Client crashes and BSoD, especially in loadings

[Eesley]

Hello Blade and Soul community!

 

For while (since Alpha), I have had this issue.

I have been at war with this since before BnS actually since I was experiencing this with FF14 too and can't even play Star Wars Battlefront for a similar issue (but different .dll, more on that below)

 

It is my hope that some of you more techy people may have a solution to this since it has been increasingly worse recently.

 

So here's my rig : 

CPU : i7-3770 3.40ghz (not overclocked, core voltage is around 1.0, fluctuating from under 1 to 1.1 depending on activity according to CPU-Z)

RAM : 16.0gb (2x 8gb sticks, they run on 1.65 volt out of the box according to label so my DRAM voltage has been set and kept there) 

GPU : GTX 770 with latest drivers clean installed after I RMA my 680 (Old : NVidia GTX 680)

OS : Windows 10 64bit (was window 7 till yesterday, I never approved of the update but apparently it was scheduled and I came home from classes to a win-10 computer -_-)

Other : I do have razer keyboard and mouse, but I don't use synapse, I even uninstalled it.

 

Now for the issue :

 

I will sometimes be able to play hours without a crash. When I do crash it happens in many forms and ways, but most frequently it just crashes to desktop with a message saying the application stopped and windows is trying to find a solution (which of course, it never found) Sometimes it proposes me to send my crash report to NCSoft, which I do in the off chance some dude stumble on it and sees something that has to be fixed. Other times, game freezes and I have the "not responding" messaged. Lastly, I also sometimes get the full BSoD treatment or just complete computer freeze that forces me to restart.

 

This happens sometimes randomly, like standing or running or fighting, but the amount of activity in the zone I'm in doesn't seem to really change much of anything, it's just super random.

This though doesn't happen that often, the random part. say 95% of the time I crash on loadings. Zone changes don't make me crash that often (exemple getting in PoH 24 man), but it's still a loading so it happens and those kinds of loadings are not as frequent as others so maybe I'm just lucky on those. Windstriding will make me crash often, as will reviving myself (and it sucks because when I get back in sometimes I'm still dead cause it crashed before the half point of the loading, so I need to revive again and potentially crash again).

Another thing, is opening the game simply. I will sometime crash anytime between pressing "Play" on the launcher and having to enter my PIN after the game open. Then of course, once I select my character and go to enter the game properly, I have a loading so I will crash... very often. It can sometimes take me up to 10 tries before I finally manage to get in the game.

BSoDs and full PC crashed are thankfully not as frequent. They will happen in the same situations, mostly loadings.

In average, I will crash about 10-15 times a day, depending how long I play (not including the multiple tries to get back in) and will BSoD/Full PC Freeze 1-3 times out of those if I'm unlucky, none or once only if I am lucky.

 

Recently, it has been worse. I have never had a BSoD happen in a row but I had 3 of them in a row trying to open the game at one point recently. Those full pc crashes used to happen only 1-2 a week, now we're talking about 1-2 a day, so it's becoming very hard to deal with. I'm also playing on lowest graphical quality to somewhat give it a chance, objectively, I doubt that the quality settings don't actually change anything since I actually crash just as much on lowest settings. Still, I get the impression that I crash less with lower settings, which might be the case, but impossible to really quantify since it can happen either a lot in a row or not at all for a few hours, depending on my PC's mood I guess! I am a very patient person and have managed to still enjoy the game while crashing all the time (thank you my friends for being patient about me crashing in the middle of questing!).

 

Anyway! Here is the message I get in the event viewer for this issue : 

(old, this was with the 680)

Faulting application name: Client.exe, version: 0.0.159.5740, time stamp: 0x56f51b5b
Faulting module name: nvd3dum.dll, version: 10.18.13.5382, time stamp: 0x55c3e7fe
Exception code: 0xc00000fd (this can sometimes be 0xc0000409 or 0xc0000005 but more often than not it's the fd one, which apparently means stack overflow error. Still, it all points to memory, but I know the errors can be cause by a lot of random or weird stuff)
Fault offset: 0x008a47e7
Faulting process id: 0xd8
Faulting application start time: 0x01d19070ad261356
Faulting application path: Z:\Blade And Soul\BnS\bin\Client.exe
Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\nvd3dum.dll
Report Id: ab7e9998-c0ef-432c-a6e0-fad1454dddd6
Faulting package full name: 
Faulting package-relative application ID: 

