Game Freezes indefinitely at Random

[McDonaldsnapkin]

Hi all,

Just bought this game for the steam sale and I'm starting to get aggravated to the point of regret. My game at complete random will permanently freeze. Audio still plays but nothing else. The only way to close the game is through task manager (alt f4 doesn't even work) where it will say "not responding." I am playing the Pirate Game start as part of the new DLC. Please help I really want to get into this game but at this point it is unplayable for me.

Device info and savefile:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

[Alan Phipps]

First of all thanks and well done for providing the supporting info. Have you verified your game installation since the last update and is your game modded or save-edited?

Your DxDiag shows quite a few different sound devices and drivers on the go at the same time. Disable any that you don't use in Device Manager, Sound/Audio Devices (right-click on a device in the list for a disable/enable pop-up). Especially disable the Nvidia *sound* device and driver if you don't use it. Unplug any USB devices that you don't use while playing too.

Your DxDiag shows that every one of your Windows Error Reports are unattributed LiveKernelEvent issues which are serious system failures that are usually associated with a driver or system problem rather than a game or app. I also note that your Win10 OS is at least two builds out of date (19042 instead of 19044) and so it may be worth fully updating that to improve system stability.

Good luck.

[McDonaldsnapkin]

Thank you for the response.

I updated my windows and tried playing again. I watched my event viewer while playing and was able to catch this upon crashing:

Log Name: System
Source: Display
Date: 3/19/2022 12:10:59 PM
Event ID: 4101
Task Category: None
Level: Warning
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: DESKTOP-PI3C6BM
Description:
Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="Display" />
<EventID Qualifiers="0">4101</EventID>
<Version>0</Version>
<Level>3</Level>
<Task>0</Task>
<Opcode>0</Opcode>
<Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2022-03-19T12:10:59.9173174Z" />
<EventRecordID>30614</EventRecordID>
<Correlation />
<Execution ProcessID="0" ThreadID="0" />
<Channel>System</Channel>
<Computer>DESKTOP-PI3C6BM</Computer>
<Security />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data>nvlddmkm</Data>
<Data>
</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>

Sounds like a GPU issue but my Driver is up-to-date and I don't have this problem on any other game. No overclocks either

[Alan Phipps]

Yes, your graphics driver stopped responding. I would do a clean uninstall and then reinstall of that latest Nvidia driver to make sure that there are no outdated or corrupt files hanging around in the driver suite.

[McDonaldsnapkin]

I have used DDU to perform a complete reinstall of graphic drivers. I will update status after some more playtime.

[McDonaldsnapkin]

Seems the problem is still persisting. I monitor my GPU temps and health while gaming and everything is within baseline. I have this issue on no other games even GPU heavy ones. I'm at a loss here. My game will let me play anywhere between 5 minutes to an hour before crashing.

[Alan Phipps]

OK, that's a shame, then let's go back to my questions and suggestions at post 2 please.

It could be something else due to stress going on, such as cpu overheating or psu voltages fluctuating, but you said that you monitored such things.

It *might* be worth doing a cpu stress test, an SSD drive check, and a Wn10 memory check, if only for peace of mind.

[Terre]

The 'Event ID: 4101' appears to be quite a common error.

It maybe worth trying the NVidia Studio drivers, they tend to be more stable than the game ready set.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/drivers/results/186823/

[BitByte]

Have you tried lower used resolution in the game if that would help in problem?

[McDonaldsnapkin]

Unfortunately I don't have time to do more extensive testing today but I think there's either a problem with my graphics card or the way this game handles my GPU. After a small underclock I was able to play stably until I had to go for about 45 minutes (in hindsight I maybe should've kept the game running while I left just to check). I downloaded a different hardware monitor and ran the game later again at stock and was able to identify that my GPU's power limit is over hit by this game

See the new screenshot "HWMonitor Stats" in:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... -htzD46wpE

You can see under section "Powers" it hit nearly 102%. The game didn't crash at this point but I'm not sure how normal that is. I had another test where the game crashed after hitting about 102.5% but HWMonitor freaked out and wasn't able to get the screenshot. Since this I've stressed test the gpu under other circumstances and it never goes about 100%. And I have been stress testing the GPU a lot since making this thread. I've done an hour long haven benchmark along with extensive testing with 3d mark, furmark, and Gravitymark which can test using Vulkan. All of those have ran extensively without issue. I've even ran multiple at once to really strain my gpu and while the performance of them weren't good, my gpu handled them for over 20 minutes without crash. I might be in denial, but I really don't want to believe my GPU is failing. I also feel like underclocking to get 1 game to work is an overly annoying work around. My GPU stays at stock all other times. I'm able to play other gpu intensive games like Warzone, Enlisted, and Escape From Tarkov without crash for VERY long periods of time.

