Natural Selection 2 Multiplayer Armory Crash

HubHikari · November 2014

Alright, so a very weird error: If I'm in a multiplayer game, and attempt to access the Armory, the game immediately CTDs. No warning, no message, just one second there, the next, gone. I'm running a Windows 7 platform with 24GB of RAM on an i7 950. Physics multithreading is off. Does anyone have any idea what's going on?

This also happens when I try to access the Marine Commander box.

GhoulofGSG9 · November 2014

Did you already tried all steps given in this post ? If so i would ask you to add the tech-support.zip

HubHikari · November 2014

All files were successfully validated through Steam. The options file is not applicable, since it was the very first time I started the game. Edit: Also, deleting it did not fix the issue.

http://puu.sh/cCeN8/1ab5c0a417.zip Here's a link to the Tech_Support ZIP file.

GhoulofGSG9 · November 2014

HubHikari wrote: »

All files were successfully validated through Steam. The options file is not applicable, since it was the very first time I started the game. Edit: Also, deleting it did not fix the issue.

http://puu.sh/cCeN8/1ab5c0a417.zip Here's a link to the Tech_Support ZIP file.

Ok the only thing i could find in your files was a weird PhysX issue, so do me the favor and disable PhysX in the Options. If that doesn't help the only way to really get the issue seems to use windg.

But I'll give you further instructions about that if disabling PhysX doesn't help.

I'm really sorry you did run into those issues but i'll try to do as much as i can to help you solving them

HubHikari · November 2014

PhysX and Physics Acceleration were and remain "Off." Let's head to the windg solution.

I definitely appreciate your support! Thanks a lot!

GhoulofGSG9 · November 2014

Ok first download the Win SDK form here. While installing it you have to only select Debugging Tools for Windows, that's all we need!

Once you are done with installing, start up Windbg(x86) (you can use the start menu search to find it). After that start ns2 and set it under the options into the "full-screen windowed" mode. Now you can switch back to windbg with alt +tab. There you click at File -> Attach to Process and select the ns2.exe . You will then notice that ns2 will freeze and a console will open itself. Type into that console g and hit enter.

Congrats you have now used windbg the first time and are technically able to debug any win application out there

Now try to get ns2 crashing. Once ns2 crashed enter .dump /ma <path to file> (e.g. .dump /ma C:\filename.dmp ) into the windbg console to create a memory dump.

Upload this file somewhere (zip it before you do so!!!!) and post the link here. Then i'll look at it and hit the given engine dev to look at it.

HubHikari · November 2014

Okay, now the problems have grown somewhat more severe, but the original problem has gone away. Now, I can access the Commander Box and Armory locations fine, but the game will graphically hang a variable amount of time later. Sometimes, it'll even hang at the main menu. The screen stops responding, but I can still hear things as if the game is running full steam ahead. The debugger scrolls "PRESENT FAILED" at that point until I Alt-F4 out. I'm uploading four example dumps for your perusal, all of which ended in similar program hangs. The first dump, which is five times the size, said something about a failed checksum in SDL2.dll; Steam, however, did not say anything was wrong with my files.

*sighs* I love technology.

All dumps may be found here.

I'm going to upload the three smaller dumps first, because they're all complete. I will bump this post when I get the larger one up.

Hopefully, this will help...

HubHikari · November 2014

Bumpity bump, the biggest one just finished uploading for you.

Edit, 2240 EST: Uninstalling it and moving it to my SSD does not fix it.

IronHorse · November 2014

Without looking at the dumps tech files, what did you change so that the problem is no longer occurring??
Just using the windows debug tools should not have fixed anything in NS2 ... sooo.. I am wondering what is going on there.

About your new issue:

PRESENT FAILED means that the D3D API failed to communicate with your video card.

Some things to try (one by one) :

DISABLE ALL ANTI VIRUS SOFTWARE
Disable Vsync
Try DX11
Re enable fullscreen
Reinstall DirectX
DXDIAG is showing you using OEM, so you may be using a prebuilt machine, if so, do you know if Nvidia Optimus is being used?
If yes, try this. Seems that error occurs often with Optimus because it switches from your dedicated GPU (980GTX) to integrated GPU for any in game videos (like our tip videos)
Stress test your GPU with any free program out there, you are looking for artifacts or any evidence that your GPU is failing.

HubHikari · November 2014

I didn't do a thing to stop the problem from occurring.

Out of your suggestions, the very first (and only) thing I tried was switching to DX11, and lo and behold, that has solved the issue. I ran around the sandbox for ~10 minutes with no problem. One thing I noticed, however, in the debug stream is the following line:

(1a70.1f18): C++ EH exception - code e06d7363 (first chance)

I don't know what that means, but I'm guessing "Error Handling Exception." It seems to work fine, though, and for your perusal I'm uploading the dump file from this latest run so you can see if anything changed by virtue of changing to DirectX 11.

With regards to OEM, I guarantee you this system is scratch-built, so nVidia Optimus is not in play. DXDiag is probably keying off the fact that my copy of Windows is an OEM copy, and not a retail pack.

I'll keep you updated as the situation....*glasses pull*....evolves.

I'll see myself out.

GhoulofGSG9 · November 2014

Weird as the issues seem to be gone with dx11 it could be that your dx9c installation was not successful or the given api files are somewhat corrupted. Try installing DirectX 9.0c yourself and see if that solves the issue.

HubHikari · November 2014

Well, if DirectX 11 is working just fine for me and not causing any problems (textures are actually loading faster with DX11), I'll just stick with this.

Thinking more on it, it might not be a bad idea to note this in a support forum. "If your game crashes when loading the Armory or Command Center (possibly anything with a screen overlay) or you have Direct3D API failures, try reinstalling the version of DirectX you're using or switching to the other."

IronHorse · November 2014

Wellll directx 11 is in BETA as the option clearly says so you're bound to run into issues here and there. Not to mention there may or may not be a performance difference for you. (varies hardware to hardware)
Basically its a trade off... DX9 has better mouse input timings, whereas DX11 has smoother frametimes...

In any case, the reason i suggested it, is because if it worked.... I was going to suggest you try reinstalling directx to fix the issue, like ghoul said.

Glad you can play though!

HubHikari · November 2014

Turns out, on further investigation, I can't reinstall DirectX 9 anyway....I tried to after I noticed a similar problem crop up with VLC Player and Media Player Classic. All the installer says is "The installed components are ready for use," without doing anything. I can't find a way to yank DirectX 9 out of Windows short of reinstalling the entire OS, so switching to 11 was the only option.

I know this question is outside the scope of NS2 tech support, but in case anyone else has this issue further on, does anyone know how to completely uninstall and reinstall DX9 without repairing the entire OS?

METROID · November 2014

You may want to try out this DX9 redist.

Natural Selection 2 Multiplayer Armory Crash

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