Constant crashing now - originally stable?

from Sins Forums
Hi guys,

Great game but after enjoying some long sessions initially, I now crash after a few mins of playing.

My specs are

P4 2.8
GF 6600
1 gig ram
Soundblaster 5.1
Win XP

System is very vanilla, no o/cing, and all settings are bsaically default, including in BIOS.  The winxp install is quite fresh too, maybe 2 months old.

When I first started crashing, I updated to the latest Geforce drivers , but they were even more unstable than the previous ones (84.21's).  AFAIK these are the most solid drivers for the Geforce 6x00 series. 

I'm pretty stumped as to whats causing the crashing.  One explanation is that the game is a little buggy.  But I doubt this because most people seem to be having no problems.  The other explanation is that because my graphics card is getting old now, Ironclad haven't tested it as much as the newer cards.  Hence the instability I'm experiencing.  Ahh this is why I stopped pc gaming and got a 360 :P

My other theory is that the video card is overheating and locking up.  I have had it overclocked previously, but for most of its life its been at normal speed.  The CPU has also been overclocked, but similarly, has been clocked back to normal speed for stability.  I've never run either at o/ced speeds for long periods of time, mainly because I prefer stability over the relatively small performance gain.  The weird thing is, the kind of lockups I'm getting aren't the kind that I usually associate with CPU or video card lock ups.  For CPU lock ups, I find the whole computer locks up, and you have to do a hard reboot.  But when I lock up in Sin's, I can quit to windows and end-task on the game.  And for video card, if theres a problem, usually you'll notice artifacts, and there is rarely a hard lock.  In Sins, I never notice any artifacts.  So I'm not entirely convinced its overheating...

My money is on the video card, and the drivers I'm using being glitchy with this game :/  Anyone want to recommend some drivers to use for my 6600 GT? 

Cheers guys

This is a great game, I just wish I could play it.  I'm one of those pc gamers that very rarely has crashing problems with games.  Unfortunate that my luck had to run out when I finally found a wicked game to play!
13,078 views 28 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Oh and the other thing that is quite strange, is that when I initially began playing the game, I played some really long games with no problems at all. I was playing 2 player random maps with pirates. The problems started when I tried some of the bigger maps, with 3 AI players including pirates. So to test my theory, I started a 2 player map again. But unfortunately I crashed after about 10 mins :/ So its not just the fact that I'm playing bigger maps, although I think this makes the problem worse!!
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

im using my dad's computer : he has a 6800 and he uses the nvidia 169.21 drivers...he and i have played for dozens of hours this month and the game has not crashed once...

the only thing i can do is tell u is my dad's setup :

1. he turned off V Synch in the desktop nvidia control panel
2. he runs the game in a 1360 X 768 window on his 1440 X 900 desktop
3. even though he set the visual quality of many stuff to « highest », he turned off :
bloom
elevators
dust clouds
debris
asteroid field
ship trail (reduced to minimum)
4. he closes ALL user background programmes (in the task manager) except explorer.exe
5. he has an ordinary household exterior fan that he directs towards the side panel of the PC, where the processor and geforce are located (not too close, but not far away) -- i dont know if that works, but my dad believes it cools the side panel and the nearby PC hardware (well, it doesnt seem to hurt !)

like u said in your second post its strange that u could play some really long games and suddenly it started to crash after 10 minutes...maybe some important sins file has been damaged...have u considered uninstalling and reinstalling ?

good luck
Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
Thanks for the help, I will try tweaking some of these settings.

RE: your last comment, I actually did try uninstalling and reinstalling, but the problem hasn't gone away.

I just tried the latest drivers again, and still no luck.

Also I've been running 3dmark constantly to see if it crashes, but its fine. So I don't think its my system overheating.

So frustratin!
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
maybe just try nuking C:\Documents and Settings\YOURWINDOWSUSERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
I'll try that.

I've also tried different nvidia drivers. The newest ones are by far the worst. There is periodic hitching while playing. The older drivers are better. The game is okay for a while and then it eventually locks up. The fact that I get variable results from different drivers makes me certain that it is a driver issue. There is also the fact that there is a whole thread with people with nvidia cards having problems.

I think I'll wait for a fix... :p Next time I'm buying ATI!
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
I think you have too little ram for the bigger maps. This game is a ram hog!

My second guess along the same lines is that your paging file is very fragmented.

Paging files should be about 1.5 times the size of your ram, so 1.5 gig.

