If you're running Avast (or WindowBlinds) and getting crashes with this game

[keith.lamothe]

We've gotten a fair number of reports from people with frequent crashes with "Fatal Error In GC" error messages, and in most cases it appears to be caused by Avast (specifically Avast 8, apparently).

Here are some threads I've seen discussing the issue, with resolutions that worked for the people involved:

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=117134.0
(short story: in Avast, try "Uncheck: Settings -> Toubleshooting -> Enable hardware-assisted virtualization" )

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/37787-Avast-Antivirus-The-Unity-KSP-Fatal-error-in-GC-Fix

And a quick googling revealed many others for different games, but I figured the above is sufficient.  If some of you are unable to resolve the "Fatal Error In GC" thing this way please let me know so we can do further research.


In short there's nothing we can do if Avast decides to kill our game when it sees it, but we can help you find a way to get Avast to stop doing that



Also!

Apparently WindowBlinds can cause the game to crash too, and apparently the solution is "Adding it to the exception list for windows that should not get decorated fixed the problem." (thanks to Fraktyl for that)

[Colonel J]

I'm using Avast free version and this fix worked for me. However I installed an update to a new 2014 version that was released today I think (I now have version 2014.9.0.2006) and it is giving me big problems - I can't start the game at all now. On start-up the game either locks-up or CTDs at step 3 or step 5 of GameInit with error message 'Fatal Error in GC. Duplicate Handle Failed'.

I've also a couple of times seen the attached error at start-up.

The Troubleshooting options are identical in Avast 2014 and I've definitely got 'Enable hardware-assisted virtualisation' unchecked. In fact it now makes no difference if it's checked or not, same crash.

if it's pertinent...I've tried a fresh install through Steam but that doesn't help. Also 'Verifying Integrity of Game Cache' on Steam always shows a problem with one file which results in a 1.2KB download to fix it. If I then re-verify after the download if says all ok. But it reappears again after another crash at start-up.

I kind of like Avast and til now haven't had any issues in 3 years of use so am a bit reluctant to ditch it, but I might have to unless you have a fix!

[Colonel J]

Update - after yet another reboot, the game it now working again.

That's 3rd reboot I've done since Avast got updated and the problem started, so why that has suddenly changed something I don't know. 

Damn cranky AV. If it comes back I'll let you know...

[Colonel J]

It's still cranky.

An hour after a posted that last night I got one crash at start-up 'Fatal Error in GC. Duplicate Handle Failed'. Started up the game again, all OK, played for an hour.

Tonight, 5 tries at starting up, every time it hangs with the GC error between step 3 and 10 of GameInit. Left it 5 mins to start typing this, went back, and now it restarted fine...WTF? Can confirm that the Avast virtualisation option is definitely unchecked, I've not touched that since.

Help....Is this Avast, or something else?

[orzelek]

Try to disable steam community in game (checkbox on game properties in steam).

I had strange crashes for some time that went going away after disabling the overlay.

[Colonel J]

Thanks for the suggestion...I've tried disabling Steam overlay but no change unfortunately

Still getting crashes at GameInit much more often than not... usually Fatal Error in GC and sometimes an Exception breakpoint. Once the game is up and running it seems to be stable.

[x4000]

Sorry for the slow response.  This is something that really sounds like it is Avast -- people without Avast don't have the problem, people with do.  I'd suggest AVG Free or something else.  There are reports of this sort of thing all over the Internet for a variety of Unity 3D games, so for some reason Avast is just giving loads of false positives all over the place.  Unfortunately there's not really anything we can do when antivirus software starts shut down other processes (like our game) without permission.

[Colonel J]

Thanks for the clarification, I'd suspected as much. Sorry for belated reply I've been away from my PC for a couple of weeks.

I don't know if it is the result of an Avast update or a game update or just luck but (touch wood) I now having no problems on returning the game in the last couple of days.

If it does come back I will be uninstalling Avast and looking for an alternative. I wasn't a fan of AVG in the past because of how much is slowed down my boot-up time and I really didn't like the bundled adware/toolbar that it kept wanting to install, this was a few years ago so maybe that's changed.

[keith.lamothe]

Glad to hear it's working now   It'd be nice to have a solid idea of what actually changed, as that's usually helpful in figuring out other cases, but sometimes one can't have everything

[moogthedog]

Has there been any movement on this?  I'm -really- not keen about moving back to AVG, as it has let all sorts of stuff onto my PC in the past.

For the record, it's necessary to disable both  File system shield and Web shield in order for the game to run.  I haven't taken it any further than the main menu, as I really -really- don't like running my PC with protection disabled.

Do we know if anyone from Unity or Avast are looking at why the false positives are happening in the first place?

[x4000]

Most likely it has to do with unity embedding the mono runtime, but that's just my guess.  I believe the ball is basically in AVAST's court, but they aren't particularly communicative.  Kaspersky 2011 had the same sort of false positive problems with unity games in 2011, but by their next year version they had fixed that on their end and they haven't had a problem since.  AVAST has been slower to move.

In the Last Federation forum, there is a stickied thread where people have discussed ways of getting around AVAST killing that game, which is basically the same sort of thing as for here.  For some of them, moving the game out of the Program Files folder and then setting an exception did it.  Someone just today said that if they set an exception on the entire folder for the game (in this case BionicDues) rather than just on the game executable (Bionic.exe), then that made it work for them.  Other folks have had other results and just had to switch antivirus -- for a lot of them, even disabling AVAST would not actually turn off its interference.

Very frustrating.  Hopefully one of those workarounds might work for you, though.

[nas1m]

Do you run the most recent version of avast?
For me, it deep scanned Bionic the first time I started it - but since then the game just works...

[x4000]

For me, it deep scanned Bionic the first time I started it - but since then the game just works...

And then we get this...

Sigh.   I'm really glad it is working for you, but why it does different things for different people is a huge mystery to me.

[keith.lamothe]

For me, it deep scanned Bionic the first time I started it

And quailed in terror, departing never to trouble Bionic.exe again.

[moogthedog]

Thanks for the quick replies, guys.

Peculiarly, I have absolutely no difficulty running Last Federation at all.  I should have said, I'm running both through Steam, so moving it around isn't really an option.

But I'll try downloading my purchased copy from the site directly and see if I get any more joy with that.