Question Anyone having programs or games crashing since the 5/12 W10 Servicing Stack update?

[Frag Maniac]

I have been playing Ghostrunner lately, and on all prior sessions I had no crashes. A few days ago was when I picked up playing it again after taking time off to play other games. Last time I played it was a few days before this 5/12 update. At that time I fully played through the level Dharma City I'm now playing through again to go for a no death run on it. The first time I played it before that update, I died several times, but just kept playing from respawn checkpoints, and it never crashed once. As mentioned, it also never crashed anywhere prior to that point.

Now I HAVE checked to see if others are having crashes with this game, and found many saying they've been having these fatal error crashes I'm getting since the game came out well before that W10 update, which are said to be UE4 fatal errors. Some say it crashes right away and they can't even get into the game. Others say it can have these crashes at random points. Some have even said it crashes after the first boss fight, which is the level prior to Dharma City.

I've checked the crash dump files and they all say Invalid Point Read, and since this 5/12 Servicing Stack Update was the only major system related change since I played it with never having any crashes, I am wondering if it's the culprit. So please let me know if you've had any fatal error crashes since this 5/12 W10 update, especially UE4 crashes? I'd also like to know if anyone has an easy fix for this meantime, as this update, unlike most W10 updates, cannot be uninstalled.

My spec...
W10 64
8700K
GTX 1080 SC,
16GB Vengeance LPX
No OCs

BTW, I have tried updating to the latest Nvidia driver, and also completely reinstalled the game.

 

[Ralston18]

Look in Reliability History and Event Viewer for error codes, warnings, and even informational events that correspond with the crashes.

Start with Reliability History: The timeline format can be very revealing.

Also look in Update History for any Windows related updates and update problems.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Well none of those sources of info say anything about Ghostrunner crashing on that day, so I'm afraid none of that is useful.

I DID however just play a rather long several hour session of Days Gone, which is another UE4 game, and it didn't crash once. At one point a rather long cutscene hung video wise while the audio kept playing, but when I minimized to Task Manager and quit task on it, it still retained the save, and picked back up where it was supposed to.

Given the many reports of crashing and bugs I've read about these two games, I have to say my experiences are better than average it seems. I think it's just a matter of a couple of new dev teams struggling through a global pandemic.

The crashing has been frustratingly frequent on the current level of Ghostrunner I'm playing, but I did managed to get down to the last few enemies, one enemy in fact the very last time, before I got killed, so I've nearly met my goal of a no death run on it. My only hope is once I DO complete this level, the rest of the game is more stable. Days Gone however plays pretty stable.

 

[Colif]

Well none of those sources of info say anything about Ghostrunner crashing on that day, so I'm afraid none of that is useful.

How about looking in system information app (search for system info, its the application choice offered by search)
then in the left hand column, look under Software Environment/Windows Error Reporting

If the game crashes are anywhere, they will show here. if it mentions pre radar leaks it means that windows is perceiving a potential memory leak, so perhaps try updating drivers.

 

[Frag Maniac]

How about looking in system information app (search for system info, its the application choice offered by search)
then in the left hand column, look under Software Environment/Windows Error Reporting

If the game crashes are anywhere, they will show here. if it mentions pre radar leaks it means that windows is perceiving a potential memory leak, so perhaps try updating drivers.

Unfortunately Sys Info>Win Error Reporting doesn't show these crashes either, and as I mentioned in the first post, my drivers are already up to date.

The only crash dump info I've found so far is what the game itself generates, and as I said, it's describing it as an Invalid Pointer Read.

I really think if this WERE a W10 update problem, I would at least be able to find some kind of error report in W10 that refers to it, because W10 has a fair bit of self diagnostics. So my perspective has changed on this from skepticism about that Servicing Stack Update, to skepticism about One More Level's game coding.

It just seems odd that I was able to play through that whole level the first time with no crashes, and now it crashes every 5 to 10 min. I've also tried reinstalling the game, scanning extensively for malware (none found), and running an SFC scan, so this seems purely a game bug, as many have reported fatal error crashes with it.

If MS made Servicing Stack updates uninstallable, I could have easily removed it to verify whether it's the culprit by now, but unfortunately that's not the case.

 

[Colif]

the fatal error is in the Unreal 4 engine game uses.

Its still odd windows doesn't see any errors. but its a error in the engine it seems.

i found this

The second reason that we’re aware of is tied to the game FPS settings. To resolve this, you may have to try locking the game’s maximum FPS. What this essentially does is cap the FPS settings of the game to a certain level, so that it won’t go over and put extra tension upon your system. To lock the game’s maximum FPS, navigate to Nvidia Control Panel→Manage 3D Settings→Program Settings. From there, select Ghostrunner and turn on the Max FPS Limit option. Finally, set the value to 30 and it will lock the game’s maximum FPS level.

source

 

[Frag Maniac]

the fatal error is in the Unreal 4 engine game uses.