 

(error with the 770, it's the same of course)

Faulting application name: Client.exe, version: 0.0.159.5751, time stamp: 0x57220f13
Faulting module name: nvd3dum.dll, version: 10.18.13.6510, time stamp: 0x57209c51
Exception code: 0xc00000fd
Fault offset: 0x008b2e07
Faulting process id: 0x2708
Faulting application start time: 0x01d1a678ea50dc07
Faulting application path: Z:\Blade and Soul\BnS\bin\Client.exe
Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\nvd3dum.dll
Report Id: 6b65b546-4af4-47dc-b667-96bcf59ac3cc
Faulting package full name: 
Faulting package-relative application ID: 

 

It was the same thing with FF14 for the dll and exception code, which is why I feel like it's not the game but something on my computer... that or both FF14 and BnS have the same issue which is not impossible I guess. Had a different one for SW Battlefront (nvwgf2umx.dll) and I don't remember the exception code there. That might just be EA though, people say they're infamous about that kind of things for new games.

 

I also have a lot of WHEA warnings for parity errors that were corrected, like this : 

A corrected hardware error has occurred.

Reported by component: Processor Core
Error Source: Corrected Machine Check
Error Type: Internal parity error
Processor APIC ID: 0

 

I'm pretty certain the issues are related or caused by the same thing, but I sometimes get WHEA warnings when I'm not playing and sometimes I won't get any while I still crash so maybe it isn't. Still, those are usualy warnings that the CPU is unstable and people bump their VCore to correct it, but that is on overclocking websites that I got that information, and I'm not overclocking so I'm not certain if that trick is viable for me. I does sound like a hardware issue to me, but I'm just an amateur so I may be completely wrong.

 

As I said I've been at war with this issue forever. Things I tried are : 

- Removal of Graphic drivers and Clean instal with DDU (display driver uninstaller)

- I reinstalled direct x a bunch of times with the end-user microsoft app in case the drivers were corrupted or something

- I obviously reinstalled the game multiple times

- I have checked my fans and air-flow and they're all clean. CPU has heatskink well installed and the fan is also clean.

- I have checked for overheating, using various thermometers and neither my GPU or CPU reaches a point that is deemed dangerous while playing intensive games (I have been told that 70 degrees on CPU while playing games is safe, maybe those people were wrong?)

- I have talked to both NVidia and EVGA(the manufacturer) customer support and they had me do bunch of modifications in my default settings to what I suppose is their known most stable settings.

- I have performed a memory test and it came out clean

- I followed the instructions here : 

 

- I even added a TDR delay of 8 sec for 32 bit in my registry as was advised on some other site to someone having a similar issue with FF14

- I tried rolling back to older graphics drivers but since I've been having this issue for so long I don't really know how far back I should go.

- I did a bunch of other stuff that I don't remember probably, but you get the idea.

- Updated BIOS to latest version

- Updated all my drivers in the Device Manager (including chipsets, etc)

- Uninstalled Anti-virus and reinstalled it, adding exception for anything related to Blade and Soul, Gameguard and Awesomium

- Cleaned off and reapplied Thermal Paste on CPU's heatsink, stabilised my CPU temps a bit but didn't solve anything.

- Changed GPU (RMA my 680, I now have a gtx 770)

- Tried installing BnS on my HDD instead of SSD, then back on the SSD. I had some issues installing the last time, the installation would stop randomly and I'd have to reopen the client, where it would pick back up where it was last, install a bit more then stop again. After a bunch more times it managed to finish installing and I was able to play (but still same issue)

 

As for things I know I could try but haven't done yet (some I will try after this post) :

- Try my RAM sticks separately by removing one and trying different slots, etc... I've been meaning to try that for a while but always forget. I'm gonna do that when I finish posting.

- I haven't tried underclocking my CPU or GPU, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to know how to do that in a stable way.

- Playing with voltage of my VCore and DRAM, but I'm not overclocking so I feel like this is not going to change anything

- Stress testing my GPU in some way, I haven't searched for a good software to stress test it's memory yet.

- Making a few hours Torture test of my CPU and memory with the Prime95 software

- Could it be my power supply?

