Hard crashing PC locks up

"

Stormscourge#2254 wrote:

I found another workaround that seems to help me (fingers crossed it hold up!):

(NOTE: STILL disabling Core 0 & Core 1 - I haven't tested this with all cores enabled yet.)

If you pay the game with STEAM:

1. Go to Steam and RIGHT-CLICK the Path of Exile 2 game in your games list, and select PROPERTIES.

2. In the General - LAUNCH OPTIONS box for POE2, copy and paste these three commands as-is:

--noasync --nologo --waitforpreload

^exactly like that in the Launch options box

3. Now run the game


These STEAM launcher commands will disable asynchronous loading, disable the startup GGG logo just to get it loading faster, and force the game to pre-load all assets and shaders BEFORE you can enter the game.

In effect, it will load up your game and zones slower, BUT it will make sure everything is in place before you enter the game world, instead of trying to load assets and shaders at the same time you're actively in the game.

I started using those launcher commands this morning, along with disabling Cor 0 and 1, and so far, so good.

Again, loading times will take longer while playing, but it seems to be much more stable once you get into the actual game world with your character.

Thanks but doesn't solve the problem for me. It was possibly a bit more stable and loads were quite smooth for 3-4 maps but then full crash and lock up.

"

Cainrith#2807 wrote:

"

Yehima#6469 wrote:

"

Stormscourge#2254 wrote:

If you pay the game with STEAM:

1. Go to Steam and RIGHT-CLICK the Path of Exile 2 game in your games list, and select PROPERTIES.

2. In the General - LAUNCH OPTIONS box for POE2, copy and paste these three commands as-is:

--noasync --nologo --waitforpreload

^exactly like that in the Launch options box

3. Now run the game

Tried this, freezed on second start (with the two gears before login screen).

You shouldn't be seeing the gears though.

Still thanks for trying and reporting back. At this moment you did more than GGG did.

Not the first gears from Grinding Gear. It starts directly with the typical two loading gears and freezes.

Nevermind about those launch options (--noasync --nologo --waitforpreload) not working. This is what works for me. When I tried launching the game in Steam itself with those options, I failed to clear the shader cache in the AppData\Roaming folders. I can't play the game without clearing those folders before launching the game. Anyway, if you want something else to try, here's my batch (poe2.bat) file.

"

del /S /Q "C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Path of Exile 2\ShaderCacheD3D12\*"
del /S /Q "C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Path of Exile 2\ShaderCacheVulkan\*"
del /S /Q "C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Path of Exile 2\Minimap\*"

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Path of Exile 2\PathOfExileSteam.exe" --noasync --nologo --waitforpreload

This is a headache.

"

noise256#0753 wrote:

"

Stormscourge#2254 wrote:

I found another workaround that seems to help me (fingers crossed it hold up!):

(NOTE: STILL disabling Core 0 & Core 1 - I haven't tested this with all cores enabled yet.)

If you pay the game with STEAM:

1. Go to Steam and RIGHT-CLICK the Path of Exile 2 game in your games list, and select PROPERTIES.

2. In the General - LAUNCH OPTIONS box for POE2, copy and paste these three commands as-is:

--noasync --nologo --waitforpreload

^exactly like that in the Launch options box

3. Now run the game


These STEAM launcher commands will disable asynchronous loading, disable the startup GGG logo just to get it loading faster, and force the game to pre-load all assets and shaders BEFORE you can enter the game.

In effect, it will load up your game and zones slower, BUT it will make sure everything is in place before you enter the game world, instead of trying to load assets and shaders at the same time you're actively in the game.

I started using those launcher commands this morning, along with disabling Cor 0 and 1, and so far, so good.

Again, loading times will take longer while playing, but it seems to be much more stable once you get into the actual game world with your character.

Thanks but doesn't solve the problem for me. Loads were quite smooth for 3-4 maps then full crash and lock up.

That's OK.

Figured it couldn't hurt to test it out. I was hoping preloading and more straightforward loading might solve the general load crashes, but apparently it was just another placebo.

I'm throwing my hands up on this one. Nothing seems to work for more than a couple game sessions. I didn't crash with this yet, but based on all the other workarounds I've tried, this one will probably crash too.

:(

Peak Memory Usage indicates this is not a (solely) memory issue. 282MB is too low for that in modern PCs.