Set it to stay the same size, no change dynamically.

Tips to clean your paging file:
1) Set the size to something very small - like 50 meg
2) Reboot and defragment your hard disk
3) Increase the size of your paging file to 1.5 gig, it should now be in one continuous file rather than a fragmented mess.

Just my best guesses, game runs fine for me.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
And of course defrag your hard disk.

Also, does this happen only with this game? Will other games run?

If you have diagnostics, run a RAM check. RAM occasionally goes bad.

I had a similar problem about 8 months ago with another game. Turned out my power supply was getting marginal. Replaced it, problem went away.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
i found a fix


its because the games programming doesnt cope well when it runs out of memory, be it either ram or page file memory, so when it runs out it crashes. So if you increase the page file to MORE then the game will ever be using, you should be fine. Note it is better to do it with large hard drives as its preferable to reserve the right ammount of HD space for your page file.

i dont know the exact trace for vista but heres how you do it with XP:

start
Control pannel
system
advanced tab
click on the settings button under performance
advanced tab
virtual memory
chose your main hard drive(preferably where sins is installed)
chose set custom
and input on both initial and max a higher amount of page file size, i have wadds of HD space so i input the maximum, 4096 mb. And generally, if you have a PC that can run the game you should have enough to do that. i tried this today and was able to resume and finish a massive game i had been playing when it crashed.

click on OK

then click on accept in the previous window
close the menu
restart when prompted

Dont worry changing page file size wont harm your computer, I know what i'm doing, which is why i came up with this solution.

should work with vista too, just need to find where those settings are.
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
Thanks for the replies guys, I'm going to try these ideas when I get a chance.

The thing about the paging file idea is that when I lock up, I'm able to alt-tab into windows. When I check task manager, only around half the paging file is used (I have it set to 1 gig). So I'm not sure its running out. Then again, with windows, more is always better, so I'll definitely increase the paging file and see what happens.

The ram idea is interesting, but sometimes I crash very early on in the game, when my ram has hardly been used up. But admittedly, most of the crashes occur around mid-game (just as things are getting exciting :(), and at this point yeah, the ram usage would be peaking. I find it hard to believe that lack of ram would cause lock ups like this though :/ Lack of ram usually results in excessive hard drive caching, and I'm not getting that. I will try and do some further testing and see if I can replicate crashing early on ingame, on small maps, that way I'll be confident its not a ram issue.

As for other games, I've never had any major problems like what I'm experiencing with Sins. The worst I would get is lock ups when I tried to o/c my video card or cpu. But when I returned the clock speed to normal all my games would run fine. BF2 was fine, for example.
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
Of course, when you lock up or get a minidump error, the game stops operating and thus sending data into the pagefile.

like you said too, your crashes arrive when things get big, which is exactly what happened to me.

i thought of this idea when i saw someones fix for vista crashes, it was a download, a hotfix issued by vista to HELP(not solve) the problem that some games have when they run out of memory. So it would seem that Sins is one of those(not saying the game was badly programmed, me and my friend played a lot after fixing the crash problem and we loved it, my friend loved how well balanced the game was for a fresh out of the box RTS, and thats coming from an RTS veteran who's tried em all. And that was the ONLY problem we ran into, so Kudos to stardock and ironclad for their superb game). So by reading that article from microsoft it hit me. The problem is that the game cannot cope with running out of memory. So i decided to increase the page file on both computers we were using. That worked so well we managed to resume and finish a game that was IMPOSSIBLE to continue.


So note to stardock, im pretty sure i spotted the problem for you guys. Try doing some tests and looking at the programming to see how you could make the game manage when it runs out of memory. I am pretty sure(but not 100% sure, im no programmer) that that's the problem. So i hope i am right because i suppose it would save you guys a LOT of trouble shooting trial and error and help you avoid a LOT of tedious crash report analysing.
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
Sebastian, came in here from other forum to get more detail of what problems you've been running into. I think XP would give you the ole, System is Low on Virtual Memory error if you were bumping into that one. Fresh install, I can't imagine defragging would fix much, though always good practice. I did a quick PSU check, you should have at least a 400W power supply, sound about right? Usually a complete reboot happens if PSU is maxed out though, I think I read that somewhere. I think 6800 GeForce is the minimal they recommend on the box, 7600 recommended, though some guys get away with less, but make up with it by having 512 RAM on the vid card. Yours is 256 AGP? Try things on minimal if you haven't already, messing with settings in the game like suggested by Sorceress and maybe tinkering with the 3D section in the Nvidia Control, turn things off or make sure things are set to performance instead of quality in there. Try going minimal on sound too. If you are running 5.1, when you zoom in, it has to bring in the sound of the battle along with all the graphics, could be an issue and draining your resources. Maybe this next driver update from Nvidia will help us all out. Just imagine if you can get it stable and get good at playing the game in 800X600 resoltion with no effects, no sound, black and white... joking, imagine how good you'll be when you upgrade to the latest and greatest and can run the game in 2540X1600, full throttle... that or give up and stick with your XBox... Good luck!
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top

