[Solved] Fatal crash during gameplay

[CrimsonFlash]

Hey everyone. I just got this game today, and it is fantastic. A bit of a learning curve, but it's good once you get in a mold.

Anyway, onto my problem.

Every time I play a game, whether it is a new game or loading from a save, after about... Oh, maybe 10-20 minutes or so, the game has a fatal crash, and I am forced to manually restart my computer to get out of it.

Essentially, the game locks up, audio loop repeating, and bam! Crash.

I don't know if there is a way for me to get a log file of what happens, or even if I could get one as I have to force restart, but I would like to help out. Don't know if this is a problem for just me, or if other people are experiencing it as well. I did look around the forums, and did not see anything similar to mine...

Well, I will try and play again and try to pinpoint what is going on when it does so. Maybe an event triggers it, like an explosion. Donno.

Hope that this gets solved. I've had a taste, and I want more. Haha.

[Fiskbit]

Hi there. Without more information, we can't do much to help you yet. In your AI War directory, there should be some sort of UnhandledErrors.txt file. Could you post that? The information in there should help us a lot in tracking this down.

Thanks, and I'm glad to hear you're enjoying the game despite this problem. We'll do what we can!

Edit: Furthermore, some things you could try for now would be updating your drivers or reinstalling directx. It's possible something may have become corrupt or is perhaps out of date.

[CrimsonFlash]

So, I tried playing again, and the same thing happens. Was about 10 minutes of playing.

My computer is 100% up to date, but I will try reinstalling DirectX like you mentioned.

As for the log file, I could not find any sort of errors text file, so there is no luck in that.

In the meantime, I will redo DX, and then update you all.

[eRe4s3r]

Does it reboot without you doing something or does it just hang - thats important because one can deduct the type of error from that alone.

Well we need more info on your system - Can you attach the dxdiag txt file

for info how to get it here - http://shoguntotalwar.yuku.com/topic/10016 (yeah, i just took the first hit from google, no need to rewrite it all ;p)

Of course if it just hangs there might not be any unhandlederrors.txt so don't worry if its not there or empty.

If you want to make sure cpu/memory/heat are not the issues you might want to get prime95 and run a torture test for 20-30 minutes.. though first things first

[CrimsonFlash]

I am forced to restart. I tried letting it sit there for around 5 minutes, and it did not restart, or shut down, on it's own.

I'm pretty sure my CPU and memory are not the problem, as I can run L4D, HL, and TF2 all full speed and fine on here. I have a fan matt as well, which keeps my computer nice and cool too.

And, I attached my system info as well.

(As of this post, I have not reinstalled DX. Will do that then edit this if that fixed it or not.)

[Fiskbit]

Very strange. Since you haven't mentioned it, I'll assume that this appears to happen at some random time rather than associated with any sort of event. Does it happen in any game you play, or is it a specific game? A good test could be to start a new game with a different map and different AIs to ensure it happens there, as well. If it doesn't happen then, then posting the save file from the current game could be a good idea; basically, trying to figure out if the problem is with the game itself or with how it's interacting with the system.

What happens when it crashes? Does the application lock up? Does it give you any sort of error (if so, what is it?)? Does it simply close without warning?

Ah, just saw your reply. So the game just locks up and stops doing anything, accepting input, etc? What happens to its CPU use?

After you get DirectX reinstalled, you could also try reinstalling AI War; maybe something in it has become corrupt. I'll point Chris toward this and see if he has any ideas, once those are ruled out.

[x4000]

You may need to rollback your drivers slightly, depending on which ones they are.  No one has ever reported this specific issue before, but 100% of the time where mysterious crashes with no log file have been reported, it has been something outside the game -- corrupt graphics or audio driver or settings, corrupt audio file from a bad download of the game (or bad sectors on a hard disk), messed-up DirectX, SlimDX, or .NET 3.5 install, etc.  AI War's needs are pretty simple, but if you look in other threads here you can see that there are a few cases of new graphics drivers being bugged and causing strange issues (like no DirectX display).  

Sometimes third party apps (like Mumble) can also cause crashes of the game or the app itself.  That is generally an app that hooks into DirectX and tries to do something funny with the game window, which causes something unexpected to error out.  Most such things -- FRAPs, XFire, Steam, etc -- work just fine with AI War, but I guess one never knows given all of the many apps out there.

