Game freezing

My game has been freezing after about 30 min of game time. When it freezes it does so for about 10 sec then keeps going. After the first freeze occurs it will continue to happen. If I alt tab out after the problem occurs I notice a error in the system tray saying that the driver nvlddmkm has crashed and then been restored.

Work around: Lower the bump mapping quality from highest to high and other effects settings.

20,080 views 59 replies
Reply #1 Top
Oh not that one again. Are your drivers up to date?

This error is usually not game-specific, I used to have it happen in WiC, Hellgate London, etc. It seems to be an issue with Nvidia.

I remember IC said back in beta they had a trouble ticket open with Nvidia about it.
Reply #2 Top
This is known Nvidia driver issue that we are talking one on one to them about. The best bet is to make sure you have their latest drivers.
Reply #3 Top
I bought and downloaded the game a few hours ago. Been playing ever since. I must say that after the turutorials I was enjoying my first (small universe) game. That is, untill it freezed up during the second autosave. Had to reboot to get my computer working again. Alt-tab or ctl-alt-delete all didn't work.

I've got a brand new system, including a amd phenom quad core processor, the 8800ultra geforce card (here might be the before mentioned problem with nvidia, altough i have downloaded the latest nvidia driver the other day, 4gig of ram and running it all on a 64bit version of Vista.

Hope this helps the dev's and maybe someone has a solution for avoiding the problem.

Best Regards,
Ramage.
Reply #4 Top
I reinstalled my drivers just in case, they were already the latest. Still go the problem, like Ramage I'm also using the 64bit Vista.
Reply #6 Top
All I can say is try getting a copy of windows 32 bit. 64 has always been buggy on the graphics drivers and vista 64 is no exception. Or just sit and wait that someone can patch it. If I come up with anything I will let you know.
Reply #7 Top
mine was doing a bit of a freeze for 2-3 secs then resume so i turned down the graphics a little bit (from highest to just high, and they still look amazing) and the problem went away. running it on a 3.0 Ghz Dual Core Pentium D, with a ATE X1650 video card. so maybe droping the graphics level a notch or so will help ya?
Reply #8 Top
Ít's ridiculous to buy windows32b and make a partitian just for this game. Cheers for the last remark though.

I just started up my second game and it froze up in about 10min.
I've been looking out for a game like this since Imperium Galactica, but this freezing up and having to reset with all my game progress lost, is just a partywrecker!
Seeing there are a lot of nvidia cardusers out there I'm hoping and assuming that this bug is on the top priority list for the devs.

Best regard,
Ramage.
Reply #9 Top
I have also had the Nvidia driver freeze, and yes my driver is up to date. we just need to be patient so that the Devs and Nvidia can work out a solution. I have faith in SD and Ironclad and know that a little patients is all we need.  :CONGRAT: 
Reply #10 Top
Im also using vista 64bit, the only "freeze" i get last one half to one sec, and seems only to happen in the beginning of the game.

But for those of you on Vista 64bit try these Nvidia beta drivers 171.16.
Its at least a try to see if it helps :)
Reply #11 Top
Well; Tymestrike, it seems like you've come up with a temp solution. 've been playing for about 45min now, with all hte detailsettings set to high instead of highest. Eventhough my system shouldn't have a problem with the highest, seeing it is top of the line, the problem does seem to go away. So probably there is a bug somewhere in the highest features.
Reply #12 Top
I have this issue as well on Vista 32bit. Same error about the driver crashing.

Specs:
AMD X2 4400+ dual core, 2 gb of ram, nvidia 6600gt

I don't play the game with everything on highest, but some of the settings are - I'll try toning it down and see if that helps the problem. No frame rate issues though!
Reply #13 Top
yup, same problem here too, it is frustrating but definitely not a show-stopper (yet)

Specs:
AMD X2 4200+, 2GB RAM, Nvidia 7800gtx (latest whql drivers) and Vista 32bit.

The only frame rate issue I get other than this is the first time a texture/object appears as it is loaded in. Once I've seen it once I no longer get a stutter.
Reply #14 Top
I'm having the freezing problem as well. It happens usually within 5 minutes of starting a game. It will freeze for 2-3 seconds then run, then it will completely freeze. I'm unable to return to the desktop or even start Task Manager. I have to restart the computer.

My specs:
Intel Quad Core Extreme x9650
2 GeForce 8800 Ultras in SLI
4g of RAM
780i Motherboard
Windows 64-bit

All the drivers are up to date.
Reply #15 Top

I have a suggestion on this:

Turn the planet detail on effects to HIGH from HIGHEST. I think that will fix it. If not, let me know. I am pretty sure it is specific to one of the settings being set to highest and nVidia's drivers.

/me has 2 nVidia boxes

Reply #16 Top
I'm sorry to say that I am already on highest Frogboy. I think my first freeze happened with no planets on screen at the time.
Reply #17 Top
The 171.16 Nvidia drivers fixed my problem on Vista x64. Hopefully they'll put out a finalized version of it, as it is not exactly complete yet.
Reply #18 Top
Im getting the same problem. Company of Heroes has the same issue with the Nvidia drivers and like Frogboy said, turning settings to high usually sorts it out but i'm afraid that with Sins it just allows me to have a longer game until it crashes.
Reply #19 Top
My game is also crashing. After a variable amount of time the game freezes and the screen goes back. Sometimes the game will return and it continues but other times the game crashes and I get a windows error that my video card has stopped working but it recovered and I get a minidump error. Turning the settings to high from highest did NOT help this problem.
Reply #20 Top
Same problem here. Nvidia GeForce 7300, with latest drivers. Putting settings at a lower level enabled the game to go on a bit longer until the crash. I actually get the Blue Screen of Death from this (haven't seen much of that since Windows 95), after the screen goes dark with the music playing for a little while. I'll continue to fool around with changing the settings. Too bad, it seems like a really nice game, and I would like to play it  (:( 
Reply #21 Top
ok i have freezing problem myself sadly! i play for 20-50 minutes when the game just freezes with the audio also stucking, only solution to manually reboot. i thought it would be my graphics card so i loaded medieval 2 on high to highest graphics. played for a couple of hours then loaded dungeon&dragons online also in full graphics for another hour. no problems at all. so it must be SoaE problem i believe. is there a final that if you lower to high the problem fixes?
Reply #22 Top
I had the freeze too but I just played for several hours with no freeze, the only thing I changed was Ship Bump Map from Highest to High
Reply #23 Top
I just played for a good few hours with no freezing after turning everything down to high (except the planet details as I like them at highest) and also had bloom turned off.

I got pwned by the AI instead . :SNIFF!:
Reply #24 Top

We have reports that the latest Nvidia Beta drivers fixes the problem for some machines. We are still working with Nvidida to isolate what the exact problem is.

Reply #25 Top
Continuing to experiment, I turned all of my settings up to the *highest* and enjoyed my longest session before the blackout/crash. Maybe I'll go try those Nvidia Beta drivers now ...