Intermittent crash seemingly caused by Shiver
By
Back_Blast,
Posted on: 2010-05-26 09:00 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
Turn down particles. What comes to mind is that possibly, potentially, and this is way out there:
Your video card is on the cusp of overheating and the particle effects from Shiver puts it over the top. Evidence for this theory was reported to me when playing my ice dom and using Shiver - my friend on vent said "It's hilarious how my video card fan revvs up to lawnmower speed when you use that power".
Try turning down particles from 50000 to about 12000 (most likely wont see a change at all solo) I'd start there.
Load up monitoring software for temps too. Ya never know!
The Story of a Petless MM with a dream
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Originally Posted by Deus_Otiosus
This entire post should receive some kind of award for being both hysterical and fantastic.
Well done. |
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I reinstalled the nVidia System Monitor just to be sure, but I don't think it's card temperature. My GPU is running at 69-70 degrees right now, and its specifications list a maximal temperature of 105C before it incurs actual damage. From what I've read around the 'net, I shouldn't even worry unless it goes over 85-90 degrees or so, and it isn't anywhere close to that.
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Originally Posted by RedSwitchblade
Load up monitoring software for temps too. Ya never know!
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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OK, does that mean I should just call technical support, then?
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Is it freely reproducible, or are you operating on what-if's and happenstance? Because if it isn't regularly reproducible, I think you might be SOL on this one from Customer Support.
The Story of a Petless MM with a dream
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Originally Posted by Deus_Otiosus
This entire post should receive some kind of award for being both hysterical and fantastic.
Well done. |
I played my ice dominator last night. I used shiver many times. My computer didn't crash (I think I turned down the particle count). It's possible that certain faulty hardware caused the crash, and somehow shiver seems to trigger it. However, if you think that the fault is not on your side, you can do some more systemic testing. For example, play other toons instead of your ice blaster to see if it crashes after a day. If you can find a target that you can just use shiver on it the whole night, it would be informative to know if crashes will occur.
If it's easily reporduceable as you kinda suggest, Support may be able to help.
It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
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If you had another character with shiver to compare with the specific one you've experienced so far... or if someone else uses shiver in your LOS, that may be helpful testing also.
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Originally Posted by Twilight_Snow
I played my ice dominator last night. I used shiver many times. My computer didn't crash (I think I turned down the particle count). It's possible that certain faulty hardware caused the crash, and somehow shiver seems to trigger it. However, if you think that the fault is not on your side, you can do some more systemic testing. For example, play other toons instead of your ice blaster to see if it crashes after a day. If you can find a target that you can just use shiver on it the whole night, it would be informative to know if crashes will occur.
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R.I.P.
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Inflyct - Mysron - Orphyn - Dysmay - Reapyr - - Wyldeman - Hydeous
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In addition to what others have mentioned, there's a chance that the file on your hard drive that contains the effect for Shiver is bad. Probably a good idea to do a forced verify of CoH, and possibly tell your HD to check for errors (can be time-consuming). |
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
... Every now and then when I fire Shiver on my Ice/Ice Blaster, the game will freeze, then Windows will butt in telling me it is not responding, suggesting that I shut it down. Which I do. I seem to have a very small chance to incur a crash EVERY time I fire Shiver. ...
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The obvious test would be to try seeing if it's specific to your character, their AT, your system, etc. Ask a friend with Shiver to fire it off near you several times, or perhaps more productively try and arrange an AE test mission. See if the L8 Dom version has the same problems as your L28 Blaster version, whether firing them off in conjunction with other ice powers or onto targets affected with other ice powers makes it worse, etc.
If you can manage to arrange a situation (probably through AE) that causes problems even semi-regularly, someone else can try and duplicate the situation / run the arc on their computer, and see if it's actually a problem with the power or something specifically weird to your computer, like a partly-bad bit on your hard drive.
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It's not easily reproducable, as in I can't force the crash to happen, I just know that whenever it happens, Shiver is what I'm doing. And it's not just Shiver, so I doubt it's Shiver's effect. This also used to happen a lot on my Demon Summoning Mastermind when zoning and summoning creatures, but I don't know exactly what caused it. It tended to happen when I zone with 6 henchmen all with two upgrades, so it could be one of a number of effects causing it.
