[Windows 10] Game continuously freezes for a few seconds

[jaava]

Since a few months ago the game sometimes launches but then starts freezing for 5-10 seconds every few seconds. This happens both in the menus and in the game itself. This doesn't seem to be related to any specific activity in the game, it happens as much when the game is paused or running and even in start menus. The freeze stops everything except the cursor. The game is completely frozen and windows reports it as not responding during that 5-10 seconds. Then it usually runs a frame or two, or sometimes even a second or two, and freezes again.

This behavior seems to start randomly at game launch. i.e. it doesn't happen every time I launch the game. And if I am able to launch the game with no issues the freezing seems unlikely to start during the gameplay no matter how long I play. Sometimes restarting the computer helps but I'm not sure if it's actually the restarting that fixes the issue or if it was just random. Nothing else is affected in the computer, I can tab out of the game just fine, so it seems unlikely this is a hardware issue. I also have plenty of hardware resources available, I'm not running out of memory or anything.

Game runs borderless windowed 1440p. All DLC is installed and no mods (removed all mods to debug) but this started before the latest DLC was released.

I already tried making complete reinstall removing all folders. The game worked fine the first time I launched it after reinstall but the second time the freezing returned.

I don't have antivirus except windows defender and the game has exception in windows defender firewall.

 

[AndrewT]

I see you have our similar game CK2, does the same happen there?

Try unloading GeForce Experience before starting the game. Does that help?

 

[jaava]

I see you have our similar game CK2, does the same happen there?

Try unloading GeForce Experience before starting the game. Does that help?

I haven't played CK for a while but HOI4 had similar issue in the past.

It's hard to test things because the problem doesn't occur every time. I updated nvidia drivers and my sound card drivers (which showed some errors in windows event viewer, although didn't seem related) and now the game ran well again when I tried.

 

[jaava]

I see you have our similar game CK2, does the same happen there?

Try unloading GeForce Experience before starting the game. Does that help?

Yesterday CK3 worked fine. Today it shows the same problem. Not sure what I'm supposed to do with geforce experience.

 

[AndrewT]

Not sure what I'm supposed to do with geforce experience.

If it is running, unload it please.

 

[jaava]

If it is running, unload it please.

I have now removed geforce experience completely. The problem still persists. It seems to affect at least CK3, HOI4 and EU4.

Is there any debug log console or something that would allow me to see what the game is trying to do when it becomes unresponsive? Windows activity monitors don't show anything interesting.

 

[AndrewT]

Not really, no. It would probably take a development-level tools to see that, if you have access to such things.

@grotaclas do you have any suggestions in this area?

 

[grotaclas]

Not really, no. It would probably take a development-level tools to see that, if you have access to such things.

@grotaclas do you have any suggestions in this area?

I don't have any good ideas either. There is an eu4_profiling.exe in the installation folder, but I don't know what it actually does, because I don't use windows. But it is probably to profile the game script and not the game engine which won't help in this case. And there is the error.log in "Documents/Paradox Interactive/Europa Universalis IV/logs". It is probably a good idea to see if that or one of the other logs in that folder get some new lines at the moment of the freezing. I have seen a case of a modded game in which the error.log grew to many GB and this could be a problem. Or maybe something is blocking eu4 from writing to the log and this freezes the game. Is the Documents folder maybe synced with a cloud storage service like microsoft oneDrive?

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