stellaris (and all other paradox games) crash on splash screen after clicking play on the launcher

[yotunnnn]

Application: Stellaris
Version: 3.7.3
Date/Time: 2023-03-29 17:19:56

Unhandled exception C0000005 (EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION) at address 0x00007FF7E4435B93

Stack Trace:
1 stellaris.exe PHYSFS_writeUBE64 (+ 2076147)
2 stellaris.exe PHYSFS_writeUBE64 (+ 2649079)
3 stellaris.exe PHYSFS_writeUBE64 (+ 2649768)
4 stellaris.exe PHYSFS_writeUBE64 (+ 2649499)
5 stellaris.exe PHYSFS_writeUBE64 (+ 2117681)
6 stellaris.exe PHYSFS_writeUBE64 (+ 2112036)
7 stellaris.exe PHYSFS_swapSLE64 (+ 19648003)
8 stellaris.exe PHYSFS_swapSLE64 (+ 19657510)
9 stellaris.exe PHYSFS_swapSLE64 (+ 18805340)
10 stellaris.exe PHYSFS_swapSLE64 (+ 18811167)
11 stellaris.exe PHYSFS_swapSLE64 (+ 294398)
12 stellaris.exe PHYSFS_swapSLE64 (+ 284597)
13 stellaris.exe (function-name not available) (+ 0)
14 stellaris.exe (function-name not available) (+ 0)
15 stellaris.exe PHYSFS_writeUBE64 (+ 4940498)
16 stellaris.exe PHYSFS_writeUBE64 (+ 4691606)
17 KERNEL32.DLL BaseThreadInitThunk (+ 20)
18 ntdll.dll RtlUserThreadStart (+ 33)
19 ntdll.dll RtlUserThreadStart (+ 33)


Vanilla with no mods.

I've tried:

Verifying files
Reinstalling the game including the launcher (deleting the folder in documents, the steam folder, uninstalling on steam)
Reinstalling my graphics drivers
Adding stellaris.exe to windows defender exclusions
Running the game in windowed mode
Reinstalling the c++ redistributables

Eventually I got pissed and removed one of my ram sticks. After this, my computer wouldn't get past the BIOS screen without showing a fucked up bluescreen. Putting that one back in and taking out the one that crashes solved the issue, so it looks like one of my sticks was faulty. Is it possible the "working" stick could be causing this? It only happens with paradox games and my pc seems completely stable after taking out the broken ram stick.

 

[jpd]

It could very well be. No way to say for sure without extensive (hardware) testing.

From my own personal experience:

I have a perfectly stable system, with 24 GB RAM installed (2 x 4 and 2 x 8). A couple of weeks ago, I noticed massive lag appearing in World of Warcraft, seemingly out of the blue. Anyways, contacted both Blizzard and my own ISP. They had me check lots of things, all hardware related. One of the tests was an internet speed test (fast.com). Turns out my test always starts fast (like 60 mbit/sec, but shortly after test start, it crashes to something like 1.7 kbit/sec).

First suspect was the modem. So tested with a different PC. It wasn't the modem. Second suspect was my integrated ethernet port. So in went a new PCIe ethernet card. That wasn't it either. Finally, I started disconnecting components (one by one) and test the system each time. After removing one bank of memory (either the 2 x 4 or 2 x 8), the system would behave normally. Put all four memory modules back in, and down went the internet speed.

So, each bank of memory by itself was working perfectly. But having both banks together in the system, and my internet download speed crashes. Upload speed did *not* suffer in any way. Nor did the working of any of the applications I run (mostly games, web browser and media player).

In short, there is no way to predict what applications or system functions get affected by malfunctioning memory.