Crashing quite often

Nvklddm has stopped responding and was restarted

from Sins Forums
Hi, Ive been playing Sins of a solar empire since Beta 1 and been encountering the following problem on:

Windows Vista Ultimate
AMD Athlon XP 3800 Dual core
2gb DDR 400 Ram
Nvidia Nforce 4 chipset
BFG Tech Nvidia 7900GT Graphics card

Basically I start the game and can play but it will occassionaly freeze, the screen will turn black then eventually blue saying (!) No signal..

You can still hear the soundsa and music in the background and eventually the screen will come back up after a few seconds.

This will happen more and more often until eventually the game crashes stating to send a minidump - I have done this for Beta 1 but not for Beta 2 yet.

Ive tried using NVIDIA drivers ranging from 101.xx, 158.xx, 160.14.

None of them make a difference, I dont encounter this problem playing any other game though such as Alpha Prine, Quake IV, Quake wars Enemy territory, C&C 3 Tiberium Wars, BF 2142.

They all work fine, any assistance would be cool cheers.
technical
14,281 views 39 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Sure as heck sounds like a display problem (due to the nvidia drivers) then it prolly spikes your CPU, then crashes (minidump)...

Did you have the same problems in Beta 1?
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
Yeah, I sent the minidump from Beta 1...

Havent sent the Beta 2 yet as I havent really had time... I must say though im likihg the game and may just install XP in order to test it.

All my temp reads are fine and theres no oc/ing (The card is stock o/ced from the factory though)

But again all other games work fine and this is the only one to exhibit such problems >_<
Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
How did you install beta 2? just updating like a patch?
Cause we were told, there would be some problems with it, if we didnt uninstall beta 1 first.
Maybe try and reinstalling it?
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
No I uninstalled Beta 1 then Installed Beta 2..

Its deffo a graphics problem as opposed to installation since it was happening in Beta 1 as stated in my previous posts.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
strange SINS is the only game you see this problem with...
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
I tried disabling the Graphics driver monitoring engine within Vista - it allowed me to play SINs for a hell of alot longer than normal but eventually I got to a 40 ship vs 35 my fleet battle with 10 bombers and 8 turrets and my system hard locked.

Bloody Nvidia - Im tempted to buy ATI now :/
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
Seems to have been fixed by moving to a 19" LCD Monitor as opposed to using my 32" LCD which was using a 1320 x 768 resolution.

Now playing fine in 1280 x 1024... bit of a downgrade of screen but as long as everything works.
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
I've got the same thing going on in Beta 2 running Nvidia drivers with my 8800. I'll try running the game at a non-widescreen resolution to see if that helps.

But I'm in a similar boat where I'm able to run pretty much everything else at my screen's native resolution without any problems at all. I've even run 3DMark '06 for ~18 hours without any sort of reset, lock, or crash.

But playing Sins has it randomly trigger Vista's "your video driver has been reset" from anywhere from 10 seconds (the fastest) to over 3 hours. There doesn't seem to be any sort of repeatable way to trigger it outside of simply playing the game.

My system's Specs:

Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTX
Intel 6600 Core 2 Duo
2 Gigs RAM
Vista Ultimate
Native Resolution - 1680 x 1050
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
Im using a 8800GTX too, and tryed all almost all the Nvidia drivers, and there hasent been any errors of any kind with sins.


Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTX
Intel QX6700
4 Gigs RAM
Vista Ultimate 64bit
Native Resolution - 1680 x 1050

So mine is somewhat the same, maybe its a setting you played with?
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
Well if it is a setting that I flipped, it's only being impacted by Sins, and no other game that I've played since getting this box (which is why I think it's something with Sins specifically, but I don't know what).

But I haven't tweaked any settings in the Nvidia drivers. They are all still set at default settings based on whatever was installed originally. So basically it's set to "let all the programs figure everything out".

I wonder if it's the difference between Vista 32bit and Vista 64bit? I'm running 32bit, and normally if people don't mention it (like the person who started this thread) they are also running 32bit.

I'm loving this game in so many different ways, but this is just making it a bit frustrating.
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top

Im using a 8800GTX too, and tryed all almost all the Nvidia drivers, and there hasent been any errors of any kind with sins.


Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTX
Intel QX6700
4 Gigs RAM
Vista Ultimate 64bit
Native Resolution - 1680 x 1050

So mine is somewhat the same, maybe its a setting you played with?


