Game keeps crashing at random

[wjm67x]

I have an issue where the game crashes at random. some days it doesn't do it for hours, other days it crashes every 5 minutes. I'm running tequila on an i7-2600  with 8gb ram (dual 4gb G-skill ripjaws), video card is an Nvidia GTX 750ti with 2Gb ram, windows 10 fully updated.  I've tried 32 bit, 64 bit AND safe modes. tried deleting and copying over from a copy of the initial version pre updates, no go still does it. deleted again and reinstalled tequila and did a fresh install from tequila, still crashes. it's completely at random, some days it doesn't do it at all, some days, like today it does it every 5 to 10 minutes. I started noticing it a couple of updates ago and it's been getting worse since.  it's not a mapserver issue, I haven't seen a single mapserve message. It's not the video card as the system was recently disassembled, cleaned and rebuilt. Every other game I have runs perfectly fine. Overwatch, WoW, SWTOR, Star Trek Online and Wolfenstein II all run without issues. OS and video codecs are all up to date. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Yes, I know there was another post someone put up who was having similar issues, but his were resolved by cleaning his video card as it was overheating.  I've checked everything out and yet it still persists. any help in this would be greatly appreciated.

 

-Hierarch on Everlasting.

[Tokala13]

Same, I just got my first character made but generally within 1-2 minutes the game freezes up and goes unresponsive.
In the outbreak tutorial area if that helps. Robotics/Barrier controller type.

Edited November 29, 2019 by Tokala13

[wjm67x]

Thus far it happens with all my characters. I've even tried reducing my video settings to no avail.

[Dyre Knight]

Same issue on my Win 10 computer, with the Nvidia GTX 750ti everything is up to date.  It may go hours or seconds, and I get an all black screen and unresponsive computer.  Not doing this with any other old or new games,

 

I actually pulled my old Windows XP computer out of storage to play the game and no issues on that or the Windows 7 Laptop

Edited November 29, 2019 by Dyre Knight
typo

[Seed22]

I keep DC'ing in FF. Damn patch must of broke something, again :P

[Ago]

I know many users have a common practice of leaving their PCs on overnight and not shutting them down.  It's a wash trying to explain what the advantages and disadvantages of powering on/off are to folks with different priorities in life, so I'll spare the finger-wagging.  The point? 

 

Make sure the client isn't a 'zombie'

Sometimes apps crash and leave a dead copy of themselves in RAM.  Open Task Manager.  Press Control Alt Delete, and choose Task Manager (works in any version of Windows, XP and up.)  Open the Applications or Processes tab (depending on your version) and make sure City of Heroes and Homecoming are actually closed before trying to launch the game.  If they are not, right click it and "End Process".  If you don't see them, then this isn't the issue (NB: leave the "Services" tab alone, nothing in there would affect this, and disabling services at random is a great way to brick your system.)  The faster way to alleviate this is to restart your computer, but in recent times, there's a reason this isn't as effective anymore...

 

Fast Startup/Hibernation and Windows 8/8.1/10

This is a total shot in the dark here.  Might help, might not. One common difference between Windows XP & 7 versus Windows 10 is the Fast Boot setup.  Windows 10 actually uses a "hibernation" hybrid where the RAM contents for the System Services and common programs are saved to a hard disk file before shutting down so it can be returned to RAM as fast as possible.  (Windows 10 didn't come up with that, it was a hold over from Windows 8.)

 

GENERALLY, it's just Windows services that are captured with this.  But there's been strange occurrences with apps at my work when Windows 10 turns this on by default every major update.

 

To turn off Fast Startup, check out this post on how to go about it.  For Windows 10 versions past 1809, you're not going to see Fast Startup appear in Power Control Panel anymore.  It's being relegated to Registry and GPO now as they make it default on Home and Pro Workgroup (non-AD) systems.  (The same thread post tells you how to enable and disable it.)

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/4189-turn-off-fast-startup-windows-10-a.html

 

Also, try disabling Hibernation as an option to further assure that pressing Shutdown is really clearing out the system's RAM.  Type this in an elevated Command Prompt.  (Start -> type CMD -> Press Control-Shift-Enter.  Answer Yes to the UAC window.  If successful, you'll see "Administrator: Command Prompt" on your window title.)

powercfg -h off

 

There won't be feedback after typing it (unless you're not using the Command Prompt as an admin, it'll say "Permission Denied".)  What this does is remove Hibernation from Power Control Panel and the Shutdown dialog box.  You can turn it back on if you want to keep Hibernation by reversing the "off" above to "on".  Just try shutting Hibernation off along with Fast Startup and rebooting or shutting down first before restoring Hibernation.

 

If the crashing persists, then it's safe to say the game client isn't persisting in RAM at that point.

