Failed to Uncompress Animation and Other Crashes

After one of the patches earlier this league, I have had an unbearable number of crashes to desktop. The crashes range have a wide range of when they occur and include the following.

- Crashing before login screen. (Frequent)
- Crashing when trying to load an area. (Frequent - primarily after character selection)
- Crashing due to failing to uncompress an animation. (Occasional)
- Crashing when accessing stash or a new stash tab. (Occasional)
- Crashing when rerolling loot in ritual. (Occasional)
- Crashing when opening the character passive tree (Infrequent)
- Crashing with a [TEXTURE] Invalid Header message (Infrequent)


System Specifications:

CPU: Intel® Core™ i9-14900KS Processor (8X 3.20GHz + 16X 2.40GHz/36MB L3 Cache)
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 - 24GB GDDR6X
RAM: 32 GB [16 GB X2] DDR5-6000MHz Kingston Fury Beast RGB


Game Settings:

Mode: Windowed Fullscreen
Render Resolution: No Upscale - 2560 x 1440
Renderer: DirectX12 (Tried DirectX11 and Vulkan with no positive effect)
VSync: Adaptive
Triple Buffering: Enabled
Antialiasing Quality: Off
Upscale Mode: NIS
Sharpness: 69%
Lighting: Shadows + Global Illumination
Shadows + GI Quality: Ultra
Sun Shadow Quality: High
Number of Lights: High
Bloom: 100%
Depth of Field: Disabled
Water Detail Level: High
Texture Quality: High
Texture Filtering: 16x Anisotropic Filtering
Dynamic Culling: Disabled
Dynamic Resolution: Disabled
Engine Multithreading: Enabled


I have tried the following to fix:

- Updating graphics drivers. (Currently running NVIDIA version 560.94)
- Previously restoring to an earlier graphics driver.
- Changing Renderer settings.
- Uninstalling/Reinstalling.
- Running the PackCheck application.
- Removed NPCs from hideout that were commonly causing the failed to uncompress error crash, which included Zana, Einhar, and the Kalguuran Forgemaster Station Hideout Decoration.


Not all crashes include error messages. For the error messages that are seen, examples include, but are not limited to the following:

- "Art/Models/MONSTERS/Elder/rig.ast": Failed to uncompress animation 0
- [TEXTURE] Invalid header version: 20735
- "Metadata/Effects/Spells/arc_purple/surge": Error: Metadata/Effects/Spells/arc_purple/surge.ao is non-virtual and does not have a physical file

I have the same exact issues with close to the same rig. Problem started occurring maybe 2 days ago and it feels like it is getting worse.

NVIDIA(R) GeForce RTX(TM) 4090, 24GB GDDR6X
Intel(R) Core(TM) 14th Gen i9 14900KF (24-Core, 68MB Cache, 2.4GHz to 6.0GHz Thermal Velocity Boost)
32GB, 2x16GB, DDR5, 5600MHz
2TB M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive
Win 11

At the start of the league, when entering late game, my FPS dropped like crazy with dx12. Swapped to Vulkan and it solved the problem. Have been running Vulkan since then and tried swapping back to DX11/Dx12, change from high to low graphics settings, ran the PackCheck, updated BIOS, updated other drivers, but still crashing.

My last crash error message: "[TEXTURE] Invalid header version: 144"

Update #1: An error message I haven't seen before just popped up after a crash (happened when idling in Karui Shores): "vk::Queue::submit: errorDeviceLost"

The crashes are so frequently now that there are no real reason to play, sadly.

I started to have this issue with my 13900k after I updated to recent ASUS BIOS to fix the micocode issue released on 08/08/24. I had to roll back my BIOS to one that seemed to work, and have had no issues with the compression errors. I do still have random crashes where the game client just closes randomly no crash error messages. I have to assume these errors are from 13-14th gen Intel CPUs and hope GGG can address them or provide some additional info. What BIOS are you running?

I tried updating my BIOS after my game started crashing on Friday, but still crashing.

BIOS: Alienware Aurora R16 System BIOS - 2.10.1

Current BIOS Details:

BIOS Version/Date: American Megatrends Inc. 2402, 6/24/2024
SMBIOS Version: 3.5

Updating my BIOS is not high on my list of things to try since every other game and/or application seems to be running fine.

Since the original post to this thread I have also tried the following:

- Clearing the cache from the %AppData%\Path of Exile folder.
- Repairing/reinstalling my .Net Framework files.

However, no luck here. There will be times where I simply cannot get into and stay in the game without crashing. Other times I can play for hours without a crash.

"

KeelKeel wrote:

Current BIOS Details:

BIOS Version/Date: American Megatrends Inc. 2402, 6/24/2024
SMBIOS Version: 3.5

Updating my BIOS is not high on my list of things to try since every other game and/or application seems to be running fine.

Since the original post to this thread I have also tried the following:

- Clearing the cache from the %AppData%\Path of Exile folder.
- Repairing/reinstalling my .Net Framework files.

However, no luck here. There will be times where I simply cannot get into and stay in the game without crashing. Other times I can play for hours without a crash.

I would suggest updating BIOS if you have a 13th or 14th GEN intel CPU to at least July update. This defaults to INTEL recommended setting and can prevent your CPU from requesting to high of a voltage limit, but yeah I get that if its running fine why risk it. The compression issue was fixed for me after the July update. I had those issues return for POE only after I downloaded the recent microcode update. First time I've ever gone i9 hahahaha my luck.

Updated BIOS to American Megatrends Inc. 2504, 8/8/2024.

Still crashing even before login screen. Thank you for the suggestion though. Glad the BIOS update is at least working for others.

I'm also having similar issues with a similar rig. I have a 4090 and a 13th gen Intel CPU, and after finally getting around to updating my BIOS to the August stability patch, Path of Exile is the ONLY game that is crashing. I really hope someone finds a way to fix this.

Update: I think I've found a solution, though not ideal. Before the BIOS update, I underclocked my CPU to maintain stability because programs kept crashing with the default settings. While I don't need to do that now because the BIOS update fixed the crashing I was experiencing with all other programs, I tried it again to see if it would help Path of Exile and lo and behold, it worked! No more crashes!

I used Intel's Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU) to underclock my CPU. I'm using the i9-13900KF, and the default settings are a performance core ratio of 55x and an efficient core ratio of 43x. I set the performance core to 50x and efficient core to 40x, and it's been smooth sailing. Maybe a similar configuration will help those having problems here?

It's not the greatest solution because you will of course lose out on some performance, but the game still runs just fine for me and it's now perfectly stable. For me, that's good enough!

"

AndrewChicken888 wrote:

Update: I think I've found a solution, though not ideal. Before the BIOS update, I underclocked my CPU to maintain stability because programs kept crashing with the default settings. While I don't need to do that now because the BIOS update fixed the crashing I was experiencing with all other programs, I tried it again to see if it would help Path of Exile and lo and behold, it worked! No more crashes!

I used Intel's Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU) to underclock my CPU. I'm using the i9-13900KF, and the default settings are a performance core ratio of 55x and an efficient core ratio of 43x. I set the performance core to 50x and efficient core to 40x, and it's been smooth sailing. Maybe a similar configuration will help those having problems here?

It's not the greatest solution because you will of course lose out on some performance, but the game still runs just fine for me and it's now perfectly stable. For me, that's good enough!

This does work I set mine to 54x and it will run without any problems. We shouldnt have to do this and we didnt until 3.25 but its a solution for 13-14000ks