I do know my game hasn't crashed from playing an Electric/Electric Brute and an Electric/Regen Scrapper, and I also know it hasn't crashed from Shiver since I posted about it, though it crashed from Shiver at least four times across two days, and all four times was when I hit Shiver. I can't cause it to happen, but when it happens, I know what I was doing at the time.
I'll force a re-check as soon as I'm able to connect to the patch server. There really shouldn't be a problem with it, though, since I haven't messed with my Live client and it's a new installation. It's on a new hard drive, too, no more than a couple of months old.
P.S. File verification completed with no errors present.
*edit*
I can't really do comparisons between characters on my account or my account and other people's without the ability to force the crash, which I don't have. Either there's a very low random chance for the game to crash on activating Shiver, like something to do with RAM, though my RAM is brand new, or there's a circumstance that I'm not seeing. Hmm... You know, I have an idea. It feels like every time my game has crashed, my camera had been forced close to my character, possibly closer than my minimum distance for suppressing player effects when close. It killed me on my Mastermind when I zoned into instances, which puts me with my back against a door and the camera shoved into my neck, and the one time Shiver crashed and killed me was when I ran through a door and swivelled the camera into the door frame, forcing it into the back of my head. Will do a few tests with this, see if there's anything to this.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Well, I couldn't cause the crash to recur, even with my camera zoomed in, doing what I usually do. At least it's not happening to me any more. Maybe I stopped doing whatever it was I was doing to cause it? I don't know, I hope it won't kill me in the future.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Sometimes, new components can be defective. You can do a complete memory diagnostic test and a stress test for your video card to make sure that your hardware has no problem.
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In another thread, I was advised to try the latest 3D Mark software, which I did with no problems. Is there a better way to stress-test a card with purpose-designed software? Also, I've been told about memory testing before, but never what to do it with. Would you suggest a piece of software with which to check my memory? I assume we're talking about RAM here.
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Originally Posted by Twilight_Snow
Sometimes, new components can be defective. You can do a complete memory diagnostic test and a stress test for your video card to make sure that your hardware has no problem.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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MemTest86 is good. And free. Just do the free download.
FurMark is a very intensive OpenGL benchmark that uses fur rendering algorithms to measure the performance of the graphics card. Fur rendering is especially adapted to overheat the GPU and that's why FurMark is also a perfect stability and stress test tool (also called GPU burner) for the graphics card. (quoted from their site)
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
Thanks 
A couple of questions:
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Wow... So, I can only check memory at boot time? I'll have to look into this, as I'm not sure I have a CD burner programme and I don't actually have recordable CDs at the moment. Will look into it, though.|
Originally Posted by Texas Justice
MemTest86 is good. And free. Just do the free download.
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| FurMark is a very intensive OpenGL benchmark that uses fur rendering algorithms to measure the performance of the graphics card. Fur rendering is especially adapted to overheat the GPU and that's why FurMark is also a perfect stability and stress test tool (also called GPU burner) for the graphics card. (quoted from their site) |
*note*
Something I may have neglected to mention: From time to time, my video will freeze into a black screen and Windows 7 will tell me that my video driver crashed but recovered. This does not cause games to crash when it happens, and it it has persisted for as long as I've had this rig. It persisted without drivers, with the default drivers on the card CD, with the updated drivers I got from nVidia and after I did a Driver Cleaner sweep to remove all old drivers and install new ones. I don't know what it is, but given that Windows 7 seems to have new ways of displaying errors for EVERYTHING, it could be an old problem I've been seeing before manifesting with a new message. After all, what used to be "Illegal Operation" and became the "End Task" window is now also completely different.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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There is a memory diagnostic program in Windows. In the search box in the Start Menu, type memory. You'll see the Windows memory diagnostic program. It will run when you restart. From your description, it looks like a hardware issue.
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Well, I ran the memory test programme, and I didn't see any errors. However, the programme didn't seem to want to give me a log pop-up when I logged back in. It gave me the usual word balloon that the testing was done, but when I clicked it, it didn't open a window. I assume if there were errors, it would have been more persistent about telling me about them.|
Originally Posted by Twilight_Snow
There is a memory diagnostic program in Windows. In the search box in the Start Menu, type memory. You'll see the Windows memory diagnostic program. It will run when you restart. From your description, it looks like a hardware issue.
