AMD Driver Timeout after a few minutes of playing.

[Dudamesh]

After a few minutes of playing, game will freeze, my monitor will go black then back to the desktop with an AMD error saying a "Driver Timeout" happened.
Stellaris will keep running in the background transparent, my cursor is still in Stellaris mode and also the music is playing in the background. If I run the game on windowed mode, the game will instead have a white screen after the driver timeout. The game doesn't "crash" so I don't see anything on the crash logs (it's empty).
If I put the focus on Stellaris, my cursor will appear as if I am playing in Stellaris but I wouldn't be able to click anything, I have to Alt-Tab and manually end the program.

It happens rather randomly when playing, it takes around 5-10 minutes of gameplay before the driver timeout happens.
However I can reliably reproduce the timeout whenever I go into the Empire Creation tab and go specifically into the Origin tab, it pretty much times out a few seconds later. Sometimes it will happen in other tabs too but not as instantly.

AMD's driver timeout error is here:

My PC Specs:

• CPU: Ryzen 5 2600
• RAM: 16GB
• GPU: RX 570

It started happening yesterday after I quit a game midway to create another Empire, then it crashed immediately when I went to the Origin tab, my first thought was driver issue so I immediately updated my GPU drivers so now I have the latest AMD drivers on my RX 570.

I have also reinstalled the game once and it still happened. I tried renaming the documents folder for Stellaris where my saved custom empires are and it still crashed (it even crashed when I was simply putting my settings back into what I had before) I tried reinstalling/deleting the launcher as well and it still didn't work.

I do have one mod: Tiny Outliner however the crash happens with or without the mod.

I am using a GOG copy of the game.

 

[AndrewT]

Right click on stellaris.exe , properties, compatibility. Tick "disable fullScreen optimisations" untick every other box in that dialog, Apply and exit.
Then in the launcher Game Settings menu, select fullScreen display mode, Vsync off, cap refresh rate at 60.


If that doesn't help:
DXDIAG is a program you run from the Windows search box on the task bar. After running it will open a window and start collecting info with a progress bar in the lower-left corner. When it completes click the 'save all information' button and save it to a file then attach that file here.

Please attach here your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Stellaris/settings.txt and pdx_settings.txt .
From your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Stellaris/logs/ folder, attach here system.log , error.log , exceptions.log

 

[Dudamesh]

Right click on stellaris.exe , properties, compatibility. Tick "disable fullScreen optimisations" untick every other box in that dialog, Apply and exit.
Then in the launcher Game Settings menu, select fullScreen display mode, Vsync off, cap refresh rate at 60.

Did not help, game still crashing.

Also would like to note, I did a "clean" reinstall by deleting the Stellaris folder on the documents just yesterday, and ever since then, the game crashes instantly now on the loading screen (when launching the game) instead of the Empire Creation tab or in-game.

Attached are all the files requested, except for exceptions.log it doesn't exist (not even empty or anything, it's just not there)

I do still have the copy of my old Stellaris folder (the one in the documents), in case you also need those files for cross-reference or something as with those settings it seems that the game doesn't crash instantly unlike now.

 

[Dudamesh]

UPDATE:

I uninstalled my GPU drivers using DDU and did a reinstall with the latest AMD drivers but without the Adrenalin software, as in, it had an option for "Driver Only" which is what I did (also ticked Factory Reset on the driver install)

It has worked! Surprisingly?? So this meant that the adrenalin software was bugging things out?

BUT, After I restored my saves and custom empires and settings, I have crashed again on startup. So this most likely means that there really is some setting in Stellaris that is making me crash, perhaps something not particularly compatible with my RX 570...

Here are the requested files from before, but inside the documents folder of my OLD settings and OLD saves before I did a clean reinstall of the game, I suppose I have to do without my custom empires for now, at least, until I crash again on these default settings...


UPDATE #2:

The game didn't crash on start-up.. but still crashes a few minutes after playing, which means back to square one I suppose...
I did manage to create a new Empire without crashing, even stayed on the Origin tab for a long while, but after playing about 9 months into a new game, it crashed


UPDATE #3:

The game crashes on start-up when I enable the mod Tiny Outliner, if I disable it, the game will launch until the main menu, but loading the latest auto-save crashed the game.

 

[AndrewT]

Right click on stellaris.exe , properties, compatibility. Tick "disable fullScreen optimisations" untick every other box in that dialog, Apply and exit.
Then in the launcher Game Settings menu, select fullScreen display mode, Vsync off, cap refresh rate at 60.

Did you do this? Because that settings.txt says:

refreshRate=120
fullScreen=no
borderless=yes

And please disable ALL mods, and only test on galaxies that have never had any mods used in them, while we work on this. Thanks.

 

[Dudamesh]

Did you do this? Because that settings.txt says:

I'm quite sure this is what you meant right? and it still crashes with these settings, in fact I've been testing the other "fixes" on my second reply still with these settings intact.

I only have one mod and I have disabled it. I will uninstall it completely and test it again. I am also playing on a NEW empire on new saves with a new galaxy. I have not touched my old saves since they crash before I can even load them in. I will update after further testing.

 

[Dudamesh]

UPDATE:

As a test, I ticked off all of the stuff you mentioned you tick leaving me back to borderless windowed mode and with fullscreen optimizations, this change actually made the game not crash immediately in start-up, so far no crashes in Empire Creation and no crashes in-game, I have enabled Tiny Outliner and everything seems to still work (no crashes yet)

This might be a combination of the full clean reinstall of the drivers, factory reset and DDU and the fact that I do not have Adrenalin Software, to further specify the problem, I will now try to re-install the Adrenalin Software and try to run the game in these settings.

NOTE that when I enable back the stuff you told me to tick (full screen optimizations, run on full-screen w/o v-sync and 60fps cap) the game crashes on start-up.

Attached are my most recent logs and settings where it hasn't crashed yet after 30 mins of gameplay:


UPDATE #2:

I have reinstalled Adrenalin Software and have been playing extremely fine since then. I can only attribute this error to some mess-up on AMD's drivers ('sigh') and admittedly my incompetence at proper procedure of installing said drivers. If anyone is ever experiencing the same issues: Fully uninstall drivers using DDU, then reinstall latest drivers.


UPDATE #3:

My save reached a point where it now crashes again whenever I reload it, checking the error.log it seems that it has this new log on it:
[21:23:04][gfx_dx9.cpp:895]: Error calling Reset after alt-tab! - invalid call [21:23:04][gfx_dx9.cpp:1822]: Error create vertices -2005530516 8 4 20 [21:23:04][gfx_dx9.cpp:1828]: managed [21:23:05][gfx_dx9.cpp:1822]: Error create vertices -2005530516 8 4 16

I will now test if it happens on other saves, if I now crash on empire creation, disabling fullscreen optimizations, 60fps vsync off etc. and also turn off my single mod and see if I can play the game on another unmodded save, and finally uninstall my drivers (again) and reinstall without Adrenalin to see if it will fix anything.


UPDATE #4:

I haven't changed anything yet and It seems to not have crashed while creating an empire, so I tried reloading my save again without changing anything and it worked.. again. This is so frustrating because I didn't change anything and yet it worked? and sometimes it doesn't?? I'll test more tomorrow, now it's time to sleep.


UPDATE #5:

Still no changes and I have begun crashing again.. this time the error.log has this:
[19:58:05][gfx_dx9.cpp:895]: Error calling Reset after alt-tab! - invalid call [19:58:05][gfx_dx9.cpp:1822]: Error create vertices -2005530516 8 4 20 [19:58:05][gfx_dx9.cpp:1828]: managed