FC3 keeps crashing

[Dweller_Benthos]

Glad you're experiencing more stability D_B  :-X  It's really a shame that some kind of hardware/software issue is preventing you from enjoying the game to the max.

It seems to come and go - some days I can play for a good half hour with no trouble until it crashes. Other days it won't go 10 minutes. Yesterday was exactly like that, I would start at Hubris Farm and drive toward Citra's Temple. That only takes, maybe 2 or 3 minutes? Less? Each time it crashed as soon as I got near the temple. Once I could actually walk around outside a bit but that was it. I gave up after 4 or 5 tries.

I did take some screenies, just need to post them.

[Art Blade]

hey D_B, reinstall your sound drivers. I once had that: no explanation whatsoever anywhere until one fine day I found that recommendation. It helped.  :-D

[mandru]

D_B, I don't recall seeing if anyone else has asked these questions so sorry if it's a repeat but maybe it needs to be asked.

Is this the only game on your system that is giving you this specific problem?  What other games are working fine?  Could their settings and set up be the problem?

I don't know how to fix things like this but sometimes the right defining question can highlight a direction to look in to find the solution.  :-\\

[PZ]

Art might have something - if there is anything wrong with video and/or sound drivers, programs that rely on them can easily crash.  If it is possible, it might even be worth it to uninstall/re-install DirectX

[Dweller_Benthos]

I've reinstalled the video drivers and Direct X many times now, not the audio, as the crash report always mentions either a problem in one of the video drivers or the game itself. The audio drivers were installed a few weeks ago though when they were updated. No other games have this problem. I played Borderlands 2 for a while (up until the first mission) and it runs fine. Played Crysis 2 a bit, no problem there. AC3 ran fine, until I got annoyed with it's 3rd person perspective, but it had no problems, Minecraft runs like a champ on the new video card, so what's the problem with FC3? I haven't heard back from the last time I updated my crash report with Ubisoft, so I take it they don't know either.

[Art Blade]

find out what you do differently than the rest whose games don't crash (at least not as often as yours)  :-D If it's not you nor your own installations then it has to do with hardware conflicts. Maybe IRQs, too.. they sometimes are related to sound cards..

[fragger]

I take it you've got plenty of RAM, D_B? Just a stab, I mean I get crashes too - not as often as you, but I still get them, about once per hour on average. Mind you, I've got 16 GB RAM on main board and 4 GB on my card, so I don't think a lack of RAM is responsible in my case. Like you, nothing else crashes on me like FC3 does. Civ V is surprisingly demanding of resources for a strategy game and can happily will run all day, as will FC2. I use some pretty heavy-duty 3D apps for my artwork and I never have any problems with them.

Do you play online or offline? Just curious, I always play offline. Also, what version of the game are you running?

I have found that I have better luck if I let FC3 run first thing after start-up, without running any other software first. I do know that some of my graphic programs like Photoshop and Poser will leave part of themselves in memory after they've been run and then exited, which could conceivably cause a conflict. I don't know what other software you may run, it might be worth looking at. I'm even thinking of switching off my AV and playing completely disconnected to see if that helps, in case there's some background AV process stuffing things up.

I'm starting to think that this game is just super-finicky about what type or brand of hardware it runs on.

[PZ]

I don't recall if we've already discussed this potential problem, but have you guys tested for a defective memory module?  That is one other thing that I've found on PCs of the past that have had intermittent program failure and/or Windows crashes.  fragger's comment about running the program immediately after starting the OS before you start filling up RAM with things reminded me of this issue.

For anyone interested in how to test memory modules, here's an article:

http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-57342679-285/how-to-test-your-ram-in-windows/

Also apologies if this has been mentioned before, but is something that I often do especially when running games is to kill everything in the system tray that is not relevant to running the game.

[Art Blade]

No apologies needed, old friend :) So we can find it easier and later, too, I just split this topic off the screenshots topic..  :)

Now we can dedicate every post to the crashes.

[PZ]

 :-X

[fragger]

My crashes are very intermittent. I fired it up this afternoon and it bombed after about twenty minutes. I restarted it - and played for almost six hours without incident. It was still going OK when I voluntarily quit.

Most peculiar ????

[Art Blade]

I don't think I had many crashes in SP. Not enough to instantly remember, anyway  :) On the other hand, however, I keep getting crashes while playing online. Coop hangs in the heat of it, same with MP.

[PZ]

Still no crashes for me at all, and I'd think I'd be the first to have problems due to the many mods I've used.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah, I have 16GB of system ram, 4GB on the card, an nvidia 680. This type of crashing only started happening when I installed the new card, I didn't have this much trouble on the old 460 cards, as long as I didn't run them in SLI.

