After finishing part of Endless Paths game crashes upon return to stronghold

[kalevala]

After having met the dragon on the 15th level I can still go upstairs and leave my stronghold. But after having left the stronghold area the game crashes when I return to it.

Tried it several times, tried coming from different zones, always a crash.

Some more testing revealed that I had the problem long before the 15th floor. I don't have any saves left before I was on floor 12, but I already had the problem there.

 

It could be a memory issue since I have a 32 bit computer.

I used to have a similar issue where I could no longer return to Copperlane in act 2, but that got fixed in 1.04 (thank you!!!)

 

I've added the map folder of one of the crashes. It's a rarred file, but since I apparently can't upload rars here I changed the extention to doc. So just change the doc back to rar and unrar it and you'll have the crash folder.

2015-04-25_190012.doc

[AstralWanderer]

Have you tried the /3GB fix? PoE's memory usage will increase as you progress further, so you've likely now hit the 2GB limit for unmodified 32-bit systems.

[kalevala]

Have you tried the /3GB fix? PoE's memory usage will increase as you progress further, so you've likely now hit the 2GB limit for unmodified 32-bit systems.

That is not without risk. It doesn't magically increase memory, but instead reallocates memory normally only used for internal processes. The 3GB switch can destabilize some things.   

I did this on another computer, a windows XP, when Crusader Kings II failed to create save game files, making it pointless to play. After editing the boot.ini for the 3GB trick windows refused to boot properly, either getting stuck on an infinite CHKDSK loop or getting a "failed to load personal settings" error and kicking me out. It didn't even let me boot windows in safe mode. Fortunately, I had another computer which I could use to solve the problem. I could download Hiren's BootCD which would allow me to restore the boot.ini without actually booting windows.

I play PoE on another computer, a vista, so I might not get the same problem, but I'd rather not find out. I don't know if Hiren BootCD works vista, I think it's XP only. I don't want to take the risk.

[AstralWanderer]

That is not without risk. It doesn't magically increase memory, but instead reallocates memory normally only used for internal processes. The 3GB switch can destabilize some things...I did this on another computer, a windows XP, when Crusader Kings II failed to create save game files, making it pointless to play. After editing the boot.ini for the 3GB trick windows refused to boot properly, either getting stuck on an infinite CHKDSK loop or getting a "failed to load personal settings" error and kicking me out. It didn't even let me boot windows in safe mode....

Sorry to hear of those problems - but there is another switch noted in the comments to the blog entry that is supposed to avoid most likely issues, /userva=xxxx, which fine-tunes the memory allocation.

 

The problem you describe seems very unexpected, since activating the /3GB switch alone should only restrict PAE and reduce the shared/non-shared kernel memory pools. I'm currently using it on WinXP myself. Are you running any software that affects low-level disk reads/writes like encryption?

[kalevala]

The problem you describe seems very unexpected, since activating the /3GB switch alone should only restrict PAE and reduce the shared/non-shared kernel memory pools. I'm currently using it on WinXP myself. Are you running any software that affects low-level disk reads/writes like encryption?

 

Not that I'm aware of.   

[AstralWanderer]

Then I would suggest retrying but adding a /userva setting - start at a relatively low value like 2500 (which would allow processes access to 2.4GB memory).

 

If that fails, then shortage of pool-paged memory would be the next possibility. See Memory Management - Understanding Pool Resources for more on this - you will need to install 3 items to diagnose this:

• Debugging Tools for Windows (included in this SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 4.0 - to install the Debugging Tools for Windows as a standalone component, in the SDK installation wizard, select Debugging Tools for Windows, and clear all other components).
• Symbols Package for Windows XP Service Pack 3 - select the last download, the full non-debug version.
• Process Explorer - Task Manager on steroids.

With these 3 items installed (and Process Explorer configured to use the dbghelp.dll and symbols as noted in the Memory Management article) you should see figures for Paged and Non-Paged Kernel Memory. If these seem too low, modifying the following Registry entry (standard caveats apply to Registry manipulation - installing ERUNT and configuring it to run on Windows startup is a very good idea):

 

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PagedPoolSize

 

This should be PagedPoolSize (dword) =00000000 (hex) (default) - changing it to PagedPoolSize (dword) =FFFFFFFF (hex) (default) and restarting Windows (taken from How to troubleshoot the use of paged pool kernel memory (event id 2020) in Windows Server 2003) should increase paged memory as much as possible.

Edited April 26, 2015 by AstralWanderer

[kalevala]

After some looking around I found more people who had a similar problem when using the 3GB switch. However, it seemed all of those people had XP. So I decided to take the risk and try the 3GB trick on my vista. Thus far it seems to have worked. My pc boots normally, that's already a big plus

I could return to my stronghold and haven't had a crash yet.

I will definitely keep your other suggestions at hand for when/if I run into problems again.

Thanks!