AstralWanderer

Welcome to the forums Yuri89, Check which version of Windows you are using. If it is 32-bit then you may need to change startup settings - see Windows 32-bit: Crashing occasionally or on specific area transitions. Otherwise, please run a DirectX diagnostic (see here for instructions), save the results and post the dxdiag.txt file created in your next post.

Might this be related to the overlay option it offers? Some other PoE crashes have been linked with Steam's overlay. If you have a Realtek chip, then there should be more recent drivers for it - check here. MSI Afterburner is very similar to EVGA Precision (both based on RivaTuner) so if one causes problems, it seems quite likely the other will also. If you are using the overlay (to report temperature, framerate, etc onscreen) then try disabling that first.

For WinXP, edit the boot.ini file in C:\ to add a /3GB switch - see https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/316739 for details. Windows will need to be restarted for this to take effect. Also consider adding /userva=2900 after the /3GB - this will reduce available memory slightly from 3072 to 2900 but should avoid potential issues with reduced Windows kernel memory as noted in the MS article.

Dragoonlordz, The error reported in your logs is identical to that in the Random crashes... thread, which seemed to be solved with a (sound card) driver update and heatsink cleanup. It may be worth checking your sound/video drivers also (DirectX diagnostics should give the date of both). I would also suggest trying the Torture Test option of Prime95 - this will serve as a CPU/memory stress test (try to leave it running for a couple of hours if you can) and can help identify issues with these items.

Sorry for lack of followup but I've been busy elsewhere (BTW I'm not a developer or an Obsidiman - they get special banners under their usernames...) and I couldn't really make out much from the logs you uploaded (only one had the output_log.txt and the related error details seemed to suggest something odd with memory usage - PoE using 0 bytes which could have been an overheating issue). If you haven't already done so, it may be worth installing some termperature monitoring software - for the CPU I'd suggest CoreTemp but don't download the "standard" installer with InstallQ adware - use these direct links instead for the 64-bit version (this is the version you want) or 32-bit version (for anyone running 32-bit Windows versions). For the GPU, I'd suggest MSI Afterburner. Both are free, both can provide temperature graphs (CoreTemp requires the Grapher plugin for this) and MSI Afterburner allows you to set up a fan profile so you can improve cooling by increasing fan speed as GPU temperature rises.

Not tried Prime95 then? Go on, I dare you. *heads off to call the fire service to report an impending explosion at Ichthyic's address* Looks pretty, but nothing that requires .NET bloatware gets my vote. And it doesn't seem to offer graphs (CoreTemp does via a plugin).

As an aside, that high a temperature should merit an examination of your setup (either dialling back the overclock or improving the CPU cooling). If PoE can cause those termperatures, then plenty of other applications can too. A good (and free) CPU stress tester for this is Prime95 (use the "stress test" option) which can also double as a memory test. For monitoring temperatures, CoreTemp (32-bit version or 64-bit version - these are direct adware-free download links) is a good choice - just avoid the main download which includes InstallQ adware.

Sorry to hear disabling the sound card didn't help. However since you mention your PC being a new Lenovo, it would be well worth removing the bundled adware that has been giving them such a bad name (Lenovo offer a special uninstaller for SuperFish here). PCDecrapifier might be worth checking out - unwanted bundled software might not be responsible for your system freezing, but it's probably not helping either.

Either you need to check the exact model of HP Pavilion (e.g. HP Pavilion G6 has an Intel HD Graphics 3000) or go to Control Panel/Device Manager and look at what is shown under the Display Adapters section. If you have an Intel graphics chipset, then you may be able to run PoE but not very well (or most other games for that matter since Intel produce the least capable graphics chips). Your best bet would be older games like PoE's spiritual successor Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2 - these also benefit from dozens of high quality mods, most notably the Baldur's Gate Trilogy mod which combines both games into one epic quest using the BG2 engine.

Check the folder - it should contain a text file with the full error and an output_log.txt. These may offer some idea of the underlying cause but that error suggests a permissions issue. Running PoE as administrator might be worth trying if you haven't already done so.

Welcome to the forums Brumrah, Your output_log reports the following error: Crash!!! Crash in winutils::ProcessInternalCrash(PEXCEPTION_POINTERS pExInfo) ERROR: SymInitialize, GetLastError: 'The operation completed successfully.' (Address: 00000000) ERROR: SymGetSearchPath, GetLastError: 'The handle is invalid.' (Address: 00000000) SymInit: Symbol-SearchPath: '', symOptions: 530, UserName: 'Jonathan' This isn't the same as running out of memory, but given that you are running on a 32-bit version of Win7, it could be that PoE is hitting the 2GB per-process limit. In that case, editing your boot.ini file to add /3GB /Userva=2900 flags as documented in Microsoft KB 316739: How to use the /userva switch with the /3GB switch... may help by increasing the per-process limit from 2048 to 2900KB (you will need to restart Windows for this change to take effect).

