Crashes (Win8.1) and What to do with Dump Files?

[Aaelefein]

Thought it was the Map Pack (which coincided with an increased frequency) which I have since uninstalled - now not so sure...

Running the game on 2 different PCs - one Win8.1 and the other Win7...

I have yet to have the Win7 game crash, not so on the Win8.1...

While it seems to be related to time online and the number of ports, I also get crashes that happen within 20-30 minutes of being online with no ports. I wait for it to happen again to post the exact messages, but one I had last night the error was about trying to access memory that didn't exist.

Also, what should I do with the dump files that are generated when the game crashes. Most of them are empty, but have a couple that are 67 and 81 kb in size - is this something the Developer's can use? Who do I sent them to?

Will post more as I get it...

[Cegaiel]

Sounds like you've got Windows setup to provide mini-dumps which I'm not sure are useful.

I'll tell you a story that happened to me a couple of years ago. Following on of the Istaria Patches, I started crashing to desktop frequently. Grrr. A week later I start getting Blue screen of deaths. After a couple of support tickets (I basically accused the patch to all the problems) I said the heck with it. Started playing another game. BSOD still occurred. Then it started getting to the point where every two webpages would BSOD. Something is corrupted I thought to myself. Said Oh well, let me reinstall windows. Several attempts to reinstall kept failing. Finally after 10 hours, got the copy installed. Still same thing.

After much research, I found that my Dell OptiPlex 745 (mini-tower) version had problems with the manufacturer of some of the capacitors. The ones nearest the CPU (hottest point) would bulge at the top and even sometimes ooze stuff out of it. Sure enough, mine were like that. Got a replacement board off ebay and was back in business.

I know that's an extreme case and would not likely to apply to anyones. But just goes to show how sometimes you think one thing is a problem and it turns out to be something else.

But back to your problem, I too have also had something similar happen a few times in the past. Errors about accessing memory. I tried swapping out memory modules when that happened, no luck. Those problems turned out to be a failing hard drive. Blue screen of deaths, doing memory dumps (.dmp files), etc. I've found those usually were always the hard drive going bad. There are diagnostic tools out there (sometimes you might even have some in your manufacturers partition that can be accessed during bootup. When I suspected my HD was going bad, I did try some of those tools. Sometimes it said nothing was wrong and I believed it. But a week or so later as things got worse, I re-ran them again, then it reported there was a problem.

Speaking of HD problems, you could also have some corrupted windows files, that will do it sometimes, too.

Try this, go to your windows explorer, Right click the C: Drive, Choose Properties. Click Tools tab. Click the Check button (Error Checking). Have it Scan for errors. You should get a popup saying the drive is in use and it can't check, schedule a check for next reboot? Choose OK. Reboot computer. Before windows starts up, it will scan the hard drive for any corrupted files and fix it.

I'm not sure how that screen looks on Win 8, but on Win 7, when you click the Check button, you see two checkboxes you can check. You only need to check the one that says "Automatically fix system errors". The other box "Scan and attempt recovery of bad sectors" usually isn't needed. Checking that particular box will add an hour or two on the scan, so try it without that first.

[Aaelefein]

I am pretty sure this is Istaria specific as I'm not having issues in ESO, Eve, Galactic Civilizations 3, or Sorcerer King...

That being said, got this new information...

Windows crashed and the initial window said nothing other that the fact Istaria quit unexpected (like I didn't know that - lol)

Clicked on the debug option and got this more specific error...

"An unhandled Win32 exception occurred in istaria.exe [48240]"

Not sure if that will help anyone, but that is the most current error today (was mostly quarrying with only a couple ports and only had the one crash)


PS: I have Windows Visio installed from when I was thinking of making my own game and learn C++ - not sure where that idea is going or if it will ever get off the ground, but the Visio suite is still installed.

[Guaran]

Are you talking about crash to desktop (CTD), where the game closes unexpectedly, and may or may not generate its own log files? Or are you talking about the whole OS crashing (Bluescreening)?

If Istaria crashes to the desktop after a few ports, well mine has been doing that for years. Could sometimes port up to 8 or 10 times... but after enough, the game would CTD. Watching the istaria.exe in task manager under processes, the ram usage would slowly climb, especially when porting, and once it hit about 1.5Gb, the game would ctd. I did always play back then with loading screen off, but would usually wait about 20 or 30 seconds before moving around anyway. Being patient before moving did help extend the time before crashing somewhat. But it was always inevitable.

[Aaelefein]

Are you talking about crash to desktop (CTD), where the game closes unexpectedly, and may or may not generate its own log files? Or are you talking about the whole OS crashing (Bluescreening)?

If Istaria crashes to the desktop after a few ports, well mine has been doing that for years. Could sometimes port up to 8 or 10 times... but after enough, the game would CTD. Watching the istaria.exe in task manager under processes, the ram usage would slowly climb, especially when porting, and once it hit about 1.5Gb, the game would ctd. I did always play back then with loading screen off, but would usually wait about 20 or 30 seconds before moving around anyway. Being patient before moving did help extend the time before crashing somewhat. But it was always inevitable.

Just CTDs and now that you mentioned it - it is often after a port so will keep in mind the idea of waiting a few more seconds for things to load before moving and see if that makes a difference. Will also keep an eye on memory usage...keep forgetting that I have my keyboard setup to continuously monitor that and CPU usage. (Logitech G510s Keyboard with LCD Display)

[Spyrioyo]

Just CTDs and now that you mentioned it - it is often after a port so will keep in mind the idea of waiting a few more seconds for things to load before moving and see if that makes a difference. Will also keep an eye on memory usage...keep forgetting that I have my keyboard setup to continuously monitor that and CPU usage. (Logitech G510s Keyboard with LCD Display)

The CTD is usually cause of memory leakage cause of the client or that is what someone told me. That's why the rise in usage.