one thing i forgot : my dad turns off AA ... the game still is quite beautiful ... on other threads, some people have had less problems with AA disabled ...
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
Ok last night I tried a small map game. It was fine until me and the other AI started fighting proper. At this point we each had about 3 cap ships each, so it wasn't anywhere near end game! After we began fighting I locked up. Note that there wasn't any frame rate issues here, despite the relatively low specs of my system. So I don't feel my hardware was being pushed that hard at this point. The fact that I crash on a small map with only one other AI Player (plus pirates) at about the midgame point, reinforces my view that its a driver issue.

Sorceress: Yep I've been playing with AA off, unfortunately doesn't seem to fix the problem, for me anyway!

StitchedChin: its a 128meg 6600GT btw. Interesting that you found underclocking seemed to fix your crashing problems. It's something I might try, just out of curiousity.

On the PSU, I do have a 400W one from memory. The thing is, if this was the problem, then I'd expect it to crash while I'm running stress tests with nTune or 3dmark, but they both run fine for long periods of time.

On the page file thing, I did increase it to 2 gig from 1 gig before I played the game above. But as you can see, it didn't help. I might try maxing it out to 4 gig like someone suggested in the other thread, just to completely eliminate it as a possible cause.

StitchedCHin I can see from your detailed posts it seems that you enjoy tinkering with games trying to get them to work properly. I think this is a trait you share with many pc gamers :> I have to admit there is a 'sadistic' pleasure as you say in trying to get the game working! I'm just lucky university doesn't restart for me for another week, so I have a bit of time on my hands at the moment. This kind of tinkering is exactly why I bought a 360, I just don't hae the patience anymore. Although I have to admit you can learn a lot about PC hardware from trying to get a bloody game to work properly! :) The main reason I'm putting so much effort into getting this game to go is because its so damn good. I've been waiting for a game like this for a LONG time,and its great when its working properly.
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
Dude most people who crashed(including me) had a perfectly fine framerate up untill it crashed.. me it was midgame all seemed fine and bam, it crashed.

I tweaked my page file and voila it worked

BTW mine i increased it from 2 gb to 4 gb, yeah it was stock at 2 gb on my system.

heres my system

p4 3ghz HT
1 gb ddr ram
ATI RADEON x800xl ALL-IN-WONDER
Soundblaster X-FI XTREME GAMER

250 gb hd + 2x 80gb secondairy drives

i still had the problem and the pagefile fixed it proper.

Just try it.


but then again drivers could help. i know my up to date ATI drivers dont mess up with the game.

but what causes the minidump error though is because the game runs out of places to put data and graphical bits on memory. the game fails to manage the problem and crashes.

by significantly increasing the pagefile the game has more room, and thus wont crash.
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
Oh yeah, sadistic is definitely the right word, going with Vista 64-bit when it was first available... gotta be crazy. I keep telling myself it is a hobby... The thing I hate it Gametap doesn't support 64-bit and I was just having fun with it, ah well.

Try Upshift's fix, if you have the stamina, I like the idea of marking the pagefile.sys down to 50 mb, defrag, and upping it back up to 2 GB.

If that doesn't work, check out this issue on the nvlddmkm.sys.
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=43481&hl=
It is on Vista, but wondering if it can also apply to XP. Nvidia's update from 2/10/2007 seems to be an issue, lingering on some systems and causing conflicts on newer updates?
Here's another thing I found on the underclocking.
http://www.driverheaven.net/vista-nvidia-display-drivers/152790-how-solve-nvlddmkm-sys.html

This is insane! There are enough "fixes" to go at this for years. The only problem I see with feeding you all the nvlddmkm info is you are on XP and I haven't found anyone really complaining about that driver issue on XP, yet. I think the pagefile.sys fix might have a shot. You may not be running out of memory, but if it is having trouble accessing and writing to that pagefile because it is fragmented, it may help speed things back up to get that straightened out. It is usually good to defrag after a fresh install anyway, a lot of files are thrown around during the process and subsequent installs. Good luck...
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
Paging files should be about 1.5 times the size of your ram
End of quote



And if I have 8 gigs of RAM? Should I have a 12gb PF?

