Frequent, random crashes
SouthernGorilla
United States Join Date: 2017-07-26 Member: 232057Members
United States Join Date: 2017-07-26 Member: 232057Members
As the title says, I experience very frequent crashes at very random intervals. There's no discernible pattern at all. Sometimes it crashes during the load screen, sometimes within seconds of loading into the game, sometimes after a few minutes of play, and (occasionally) sometimes after a few hours of play. It doesn't matter what we're doing in the game, what mode we're playing, or where we're located. It even crashes while we have the game paused. I've run out of ideas for fixing it myself and could really use some expert guidance. I don't think it's a problem with the game itself since others don't seem to be having as much trouble. And I don't think it's a hardware issue. I'm not sure what options that leaves.
Whatever we're doing, the game freezes, the screen goes blue, then we get either a black screen and have to open the task manager manually, a white screen and the task manager telling us the program has stopped working, or we end up on the desktop. We can almost always still hear the game, and the controls still work-- we can actually hear the guy walking/swimming while we're hitting the keys on the desktop.
Per the sticky, I've uploaded the relevant information to Pastebin;
Output Log
DxDiag
error.txt
I know the error file is not specifically requested. I just figured more information might be helpful.
As for what I've done to try and resolve the issue myself;
Used driver-remover software to completely eliminate old Radeon info.
Installed the latest drivers for the RX 460.
Replaced the stock cooler with a Hyper Evo 212 to see if thermals were an issue.
Overclocked the GPU.
Underclocked the GPU.
Overclocked the CPU.
Ran the game offline to see if it was a network issue.
Ran the game with "Above Normal" priority.
Upgraded the PSU to see if that fixed any instability.
Repeatedly defragged and "optimized" the drive.
Why I don't think it's a hardware issue;
I can run the Unigine Valley benchmark with no trouble.
I run the OCCT stress test with no problems.
The PassMark BurnIn Test also runs fine.
I also spend hours working with GIMP and Unreal Engine without issue.
The histogram from the Radeon software shows no obvious problems prior to any crash.
I realize that running other applications doesn't mean my rig is flawless. But surely that at least indicates it's capable of more than browsing ebay and sending mail.
What's most perplexing is that it hasn't always done this. The first few weeks we had the game there were no crashes at all. And even now it's not unheard of to go hours without a crash. But those stable periods are less frequent and shorter than they had been. I'm certain it's something that can be fixed either in the system settings or in the command line. It's just that diagnosing the problem is beyond my skill level. Whatever help y'all can offer would be greatly appreciated.
*EDIT*
Forgot to add, in case it makes a difference, our rig is a livingroom computer. It's hooked to a 42" 1080p TV via HDMI with the sound sent to a surround sound receiver via S/PDIF. Is that maybe more than it can handle?
Whatever we're doing, the game freezes, the screen goes blue, then we get either a black screen and have to open the task manager manually, a white screen and the task manager telling us the program has stopped working, or we end up on the desktop. We can almost always still hear the game, and the controls still work-- we can actually hear the guy walking/swimming while we're hitting the keys on the desktop.
Per the sticky, I've uploaded the relevant information to Pastebin;
Output Log
DxDiag
error.txt
I know the error file is not specifically requested. I just figured more information might be helpful.
As for what I've done to try and resolve the issue myself;
Used driver-remover software to completely eliminate old Radeon info.
Installed the latest drivers for the RX 460.
Replaced the stock cooler with a Hyper Evo 212 to see if thermals were an issue.
Overclocked the GPU.
Underclocked the GPU.
Overclocked the CPU.
Ran the game offline to see if it was a network issue.
Ran the game with "Above Normal" priority.
Upgraded the PSU to see if that fixed any instability.
Repeatedly defragged and "optimized" the drive.
Why I don't think it's a hardware issue;
I can run the Unigine Valley benchmark with no trouble.
I run the OCCT stress test with no problems.
The PassMark BurnIn Test also runs fine.
I also spend hours working with GIMP and Unreal Engine without issue.
The histogram from the Radeon software shows no obvious problems prior to any crash.
I realize that running other applications doesn't mean my rig is flawless. But surely that at least indicates it's capable of more than browsing ebay and sending mail.
What's most perplexing is that it hasn't always done this. The first few weeks we had the game there were no crashes at all. And even now it's not unheard of to go hours without a crash. But those stable periods are less frequent and shorter than they had been. I'm certain it's something that can be fixed either in the system settings or in the command line. It's just that diagnosing the problem is beyond my skill level. Whatever help y'all can offer would be greatly appreciated.
*EDIT*
Forgot to add, in case it makes a difference, our rig is a livingroom computer. It's hooked to a 42" 1080p TV via HDMI with the sound sent to a surround sound receiver via S/PDIF. Is that maybe more than it can handle?
Comments
You did a lot more troubleshooting and tweaking of hardware stuff than I would have, but at least you eliminated all that. I didn't see you mention testing the RAM, but I think if this were a memory problem, it would be freezing the entire computer. Sometimes a hard drive going bad can cause problems like this, but if everything else works then that's probably not it, either.
My money is on a bad install of the game. Rip it out completely and put it back fresh.
IMO.
All the troubleshooting is in my nature, I like tweaking things. I also don't want to be one of those guys who jumps on a forum the instant anything goes wrong without even making the slightest effort to fix it first.
