiser for a solution and have an endless list of possible causes. Generally it seems to be a popular opinion that it is a memory problem and the magic number seems to be less than 3 gig available causing the problems. There are various tricks and ways suggested to enable more than 3 gig memory in a 32 bit OS but having tried them all with no success I am resigned to not fixing it with my current setup. Having also read that 32 bit OS's cannot ever really access more than 3 gig of memory, if this is the cause of the problems, then the only way I can fix it is to upgrade my OS. Hence the question in the title, if this is so are the min requirement for lotro now that you require a 64 bit OS because a 32 bit OS just can't give you enough memory.

I am interested to know if anyone else has had this problem on a 32 bit OS with RoR installed and have fixed it. Conversely, those that have no problems with RoR, are you running a similar setup to me?

My dilemmas are, do I buy a 64 bit OS in the hope that it will fix the problem? Do I go VIP or purchase future content? I know the problem is not limited to just me but I have yet to read of someone having the same problem and fixing it. Has anyone actually solved this problem and if so how did you do it? Do I just give up on the game and find something else? (I'd hate for that to be the solution).

Please post a reply if you have some constructive info etc. Meanwhile, I'll log back in again and carry on with Hytbold rebuild....

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After Rohan I decided this game was unplayable on a 32 bit OS. I would definitely upgrade to a 64 one - else you are probably going to have horrific lag and constant crashes.