 

So there. I probably am forgetting a lot of things but if you guys have suggestions, I would love to see this thing solved without changing my graphic card or send it in repair (but since i'm in warranty anyway, I will probably do that if the issue is still there by the end of the month before warranty ends)

 

Thanks in advance! :)

[thenameisik]

I found a VERY reliable solution for loadings, though keep in mind it doesn't work EVERY time but I would say a good 85-90% of the time. So the reason for the crash is most likely related to the landscape loading in, and when you go into the portals it causes it to load very rapidly, so my solution was to wait by the portal for a good 20-30 seconds to let everything load, just like in Minecraft (I know bad reference) when you walk things have to load and could down your frames. Hope this helps!

[Eesley]

Thx, I do try to wait a bit before going in any portals, but they're not the biggest problem since we don't actually use a lot of portals that requires a full loading page. My main issue is mostly with loadings from windstriding or reviving, as well as opening the game.

Anyway thanks for the answer ^^

 

EDIT : Updated the stuff I tried

[Dru Lockheart]

Well, it seems the game is working quite bad and prone to crashing computers with BSOD if they have Win 10 and Nvidia. Basically, that's what event viewer tells you: there was nvidia driver error (nv* file) caused by BnS client. I have similar settings (although less RAM and weaker CPU) and all my BSOD crashes are due to graphics driver and only when playing BnS, I have tested several drivers (like 6 now, including the dedicated drivers for my laptop which were not drawing floor after teleport to Poharan in E Fleet on regular basis), the latest included and it's always BSOD, although with varying error messages (Video TDR failure; kernel driver stopped responding but recovered; system thread exception not handled; dxgi error not found; driver irql not less or equal...). Someone on the forum tested downgrading from Win10 to Win7 and claimed that settled his issues, so maybe you can try that - those Win10 upgrades are supposed to be entirely reversible within a month from upgrade (that's how long the previous system backup is stored, from what I remember). Unless, of course, the issues were already occuring with Win7 too.

Those Whea messages sometimes are "false positives" so there might or might not as well be a CPU problem. I guess you can try testing the computer with different power supply, who knows what might help...

[Eesley]

Hmmm, thanks for the info.

Yeah I knew that the drivers were nvidia which is why I contacted their tech support as well as EVGA, the manufacturer for my card. Neither were able to solve my problem.

Still, I'm relluctant to RMA my card yet, first of all cause I need it for my infographic class, second cause I'd end up with a long time not able to play either. Also, I'm not entirely sure the driver crash is caused by faulty or damaged hardware, but since I don't have a second card to test I can't be sure. Same for my powersupply unfortunately, I don't have the money to just buy another one and risking it being useless since the one I had before was perfectly fine.

The issue did happen in windows 7 before so downgrading won't solve anything for me most probably.

Oh! something I haven't mentionned (I'll add it) is that I cleaned off and reapplied thermal paste to my CPU heatsink. My temps are to my knowledge acceptable, from around 30-40 at rest, and around 65 at load. During loadings I can hit 80 but it drops back down to ~65 when loading is done, so I kinda discarded the CPU overheating as a possibility. I didn't check my GPU temps though, but from memory when I was running EVGA precision X with the game temps never went very high and I know my card can hold up to 98 degrees according to official answer.

 

I've been thinking about just doing a reboot of my computer. Will have to wait till after my school semester is over but if my issue is from corrupted or conflicting drivers, or background processes I somehow missed or can't close for whatever reason, it would most likely solve everything. Though of course I'd much rather pinpoint the problem, both for me and for those that may have a similar situation at the moment or in the future.

[Eesley]

A little bump for this one.

I RMAed my GTX 680 and received a 770 (yay free upgrade!)

Installed the 770 after removing all drivers with DDU in safe mode, then installing the latest ones with clean install.

Issue wasn't resolved, I tried reinstalling the game on my SSD (which for some reason didn't go smoothly, the install kept stopping and closing client with no error message. When I restarted the client it would quickly go back to where it was at and continue installing then stop after a few seconds. After a bunch of times doing that it finished installing and I could play, but same issue. I doubt it's related but worth mentionning)

 

Almost forgot : I've been told there are issues with PCI-E 3.0, NVidia and official Windows drivers. Wondering if that might now be the cause?

[Bruce Chi]

WHEA errors are 99% too low vcore. Your system is unstable which is the cause of the BSOD not B&S (though it is still a broken PoS right now) If you are comfortable editing BIOS settings try setting VCORE to manual instead of auto and either add 0.05v to the offset or change to fixed and set it to 1.2v.

 

Mine requires 1.375v for 4.8GHz but due to excellent cooler load temps are lower than yours with the stock HSF.