Welcome to the forums Wiggum, The output_log file lists a stack overflow error at the end. While your (Nvidia) graphics card drivers look up-to-date your (Realtek) sound card drivers are 2012 vintage, so I would suggest updating these. Given your mention of a screeching sound, these seem the most likely cause of your problem. If the Realtek driver update doesn't help, try disabling the sound (best to disable the Realtek in Device Manager) to see if that stops the crashing. If crashes continue, then something else is to blame.

Rockmono, Sorry to hear that didn't work. One final thing to try is to start your PC in Safe Mode (see here on how to do this) and try running PoE from there. It probably won't work (since your graphics drivers shouldn't be loaded) but if it does and manages to keep running without a freeze, then it would suggest a conflict with other software (or drivers) that normally load during Windows startup. Edit: just had another thought. Try muting sound (or better yet, disable your sound card in Device Manager) just in case the problem is a sound driver issue.

Good to hear that worked for you, but checking the output_log.txt file as suggested earlier would have shown the problem as well (the end of that file should contain an "unable to allocate memory" error). The suggestion made to Abel above regarding system setup might apply with your system also - other Unity games are likely to be more demanding than PoE and even the /3GB setting may not help if you have third-party DLLs that greatly increase memory usage. You're welcome, but the /userva setting actually reduces maximum per-process memory (in this case, from 3072MB to 2900MB). However, as noted in the linked Microsoft article, it reduces the likelihood of the Windows kernel running out of space in its Paged/Non-Paged Pools or for System Page Table Entries.

For someone so willing to call others' expertise into question, yours seems highly suspect. GPU overclocking-related problems would not give the results described by the original poster who cannot even start a game - instead they would tend to involve crashes after a period of gameplay (likely due to overheating) or graphics corruption. Far better advice. It might also be worth checking, given the PC setup, if the Users folder has been relocated to another drive or is using links or junctions (these allow you to relocate files elsewhere while leaving a "pointer" in the original location). PoE should work OK with junctions on the savegames (it does on my 32-bit WinXP system) but if these are being used, it might be worth removing them (backup the contents first!) and creating normal folders.

This may be a long shot, but try checking the Event Viewer (Start/Control Panel/System and Security/Administrative Tools/Event Viewer) system and application logs to see if anything unusual was reported just before lockup. Another option is to try disabling any security software like anti-virus scanners or firewalls (disconnect from the Internet first and do not reconnect until the security software is re-enabled) and then re-running PoE.

Doing so would have shown your situation, though regrettable, was not universal. I've had no problems so far on WinXP SP3 with or without the /3gb setting. That info may be useful to some posters, but anyone adding the /3GB switch to boot.ini should also consider the /userva=2900 option (see Microsoft KB: How to use the /userva switch with the /3GB switch... for more) to avoid possible issues with /3GB on its own. However PoE shouldn't be using that much memory on your system (I see it reaching 1.5GB maximum). It might be worth you installing Process Hacker and enabling the "Virtual Memory" column (this shows the memory requested by a process and will therefore show which ones hit the 2/3/4GB ceilings). There must be something on your system (third party software maybe?) causing your processes to use much more memory and it could be that Process Hacker can identify the problem (you'll need to look at the DLL lists). The reason for doing this is that you'll encounter similar problems with other Unity games, and you may find even the /3GB switch doesn't help if you have other software significantly increasing process memory usage. For example, I find that Dreamfall Chapters book 2 requires /3GB /userva=2900 to run a particular cutscene without crashing - if your system setup is adding 500MB+ to every process then even this would not be enough for you.

When games A and B do a similar thing but B has half the framerate while consuming double the memory and CPU/GPU processing power, then it is a simple judgement to say that B is less efficient than A. You don't need to run a profiler, debugger or other monitor to see the results. With PoE's fixed perspective view, valid comparisons can be drawn with earlier games like Temple of Elemental Evil (min spec 700MHz CPU, 128MB RAM, 32MB GPU) or Beyond Divinity (800MHz PIII, 256MB RAM, 64MB GPU). PoE's min spec (2.5GHz Core i3, 4GB RAM, 512MB GPU) is completely out of line. Just none you'd care to name publicly, eh? If it was one game only, you'd have a point but several other Unity-based games have been mentioned in this thread as showing poor performance also. That does fairly put the spotlight on Unity, since it either proves it to be a bottleneck, or so difficult to get good performance out of that nobody bothers. This isn't to say that people should expect good performance of Pillars from the start - as I and others have said, bug-fixing should take priority over speed improvements. However performance tuning can have a huge impact and any experienced developer should know that.