Uninstall, then delete %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Steam\steamapps\common\Subnautica
I have an even more extreme thing for you to try... Delete your entire profile in Windows to try and clear up the problem. Or, something that is a way to test it before you delete it... Create a new account (including profile) on your computer. Logon as this other user. Install Steam. Install Subnautica. Try playing the game. In some cases, I've seen this resolve some odd issues. Let me know if you'd like more detailed instructions for doing this for your O/S and such.
Kilobytes?? It might be faster to just drop me an e-mail with your snail mail address. I'll download the game for you and drop a floppy disk in the mail to ya.
Not sure I'm ready to try deleting the profile yet. We had one crash after deleting the game folder and reinstalling. But that may have been due to changing the graphics settings mid-game. We're testing now. Seems more stable. We'll see as more data comes in.
Hopefully it keeps working...
Man, that is a bummer. Creating a new Windows profile is definitely a good troubleshooting step, though.
Back in my desktop support days, we could just log in as another Admin user and rename the old profile, so that when you logged in again with your real account, it would just create a new one fresh with all your appropriate settings. Then you could manually copy just your data from the old profile folders. I don't know how that would work with Win10 these days, what with their integrating with your Microsoft account online and all.
Good luck, though, and let us know how it goes.
I believe that's called Reset this PC now (Re-installs / wipes Windows to factory condition, but it doesn't have to wipe everything, although it does have that option if you choose it)
@SouthernGorilla Have a look through these: http://carlcheo.com/best-smart-monitoring-tools
I've used CrystalDiskInfo and HDD Health before, and Acronis is good. Anyways, get a SMART tool, and see if it says your drive has issues.
I was going to post a screenshot but it isn't giving me the option to upload a photo. Don't feel like putting it up somewhere else just so I can link to it.
I frequently have trouble uploading images. Some days, it seems to let me while other days it does not. It's maddening!
Hmm. Could be bad cable or something? Possible bad BIOS setting? (Like legacy compatibility or something?) Bleh, enough guessing, have a look here (there's 10 to pick from) and see what the drive's performance is: https://www.raymond.cc/blog/measure-actual-hard-disk-perfomance-under-windows/
Used CrystalDiskMark with 5 passes on a 1GiB test. That doesn't tell me anything. The numbers don't look goofy as far as I know.
Here's what I got on my 5400 RPM WD Green spinny drive for comparison:
For another comparison, I run Subnautica from my 850 EVO SSD:
Anyways, the point being with the spinny disk results: your drive appears fine. So we need something to show you what's using your hard disk. May I present the Swiss Army knife of computer tools suites, so good at its job that M$ bought the company: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/sysinternals-suite <- Download the suite, then use the tool Process Explorer (procexp64.exe once you've unzipped the tools to a folder of your choice), and sort by "I/O Read Delta" or "I/O Write Delta" to see what process is doing this, and then you can click on that process to find more info on it.
I almost had to start from scratch, this time I made manual saves as I went just incase.
Went AFK for 5 minutes paused and came back to PC completely frozen.
Since then it's crashed a couple of times while playing but because i've been manually saving constantly it's been no big deal.
Every time I've loaded the game up it's said my save is corrupted but still works, but now im getting a error loading build 18 message while loading my game and it never loads.
I'll have to start all over again.
Been monitoring temps, haven't noticed anything untoward so far and my rig is more than enough to handle the game.
i7 930 @4ghtz
12G ram
1080TI
SSD Samsung Evo 840
latest Nvidia drivers.
All modern games run great without issue.
I didn't read your diagnostic results in detail, but I was reminded of that issue so I figured I'd throw it in the thread, just in case.
I'll try that when I get home in the morning.
You can disable Indexing service (but it should do that on idle, I thought?). Anyway, it's there to make the useless (IMHO) Windows Search function work. You could try disabling Indexing Service, and installing voidtool's Everything (choose Installer 64-bit, or if you don't want it installed or want a copy for say, a work computer on a USB thumb drive, the Portable 64-bit).
Everything search is near-instant (seriously, by the time you finish typing a file name, the results are loaded), and they just updated it to include searching file contents as well (like if you're looking for a text file containing a certain phrase or something; I haven't tested this functionality myself, though, so I'm not sure how well it works).
Now, Everything Indexes the drive as well, but apparently, is about 10x better at it than Windows, and, doesn't do it all the time. So, there you have it, if you want, give it a shot, I've used it for years.
I've reinstalled from scratch (not making a new Windows profile, especially when Subnautica is the ONLY thing having a problem, and ONLY since the Cuddlefish Update).
It's really disheartening that this game just stops working entirely right before launch, and no Dev can even pop in here to give us a direction to look at, much less "we know about it and will eventually fix it". As far as I can tell, they just made SN incompatible with my hardware without changing the minimum specs officially. 'Cause I'm just plain stuck, can't play whatsoever.
It can kick in when not really idle. The one that more often burns people though is MS's anti-virus/malware thing that likes eating a minute of CPU time right after you start a program - it's extremely and unexpectedly heavy and fights with legit software. I just disable all of it. Virus scanners are the new viruses.
So true! I used to always disable my antivirus before I played some resource intensive games back in the single core, single thread days. These days, with quad core processors, it doesn't seem to be as much an issue. But I'm mostly playing low CPU INDY games of late so maybe it's still an issue and I just don't know it.
You'd think the OS would be smart enough by now to load-balance the AV software and other system tasks to other CPU cores if an old or simple game is asking for all of CPU0.