Game now crashes even with an old savefile

[FleetingRain]

Okay, this sounds peculiar.

I've been having CTD issues since I got back to Vic3 in 1.5. They happen on autosaving in wartime, autosaving in peacetime, when I zoom in or out too quick (that goddamn mapmode transition), when I change the construction queue order by the end of the week, sometimes even when the game is just merrily running. It's gotten to the point I dread CTDs while playing Rimworld or lol Pokemon Go, because I grown accustomed to it in Vic3.

Just a couple hours ago, my Roman Republic game crashed in peacetime, as usual. But now the game crashes whenever I try to load the savefile. I can't even send a report on Paradox Crash Reporter, it says "the upload failed for an unknown reason".

So I deleted shadercache, turned VSync off, yadda yadda. I tried loading it again, and this time it worked! But then I unpaused and it crashed after two days. Note, it crashed in less than half a week. There literally was no time for anything to happen, it was peacetime, even.

So I deleted shadercache etc etc again and did a clean install. The only thing I preserved was an old save file from a couple years prior, which I had kept saved elsewhere in my computer (I make a backup whenever I try out a risky diploplay). All reinstalled, I tried again with this old save.

It crashed on load. Again.

I mean. Literally how. It's a different save file, it's a clean install, there's no cache lying around.

Also, if it matters, I play on speed 5 90% of the time, but I've had the rare CTD on speed 4 too. I've also been playing with VTM mod this week, which weirdly enough reduced the number of CTDs I had until this save-breaking one.


Specs:
Windows 10 64-bit
No Windows Defender antivirus
NVIDIA GTX 1060 3GB
AMD Ryzen 5 1600 Six-Core Processor 3.20 GHz
16.0 GB RAM

Files:
papal_states_ironman, from my backup
pdx_settings.json, from Documents\Paradox Interactive\Victoria3\
system.log and error.log, from Documents\Paradox Interactive\Victoria3\logs\
exception.txt, from Documents\Paradox Interactive\Victoria 3\crashes\victoria3_20240206_022223\
DxDiag log, from literally three minutes ago.

 

[AndrewT]

We see some crashes in nVidia in that dxdiag, and their driver is not up to date. So try this:

- uninstall the nVidia driver with this tool https://developer.nvidia.com/cleanup-tool
- reboot
- install Jan 2024 from here https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
- reboot again
- unload GeForce Experience if running
- THEN unload every other app you can before starting the game, to free up as much memory as possible
- start and play a new unmodded campaign, not any existing one

If that doesn't help, please attach here new copies of all those files. Good luck!

 

[FleetingRain]

Welp, it happened again. This time minidump.dmp got smaller, however (from ~50MB to 36MB).

EDIT--Wait no, I forgot reinstalling the game would once more reset my configs. Now I set up everything and it's working! Not sure about the CTDs yet, but at least the savefile loads now.

EDIT2-- Aaaaand the game crashed just after the prior edit. At least it wasn't during an autosave.

 

[AndrewT]

We are still seeing crashes in nVidia utilities in there,eg:

+++ WER2 +++:
Fault bucket 2163355354144497125, type 4
Event Name: APPCRASH
Response: Não disponível
Cab Id: 0

Problem signature:
P1: NVDisplay.Container.exe
P2: 1.37.3103.4323
P3: 621dbda6
P4: nvxdsyncplugin.dll
P5: 8.17.15.3699
P6: 64cd748a
P7: c0000005
P8: 0000000000095cf5

Did you use the removal tool I linked for you? I would have thought that would clean up any such issue. If you did but you still get those though, you may need to contact nVidia support about them.

No crash in the game there though.

What fps are you seeing in the game before it crashes? And in Task Manager, how much memory is it using?

 

[FleetingRain]

We are still seeing crashes in nVidia utilities in there,eg:

Did you use the removal tool I linked for you? I would have thought that would clean up any such issue. If you did but you still get those though, you may need to contact nVidia support about them.

Yeah, I didn't even know this tool existed before so I just clicked your link and downloaded it. Maybe my card is too old and cranky?

No crash in the game there though.

What fps are you seeing in the game before it crashes?

The only thing I notice right before a CTD is a short freeze, then the game resumes for a split second and crashes. My fps drops (to 25-30 fps) only come from 20th century megawars.

Right now, in a 1903 war for the unification of Italy, I'm getting 52-62 fps in political mapmode (with a sudden drop to ~44 for a half-second every now and then) and 36-42 fps in terrain mapmode (with the same sudden drop to 29).

I now decided to be silly and zoom in and out very quickly to see if the game can handle it. My fps drops to 25-35 (with sudden drops to 15) but otherwise it doesn't crash anymore, which is good... until autosave comes and it CTDs and even my screen goes black for a moment. This one is new.

And in Task Manager, how much memory is it using?

In the title screen post-CTD just now, it was at 5642MB. Usually it stays at 6-7GB in peacetime and goes all the way to 8-9GB during wars, but right now it's at 8591MB even with the game paused after loading the save. The wartime fps also dropped a solid ten, to 42-52.

 

[AndrewT]

I don't know then; that's quite a bit of memory the game is using, but you seem to have enough to spare, according to that dxdiag.

One possibility is I suppose that the nVidia card is borrowing some of the system memory, not leaving enough for Windows and the game together.

Please expand your Windows paging file maximum size to 32gb

Optional: Increasing the paging file size on Windows computers

On computers that have 8 GB of RAM, the suggested paging file size is 16 GB.

www.ibm.com

AND exit every other app you can before starting the game.

Does that help at all?

 

[FleetingRain]

I don't know then; that's quite a bit of memory the game is using, but you seem to have enough to spare, according to that dxdiag.

One possibility is I suppose that the nVidia card is borrowing some of the system memory, not leaving enough for Windows and the game together.

Please expand your Windows paging file maximum size to 32gb

Optional: Increasing the paging file size on Windows computers

On computers that have 8 GB of RAM, the suggested paging file size is 16 GB.

www.ibm.com

AND exit every other app you can before starting the game.

Does that help at all?

I've now played a cumulative 50 years with Chrome and Twitch open and Vic3 is consuming less RAM (3391MB right now) with zero crashes, so yeah, it worked! Thank you, I'm finally free of the CTDs now.