FC3 keeps crashing

[Art Blade]

incredible, D_B. Good luck, man  :(

[Dweller_Benthos]

OK, here's a quick synopsis of my weekend. Submitted an error report to EVGA who made the video card, because Nvidia said, "don't tell us, tell the people who made your card". So I did, and they said, essentially "try everything you've already tried". So I did. Checked the voltage on the power supply that feeds the card, rock solid at 12V (well, fluctuates a bit between 12.192 and 12.096) so I don't think that's it. Made sure the GPU was keeping cool enough, it's not supposed to get above 95° and it never ran long enough to get even much over 77°. Checked all the timings on the system RAM (spent a lot of time in the BIOS screen today) and they are spot on to what they are supposed to be. So that's not it.

Went to the place I sold my old video cards to. They took a while getting back to me, so I never picked up the money, so I asked for one of them back and half the money. Got home, installed that card and no dice.

Reverted to the 306 driver set. Nothing doing.

So now I'm running the old video card, the old driver set and it still crashes. Even more quickly than other times. Though it seems completely random. Oh yeah, I connected the card to the dedicated PCI-e power supply hook ups instead of the exact same type of hook up that runs directly from the PSU, and it actually ran for quite a while, but still eventually crashed.

I'm punting this back to Ubi and also sending a report to Nvidia, because I have gotten blue screens that mention their drivers when not playing FC3, so they are going to hear about that.

[Art Blade]

All you've got to go through is ridiculous and unbelievable.  :(

When doing serious debugging, you remove, test, and reconnect hardware parts. Like you did with the vid cards. But it is a little too much having to do all that for a fricking game.  >:((

[Dweller_Benthos]

I've given up. It has to be a FC3 problem. Three different sets of drivers and two different video cards and the problem still persists. There is a very slight chance it could be system memory related. I did run a memory test for about an hour a couple weeks ago, but I should let one run for several hours and make sure the system RAM is OK.

I ran the EVGA stress test for an hour and had no problems whatsoever. Right now, I'm just going to live with it and hope Ubi comes out with a patch. Not holding my breath though.

[fragger]

I'd say you're correct, Dweller. The problem is with the game. It's a touchy, finicky, fickle bloody thing that refuses to run properly unless everything is almost exactly the way the devs intended it to be. The slightest variation in configuration and it falls over like a drunk in a dinghy.

Maybe Ubi will address this, but I'm not holding my breath either. They never bothered addressing the boot tape glitch in FC2 and I can't imagine that would have entailed an enormously complicated fix, so what hope is there for this?

Pretty arrogant, really. Even a "Sorry for the inconvenience" to all those people who are having these issues might have gone at least a little way toward demonstrating something resembling contrition. Instead it's like they're saying, "Well, you bought the game so it's your problem", except that they aren't actually saying anything at all.

I'll certainly be thinking twice about buying any Ubisoft titles in the future

[Dweller_Benthos]

Well, I heard back from Ubi tech support. Their suggestion? Re-install the game. So, sure, I'm up for some time wasting. First I installed the latest beta drivers from Nvidia, though I think this release was just a minor update for some international versions, but what the hey. Uninstalled Uplay and FC3, then reinstalled and re-patched. I did for a moment think of trying to run on the original install and not patching, but I don't think Uplay will let you, I'm pretty sure you have no choice but to update, unless you run in offline mode maybe.

So, after the re-install, it actually ran for about an hour before I had to quit to do something else. Then I got back to it and it ran a while then crashed hard with the repeating, stuttering sound that I know means a hard crash and there's no recourse but to hit the reset button. Once it came back up, it did run for a while, but my loot that I had collected was gone, even though I had done a few quick saves, they must not have been saved or something. Nice.

It ran for a little while more and just when I started thinking it might be working it crashes again. This time the offending DLL was not one of the video drivers like it's usually been up to now, but one of the FC3 install DLLs, FC3.dll to be exact, so I sent that info along to Ubi support. They say they are looking into the problem, but who knows how much effort is being put into it. I also noticed the last time I closed it, and had several pieces of loot in my inventory, that they weren't there after re-loading, and this isn't after a crash, but a quit to menu, save, then exit, not even a F9 quick save, but a menu save. So I wonder who's stealing my loot now?

This game severely suffers from a case of console-port-itis, you can tell it was ported from a platform that has no variation in hardware, which is probably why a lot of game companies like consoles, a set standard, easy to w@&k with and a captive market with built in DRM. I like how it warns you when you start the game not to turn off your machine while it's saving. Yeah, lots of people do that on PCs these days.