Heh, only being semi-serious. As for the OP, many people have been reporting crashes and lockups like you are describing since the update. Run a search and you should find some other threads about this that may help.
Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top
Ok I tried upping the page file to 4 gig, didn't fix the problem.

Does anyone know when the new nvidia drivers will come out?
Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top
I've had consistent crashes to the point I've started tracking how it crashes. The verdict at this point is memory usage. Every crash occurs once sins hits ~1.8G it crashes and writes a nice dump file.

Sins doesn't seem to leak until starting a game... if I just enter sins and sit at the main menu, it holds about 450M. Starting a new 'balance of power' moves it up to ~880M, but it will continue to climb quickly. If I quit back to the main menu the memory usage will continue to climb (albeit more slowly than while inside a game) until it approaches the 1.8G level, then crashes. (For reference, there is 2G physical memory, and 4G of swap... the barrier isn't virtual memory)

It is interesting to note... alt-tabbing out of sins while at the menu halts the memory leaking, though cpu usage is still full, and sound is still going.

Reply #19 from Sins Forums Top
Another observation - the effects have a huge impact on how quickly memory is consumed. All effects on highest will run out of memory fairly quickly on even a 2 player map, while all effects on low takes much much longer to run out of memory.
Reply #20 from Sins Forums Top
The more stuff that's going on, the more memory a game will consume - that's typical. You can greatly reduce your memory footprint by running with lower texture settings.
Reply #21 from Sins Forums Top
I'm Getting this error and my Memory Usage on my comp is only at 69% tops when it has crashed.

Also, yes, my frame rate is flawless up until the crash, and mine only has happened online. I can play full games single player but if me and my friends try to load a game we were playing earlier (a specific game, not generic) it crashes. I have not tried loading other games yet however, just the one we were trying to finish up.
Reply #22 from Sins Forums Top
I'm getting this error too... windows yells at me that its out of virtual memory as the game crashes, my PF is disabled so it should never tell me that.

Last 3 times it happened my ram was no more than 35% usage and it seems to happen more frequently now that I've updated to 1.3 :/

Running these:

AMD Athlon64 X2 3800
Ati Radeon x1950xtx
4x 1GB OCZ Platinum DDR400
SoundBlaster X-FI Xtreme
Reply #23 from Sins Forums Top
I'm getting this error too... windows yells at me that its out of virtual memory as the game crashes, my PF is disabled so it should never tell me that.
End of quote


DO NOT DISABLE THE WINDOWS PAGEFILE. Windows is designed to use it. If you turn it off, the moment it tries, it'll see that there's nothing there and crash with an out of VM error.
Reply #24 from Sins Forums Top
I'm getting this error too... windows yells at me that its out of
virtual memory as the game crashes, my PF is disabled so it should
never tell me that.DO NOT DISABLE THE WINDOWS PAGEFILE. Windows is designed to use it. If you turn it off, the moment it tries, it'll see that there's nothing there and crash with an out of VM error.
End of quote


It only trys to use it when its disabled if it runs completely out of RAM space. I haven't had my PF enabled in over 2 years. Makes things run a tidbit faster. I've played a lot of games... and it only happens with this one. This happens even with the PF enabled and set to 6gb on any map, not just large ones. Its irritated me enough that I've temporarily stopped playing the game until I figure out some fix for it.

Also the game didn't do this in 1.0, it crashed a few times in 1.0, but no vmem err, just straight to desktop. And it did it very infrequently. Now I can't get more than an hour out of it... seems to mostly happen when I zoom in/out almost directly over a planet.

Also, see: 35% ram usage @ crash.

I would also appreciate staff not yelling at me like a 3 year old when I know perfectly well what I'm doing.
Reply #25 from Sins Forums Top
Yep my game locked up ten minutes into playing it for the first time 1.03 update installed. Real Tech onboard sound and a Geforce Go 7900 GTX 256mb, Intel 3.6ghz with 4 gig of ram. Promise Technologies(SATA 378) will not update drivers. I also run Win XP pro due to the fact that I am unable to install Vista due to Promise Technologies refusing to provide an updated driver.