Severe Instability After Closing

from Sins Forums
After quitting the game by any means (pushing the last button* in the main menu or the Download Updates button) does not actually seem to shut the game -down- on my system.

As in: It's still listed in my processes listing twelve hours later.

Worse, it seems that every time I quit (or possibly every time I End Process the Sins of a Solar Empire.exe process) my system starts to slowly grind to a halt.

Very very bad.

AMD X2 64 4400+
GeForce 7900 GT
2GB RAM
Sound Blaster X-Fi

*I don't remember the exact name of the button (Quit?) but I don't want to turn the game on again just to find out. I had a mild scare the last time I had to turn the machine off because it came crawling to a halt because of Sins with windows complaining about lost registry entries.

(PS While I don't use Steam's overlay in Sins (yet), I've seen some of the complaints about it and one of the responses about it from Stardock. It's a damn shame you guys won't even consider trying to work out whatever bug is causing problems, whether it's yours or theirs. PC gamers want options and compatibility, not forced restrictions. Besides, it's free advertising for your game, seeing someone on a friends list playing Sins.)
technical
15,450 views 36 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
ive had a similar issue, have to pull up the task manager and manually kill the process at times.

I did have avast antivirus running but im so sick of that software scanning and literally slowing down every single thing i do, i uninstalled it. Its possible that the anti virus, my firewall and this game just dont like to talk back n fourth. So far my issue seems to have faded away. only time will tell. If you have anything like that running in the background, try disabling it..or even the hideous uninstall and see if things get better.

One thing, what i had was not only sins, but other programs afterwards not closing. Firefox, winamp, etc etc. I cant imagine what could cause it short of a virus or uber evil spyware but my machine is clean. If its a memory leak from sins, once you kill the process it should stop the problem..or so i thought.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
I don't have any issues with other programs, and I'm running AVG, not Avast. Also, I'm using only the standard Windows firewall combined with a hardware router firewall.
ObjectDock - Access shortcuts and frequently used applications from an animated dock.
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
Bump? (Does that even work in these forums?)
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
I haven't found it in my task manager after closing it, but it does cause instability, sluggish performance etc. in my system after I've closed it out.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
Im using Xp service pack 2, made sure i updated to the latest drivers.

Could this hangup be to a bad driver set or something like that? I mean once sins refuses to properly close i have to either log out or reset. Either way xp throws a fit about explorer.exe not responding and to close etc etc.

Its so odd. Cpu usage goes to 100%, once i close sins, then the next program does the same thing, even notepad, firefox...wierd.

ive run all the virus/spyware scans i can stand, nothing found and it still will not return to normal. Ill try a new method of exiting. Instead of pressing the quit button, ill alt tab out and kill the process through the task manager just to see if its truly related to the exe closing out. Not sure what else i could do besides go back to an older driver set.

edit: im using an older motherboard and single 1.8ghz cpu with a 7800 8x agp card.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
Yeah I've had the same problem on two different computers. Basically as people have mentioned the Sins process stays in memory after you quit the game (and is taking up about 30-40% of my CPU on a Core 2 Duo). Also rundll32 is running an instance also taking up 30-40% of the CPU... if I kill it another one starts and does the same until I also kill it (or maybe there were already two and I didn't notice the second until I killed the first one).

After that the system usually stabilizes, but sometimes it gets stuck in a state where no further process will ever end until I reboot. I have to kill them using Task Manager and even the Task Manager process stays in memory unless I use it to kill itself instead of closing it with the X!!
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
Same problem here, everything runs fine but if i dare turn my back on the game and try to close it my system comes to a halt. In ~1 out of 4 tries i managed to open the task manager (takes about 10 minutes) and kill the process but i don't bother anymore since reset&reboot is way faster anyway.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
My system appears to resolve this by itself, i do get the big bad performance hit for about a minute after closing, then it straightens itself out. I figured it was just some unpolished un-loading code..

My system:

AMD 4200+ x2
Geforce 8800GTS/320
2GB RAM

Vista x64
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
It takes some time for the OS to unload everything from RAM. It's certainly not normal for the process to hang around for 12 hours, so something's up there. I would suggest trying to turn off anti-virus and what not because they could be hooking into the exe for some reason and holding it there. If the problem persists, please contact support@stardock.com.
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
I'm having the same issue as well. I even bought an external hard drive to back up everything on my system thinking a virus got past my AV before I figured it out. Everything else on my system runs fine without issues, other games, Adobe programs, whatever. But after running SoaSE I have no choice, I have to reset my system otherwise it's unusable. Rundll32.exe or SoaSE will use all my processor power and if i try to shut the process down manually, the weirdest thing happens. Any other program I open and run, then quit, starts to do the same thing until i can have 70 processes all running when the majority of them should be shut down. DLLShow shows the processes SoaSE are using and there's nothing there that look like it would be causing a problem. I double checked and I know I'm running the last revision of my chipset drivers, video card and sound card. I'm stumped here.

Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
Running the game in window mode instead of fullscreen solved the problem for me.
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
I'm sitting here staring at my machine, virus scanner is off, and I booted up and quit Sins as fast as humanly possible and it's still eating up 100% of my processor power. 50% via the Sins EXE file, and 50% via a rundll32. Dual core, so that's both cores being eaten.
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
I want to add I have the same issue with the game not closing and having to manually end it in task manager. After that any program I open then close must be closed in task manager or it hangs at about 50% CPU usage. Im glad im not the only one with this issue.
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
I have a similar problem here. Im running a duo core, 2.2 ghz.. 2 gigs ram. Prior to running sins everything is chugging along fine with 1% usage. After closing sins and changing nothing else cpu usage is at an average minimum of 25%.

This is right after a reboot. Not sure how to handle this.
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
I have the same issue. I have a Core2 Duo at 3.2 Ghz, 2 gb of ram, 8800gtx. All newest drivers. EVERYTIME I run this game, I have to manually end the process AND I have the run32dll.exe at 50% of system resources, and sometimes it won't allow other processes to end, like task manager, that keeps running at 30-50%...

This is a MAJOR bug that needs some attention
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
I also seem to be getting this , windowed mode or full screen, its weird, and I can't reproduce it 100% of the time. But it is related to Sins .
Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top
I can EAISLY reporduce it, I run the game.....

Do the develops want a video of me running BF2142, then Crysis, then Frontlines BETA, then Sins, and watch the fact that THIS game has a instability issue??

It NEVER closes right for me, and it runs an extra run32dll.exe that takes 50% of my system resources.... I have had similar issues with other Stardock software, they make some good resource hogs...
Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top
Hello got the same problem exactly and i've not found any solution on net ... What should I do ? Because it's rly unplayable. thnx :) pls resp. asap
Reply #19 from Sins Forums Top
It's not that we don't believe you, but if we can't reproduce it locally then we can't fix it.
Reply #20 from Sins Forums Top
Im not a tech anymore, (i stopped all my certifications at WIN2K...bah!) so take what i say with a grain of salt.

I have not experienced the hangup issue anymore. However i do NOT use the exit/close feature in the game. When its time to quit, I alt tab out and terminate the exe via the task manager in Win XP. Soase does take a LOT of ram, ive seen it peak at 1.7 Gig before, it could be bad memory management from xp however i do not have the tools to properly watch ram locations and such.

ill send an email with my dxdiag, and hope it helps you guys find an answer.


Reply #21 from Sins Forums Top
I need some help, maybe I should post elsewhere, but I figure since this is a quiting/ starting post, I can't do much better outside of making a new thread. Here's my problem--- Every time I play, it shuts down fine, but next time I try to get on, it puts me on the "Install" screen. I've tried to go through the windows start menue and starting from "my computer", but it doesn't work, I still get the startup menu with "Install" instead of "Play" or whatever it is supposed to be. Last time i got on, I did the "Repair Installation" function, but to no avail. Any Ideas????
Reply #22 from Sins Forums Top
I have the same issue, also it seems that it causes a extremely annoying thing when I shut down the Computer. I have to sit their and hit end now for every last prosscess and even things like DirectX I have to.

Edit: Pc specs:

AMD X2 3800+
1 GB ram
X1950 Pro 512 MB
Reply #23 from Sins Forums Top
I seem to have the same issue as everyone else in here, except my system will just shut off and reboot itself. After it comes back in it says the system has recovered from a serious error. Only once has it not done this.
Reply #24 from Sins Forums Top

EUREKA!!! I got it. For any of you that have the same problem I did, where the menu always says "Install", here is the answer, as in deprth as I can get it.

1) If you haven't already, download and install Stardock Central
2) Click "tools" on the Stardock Central panel.
3) Scroll down the list until you get to "Register Products" and click on it.
4) A menu will pop up, look on the left side of it and you should see a lot of little icons. Click the one labelled, "Games".
5) Use the drop-down menu to find "Sins of a Solar Empire". {Note:: The list is alphabetized a-z}
6) in the correct area, type in the code from the CD-case.
7) click "register".
8) When you finish that, Log out of Stardock and back into it, you should be prompted that "Updates available for Sins of a Solar Empire" or something like that. Update the game, and when it's done, It will say, "would you like to install a shortcut for 'Sins of a Solar Empire on your desktop'". click "YES" and then --VOILA-- the game runs w/o you having to re-install the game every time.
Reply #25 from Sins Forums Top
*attacks myrmidos with a pointed stick for thread derailment* dude, it informs you to register your serial with/through stardock in the first few steps after sins installs. RTFM *poke poke..pokes again*

Im not being a jerk, just pointing out that should have registered before ya even started up sins. Glad ya found the solution :)