HELP! PoE Freezes My Computer

Hello, I'm having an incredibly frustrating problem with this game.

I've been playing it for about a month now without any problems. Yesterday, the game completely froze and locked by computer. No BSoD, just frozen with a repetitive loud audio sound, only way to describe it is it sounds like "R-R-R-R-R-R-R"
I've tried many things to fix it but it will NOT work. My computer is new. I built it recently, stress tested it and it's fine.

SPECS:

i7 6700k
GTX 1080
16GB DDR4
Windows 10

I've checked my temperatures, all fine. I've reinstalled the game, I've reinstalled windows, I've tested other games such as Witcher 3, BF4, Darksouls 3 they all work fine. ONLY PoE does this. I've downloaded the standalone client. NOTHING works.

How can ONLY PoE cause my computer to basically lock up until I do a hard reboot. I've contacted support but have yet to hear anything back. I'm not too savvy to understand crash reports or anything, but I'm 100% confident it is not my hardware since it only happens with PoE.

Please, if you know the solution, or have ANY ideas, throw them my way. I want to play the game I've paid hundred to support...

EDIT1: It MUST have something to do with sound or sound drivers or something... I was fucking around with Realtek audio settings and launched the game and it worked fine for longer than usual. Now it's restarting again after I closed it. I don't know what's happening.

EDIT2: Also tried --nosound and --softwareaudio. Both proved unsuccessful.

EDIT3: I've worked out a temporary solution which came from sheer luck. As I suspected it absolutely has something to do with the audio. For whatever reason this works (not all the time???) but I have to set my audio source through the RealTek UI to speakers (although I play with headset) then launch the game with --softwareaudio which in the game UI starts off as speakers in the dropdown list. I have to let it play through that for abour ~20 seconds then instantly switch the my "RealTek 2nd HD Audio Input".

This is by no means a victory, only a temporary and very annoying solution but I don't know what else to do. I love this game and really want to play normally. But this will have to do...

EDIT4: My little workaround doesn't seem to work well anymore. The game still consistently freezes then crashes. I did a memtest and RAM is fine. I honestly don't know what there is left to do as I'm not getting much answers from anywhere.

I have 3 pc's in my house and I am having the same problem on all of them. To me it started afther the 16 september patch.

"

AS wrote:

I want to play the game I've paid hundred to support...

While GGG employees may visit to help on occasion in this forum with account related issues, it is still primarily community-driven support. Please keep that in mind when posing your questions and molding your expectations.

"

AS wrote:

but I'm 100% confident it is not my hardware since it only happens with PoE.

If you're "100% confident" that it's a problem with PoE and not your system, then why are you posting here? If you wanted to file a bug report, you can do so here. But I guarantee you it is not a "bug" or problem specific to the client, but rather compatibility on your system with the client, or your system's stability.

"

AS wrote:

Yesterday, the game completely froze and locked by computer. No BSoD, just frozen with a repetitive loud audio sound

I built it recently, stress tested it and it's fine.

SPECS:

i7 6700k
GTX 1080
16GB DDR4
Windows 10

I've checked my temperatures, all fine. I've reinstalled the game, I've reinstalled windows, I've tested other games such as Witcher 3, BF4, Darksouls 3 they all work fine. ONLY PoE does this. I've downloaded the standalone client. NOTHING works.

Please, if you know the solution, or have ANY ideas, throw them my way.

EDIT1: It MUST have something to do with sound or sound drivers or something... I was fucking around with Realtek audio settings and launched the game and it worked fine for longer than usual. Now it's restarting again after I closed it. I don't know what's happening.

EDIT2: Also tried --nosound and --softwareaudio. Both proved unsuccessful.

EDIT3: I've worked out a temporary solution which came from sheer luck. As I suspected it absolutely has something to do with the audio. For whatever reason this works (not all the time???) but I have to set my audio source through the RealTek UI to speakers (although I play with headset) then launch the game with --softwareaudio which in the game UI starts off as speakers in the dropdown list. I have to let it play through that for abour ~20 seconds then instantly switch the my "RealTek 2nd HD Audio Input".

This is by no means a victory, only a temporary and very annoying solution but I don't know what else to do. I love this game and really want to play normally. But this will have to do...

You've just proved that it's a problem with your system. Many, many, many people also play PoE on systems running Realtek sound chips without any issues. It's possible a recent patch made certain models of RealTek more unstable, so it would be nice to troubleshoot that.

