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Video Driver Issue causing hangs and bluescreen

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Video Driver Issue causing hangs and bluescreen

I'm not kidding

from Sins Forums
I'm using a Geforce 7900 GS with driver version 169.25 on 32-bit Vista, playing at 1920x1080. I have also tried beta drivers 169.28.

About once an hour or so playing the screen will hang. The music and sound effects continue playing, and after about 20 seconds the screen goes black and then comes back and everything works again. Windows informs me that my video driver crashed and had to be restarted. Sometimes this crashes the game completely, sometimes it causes a bluescreen.

There's no obvious event in-game that precedes this behavior, so it's unpredictable and I can't reproduce it at will. Because it happens so uncommonly it's very hard to find the problem, because after changing a setting I have to play for an hour or two to see it happen again.

Any ideas?

Oh and here's my DXDiag.
technical
46,192 views 114 replies
Reply #51 from Sins Forums Top
P.S. Multianna, your link to the Nvidia ticket submission has a typo in it
End of quote


ooh, hehe heres the correct one Submit Nvidia Ticket
Reply #52 from Sins Forums Top
I had the same problems. I turned off bloom effects in graphics options, problem solved for me!Try it.
End of quote


That's funny! I spent a day testing options on and off until I narrowed it down to the "Enable Bloom Effects" option (under the EFFECTS tab in option), turning off this option completely gor rid of the blue screens for my Windows XP Pro + Nvidia 7800 GTX System.

So go turn off "Enable Bloom Effects" guys, it may fix your problem like it did for us.
Offworld Trading Company
Reply #53 from Sins Forums Top
I'm not bluescreening... I'm just getting that freaking long pause and it's increased far more since I went to the 169 drivers over the 163.

No word yet from Nvidia after I sent them my specs and a detailed description of the problem.

But shouldn't this have been figured out in the beta phase? I've never understood how stuff like this makes it into final release.

9 freezes in just over an hour and a half... I'm about ready to chunk this game into the garbage disposal.
Reply #54 from Sins Forums Top
Trust me, it isn't just SOASE, I'm having the exact same issue with other games such as CoD4.
Reply #55 from Sins Forums Top
I don't have any problems with COD4, Crysis, Battlefied 2 / BF2142, QuakeWars or Bioshock. Those are the only games I have installed on Vista64 at the moment and they all work like a champ.

I disabled the bloom effect as listed here and while I may not freeze for 10 seconds, I get lots of screen flashes which isn't as annoying, but still pretty frustrating.

The devs have put the blame on Nvidia and I can buy that, but surely when testing, someone must have been noticed this as it's pretty frequent and easy to spot. If they knew it was a driver issue, they should have contacted Nvdia prior to release and make sure that a working driver was available and include it on the disc.
Reply #56 from Sins Forums Top
I'm running on an 8800GTX and Q6600 @ 2.4GHz. Seems like the more text there is on screen, the lower my performance goes.

Here at the main menu, there's not much text.
http://screenshot.xfire.com/screenshot/natural/5d9c739482414a27e102a0f6c192e54fffeee492.png

Single Player menu on the Tutorial tab. Again, little text.
http://screenshot.xfire.com/screenshot/natural/8a31a67127dc3beca43833c5a9e3178615afd039.png

Now I click New Game and get a nice performance drop.
http://screenshot.xfire.com/screenshot/natural/e15c8f1889fb3cb614f9ed6aa8efbf92eb1f51d8.png

Move to Custom Maps and the FPS goes back up.
http://screenshot.xfire.com/screenshot/natural/176fe7a71e450aa38e4ec3fa139fc35fd72107df.png

I can have hundreds of ships and strike craft duking it out with everything on high at 1680x1050 with 4 multi-sample. When font pops up, to the depths my frame rate goes!