Ugh... I don't want to know what you paid for that PC, lol...
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
You sure you dont got any programs running in the background that could interfere with the game?
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
Ugh... I don't want to know what you paid for that PC, lol...

around 3500$
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top

You sure you dont got any programs running in the background that could interfere with the game?


Again, why would Sins be the only game having issues when I've run other games/programs that are much more graphically complex/intensive on both my CPU and GPU hardware?

If there is a program running in the background, it's only interfering with this game. But with that said, due to this issue with Sins I do make sure to shut down all external active applications (even Firefox and whatnot) before I run it as I know that I'll be rebooting my machine at some point while playing.

The only non-system level resident apps that are running would be the code for my G15 Keyboard's LCD, my antivirus (and I'm sorry, If I have to turn that off to play this game that's not acceptable), and then Multiplicity (which is a Stardock product itself, so you'd hope it wouldn't cause issues with other Stardock products).
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
For S&G's I just tried it after unloading Multiplicity. The game barely had time to load up my save game (fairly late in this game so a lot of stuff to load) before it tripped the Vista video driver reset.

This is frustrating.
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top

Again, why would Sins be the only game having issues when I've run other games/programs that are much more graphically complex/intensive on both my CPU and GPU hardware?


Because simply because something is more "graphically complex/intensive" doesn't mean it strains the system in the same way. Sins could be calling an obscure graphics function that other games don't, for example. And while I haven't played several of the other games you mentioned, I doubt quake IV (or quake wars, which IIRC is based on the same engine) is more graphically intensive than this game. And I'm QUITE sure C&C3 isn't (they just threw lots of bloom around, that doesn't make good, or even video card straining, graphics).
Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top
Actually I never mentioned which games I had tried, that was someone else.

But you do bring up a valid point about Sins could be calling something "different" then the others.

For me Company of Heroes (especially in DX10 mode) and Supreme Commander are the two benchmarks I use for taxing a system. SupComm has a great built in benchmark tool that will cause almost any machine to come to a crawl.

I use 3DMark '06 as more of a burn-in tool. If it can run solid for the roughly 18 hours I last ran it, then I don't suspect that it's my hardware that's having an issue.
Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top
Actually I never mentioned which games I had tried, that was someone else.


I don't often feel stupid. Or silly.

Reply #19 from Sins Forums Top



I don't often feel stupid. Or silly.



Meh. It was an honest mistake.
Reply #20 from Sins Forums Top
Btw, if anyone from Ironclad or Stardock are reading this, I'll be more then happy to run some sort of debug client that has extra logging to try and help you with this.

I'm sure it's not directly "just an issue with Sins" but some combination of Sins and the Nvidia driver, and I'd love to do anything I can to help.
Reply #21 from Sins Forums Top
Last thing to try today.

I tried running the game in XP compatibility mode just to see if that'd make a difference. No dice.

Will try it in various resolutions later. Taking a break for now.
Reply #22 from Sins Forums Top
Yeah, I'm not sure. One of the Ironclad guys will need to look into this one when they have a chance.
Reply #23 from Sins Forums Top

Hi Spyke and hjf288, we are looking into this and it isn't something we are able to repeat. Can you send us your dxdiag output ([email protected]) and please make sure we know who it is so attach your forum name somewhere. Also, try running the game in windowed mode and at various resolutions and various aliasing settings. I want to see if there is some particular combination that makes it worse/better.

Thanks

Reply #24 from Sins Forums Top
Tried it in windowed mode with Aero disabled and Aero enabled. No dice either way.

At least I'm able to get some auto-saves in so my game is SLOWLY progressing.

I'm running out of ideas on things to try.
Reply #25 from Sins Forums Top
Roger that. I'll be emailing you my dxdiag in a couple of minutes.

To list everything I've tried so far in Vista Ultimate 32-bit:

Nvidia Driver 158.24 (current release), 162.22 (Beta), 163.11 (Beta)
No compatibility mode selected, XP SP2 Compatibility Mode
Aero enabled, Aero disabled
1650x1080, 1280x1024, Windowed Mode
No AA, 4x AA (selected from within game)
No external apps running except for Multiplicity, Windows Defender, Anti-Virus, G15 Keyboard LCD mini-app

There is no specific action that I take that causes it to do this. I sometimes select a group or planet and it immediately does it. Sometimes I'm just watching the game run sort of in a high level overview mode and it will do it.

Go go gadget new OS.