If you want further help with troubleshooting this, please run DXDiag for system info. Use a service such as http://pastebin.com to copy and paste your info, then link it here. Guide: http://tinyurl.com/dxdiag-info-guide

"

Dræco wrote:

I have 3 pc's in my house and I am having the same problem on all of them. To me it started afther the 16 september patch.

Please start your own thread and the community would be happy to help you. Don't pile onto someone else's thread. This forum is for troubleshooting and helping with the client, users' systems, and their connectivity. it's not a place to post bug reports or consolidate issues. Everyone's issue may be unique to their configuration, server, and path across the Internet. Thanks.

It's because I have absolutely no problems with any other game. I know this because like I said in my post I've tested the other games after the crash had happened and not one gave me freezes, crashes or any sort of instability. And now that I have found some temporary solutions (not ideal) that have to do with audio, I know it is not my system, but the way the game handles or loads audio in some way. Because the game clearly has had numerous instances where it has caused freezing and crashing due to audio in the past and still to this day.
I'm not posting this to call out the company or demand results I just want to hopefully find a solution and also get a solution out there for others experiencing the same or similar situations.

Thanks, I have the DxDiag link here:

http://pastebin.com/TvmGXUnt

Bump

"

cipher_nemo wrote:

"

AS wrote:

I want to play the game I've paid hundred to support...

While GGG employees may visit to help on occasion in this forum with account related issues, it is still primarily community-driven support. Please keep that in mind when posing your questions and molding your expectations.

"

AS wrote:

but I'm 100% confident it is not my hardware since it only happens with PoE.

If you're "100% confident" that it's a problem with PoE and not your system, then why are you posting here? If you wanted to file a bug report, you can do so here. But I guarantee you it is not a "bug" or problem specific to the client, but rather compatibility on your system with the client, or your system's stability.

"

AS wrote:

Yesterday, the game completely froze and locked by computer. No BSoD, just frozen with a repetitive loud audio sound

I built it recently, stress tested it and it's fine.

SPECS:

i7 6700k
GTX 1080
16GB DDR4
Windows 10

I've checked my temperatures, all fine. I've reinstalled the game, I've reinstalled windows, I've tested other games such as Witcher 3, BF4, Darksouls 3 they all work fine. ONLY PoE does this. I've downloaded the standalone client. NOTHING works.

Please, if you know the solution, or have ANY ideas, throw them my way.

EDIT1: It MUST have something to do with sound or sound drivers or something... I was fucking around with Realtek audio settings and launched the game and it worked fine for longer than usual. Now it's restarting again after I closed it. I don't know what's happening.

EDIT2: Also tried --nosound and --softwareaudio. Both proved unsuccessful.

EDIT3: I've worked out a temporary solution which came from sheer luck. As I suspected it absolutely has something to do with the audio. For whatever reason this works (not all the time???) but I have to set my audio source through the RealTek UI to speakers (although I play with headset) then launch the game with --softwareaudio which in the game UI starts off as speakers in the dropdown list. I have to let it play through that for abour ~20 seconds then instantly switch the my "RealTek 2nd HD Audio Input".

This is by no means a victory, only a temporary and very annoying solution but I don't know what else to do. I love this game and really want to play normally. But this will have to do...

You've just proved that it's a problem with your system. Many, many, many people also play PoE on systems running Realtek sound chips without any issues. It's possible a recent patch made certain models of RealTek more unstable, so it would be nice to troubleshoot that.

If you want further help with troubleshooting this, please run DXDiag for system info. Use a service such as http://pastebin.com to copy and paste your info, then link it here. Guide: http://tinyurl.com/dxdiag-info-guide

"

Dræco wrote:

I have 3 pc's in my house and I am having the same problem on all of them. To me it started afther the 16 september patch.

Please start your own thread and the community would be happy to help you. Don't pile onto someone else's thread. This forum is for troubleshooting and helping with the client, users' systems, and their connectivity. it's not a place to post bug reports or consolidate issues. Everyone's issue may be unique to their configuration, server, and path across the Internet. Thanks.

Hey cipher, I forgot to quote your post last time, which I'm guessing didn't give you a notification. I'm still trying to find out what is causing this problem. Is there anyway you could look into that DxDiag to find out more info? I also tried looking at "Bluescreenview" and get the "caused by Hal.dll driver" and error code 0x0124

OP, why do you have two threads going at the same time in Tech Support?

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1740409
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1742547

I'd stop replying to this one and use the other thread instead other people tried to help you.