Crash to desktop after very long playtime - Seems improved after BIOS update.

[grobern]

I do not think a save game will help here. The game crash to desktop during extended play sessions (6+hours). Launching and continuing is fine again for 6-8 hours or so. No crash dump. The Egosoft utility to report the crash flashed on screen though. However, I have extended debug logging enabled and found these, and the last one is right before the log cuts off:

Line 68: [=ERROR=] 545154.50 P:\dev\P1_hotfix\src\X4\ui\core\xanark\anarkviewbridge.cpp(101): Warning. The current frame was already updated without processing the update event. Check for errors in addon scripts issuing too many update calls.
Line 194: [=ERROR=] 545461.10 Widget system error. Failed to set initial selected column. Selected-column will not be changed. Error: specified column contains a non-selectable element and hence cannot be selected
Line 893: [=ERROR=] 545970.79 table:createDescriptor(): Initial selected cell '6 / 1' specified, but is not interactive. Skipping selection. (widget type = 'text')
Line 1214: [=ERROR=] 546538.29 SetEditBoxText(): invalid passed editboxID: 90186
Line 4129: [=ERROR=] 549412.71 Error in MD cue md.Story_Boron.Ch3_ActivateKhaak: Property lookup failed: $Ch3_InactiveKhaakGroup.{1}
Line 10806: [=ERROR=] 555558.23 Error in MD cue md.Story_Yaki.Wingmate_Join_Player: Property lookup failed: event.param.owner

Log file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BnOssC ... sp=sharing

[CBJ]

There's nothing obvious in the logfile that would indicate a crash. Without a crashdump or a savegame, there's not much for us to investigate as we regularly leave the game running for extended periods, including overnight.

[Alan Phipps]

There are several game-ready updates to the Nvidia driver and hence Vulkan from the version you have (566.36) - unless you are holding back on updating deliberately because of other issues. I am using driver version 576.52 without issues.

[grobern]

@CBJ: How can I enable the capture of a crash dump? I checked the MiniDump folder in Windows where the crash dumps are supposed to go, but nothing there. It seems the automatic crash reporting tool in X4 is preventing a dump file being created locally.

@Alan Phipps: The entire 57X series of drivers from NVidia have been insanely unstable from what I understand, especially with dual monitor setups, and the rate they are pushing hotfixes for them is not confidence boosting either. Also, there is the whole Windows 11 KB5058499 business that apparently fix a Windows kernel GPU issue (I did install that this weekend, and may or may not be related but X4 crash-to-desktop seem to occur less quick during extended play than before the KB got applied).

[Alan Phipps]

Here is all the information you might need about crash dumps and automatic submission of them, as linked in the 'please read before posting' sticky at the top of this forum. The ones you are probably looking for (.dmp) are in the X4 game folder where the game exe is and not in any general Windows dump folder.

[grobern]

@Alan Phipps: Thank you, found them! Here are the last 3 DMP files (since 7.60 public release):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DUWoJP ... sp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V-uyYZ ... sp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EvH9Tr ... sp=sharing

[CBJ]

Unfortunately the three crashdumps are all wildly different, and one of them doesn't involve any game code at all. That suggests that this may not be a game problem as such. Can you provide a DXDiag and vulkaninfo (see the first thread at the top of the forum) so that we can see whether there might be a system issue?

[grobern]

@CBJ: Freshly generated.

vulkaninfo: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WtfsYz ... sp=sharing
DxDiag: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hBPzlH ... sp=sharing

Also, two additional crash dumps from last night. Both happened when auto save triggered:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14kQYza ... sp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/19XSkUy ... sp=sharing

Note: After a bit of play I also start to see the same map drawing artifacts mentioned by other posters (it looks the same as their attached images with the random solid polygons being drawn). Normal game play does not produce any drawing artifacts that I have seen, even after the map starts to act up.

Tonight I will try the latest NVidia 57X driver and see how that goes. Wish me luck. From what I have seen in the GeForce forums the 57X series of drivers are a pile of doo-doo, esp. if using more than 1 monitor. Even the Google AI agrees ! Search for this phrase in Google: "latest stable geforce driver" and see the "AI Overview" result.

[CBJ]

The graphical artifacts that some people are seeing are almost certainly unrelated.

Crashes during saving are usually a result of heavy memory access and are a commonly reported symptom of the known hardware and firmware issues with Intel 13th and 14th generation CPUs. Since your DXDiag shows that you have such a system, and the other crashes you've reported are in such random places, I'd say that was the most likely candidate in your case.

[Alan Phipps]

All of the DxDiag Windows Error Reports are LIveKernelEvent or BlueScreen crashes and so it really does look like either a driver or system hardware issue as game code cannot directly cause such crashes. It is indeed typically an Intel 13/14th gen cpu combination with a powerful modern graphics card that seems to exhibit these random/long game crash issues when memory access is being stressed or loaded by X4.

[user1679]

This is purely anecdotal but I had a save that I had to abandon after 7.60 because the game crashes whenever my pilots or myself goes near the gate leading from Grand Exchange III to Grand Exchange I or vice versa. Just dumps me to the desktop with no error or log, only a dump file in the game folder. The gate is currently undiscovered and I tried all methods of discovering it; different ships, different pilots, myself, even in my space suit. As soon as the fog of war disappears on the map and the gate appears, the game crashes.

I can't explain it because it happens with or without my mods, only on this save and only on 7.60. Perhaps you're running into something as random?

[Terre]

JayzTwoCents has a video on YT showing the typical random crashing caused by a CPU fatigue.

https://youtu.be/2-9GpV2CO_A?t=569

[Alan Phipps]

@ user1679: Yours doesn't sound at all like the OP's long term play random issue as yours is a specific in-game trigger regardless of gametime. In your case I would suspect a corrupt game asset and verify the X4 game installation or do a clean reinstall. If that still fails there then the save chain may be holding the corruption.

With and without mods is quite meaningless if you play on from a once-modded or corrupted save.

[grobern]

So I did not go with a GeForce 57X driver last night, but I did update to the brand new BIOS that EVGA just released for my motherboard. It updated the CPU microcode to the latest Intel 0x12F version, and is supposed to mitigate most of the 13th/14th gen CPU issues, esp. around voltage.

Played almost 6 hours until way past midnight, and not a single crash. Looks very promising so far!

[CBJ]

Good to hear. Keep us posted.

[user1679]

@ user1679: Yours doesn't sound at all like the OP's long term play random issue as yours is a specific in-game trigger regardless of gametime. In your case I would suspect a corrupt game asset and verify the X4 game installation or do a clean reinstall. If that still fails there then the save chain may be holding the corruption.

With and without mods is quite meaningless if you play on from a once-modded or corrupted save.

Yes, thank you. I had used the custom game editor so I loaded my preset and created a new game under 7.60 and the crash does not happen so something was corrupted in my save. I wish I knew what happened, I find these types of issues interesting. But short of running X4 through a debugger to see what's going on, it's going to remain a mystery.

[grobern]

I have played for extended hours this weekend, and the worse it got was the map polygon corruption, but not a single crash to desktop. It really looks like the new Intel microcode update fixed the stability issue.