Had a random crash last night before I even did anything, was watching a video in media player classic and it just blue screened. Forget the error at this point, but looking it up on the web some of the things I found might indicate a BIOS problem, so off to the ASUS site to see if there's a new BIOS. Grab it, install it and reboot.

NTLDR missing or not found.

I was not happy. Turns out the new BIOS somehow turned off two of my SATA connectors, which my boot drive was plugged into. Plugged it into one of the other sockets and it worked. Of course, that took me almost an hour to figure out. Still didn't help with FC3 either.

I have run a memory test program and it all passed.

I also seem to have the most luck with the first run of FC3 of the day. It might run 30 minutes then crash, then after that the crashes are closer together. Last night they were less than 10 minutes apart, maybe less than five. I usually give up after that and play Minecraft.

I have yet to re-install the sound drivers yet, but at this point I don't think it's anything that can be fixed on my end.

[Art Blade]

sounds as if one of two vid sockets for the vid cards was affected. If you have two, stick your vid card in the other one and see if that helps.

[PZ]

Have you tried opening the task manager while FC3 is running to check out the running processes?  I don't know if it would yield useful information, but you never know.

With exception of the sound drivers, it looks like you have tried just about everything.  Interesting that you got the blue screen while watching a movie.

[fragger]

I had a poke around on Ubi's forum, among a few other places in relation to this. Those of us here who are having crash issues are certainly not alone, the problem is very widespread. Ubi has quite a number of disgruntled customers on their hands... And the impression I get is that Ubi isn't doing much, if anything, to help out, the silence from their end has been deafening. Some people have found ways of alleviating the problem by such unlikely methods as lowering the frequency of the GPU and having the game files validated before every load. Things that you should never have to do in order to play a game even if you are savvy to think them up.

Others have tried all the things that have been suggested here. A few got lucky, a lot didn't. Many have uninstalled the game in disgust and some have vowed never to buy another Ubi game in the future.

Ubisoft has released a very fickle and buggy game, and it almost seems to be a lottery whether it'll run well for any given player or not. The glitches are as varied as the people experiencing them - freezes, CTDs, blue and black screens of death, textures disappearing, sound dropping out, saves not registering (I know all about that one), invisible characters, missions unable to be completed - the list goes on. One player reported going back to the game after viewing the menu only to find nothing but water - no land, no trees, no animals, no characters - nothing but water, and was unable to move. Someone else responded and said they experienced the same thing ????

Something tells me the game testing was not as thorough as it should have been when it came to testing across varying types and configurations of hardware.

I'm more convinced than ever that this game was hastily rushed out the door without being properly shaken down in order to make the deadline.

[Art Blade]

same story as always. First it's delayed and then it comes rushed out the door unfinished. I remember calling ourselves paying beta testers.

[mandru]

...sound dropping out, saves not registering (I know all about that one)...

I hate those electric outboards on the rubber boats as well as the electric jet-skis.  \:/


Actually to protect and confirm my saves I always go to where there's a captured outpost vending machine toss a grenade of some C-4 then step inside and top off my ammo.  When you've bought something and exit the vending machine you get the game is saving butterfly icon.  Those steps have yet to fail me.

[Art Blade]

Actually to protect and confirm my saves I always go to where there's a captured outpost vending machine toss a grenade of some C-4 then step inside and top off my ammo.  When you've bought something and exit the vending machine you get the game is saving butterfly icon.  Those steps have yet to fail me.

Exactly the same here.  :)

[fragger]

It failed me once when the program hung while I was exiting from the vending machine :D

[Art Blade]

bugger.  :(

[Dweller_Benthos]

I've had the crash while saving bug too. Though the save at the vending machine is usually the safest. The problem with this game is, on PC at least, is that it's a console game first. It's a port, plain and simple, and probably whoever did the porting is the one to blame. They most likely did it on a "clean" system that was set up perfectly, had nothing else except windows installed on it, and called it good when it ran fine. I'm sure it did, but that's not a real world test, people use their computers for other things, you know?

I didn't have any time to play much this week, so it's been resting. I keep checking the nvidia site to see if they've released a new beta of the next driver that maybe has some fix in for this. Nothing yet.

I also grabbed the last three versions of my BIOS from the asus site, but haven't had the courage to install any of them yet. The fact that the latest version made two of my SATA sockets disappear makes me wary of installing any other BIOS, though I'd like to get those two ports back, you know?

[Art Blade]

BIOS is probably the only thing I've never updated.

PS: the only time I would have was when the so called "Pentium bug" was revealed but my machine wasn't affected. That was when you needed hardware tools to do an update, some 20 years ago  :-D

[fragger]

20 years ago? That's stone age stuff!

I never knew about the Pentium bug. Interesting info at that link, cheers Art :-X

So on some Pentium processors, 1 + 1 equals approximately 2.