Its still odd windows doesn't see any errors. but its a error in the engine it seems.

i found this

source

Well, thanks for trying Colif, but I've already seen that claimed workaround. I've yet to see if anyone's successfully applied the frame rate limiter trick, but it's common on forum chat that some claim driver updating fixes it, while the most say it doesn't, and of course as I said, it didn't for me. I also don't think UE4 inherently has this problem. It seems to happen only on games where the devs are new to using it, or UE in general.

Had that workaround claimed maybe just below 60 FPS, like 58, or 55 or 50 might work, I'd have definitely tried it, but I post these videos as guides, and I'm already having to resize a 1080p clip to 1440p just to get YouTube to process them with the VP9 codec, otherwise they don't look so good. Going way down to 30 FPS would likely affect the image quality noticeably, and worse yet, it could easily make playing a game requiring so much precise jumping very hard to play.

That workaround seems a bit half baked, and taken from a few claims that are definitely unsubstantiated by the majority having these problems. The 30 FPS limiter part, I don't know where they got that from, because I've not seen ANYONE in any forum chat claims that to work. So I'm guessing they're speculating that most having these problems are playing on potato PCs, because with halfway decent spec like mine, it can easily run at 1440p DSR on max settings at very good frame rates. I happen to play it at 1080p to get the best FPS I can though.

None the less, because you took the time to search for it, and because I've tried pretty much everything else, I will try the 30 FPS trick just out of curiosity, and report back if it works. As I said though, I'm reasonably sure I can get that level captured in about 4 min with no crashes and no deaths. I already captured a 4:35 clip with 2 deaths. The 30 FPS trick, IF it works, could come in handy in case the game keeps on doing this on other levels, but my hope, IF that's the solution, is I can get at least 40 FPS or more to do the same. I just never like stooping as low as 30, it really starts affecting the way you can move and the way the captures look, and you have to move a TON in this game.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Well I tried it at 30 FPS, also tried setting NCP to Nvidia's Low Latency mode set on Ultra, and Prefer Maximum Performance. I didn't get any crashes at 30 FPS , but didn't play it log enough at that frame rate to really know for sure if fixes the problem. It doesn't really matter anyway, as I couldn't stand playing at that low a frame rate. Surprisingly I could still make all the jumps, but it does not look smooth and sharp at ll. Also tried it at 45 FPS and got a crash soon after.

I'm pretty sure I can get it captured today though, because I had another run where I miss timed a projectile deflection very near the end, so I'm nearly there.

 

[Star_slip]

Well I tried it at 30 FPS, also tried setting NCP to Nvidia's Low Latency mode set on Ultra, and Prefer Maximum Performance. I didn't get any crashes at 30 FPS , but didn't play it log enough at that frame rate to really know for sure if fixes the problem. It doesn't really matter anyway, as I couldn't stand playing at that low a frame rate. Surprisingly I could still make all the jumps, but it does not look smooth and sharp at ll. Also tried it at 45 FPS and got a crash soon after.

I'm pretty sure I can get it captured today though, because I had another run where I miss timed a projectile deflection very near the end, so I'm nearly there.

Did you ever find a solution to this issue? I've been banging my head against a wall regarding it for months, everything I find online leads to a dead end or solutions I've tried that don't work. Basically all UE4 games only work to varying degrees, some running for an hour before crashing and other reliably crashing within 60 seconds. I tried with a graphics card from a system I know these games run fine on, memory swap, even did a clean install of Windows at one point and nothing fixes the issue. It has to be driver related somehow, but since you can't load direct x in safe mode I have no way to test that.

Edit: Just did a clean install of the Windows 11 preview onto another drive...issue persists.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Did you ever find a solution to this issue? I've been banging my head against a wall regarding it for months, everything I find online leads to a dead end or solutions I've tried that don't work. Basically all UE4 games only work to varying degrees, some running for an hour before crashing and other reliably crashing within 60 seconds. I tried with a graphics card from a system I know these games run fine on, memory swap, even did a clean install of Windows at one point and nothing fixes the issue. It has to be driver related somehow, but since you can't load direct x in safe mode I have no way to test that.

Edit: Just did a clean install of the Windows 11 preview onto another drive...issue persists.

Sorry, I thought I replied to this to update you all, but I guess I only did in the other forum I posted it. This ended up appearing to not be a UE Fatal error, and it was only happening in Ghostrunner and just in the Dharma City level. The levels I've played after that have not crashed at all, nor did any levels prior. In fact it wouldn't have even been that big a deal had I not been trying to capture the whole level nonstop with no deaths, which I finally managed to do a day or two later.

It came down to the wire to manage it because the game kept crashing like clockwork, allowing no more than 4 min of play before doing so. I decided to not try and kill all enemies, then I was able to do it a lot quicker.