I did some cpu testing, but I think there's about 0 chance its that. I stressed it for 15 minutes with prime95 with no issue and never going about 63C (shout-out to Noctua cpu coolers )
I did a full system stress test called "heavy load" that stresses RAM, CPU, and GPU all at once. PC handled that one fine as well but it only runs for 5 minutes.

Is there any chance you believe the game can be mishandling my GPU as opposed to my GPU not being able to handle the game or that my GPU is simply failing?

[Alan Phipps]

You never did say whether your game was modded or edited at all, nor whether you had verified the game installation since the last update.

[McDonaldsnapkin]

You never did say whether your game was modded or edited at all, nor whether you had verified the game installation since the last update.

I did have 2 mods but they were minor. After seeing this post I started a new save completely vanilla as the "Young Gun" start and ended up crashing after nearly an hour.

[CBJ]

If you have a crashdump from that crash, then we could see what kind of error it is, and get an idea whether it's likely to be a game issue or a hardware/driver problem. If it was a bluescreen or other "hard" crash, then it's almost certainly the latter.

[McDonaldsnapkin]

If you have a crashdump from that crash, then we could see what kind of error it is, and get an idea whether it's likely to be a game issue or a hardware/driver problem. If it was a bluescreen or other "hard" crash, then it's almost certainly the latter.

Sorry but where can I find the crash dump? The crash is the same every time. The video freezes with the audio continuing. The only way to close the game is through task manager as alt f4 doesn't even work. I've waited upwards of 10 minutes for an unfreeze but it never happens.

[McDonaldsnapkin]

If you have a crashdump from that crash, then we could see what kind of error it is, and get an idea whether it's likely to be a game issue or a hardware/driver problem. If it was a bluescreen or other "hard" crash, then it's almost certainly the latter.

Sorry but where can I find the crash dump? The crash is the same every time. The video freezes with the audio continuing. The only way to close the game is through task manager as alt f4 doesn't even work. I've waited upwards of 10 minutes for an unfreeze but it never happens.

Never Mind. Read online it's supposed to be in the game directory, but I do not have one. I guess due to the nature of my crash a crash dump is not created. The thing is, every crash is related to my GPU driver crashing according to event viewer. I just don't understand how this game can make the driver crash but no other game or even stress test will.

[StormSinger]

Maybe I can give you a direction. I had the same problem, same freezing/sound but no moving crash. It wasn't as frequent as yours, but it wasn't going away. When I finally decided to sort it out, my event logs all contained a reference to "nvlddmkm". When I went to update my video drivers, I was told that I needed to reboot the system before I could install... I did, and I did. I've put about 12 hours into the game since then, usually 3+ hours at a time with no freezing (so far).

I'm not saying your problem is exactly the same, but I'd definitely exhaust my options with regards to video drivers, settings, possible hardware issues, etc. The problem is likely there, somewhere. Most likely, I won't be entirely convinced I've fixed it until I've put enough hours into it.

My vc is nothing special, a GTX1060 6GB and the drivers are 511.79

Good luck!

[CBJ]

Yes, it sounds like it hasn't actually crashed at all, if the sound is continuing (as opposed to just repeating). That kind of "freeze", where it's just the display that is "stuck" is almost always a driver or hardware issue, so the previous poster's advice is probably a good place to start.

[McDonaldsnapkin]

Maybe I can give you a direction. I had the same problem, same freezing/sound but no moving crash. It wasn't as frequent as yours, but it wasn't going away. When I finally decided to sort it out, my event logs all contained a reference to "nvlddmkm". When I went to update my video drivers, I was told that I needed to reboot the system before I could install... I did, and I did. I've put about 12 hours into the game since then, usually 3+ hours at a time with no freezing (so far).

I'm not saying your problem is exactly the same, but I'd definitely exhaust my options with regards to video drivers, settings, possible hardware issues, etc. The problem is likely there, somewhere. Most likely, I won't be entirely convinced I've fixed it until I've put enough hours into it.

My vc is nothing special, a GTX1060 6GB and the drivers are 511.79

Good luck!

The thing is my video drivers are up-to-date with version 511.79 with an RTX 2060. I've even done a full fresh DDU reinstall. But yes, every time without fail the game will crash within an hour of play and the error in event viewer is always saying its my video driver crashing.

[McDonaldsnapkin]

So I turned the game on and put my ship on the highway and let it loop while I went out for errands for over an hour. Came back and to my surprise the game was still running. To my disappointment though when I came back I pulled off the highway and started crystal mining only for my game to crash again 5 minutes later. Seems like the game will crash when loading in new content or going to various points of space.

[McDonaldsnapkin]

Just to give everyone an update I ended up updating ALL drivers on my computer (from mobo website) along with installing window's optional driver updates and to my surprise my game ran stable for 3-4 hours without crash. I did get one crash but it was when trying to shift tab. Same error though. I'm not too sure what specific driver it was that fixed the issue as I did a bunch at once but I can deal with one crash every 3 hours as opposed to what was happening.