Game freezing and forcing me to reboot

[Cassilda]

With the latest patch I'm experiencing a random problem: without any apparent reason the game freezes (strangely it continues to play the music), but it becomes completely unresponsive. The keyboard shortcuts that would allow me to kill the process in task manager become also inaccessible.
I'm using a Steam version EUIV on Windows 11, with no mods.

 

[AndrewT]

Is this in a save left over from a previous patch, or a new one under this patch, or both?

Is it that you have to force a reboot to get going again, or how do you have to do that?

 

[Cassilda]

It's a game started with the Ottomans update. I have to reboot the pc with the button on the tower, the computer after freezing becomes completely unresponsive and I can't tab to other programs (like the task manager).

 

[grotaclas]

It could be that the game is crashing in a way which doesn't clean up the display and prevents normal keyboard shortcuts. I'm not familiar with modern windows versions, but there should be some shortcut which overrides that(maybe ctrl+alt+del). You could also try to use borderless/windowed fullscreen instead of normal fullscreen so that eu4 gets less control over the display. This might reveal more information about what is going on.

When does it happen? Just on a specific save or also on a new campaign? Are you doing anything while it happens(e.g. zooming to a specific part of the map like America or Australia)? Does it happen while paused or while the game is running? If it only happens in one save and more or less on the same date each time you load that save, can you attach the save here, so that I can have a look at it? Maybe I can find out what is going on

Disclaimer: I'm not working for Paradox. I'm just trying to help people.

 

[Cassilda]

Unfortunately the problem is that when the game freezes, it blocks "everything" I can't use the shortcuts that normally I would use to exit the EUIV window and block the process.
It doesn't happen doing "something in particular" it is completely random.

 

[grotaclas]

I can't use the shortcuts that normally I would use to exit the EUIV window and block the process.

But can you use the special shortcuts which are designed for situations in which the normal shortcuts don't work?

Did you try borderless fullscreen?

It doesn't happen doing "something in particular" it is completely random.

If you reload the last autosave, does it happen again or can you continue playing for a long time afterwards? How often does this freezing happen approximately?

 

[Cassilda]

It's already windowed full screen. And yes, it's not a game bug, it happens completely randomly, save games made just before it happens can be loaded and played for hours after rebooting the pc without any issues.

 

[grotaclas]

It's already windowed full screen. And yes, it's not a game bug, it happens completely randomly, save games made just before it happens can be loaded and played for hours after rebooting the pc without any issues.

Then this sounds more like a hardware or driver problem. Maybe something is overheating. Can you run dxdiag and attach the output here? AndrewT might be able to see possible sources for the problem.

You could also try to lower the graphics settings and disable city sprawl(causes freezes with some amd gpus when looking at America/Australia) to see if that helps.

 

[AndrewT]

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/EU4/settings.txt and pdx_settings.txt .
From your Documents/Paradox Interactive/EU4/logs/ folder, attach here system.log , error.log , exceptions.log

 

[Cassilda]

I've attached the files required

 

[AndrewT]

Right click on eu4.exe , properties, compatibility. Tick "disable fullScreen optimisations" untick every other box in that dialog, Apply and exit.

Edit that settings.txt to say:

refreshRate=60
fullScreen=yes
borderless=no

vsync=no

Then in the launcher Game Settings menu, select fullScreen display mode.


Does that help? If not, Please report the temperatures of your CPU and video (GPU)
1/ before starting the game up and
2/ after say 30 minutes' play.
If your PC's vendor has given you no way of reading temperatures, install
SPEEDFAN http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php

 

[Cassilda]

Running the game in full screen for now hasn't caused any freezing.

When not playing, the CPU is 32-53 °C min and 49-53°C max and the GPU 46-50 °C.
After running the game for half an hour, the temperatures is for the CPU 35-37 °C min to 47-66 °C max. The GPU is 49-51 °C.

 

[AndrewT]

Running the game in full screen for now hasn't caused any freezing.

When not playing, the CPU is 32-53 °C min and 49-53°C max and the GPU 46-50 °C.
After running the game for half an hour, the temperatures is for the CPU 35-37 °C min to 47-66 °C max. The GPU is 49-51 °C.

Okay, it may be it was overheating before. I hope that fixes it for good for you!

 

[Cassilda]

Okay, it may be it was overheating before. I hope that fixes it for good for you!

Yes, I hope that too, for now I didn't have any more freezing using the full screen mode.