Frozen for ~5 min. then CTD

[Armed Avacado]

Integrity​

I have verified my game files (on Steam)​

Yes

I have disabled all mods​

Yes

Required​

Summary​

Frozen for ~5 min. then CTD

Description​

with Colossus of the South DLC

I had just lost a war — I was forced to capitulate — but the war was still ongoing between the main belligerents.

I was making some treaties. At the time of the save, some were under consideration while others were newly proposed during the month.

After roughly one month of game time, the game freezes. My entire OS is unresponsive; I cannot Alt-Tab away or Ctr-Alt-Del. Music continues but all visuals are frozen. After roughly 5 minutes irl, I hear a few queued sounds (such as the turning gears of the pause menu) and then the program crashes, I'm back to desktop and the OS is working again.

I reload the autosave and proceed playing again. The game freezes again, on a different in-game date, but within the same month. Briefly, the cursor still moves but everything else is unresponsiveness. Then everything is frozen as before.

There was no pop-up dialogue for sending a report. it did not seem to generate any crash logs, either, since the files I found all had the wrong time and date. I will attach them anyway.

I will try to replicate a third time after verifying file integrity, but I want to submit this report first just in case my computer crashes.

To reiterate: the crash logs are for the WRONG DATE!

Steps to reproduce​

1. Load the save
2. Unpause
3. ??

Game Version​

1.9.5

OS​

Windows

Additional​

Bug Type​

Crash to Desktop

Save Game​

View attachment autosave.v3

Attachments​

View attachment victoria3_20250627_211353.zip

Player Pain​

8

 

[Armed Avacado]

Update: I cannot replicate the crash anymore.

Sorry for wasting your time. I will continue playing.

 

[Armed Avacado]

Update: I experienced the crash again at a much later in-game date. I had just concluded a native uprising war and I was in the process of viewing buildings and queuing construction. The freeze lasted over 20 minutes (the 5 min I described in the first post was a conservative estimate). I was incorrect; music does not continue playing.

 

[InvalidToken]

This seems at least tangentially related to https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/kernel32-dll-issue.1810116/, same DLL, same error where the GPU device isn't accessible.

Have you tried the --vulkan launch option to see if the issue persists?

 

[Armed Avacado]

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried it and still ran into a crash.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Looking at the logs this seems like a GPU (or GPU driver) issue:

[21:13:53][gfx_dx11_fence.cpp:32]: D3D error: hr returned: The GPU device instance has been suspended. Use GetDeviceRemovedReason to determine the appropriate action.
[21:13:53][pdx_assert.cpp:628]: Assertion failed: hr returned:
The GPU device instance has been suspended. Use GetDeviceRemovedReason to determine the appropriate action.
[21:13:53][gfx_dx11_master_context.cpp:676]: Failed creating fence

Moving to tech support.

 

[Sitoutumaton]

I've been getting this twice so far too since 1.9.x dropped. Didn't wait for the game to hang and crash to desktop though, but now I know I can wait it out at least! Also checked my Event Viewer to find something similar to the GPU or drivers missing.

Unless this is also related to the Windows 11 24H2 update too...

 

[AndrewT]

I see you have Windows 11 24H2; this can be the cause of this problem, it is a severely broken Windows update that has caused problems across the whole gaming - indeed computer - industry.

A user has come up with another possible workaround
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...s-the-problem-with-computer-freezing.1774335/
Definitely worth a shot - let me know if that does help you! Note that to test it you don't actually need to use Processor Lasoo, just Affinity in Task Manager (for testing purposes anyway).

And finally, in the game settings menu switch the renderer to Vulkan.

Let us know if any of those help!

 

[Armed Avacado]

Thank you AndrewT and Rin_Himari!

I played a new game until I ran into the freeze again. Tried the Process Lasso rule on DX11, and the freeze happened again at a similar time. (Notably, the game froze but the OS did not, so I was able to force quit the game.) Tried with Process Lasso and with Vulkan, and the game progressed several months later with no signs of freezing.

I don't know if this is related, but It also seemed to fix some of the black boxes that appear over certain bloom effects (from Turmoil, I think?). I saw some at the edge of vision, but when I zoomed in and centered my screen the boxes were disappeared, unlike before. However, I decided to turn off bloom completely, just in case.

If I encounter another freeze using these settings, I will reply to to this thread again. If I don't, you can assume I no longer encounter the problem.