[Art Blade]

 ??? :D  :'(

[PZ]

It is ridiculous that the game will run on old dated hardware like mine and not on the latest state-of-the-art machinery.  >:(

[mandru]

But it does PZ.

D_B's and my systems are near identical other than computer cases and he's got more RAM.  I've logged hundreds of hours now with only one bomb out.  I wish I could explain why it's treating D_B like this.  :(

The game disc would have ended up as my desk beverage coaster the way Halo2 years back when it wonked out on me on install simply because with my complete lack of techie skills if I were faced with even one of the high level fixes he's attempted, I'd be lost as a goose.  ???

[PZ]

I forgot that your machine was so similar to his - I have to admit that this is one of the strangest issues I've encountered in a while.  One can usually narrow it down to the problem child relatively easily, but it seems that D_B is undergoing herculean efforts only to be thwarted in the end.  ????

[fragger]

D_B, here's a kudo for your perseverance - you must have the patience of Job :-X I would have chucked the game in away in disgust by now if I were in your place.

[Binnatics]

Did you reinstall your windows? I have a feeling that the conflict may be caused by windows Vs Ubi. I have the weirdest thing happening all over and over. Every time I start the game I get a warning that Farcry3.exe was unable to load or locate a dll file and needs to close. The funny thing is, when I hit ok, the game starts without problems. The only thing that is not functioning, is the Uplay interface. I am connected to Uplay, can play online, but the in-game functionality is unavailable. This happens in let's say; 97% of the times. Only on rare occasions, FC3 suddenly starts up without the crash warning and the Uplay interface works brilliantly. I've been poking round on the net for a solution, not finding one. It's rare though, not many ppl have it. I simply know it's not hardware related but since it's not a big issue I leave it the way it is. I suspect ubi being unable to correctly communicate with parts of my vista64 install and that causes the problem. I wish it was something so small that bothers you, but apparently not, damn I feel for you. Hope that things turn the bright way for you :-\\

Try to run the game in offline mode, see if the crashing stops. Maybe it's Ubi-interface related.

[Art Blade]

he's got more RAM.

D_B, how about that.. reduce the amount of RAM a bit? To, say, 3 MB?

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah, I'm not going to reinstall Windows, thanks for the info anyway, Binn. That's even too much for me to take. Now, the memory thing, as Art mentioned, I have been toying with the idea. It's quite possible there's a bad memory chip in there. I think the motherboard needs two banks installed, so I'd have to take out two chips. Then there's the crap shoot that you've taken out the good one(s) and left the bad one(s). I'm going to try this weekend to run an extensive memory test, as the one hour test I ran might not have been long enough to find a bad cell in all that memory.

[Binnatics]

I don't think it's a bad ram cell. I've checked those tests as well back when I had trouble with GTA IV. You don't have trouble with anyother game so it must be (imho) software related. A fresh install of windows seems lots of w@&k, but can be quite quick. Just make sure you backup everything which is pretty easy these days. Windows does it automatically. Installing and updating all software is quite some w@&k though :-\\ But check the amount of time you've been testing and trying around already.
Well, don't want to push you
Hope things get sorted out.

[PZ]

As I believe I mentioned in a prior post, about the only time I've ever experienced intermittent unpredictable failure like this is because of a RAM problem - it's worth a try to swap out memory modules to see what happens - won't hardly take any time, except for the time it takes to experiment in the game.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah, I was going to pop out two of the ram chips and see what happens, but forgot before I turned the PC on. Decided to just forget it for the night, as I was watching some videos and playing Minecraft anyway. Then, I decided just for the self punishment, to fire FC3 up. Ran like a dream for the half hour I had to play it, no problems whatsoever. I had a rare chance to actually shut it down from the menu instead of just giving up after a crash. But the whole time I was waiting for the other shoe to drop as it were. Just lucky it didn't. Thing is, the night before, I had three crashes in 20 minutes. It's just so random that it can't be nailed down to a specific set of actions that make it happen.

[PZ]

Sounds like your PC has a contrary personality - you expect it to w@&k and it crashes.  You expect it to fail and it runs beautifully.

[Art Blade]

..you expect it to be a PC and it turns into a console..  8-X :o

:-D

[PZ]

As long as my console doesn't turn into a PC!

[Binnatics]

 

[Dweller_Benthos]

You guys are too funny.   :-D

Got another reply from Ubi support, they say to use driver sweeper and install an older driver set. So, I grabbed driver sweeper just to amuse them. Guess what I'm going to be doing tomorrow while the blizzard hits?


Answer: Play Minecraft, probably, lol.

[PZ]

 

[Art Blade]

 

[fragger]

 

When all else fails, do something else :-D :-X