One clarification on looking for error files.  If you are on Vista or Win7, they won't be in your game folder because of permissions.  If you open up the game and look under the Settings window, it will have a textbox at the bottom that gives you the location of the folder that would have any error messages in it.  So it's possible there might have been some error feedback, it's just not where you were looking.

[x4000]

Oh, one other thought:  does this happen just when you load a specific savegame, or when you are playing on any campaign?  If a specific savegame, perhaps you could post that to the forums so that Fiskbit or someone could test it out and see if they can duplicate your issue.  It's always possible you've stumbled onto some super-rare bug that the thousands of other players have all bypassed (that really does happen from time to time), but that's not usually a likely case at all.  If it's locking up like that it's unlikely to be giving you an error file, though, since you're having to kill it.

EDIT:  I know that you said it happens whether you start a new game or load from a save, but what I was trying to clarify is whether or not you are starting new games with different settings or what.  If this is a bug in the game, it would probably have to be something that is based on a very specific combination of units or map setup or something.  If it happens even with wildly different settings, this again is pointing to something external to the game, or corrupt in general.

[eRe4s3r]

Checking your dxdiag confirms that this is not a clearly visible driver issue - you have all nearly up-to-date and winxp ..

When it still happens after dx-reinstall (doubt that'll solve anything) here is a step-by-step exclusion path to find the error.

First
Double check all drivers (mainboard/netbook chipset and sound drivers et all!)

Second (still no luck)
get this - http://mersenne.org/ftp_root/gimps/p95v259.zip (prime95)
- when it starts select just stress testing
- start a blend torture test and let it run for 10-20 minutes (stop after 20 minutes)

Third
Report back here what happens ^^

(Prime95 is a open source prime number finder, which is THE tool to find overheating/ram/cpu issues)

Disclaimer: I was tech support in my previous life - So i have a hunch ;p
By the way - the hunch right now is driver issue unless it crashes in prime95, in which case it becomes overheating/hardware issue ;p If it does neither then i have no idea what causes this though

[x4000]

Sometimes the most up to date drivers are the problem, though.  Not just with AI War, but with various games in general.  I've seen it most often with FPS games, but a very few players have seen problems with AI War with specific driver versions.  The graphics drivers are always changing, and sometimes a small change can cause problems for a subset of games.  AI War uses much simpler parts of the graphics driver compared to HL2 or L4D, so it's possible that a crash would affect one set of those games but not the other (this is almost always in AI War's favor as far as remaining stable goes, but very occasionally not).

[CrimsonFlash]

Okay, so I tried it again, and there was the same crash. This time though, my graphics card gave an error. Something about a "VPU Recover."

This is what it says in Catalyst Control Center

VPU Recover allows the ATI display driver to reset the graphics processor in the event that it stops responding to commands from the display driver. Using VPU Recover the display driver will, in most cases, be able to reset the graphics processor without requiring a system restart.

So, I'm guessing that it is something to do with my graphics card, and it is puking out. It tries to fix it, but stalls and crashes.

Any idea on how to prevent that?

[x4000]

Okay, so I tried it again, and there was the same crash. This time though, my graphics card gave an error. Something about a "VPU Recover."

This is what it says in Catalyst Control Center

VPU Recover allows the ATI display driver to reset the graphics processor in the event that it stops responding to commands from the display driver. Using VPU Recover the display driver will, in most cases, be able to reset the graphics processor without requiring a system restart.

So, I'm guessing that it is something to do with my graphics card, and it is puking out. It tries to fix it, but stalls and crashes.

Any idea on how to prevent that?

Okay, well, it's good to have this narrowed down at least -- that certainly rules out a lot of other things.  I would suggest rolling back to a slightly older version of the graphics card drivers, or a past version that seemed to work better.  As I've noted, sometimes the latest versions, while fixing some things, break others -- that might be the case here.

[CrimsonFlash]

Well, I think I solved it. Basically, I lowered the graphics a bit. I played for a good two hours, and had no problems whatsoever. Kinda weird that a game like this would crash my computer, but a game like L4D wont.

Ah well. It's all good now. Really odd though. Thanks for all your help. Hopefully it's clear sailing from here on out.

[x4000]

That is odd, but I am glad it worked out!