Game Crashes Consistently

[de24]

Hi,

 

I’ve got a problem with Pillars of Eternity crashing on me and I’ve been fighting this for the past 8 months. Here’s a list of troubleshooting actions I’ve tried and other relevant information.

 

Overall Description:

I am running PoE through Steam. The game stops and I get an error message from Windows that force closes the program. This usually occurs once the game has been running for 15 minutes or so.

 

Initial Troubleshooting Actions Taken (Summer 2016):

- Initial crashes occurred while running Windows 8.1 with a brand new NVidia GTX 1070

- Verified Integrity of Game Cache through Steam -> check out OK

- Updated video card drivers -> still crashing

- Performed clean install of PoE -> still crashing

- Turned off PoE Steam “cloud sync” -> still crashing

- Updated all Windows items

- Attempted to delete “UNCL” font, but I have no such font -> still crashing

- Double checked video card drivers -> still crashing

- Emailed “support@obsidian.net” -> they seemed to think it might be a video card issue

- Posted initial forum information about my crashes -> received no responses

- Gave up on the problem and took a break

 

Current Troubleshooting Actions Taken (Winter 2016):

- Updated to Windows 10.1

- Installed new video card, AMD Radeon R9 200

- Installed new video card drivers

- Clean install of Steam

- Fired up PoE -> still crashing

- Updated DirectX

- Uninstalled PoE

- Removed all Save Game files and turned off Steam “cloud sync” of save files

- Clean install of PoE

- Set PoE and Steam to run as ‘administrator’

- Started new game from the beginning -> still crashing, this time it crashed during the character creation process

 

At this point, I’m really out of ideas. I had thought that installing a new video card and updating my OS would be the strongest actions I could take. It also seemed that Obsidian support thought the problem was my video card, which it clearly isn’t.

 

I’m not particularly knowledgeable at reading the output log, but I’m wondering if the ‘ntdll.dll’ that appears is a possible culprit. In reading other posts on the forum here about crashing, this has been mentioned.

 

As per the forum rules, I have attached a link to the Save files, Dxdiag system specification, screenshot and output log for my issue.

 

Link to those files is here

 

ANY help would be much appreciated.

 

 

Additional Data from Windows ‘Event Viewer’ (Windows Logs>Applications):

 

General tab:

Faulting application name: PillarsOfEternity.exe, version: 1.3.2.1186, time stamp: 0x5669f24a

Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 10.0.14393.479, time stamp: 0x58256ca0

Exception code: 0xc0000029

Fault offset: 0x0009d4a0

Faulting process id: 0x1ba4

Faulting application start time: 0x01d25ba7eb04c1ba

Faulting application path: S:\Steam\steamapps\common\Pillars of Eternity\PillarsOfEternity.exe

Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll

Report Id: d4016648-6c9b-47f8-9acd-27cd06e45432

Faulting package full name:

Faulting package-relative application ID:

 

Details tab ‘Friendly View’:

 

PillarsOfEternity.exe

 

     

1.3.2.1186

 

     

5669f24a

 

     

ntdll.dll

 

     

10.0.14393.479

 

     

58256ca0

 

     

c0000029

 

     

0009d4a0

 

     

1ba4

 

     

01d25ba7eb04c1ba

 

     

S:\Steam\steamapps\common\Pillars of Eternity\PillarsOfEternity.exe

 

     

C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll

 

     

d4016648-6c9b-47f8-9acd-27cd06e45432

Details tab ‘XML View’:

- <Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">

- <System>

 <Provider Name="Application Error" />

 <EventID Qualifiers="0">1000</EventID>

 <Level>2</Level>

 <Task>100</Task>

 <Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>

 <TimeCreated SystemTime="2016-12-21T17:07:22.380271500Z" />

 <EventRecordID>3102</EventRecordID>

 <Channel>Application</Channel>

 <Computer>khoffmann</Computer>

 <Security />

 </System>

- <EventData>

 <Data>PillarsOfEternity.exe</Data>

 <Data>1.3.2.1186</Data>

 <Data>5669f24a</Data>

 <Data>ntdll.dll</Data>

 <Data>10.0.14393.479</Data>

 <Data>58256ca0</Data>

 <Data>c0000029</Data>

 <Data>0009d4a0</Data>

 <Data>1ba4</Data>

 <Data>01d25ba7eb04c1ba</Data>

 <Data>S:\Steam\steamapps\common\Pillars of Eternity\PillarsOfEternity.exe</Data>

 <Data>C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll</Data>

 <Data>d4016648-6c9b-47f8-9acd-27cd06e45432</Data>

 <Data />

 <Data />

 </EventData>

 </Event>

 

       

 

       

 

[Xaratas]

You have some very uncommon error. I could not find anything useful regarding it. Only that the SIGILL in Mono/Unity stands for an Illegal Instruction which is way out of reach to fix for you.

 

But your screenshot has given me another idea, can you halt avira antivirus and then start poe? If that helps add a general scanning exception for poe.

If that does not change the behavior maybe its an other program which does not work well with poe.

[de24]

Hi Xaratas-

 

Thank you for your reply! I did as you suggested and turned off Avira Antivirus and ran the game again. It still crashed, but this time I got a different crash error. I've attached the screenshot from that crash as well as the crash report data.

 

2016-12-30_115914.zip

[Xaratas]

PillarsOfEternity.exe caused an Access Violation (0xc0000005)
  in module PillarsOfEternity.exe at 0023:0016e561.

 

This time its some sort of unspecified memory error, guessing the game want to access some thing that is not there, and was not allocated in the first place.

I think i can not read any more usefull info out of the crash.dmp, that would need some developer with his debugger, and and idea for what to look. (Aka this will never happen )

[de24]

I forwarded all this recent info to the development team. I have no idea if I'll get a response but I figured it's worth a shot. 

 

I also bought another Unity engine game, Wasteland 2, on the Steam sale so I'm curious to see if any of these problems will still persist. 

 

Thanks for taking a look at this and for your help.

[de24]

I've run Wasteland 2 (also runs on Unity) for a full day and have had no problems.

[Mad_Myke]

next time it happens, check your event viewer to see if the error consistently pops up. When I was having trouble with crashing, I got an error for ntdll.dll ... when I regressed back to an older nvidia driver, the crashing stopped. Apparently an update to nvidia drivers a while back caused problems with specific setups. I believe there was some kind of issue involving Win10, NVidia, and ASUS motherboards.

 

Of course, this could be something else as well.

 

Here was my thread for this same issue back in October:

 

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/89883-constant-crashing-in-game/

Edited March 27, 2017 by Mad_Myke