Reply #57 from Sins Forums Top

I don't have any problems with COD4, Crysis, Battlefied 2 / BF2142, QuakeWars or Bioshock. Those are the only games I have installed on Vista64 at the moment and they all work like a champ.
End of quote


Well right now for me Sins is 10x more stable than Call of Duty 4, I'm just saying don't jump to assumptions based off a single case sample.
Reply #58 from Sins Forums Top
I've just had 2 mini dumps on a game I have been playing for 7 hours. Thank god for autosave! Do they want or need the mini dumps?

These two crashes happened almost the exact same time as the novalith gun fired. Both times I was watching it fire when it went to black. Didn't start this until I set the novalith to autocast firing.

It was similar to the freeze in that it would well ya know, freeze :p then go black, switch back to the game but still frozen, music is playing, back to black, then to desktop.
Reply #59 from Sins Forums Top
Same deal here. XP/SP2, Dec. drivers, 7800GT. Haven't tried turning off bloom yet, but I'll be doing that shortly.
Reply #60 from Sins Forums Top
well in the short time that I have disabled bloom effects, I have had far more trouble. way more freezing including 2 mini dumps. feels like every other minute I am cussing my monitor.
Reply #61 from Sins Forums Top
Hey guys-
Just to let you all know, I'm on a 7900 with Vista 32 bit and the latest beta drivers (
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1846
) solved my problem (I also turned on Bloom but I don't think that changed anything). Good luck!
Reply #62 from Sins Forums Top
Asus M2N32-SLI 590 AM2
64-bit Vista
4600+ AMD X2
4 GB RAM
7600 GT x 2 (Issues in single and SLI)

I've been searching around for a fix to this for a while and thought I'd check to see if anyone has seen this from Microsoft?
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938194/en-us

This was an update back in August '07 that installed 3 patches which was suppose to vastly improve the performance for Vista, sort of a pre-emptive SP1. The problem I'm having is 2 updates install, but I can't get 938194 to install. Can anyone that is also having the screen freeze, flicker and video driver has stopped responding error, check to see if this patch has been installed on theirs --> Windows Update/View Installed Updates. Install history might show if it failed if you haven't wiped out the history. I tried for a few hours yesterday to get this patch to install and will try again tonight, but it'd be good to know if others checked into this and are or are not missing this patch as well. Ridiculous to me that Microsoft pushes out patches for their O/S that their O/S can't even install... This is about the 3rd patch with issues.

Here's a good article on Vista's performance, case anyone cares:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=243EIONI4TZOSQSNDLPCKHSCJUNN2JVN?articleID=204701251&pgno=9&queryText=

I'm also going to try the ole Right-Click and Run as Administrator, next. That worked for some other games and probably would have helped circumvent the previous patch posted for the virtual address issue. I've also gotten the 2-3 FPS stuttering issue. I'm down to Medium on everything, with most things turned off and still running into issues.

Great graphics though. Liking the 360 degree camera, zooming in on a huge fleet.
Reply #63 from Sins Forums Top

Hi guys! 

Nvidia's driver team is looking at the reported problems but they need more information, as we've been unable to reproduce it in-house.

Basically Nvidia needs details on how to reproduce this bug. They found and fixed one that was related to the Kol firing off its special ability already thanks to some nitty gritty info. :)

If anyone experiencing trouble can post back with explicit instructions or descriptions of what was going on at the time of the crash/problems, that would be extremely helpful to tracking down the issues.

Also, if everyone could please include a dxdiag with their reports that would be great. If it's easier, feel free to just email the info directly to me at bclair(at)stardock(dot)com.  Please use "Sins Nvidia Issue" as the subject line.

Thanks!

(BTW - the text bug that was slowing down the game has been fixed internally and will be in the v1.03 update.)

Reply #64 from Sins Forums Top
I'm getting this BSOD now as well.


Completely out of the blue. I could play the game fine until today, now it BSOD's after about 5 minutes, every single time. I'll try to narrow down whether it happens when a specific in-game event happens. One thing worth noting is that I get some graphics corruption justbefore it happens. That's nothing new though, I used to get that graphics corruption before as well, it would just go away after about 5 seconds or when I alt+tabout and in again. Now it BSOD's straight after the corruption.

I think it might have something to do with when I send in Advent Disciples into the first new planet/rock I discover. Will post back.

