It's hard to explain. I'm playing the game, and then it does this thing. Just ceases up, and the screen gets filled with vertical bars of color from the image that was on. And I can't CTRL ALT DEL it, or anything. I also can't alt-tab from the game, crashed or not.

What could the problem be? It's frustrating. I've updated my video card drivers and I have plenty of RAM, so I know those problems are out of the way. Any other suggestions?

Also, I've tried lowering the graphics quality, but it didn't work. The gameplay doesn't go choppy and then freeze. It plays perfectly fine, then crashes out of nowhere. My comp can handle more intense games than Maple Story, so I doubt that's the problem. Just incase it matters, I have a 1.80 GhZ processor, with 756 MB of RAM and a SiSM760GX video card. I can run games like City of Heroes and Halo 2 just fine, even with the settings at maximum, so I don't know why Maple would be a problem.

I don't believe overheating is the problem, as my laptop isn't really hot or anything, and in past experience, overheating generally just shuts the computer off, not locks up the program.

Thanks, in advance.

Is this a new problem? Were you ever able to play this game successfully on this computer?

Look in your Event viewer: rt. click My Computer then click Manage then Event Viewer.
Or: Administrative Tools/Event Viewer or Start/Run/ eventvwr
Open the system as well as the application tabs & look for red X errors. Click error line for details.
Post back the source & event id & Description especially of errors that seem to coincide with this issue.
Also check the Information lines that might coincide with this issue.

How to view and manage event logs in Event Viewer in Windows XP

Originally Posted by jephree

Is this a new problem? Were you ever able to play this game successfully on this computer?

Well, I downloaded Maple Story for the first time just a couple days ago, and I've had this problem ever since I first installed it, so I don't think this applies.

Anyway, I ran the Event Viewer, and I actually found something interesting. While there was nothing under the "Applications" tab, there was something under the System tab. Just one red X error.

It went as follows:

Source: Service Control Manager
Event ID: 7026

Description:
The following boot-start or system-start driver(s) failed to load:
szkg
vspf
vspf_hk

I don't have much of an idea what this means. I hope you'll be able to give some kind of feedback. Thanks, in advance.

EDIT: With some careful registry editing, I managed to get rid of those last two. However, since I did, it crashed again, with only szkg on the error. I've tried searching my whole drive for szkg with no luck, deleted all the registry entries relating to it from my registry, and even ran HiJackThis! with no luck. Any additional suggestions?

Source: Service Control Manager
Event ID: 7026

Description:
The following boot-start or system-start driver(s) failed to load:
szkg

Recently, I've been playing a game which crashes on me every 20-30 minutes with this message (speficially, Maple Story). I've looked in my drivers folder and done full system searches for anything by the name of "szkg" and found nothing. I've done full virus and spyware scans, with no results. I've deleted all "szkg" related entries from my registry. I've heard that this file is related to Stopzilla, which I DID find on my computer and deleted entirely. HiJackThis! shows no results for it. Yet, it's still crashing my computer with this error.

What could be wrong, here? How do I fix this problem? It's very frustrating. Thanks, in advance.

That is a Stopzilla file. I doubt that it relates to your problem. The event only indicates that the service did not start meaning something that you have scheduled to start is trying to load that driver. If you removed it then whatever is trying to start it just can't find it.

This error appears at a startup or boot: correct? Or are you saying that this error definitely coincides with the game failure?

Have you tried reinstalling this game? Many people have issues with the GameGuard and nProtect. Does this mean anything to you?

Otherwise your symptoms are very similar to hardware issues: Graphics card or heat.

If that startup error coincides with the game freeze on every occasion then try turning off the startup items under start Run... msconfig | Startup