You don't need to be a developer to know what framerate you're seeing from a game, or how much system/GPU memory it is taking. And there are several examples of Unity games showing significantly higher memory utilisation and poorer performance compared to those using "native" engines, such as Legends of Aethereus or Dreamfall Chapters. Based on Unity output logs I've received following a crash, Legends of Aethereus had 240MB allocated yet ended up using 2GB. Dreamfall Chapters reported 800-900MB allocated when it took up 2.8GB. Not (yet) seen Pillars use more than 1.6GB, but this is a spectacular amount of memory compared to what Temple of Elemental Evil or Divine Divinity/Beyond Divinity needed for their graphics. Jolly good for you. So you have no reason to post further...

Agreed on the (lack of) optimization, but if someone has overheating problems with PoE then they're almost surely going to encounter them with other GPU-intensive games. Laptops can benefit from a laptop cooler, but for the time being experimenting with the plethora of mods available for Baldur's Gate and other IE games may be more worthwhile until PoE has had a few more updates (Obsidian's last fantasy RPG, Neverwinter Nights 2, took over a year of updates to fix most of its issues).

While I'd agree on the performance front, I'd also say that fixing bugs and problems should come first - once the major problems are fixed, then look at the performance. As I noted elsewhere, this game is display-wise very similar to Beyond Divinity and the system specs for that were an 800MHz PIII, 256MB RAM and a 64MB graphics card. Slimming Unity3D down to those levels probably isn't on, but it should be possible to make it less wasteful on the hardware front. And whoever decided to recommend 8GB RAM for a game that maxes out at 1.6GB (on my WinXP SP3 setup) deserves to be flailed with a RAM heatsink (preferably one of the high-end ones wilth lots of spikes...) - especially since 32-bit PoE could not ever use more than 4GB RAM even on a 64-bit OS.

Any luck with overclocking your GPU as suggested earlier? GPU overheating is due to inadequate cooling which is the end-user's (or system builder's) responsibility. If you've installed a graphics card and then failed to check temperatures while running benchmarking software (Unigine Heaven or 3DMark2005/6's Canyon Flight being good GPU stress testers), then it's your own fault if a game causes issues later on. MSI Afterburner or GPU-Z can both be used to monitor GPU temperatures and both are free. Afterburner can even provide temperature displays via an onscreen overlay or a compatible Logitech keyboard/gamepad display so you can keep an eye on them while gaming. Most likely because that part of the game has seen little or no attention on performance optimization (probably because Obsidian considered other parts of the game more important). It will likely be addressed in a future update. The game itself is insanely demanding for what it does - a fixed perspective RPG with a zoom facility. Beyond Divinity offered a very similar display with the ability to run at similar resolutions (I've run it at 2560x1600) plus zoom and it only specified an 800MHz Pentium III and 256MB RAM with a 64MB graphics card. Unity3D may offer far more capabilities, but even when they're not used they're clearly having a major impact on system requirements.

They should actually affect both - the CPU with more NPC scripts active and the GPU with more models to render. If framerates are low when there is spare CPU capacity (as measured on Task Manager) and GPU capacity (as measured by MSI Afterburner) then that does point the finger at the game engine. Even with systems running at 60+ fps, the resources used (600MB VRAM, 1.5GB system RAM) are still extraordinarily high for a fixed perspective isometric game. However optimisation is (and should be) the last thing done, with bug-fixing taking priority. So there's a very good chance of future patches improving matters for those who've not been able to find a fix here.

Serves you right - should have stuck with 3Dfx's Voodoo.

You mentioned in an earlier post using an HD4870 - is that the 512MB VRAM model? If so, it might be lack of VRAM (I've seen GPU memory usage reach 600MB at 2560x1600) - try installing MSI Afterburner to check on your usage. If your system is maxing out on VRAM, check you're not forcing any graphics enhancements like AA in Catalyst Control Centre and try running the game at a lower resolution with MSAA disabled (open console with ~, press Enter, type msaa 0, press Enter again). Another option might be to try overclocking your HD4870 if you're not already doing so (MSI Afterburner should be able to do that, but keep an eye on temperatures) but that won't help much if lack of VRAM is the problem.