Specs: XP SP2; 6800GT (Dec. drivers)
Reply #65 from Sins Forums Top

Thanks, let us know what you find. :)

Also, if everyone could please include a dxdiag with their reports that would be great. If it's easier, feel free to just email the info directly to me at bclair(at)stardock(dot)com.  Please use "Sins Nvidia Issue" as the subject line.

Reply #66 from Sins Forums Top
Okay, for me it's definitely got something to do with the Research tree. When I play for about 5 minutes, get a capital ship and some frigates, have a fight and then go in the Research tree, the screen goes black/distorted. It doesn't BSOD though, I can get the game running normal again while alt+tabbing out and in again.

If I however go in the Research tree early on in the game (before I've built my CS or discovered a planet yet), the game seems to BSOD pretty much at random after a short while (haven't figured out when exactly yet). I'm not sure if this is the same issue everyone else is having, but I've tried this a number of times now and the result has always been the same.

Mailed my dxdiag dump as well. Hopefully it helps.
Reply #67 from Sins Forums Top
Got it and passed on, thanks!
Reply #68 from Sins Forums Top
There are no details on reproducing it... It's SIMPLY PLAY THE GAME!

I've included my DXDIAG twice, and MSINFO once. Each time I submit a ticket I get the same response that they are not aware of any problems with the game.
Reply #69 from Sins Forums Top
Do you have your ticket numbers from Nvidia that I can point them to?
Reply #70 from Sins Forums Top
Should be Incident: 080212-000155

New reply from them...


"Your case is being escalated to our Level 2 Tech Support group. The Level 2 agents will have to review the case notes. As this process may take some time we ask that you be patient and a Level 2 tech will contact you as soon as they can, to help resolve your issue"

Last night I noticed the majority of my crashes involved 3 things.
1: going into the research menu
2: zooming out from planet view
3: being at a wormhole

The wormhole area was the worse cause it froze and blacked out on me 14 times. It took me 11 minutes of waiting to get to a point where I could save my game and then end it through Task Manager.
Reply #71 from Sins Forums Top
Great, thanks! :)  I'll point them back at your ticket.
Reply #72 from Sins Forums Top
New update from Level 2 techs... looks like a sign of progress :D


Our research indicates that this issue in on our engineer's "to be fix" list. They are in process of investigating this. Hopefully a fix will be available soon. Once a fix is available, it'll be integrated into future driver updates. Please check back with us periodically for driver updates. We'll probably have new drivers coming out soon. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Best regards,
David
Reply #73 from Sins Forums Top
Excellent. :)
Reply #74 from Sins Forums Top
Thank god right?
Sorry I have been such a sarcastic twit over this... For those of us who have this problem, it's very major and extremely frustrating. You can be right in the middle of something and then comes the freeze, 10 seconds later, black screen and if you are lucky it will switch back to game like nothing happened. Last night was the worst one yet for me when it sort of got in this crash loop at the wormhole and took around 10 minutes of trying to save the game in between the crashes. Afraid to load it back up cause I might be in the same situation.
Reply #75 from Sins Forums Top
Vista 64-bit Ultimate
I think this is more of a collective failure, not just Nvidia's, though maybe they can fix their side to work with Microsoft. From everything I've found on the nvlddmkm.sys, graphic driver has stopped responding error, looks to me this is more of a problem running DirectX 9 built games using Vista which uses DirectX 10. Microsoft probably screwed something up on their backward compatability. Here's an article from way back in Nov '06. I'm going to try some of these reg edits later on.
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/display/wddm_timeout.mspx

Here's another article I found funny about the whole display driver not responding issue, back in Apr 07.
http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=ZY534EZPQQEW0QSNDLOSKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=199201066&queryText=nvlddmkm

Almost like everyone is too stubborn to come up with a solution, though there are plenty of complaints from us end users.

To summarize, though, some people are running SOASE fine on Vista, is it just Vista 64-bit, or is everyone having issues? And if it is a big Vista issue, I think this maybe should be stickied.