Edited November 29, 2019 by Tahquitz

[Tokala13]

As an IT tech it still makes me cringe how many people don't shut their stuff down, and the hybrid shutdown/boot stuff is in my opinion there so companies can claim faster boot times for their builds. Making it an option is one thing but defaulting to it has always rubbed me wrong.
Mine's not a zombie process though, but I am familiar with the concept, once in a while Pidgin would do that and I'd have to reboot to get rid of it so I could open it again properly.

=====

 

More to the topic at hand though, the launcher seems to run fine, the game client and character creation all ran smoothly, it's just that once I enter the game that at a random time within 1-2 minutes it will freeze, if I wait and do nothing then Windows will then mark it as not responding and give me the usual options, or I can kill it via task manager. I can then open the game again and rinse repeat and slowly make progress but it's not a fun way to play. It's not crashing the computer though it's just the game process getting hung up and going unresponsive.

 

Area:
Outbreak (Hero Tutorial)
 

Problem:
Game goes unresponsive eventually whether I do anything or not, but trying to click or drag interface elements such as powers, pet window, chat, ect 'seems' to cause it more readily than waiting around for it to occur on its own.

 

Possible trigger:
Seems to occur more rapidly when interacting with HUD elements.

 

Possible Solution:
Switching out of borderless window and playing in window mode seems to have alleviated the issue. Possibly caused by borderless window mode specifically?

Made it through the tutorial and to atlas park without crashing, so it appears that fixed my problem.

Misc Information:

OS: Windows 7

Tried in both Homecoming 32bit and Homecoming 64bit.

Tried setting Tequila and the cityofheroes.exe to run as admin, no change.

Tried setting to run compatibility for XP SP3, no change.
Tried changing the install directory, no change. (Well no productive change, one change was that tequila.exe deleted itself every time it was run, but the window still popped up, loaded the manifest, and let me hit play.)

 

Server: Everlasting

Character: Tsuladan (Mastermind; Robotics/Force Field)

 

Edited November 30, 2019 by Tokala13
Spruce up formatting and add new information for stuff I have tried.

[wjm67x]

Thanks for the info Tahquitz. I just finished rebooting after doing that and will see if that worked for me.

 

(edit: so far so good!)

 Nope it just did it again. It was worth a shot though.

 

Edited November 29, 2019 by wjm67x

[Ago]

Fair enough.  Not all of my advice is gold.

[Tokala13]

1 hour ago, Tahquitz said:

Fair enough.  Not all of my advice is gold.

Hey it was a good try thanks for the help.

[ChromeJustice]

I have the same issue, ticket was open stating that there was no fix since they checked everything and all things check out. 

[xaix1999]

please look up hardware diagnostics for your computer if you are having abnormal issues such as these

h^^ps://www.hwinfo.com/files/hwi_614.exe

also a connection test with h^^ps://speedtest.net can also rule out connection issues (i would suggest another state or country outside of your provider)

i tested this scenario with Linux (not windows) and tried full-screen, windowed and border-less and was NOT able to reproduce.

Edited November 30, 2019 by xaix1999
dumb links

[Number Six]

Check and see if you have a “Crash” directory under your CoH install.

 

That’s part of the new crash reporting feature - we haven’t turned on the upload feature yet until the lawyer-approved privacy policy is in place.  But the report files are still saved there and if you can manually get the contents of one it may help track down the cause of what you’re experiencing.

[wjm67x]

seriously considering switching back to windows 8

 

[Tokala13]

13 minutes ago, Number Six said:

Check and see if you have a “Crash” directory under your CoH install.

 

That’s part of the new crash reporting feature - we haven’t turned on the upload feature yet until the lawyer-approved privacy policy is in place.  But the report files are still saved there and if you can manually get the contents of one it may help track down the cause of what you’re experiencing.

Mine has no crash directory, but my problem was solved by swapping from "Borderless Window" mode to either "Window" or "Fullscreen", though I think my issue might be different than wjm67x, mine was more of a "game goes unresponsive/freezes" than a full "game crashes".

[TRODDEN666]

Hi,

 

I go to double-click my Tequila icon on my desktop like I always do, starts like normal for 3 seconds then quits back to desktop. Any ideas?

[wjm67x]

went back to windows 8.1 and it STILL does it... 

[wjm67x]

UPGRADED to windows 10 (not an initial install) and it seems to be stable now

 

[wjm67x]

Happened again but this time I got an error message saying it was a TDR failure.

 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/display/timeout-detection-and-recovery?redirectedfrom=MSDN

 

Timeout Detection and Recovery (TDR)

• 04/19/2017

One of the most common stability problems in graphics occurs when a computer "hangs" or appears completely "frozen" while, in reality, it is processing an end-user command or operation. The end-user typically waits a few seconds and then decides to reboot the computer. The frozen appearance of the computer typically occurs because the GPU is busy processing intensive graphical operations, typically during game play. The GPU does not update the display screen, and the computer appears frozen.

