Bluescreen on zoning

Me and my friends have experienced this several times.

Sometimes, when zoning, thus clicking on a waypoint/tp/zone entrance and travelling to another location, the whole System (Win7 in my case) crashes. You see the bluescreen, which is quickly creating a memory dump and then reboots.

This issue seems to be caused by the game itself and is caused by something that is synced with the server, because it happened twice to me and a friend at the same time when we were playing together. Twice isn't a coincidence anymore :)

When I read the known issues list, I thought it might be connected to overheating hw, but these two incidences indicate is is connected to the client software.

It happened in act1 as well as act2 (I didn't come farther yet) :)

Here are the last entries in the clients log file:



The only indication I have from the os is the windows message after successfully rebooting:




I hope this helps, keep up the good work, I like POE a lot so far, and for a beta it's pretty damn nice.

Greets, makko


PS: I'm sorry if a topic like this already existed, I couln't find any...

PPS: While I'm on it, it would be great to have pants in the game, or at least have long robes and better visible gear for character customization :)

Try this...

Start > Setting > Control Panel > System > Advanced > Startup and Recovery > UNCHECK the Automatic Reboot

That should allow you to view the full BSOD.



Also, Hardware specification for both of you would be nice...I prefer Speccy screenshots...

"

Looks like this:

Spoiler

The game should not be causing a BSOD.. this generally is caused by a Driver / Heat / Power / Memory /Hardware issue.

The game does have a Memory Fragmentation issue.

The game has a problem with SoundBlaster cards "" --nosound "" at the end of the target box for the game works.

It's possible that the sound card is the problem, I will ask my buddy if he is also using a creative sound card.

One time I was able to read partial texts of the bluescreen fast enough... it was connected to a page_fault and something with private space.

so a memory issue is also possible, but as you said, the OS shouldn't crash because of it, it should be able to handle page faults and user space violations...

since this happened twice to two people at the same time, I really think it can be also avoided by the game itself, there must be a system call accessing the sound driver and therefore unintentionally causing this.

of course it is not your task to fix other peoples messes, but other games are running fine and without any issues, so someone has to know how to avoid this.


about the specs, here you go:
http://postimage.org/image/rk6wwgvnj/

EDIT: it also occurs only when zoning, so there must be something about it :)

2 things...

1) Your killing your GPU. Temp is getting high. Whole system is actually up a little.

Suggestion....

A) GO BACK atleast 1-2years on the driver.
Lastest drivers are GREAT for the LATEST hardware.
B) Clean the dust out of it, including the front bezel under the plastic face plate.
C) make sure its getting good air flow...dont put it in a cabineted area. This allows for recirculating of hot exhaust air.


2) Right click the ICON, select proterties, add the --nosound to the end of the TARGET box.

"

"D:\Program Files\Grinding Gear Games\Path of Exile\Client.exe" --nosound

Otherwise, it acts just like the E_outofmemory issue and should be fixed when they fix the memory defragmentation issue.

yea my system might be a bit dusty at the moment and the temperatures are a bit off. but I'm way too lazy to clean it anytime soon :D

also as I said before, overheating doesn't cause two systems, 400km away from each other to crash at the same time (while zoning.. still). so I might be a bit hung up on that one, but yea... I'm also trying to help finding real issues, not imaginary ones. If it's a known issue, fine, if not, it's should at least be worth considering.

my guess, as previously mentioned, is that there is indeed an issue with creatives sound card drivers. but as I also said before, other games are working fine. in fact, I haven't had a bluescreen for a very long time. so there must be a way to avoid it. I'm just guessing here, but it make sense - at least to me :D

anyway, I'm definitely thankful for the sound card advice and will try it as soon as possible. (though the --nosound parameter seems like it would disable all sound, but that's a wrong assumption I guess) :D

I'll let you know about my results. It may take a while, since the issue is not exactly reproducable :)

yea a small update on this issue...

the --nosound parameter is not an option, since it disables the whole sound, not just the hardware support of the sound card

and since in the patchnotes it was mentioned, that the creative sc issue has been fixed, well... it seems it hasn't, it still seems to crash and it still does this only on zoning. also it seems it only occurs when the client is running quite some time

or hasn't it been fixed yet and I read wrong? In this case I'm sorry for bothering :D

last client log entries were:



greets, makko

I've got the same issue. When changing Zones it randomly crashes here (did that three times since I signed up). I haven't timed it yet, but indeed it seems to happen on longer sessions ~>2h. I'm using a Soundblaster X-Fi card, if that's the culprit it would be kind of a letdown.

DxDiag http://pastebin.com/X0B2w7uR

Last lines of client.log:
Definitely not an overheating issue here though, temperatures seem fine according to monitoring. Also not having instability issues with other games I play.

"

makko wrote:

One time I was able to read partial texts of the bluescreen fast enough... it was connected to a page_fault and something with private space.

That's what I could grasp on the last BSOD, too, more or less. Can't find an entry other than "The previous system shutdown at 16:09:27 on ‎23.‎07.‎2012 was unexpected." in the Event Viewer about it though.

Anyways - keep up the good work :).

Edit: Ever since I switched to my onboard soundcard it didn't crash again so I guess it's safe to assume that my problem is related to the dreaded creative driver :(.

Maybe some new hints, maybe not...

I played yesterday almost entire Act 1 without any bluescreen, but as soon as I came to Act 2 and entered the Forest Encampment, BOOM.

It seems there are some "Hot spots" when this occurs, ALWAYS on zoning and very often while zoning to the Forest Encampment, also the Church Dungeon was very vulnerable.

The best bet for debugging and recreate this annoying bugger, you might want to look into what happens if you play one hour in a zone (e.g. a forest zone, east or west of the forest encampment) and then zone into the encampement again with a portal or waypoint.

Same thing for playing in some zones for quite some time, then zone into the church dungeon. This should help find out what exactly is causing this.

and I really hope you will find our soon, because it's impossible to play Act 2 without at least 10 crashes, depending on how often you want to go back to sell your stuff and how often you deploy a portal "just in case" :\

Edit: by the way, this is happening very shortly AFTER the zoning process. so the zoning itself seems to be completed before the crash occurs.

Use the onboard soundcard on your motherboard instead of your soundblaster.


Or...

You could try these opensource soundblaster drivers: http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/

Since I have an Creative Audigy 2 ZS, I'll give them a whirl and see if they solve the problem for curiosity's sake. ;)

UPDATE: Got the drivers installed and headphones working correctly using the SPDIF/AC3 output. I gotta say, the sound quality for these drivers is excellent. A big step up from my onboard realtek hd audio device. Now I'm really hoping the game works with these. ;)

If the game crashes with these drivers, I'll let you guys know. Otherwise, no news is good news.