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What about that FurMark programme? Will it run on Windows 7 64 bit and can I be sure my box won't catch fire?
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Incidentally, I saw another instance of the "driver crashed" problem in Heroes of Might and Magic 5 when I was catching my screenshots of the naked flaming Succubus. The game froze to black, stood there for about five seconds, then resumed as if nothing had happened. The problem didn't recur for the time I ran the game, nor did it actually crash it.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Furmark will run on Win 7 x64. I've run it myself. Any 32-bit program will ordinarily run just fine on a 64-bit OS. I'm sure there are some exceptions but as a general rule, they'll work just fine. As for setting your PC on fire, I'd say that's pretty unlikely. Stress your GPU and *maybe* make it fail, certainly possible. Part of the whole point of running it is to stress the GPU and make sure it is stable as well as benchmark what it can do.
It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Thanks
A couple of questions:Wow... So, I can only check memory at boot time? I'll have to look into this, as I'm not sure I have a CD burner programme and I don't actually have recordable CDs at the moment. Will look into it, though. OK, I had a look at this, but it's listed as designed for XP/Vista 32 bit, whereas I'm running Windows 7 64 bit. Will it be compatible with that, too? Also, you say it's designed to stress and overheat video cards, but isn't that kind of dangerous, especially if there are suspicions of overheating problems? *note* Something I may have neglected to mention: From time to time, my video will freeze into a black screen and Windows 7 will tell me that my video driver crashed but recovered. This does not cause games to crash when it happens, and it it has persisted for as long as I've had this rig. It persisted without drivers, with the default drivers on the card CD, with the updated drivers I got from nVidia and after I did a Driver Cleaner sweep to remove all old drivers and install new ones. I don't know what it is, but given that Windows 7 seems to have new ways of displaying errors for EVERYTHING, it could be an old problem I've been seeing before manifesting with a new message. After all, what used to be "Illegal Operation" and became the "End Task" window is now also completely different. |
there is memtest+ that can be used on 64bit OS and can also be used from a bootable USB device. just make suer the USB is empty cause it will wipe everything on it when installing memtest (same for the normal meme test IIRC) I used it not too long ago and it works well.
Well, it doesn't seem like this is memory-related, as the Windows memory testing tool isn't showing anything. I'll hold off a bit on the FurMark test until probably next week. If we're looking at the possibility of a video card failing, I'd rather that happened on a day when I can get support for it, rather than at a time when I'll have to wait a week.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Here's something that's been bugging me for some time. I haven't spoken up about it because it's excessively rare and seemed to be inexplicable, but lately I've found the following:
Every now and then when I fire Shiver on my Ice/Ice Blaster, the game will freeze, then Windows will butt in telling me it is not responding, suggesting that I shut it down. Which I do. I seem to have a very small chance to incur a crash EVERY time I fire Shiver. And it's always Shiver and never anything else. I've crashed something like three times since yesterday just doing Shiver at random points, so I'm pretty confident that's what's causing it.
I used to see this bug on my Demon Summoning/Thermal Mastermind sometimes when I zone and sometimes when I summon my demons. I don't know what causes it on this one, since he always zones to a SEA of effects, but I suspect it's the summoning effect, since I crash when summoning, too. Originally I thought it was just too many effects, but it can't be if JUST Shiver causes it.
When the game crashes, it does when it looks like it's loading the graphics for the effect. You know how switching zones or costumes (or doing /reloadgfx) the game will sort of freeze you in place while it loads things off the hard drive? That's when this crash looks like it happens. I'll fire up the power, the game will pause as if to load, then lose sound and simply hang.
This is NOT an Ati problem because I don't have an Ati Card. I'm running a GeForce GTX 285 on Windows 7 x64 with 8GB of RAM. I don't think my drivers are at fault because I updated them recently and even did a Driver Sweeper pass to remove the old ones as best it shouldn't be faulty installation because I redownloaded the whole client brand new a couple of weeks ago.
I don't know what it is, and the crash is very rare, like once a day, if that. But it's already gotten me killed multiple times and just now it cost me a very long mission which reset when I crashed. Is there anything simple or easy I can do to fix this?