In Windows Vista and later, the operating system attempts to detect situations in which computers appear to be completely "frozen". The operating system then attempts to dynamically recover from the frozen situations so that desktops are responsive again. This process of detection and recovery is known as timeout detection and recovery (TDR). In the TDR process, the operating system's GPU scheduler calls the display miniport driver's DxgkDdiResetFromTimeout function to reinitialize the driver and reset the GPU. Therefore, end users are not required to reboot the operating system, which greatly enhances their experience.

The only visible artifact from the hang detection to the recovery is a screen flicker. This screen flicker results when the operating system resets some portions of the graphics stack, which causes a screen redraw. This flicker is eliminated if the display miniport driver complies with Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) 1.2 and later (see Providing seamless state transitions in WDDM 1.2 and later). Some legacy Microsoft DirectX applications (for example, those DirectX applications that conform to DirectX versions earlier than 9.0) might render to a black screen at the end of this recovery. The end user would have to restart these applications.

This sequence briefly describes the TDR process:

Timeout detection in the Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM)

The GPU scheduler, which is part of the DirectX graphics kernel subsystem (Dxgkrnl.sys), detects that the GPU is taking more than the permitted amount of time to execute a particular task. The GPU scheduler then tries to preempt this particular task. The preempt operation has a "wait" timeout, which is the actual TDR timeout. This step is thus the timeout detection phase of the process. The default timeout period in Windows Vista and later operating systems is 2 seconds. If the GPU cannot complete or preempt the current task within the TDR timeout period, the operating system diagnoses that the GPU is frozen.

To prevent timeout detection from occurring, hardware vendors should ensure that graphics operations (that is, direct memory access (DMA) buffer completion) take no more than 2 seconds in end-user scenarios such as productivity and game play.

Preparation for recovery

The operating system's GPU scheduler calls the display miniport driver's DxgkDdiResetFromTimeout function to inform the driver that the operating system detected a timeout. The driver must then reinitialize itself and reset the GPU. In addition, the driver must stop accessing memory and should not access hardware. The operating system and the driver collect hardware and other state information that could be useful for post-mortem diagnosis.

Desktop recovery

The operating system resets the appropriate state of the graphics stack. The video memory manager, which is also part of Dxgkrnl.sys, purges all allocations from video memory. The display miniport driver resets the GPU hardware state. The graphics stack takes the final actions and restores the desktop to the responsive state. As previously mentioned, some legacy DirectX applications might render just black at the end of this recovery, which requires the end user to restart these applications. Well-written DirectX 9Ex and DirectX 10 and later applications that handle Device Remove technology continue to work correctly. An application must release and then re-create its Microsoft Direct3D device and all of the device's objects. For more information about how DirectX applications recover, see the Windows SDK.

 

Edit: video drivers were not up to date. They are now. testing to continue.

 

Edit: still does it...

Edited December 3, 2019 by wjm67x

[wjm67x]

crash directory finally showed up. can anyone give me any ideas from this?

cityofheroes-01dv4k8h11a73d5camzz92g4mk.report

[Number Six]

25 minutes ago, wjm67x said:

crash directory finally showed up. can anyone give me any ideas from this?

cityofheroes-01dv4k8h11a73d5camzz92g4mk.report 16.61 kB · 0 downloads

Yes, that stack trace tells me that it's a corrupt texture swap list in a scene file, which probably means a malformed scene file.

 

Do you have any overrides in the 'data' directory? Make sure there is not a data\scenes folder under your COH install.

 

You may want to try deleting homecoming\scenes.pigg, and if that doesn't work, piggs\misc.pigg and letting them get re-downloaded.

[wjm67x]

did both of them to be sure. testing now...

 

edit: nope just did it once again... It was worth a try though.

 

Edited December 4, 2019 by wjm67x

[WanderingAries]

On ‎11‎/‎29‎/‎2019 at 10:57 AM, Tokala13 said:

As an IT tech it still makes me cringe how many people don't shut their stuff down, and the hybrid shutdown/boot stuff is in my opinion there so companies can claim faster boot times for their builds. Making it an option is one thing but defaulting to it has always rubbed me wrong.
Mine's not a zombie process though, but I am familiar with the concept, once in a while Pidgin would do that and I'd have to reboot to get rid of it so I could open it again properly.

 

And the net result is that you no longer get a "clean boot" without doing it the hard way or simply try a reboot.

[PeterDutcherJr]

I had the same trouble. At login I reset the graphics to default and it seemed to have fixed the issue.

[Likara]

Last night, most of the team I was on crashed while waiting at a mission door. Here's a crash log.

cityofheroes-7z05qcz524ekm3dbm92vwg1jgs.report