During the crash, the process wrote a significant amount of data to disk. This could indicate frequent or improper logging/debug output from the game or associated libraries.

It is possible that PoE2 may be missing required DLLs or modules:
LastStatusValue: (NTSTATUS) 0xc0000135 - The code execution cannot proceed because %hs was not found. Reinstalling the program may fix this problem.

There are some invalid window handle errors. Probably due to due to graphics subsystem failures.

There are some access denied errors. These errors often relate to permission issues or conflicts with other processes.

There is a 80000003 breakpoint exception so there is a debug code there from GGG. (So they are working? at least).

My theories (disregard/correct me if you know better I might be wrong here):
The high write operations could lead to I/O contention, especially on slower or failing storage devices.

Overlapping I/O operations and access denial errors: Some sort of software clash perhaps? Third party overlays? Windows desktop?

Some sort of missing dependency?

"

interbeing#5112 wrote:

Nevermind about those launch options (--noasync --nologo --waitforpreload) not working. This is what works for me. When I tried launching the game in Steam itself with those options, I failed to clear the shader cache in the AppData\Roaming folders. I can't play the game without clearing those folders before launching the game. Anyway, if you want something else to try, here's my batch (poe2.bat) file.

"

del /S /Q "C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Path of Exile 2\ShaderCacheD3D12\*"
del /S /Q "C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Path of Exile 2\ShaderCacheVulkan\*"
del /S /Q "C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Path of Exile 2\Minimap\*"

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Path of Exile 2\PathOfExileSteam.exe" --noasync --nologo --waitforpreload

This is a headache.

There are also DirectX shader files in the Nvidia folders as well you might want to try clearing.

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\LOCAL <or> LOCALLOW\NVIDIA\PerDriverVersion\DXCache\

But not sure if POE2 uses those or just the ones you listed above? If you clear the Nvidia shaders, you might want to temporarily disable the Nvidia shader cache in the Nvidia Control panel beforehand. Otherwise, it might not let you delete them.

<Or just use the Windows Disk Cleanup and tick the Nvidia Shader Cache box to clean them out? Not sure if that would get all the files in there though>

I haven't bothered clearing the caches yet. I did bump up the shader limit from Default to 10GB though, in the Nvidia control panel. Haven't noticed any improvement there though.


/shrug

I'm just at a loss with how this was not detected by GGG during their internal testing and development.

"

Stormscourge#2254 wrote:

"

interbeing#5112 wrote:

Nevermind about those launch options (--noasync --nologo --waitforpreload) not working. This is what works for me. When I tried launching the game in Steam itself with those options, I failed to clear the shader cache in the AppData\Roaming folders. I can't play the game without clearing those folders before launching the game. Anyway, if you want something else to try, here's my batch (poe2.bat) file.

"

del /S /Q "C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Path of Exile 2\ShaderCacheD3D12\*"
del /S /Q "C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Path of Exile 2\ShaderCacheVulkan\*"
del /S /Q "C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Path of Exile 2\Minimap\*"

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Path of Exile 2\PathOfExileSteam.exe" --noasync --nologo --waitforpreload

This is a headache.

There are also DirectX shader files in the Nvidia folders as well you might want to try clearing.

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\LOCAL <or> LOCALLOW\NVIDIA\PerDriverVersion\DXCache\

But not sure if POE2 uses those or just the ones you listed above? If you clear the Nvidia shaders, you might want to temporarily disable the Nvidia shader cache in the Nvidia Control panel beforehand. Otherwise, it might not let you delete them.

<Or just use the Windows Disk Cleanup and tick the Nvidia Shader Cache box to clean them out? Not sure if that would get all the files in there though>

I haven't bothered clearing the caches yet. I did bump up the shader limit from Default to 10GB though, in the Nvidia control panel. Haven't noticed any improvement there though.


/shrug

I'm just at a loss with how this was not detected by GGG during their internal testing and development.

Thanks for pointing those out. A Powershell script or something to monitor those folders and log changes would be able to determine whether they're used during gameplay. I'll give it a shot.

It’s time to send emails to the media. Everyone pls find 10 min of your time and send messages. I compiled all the contact info so you don’t have to look.

team@gamersnexus.net
jayztwocents@gmail.com
https://hardwareunboxed.com/pages/contact
paulshardwareorders@gmail.com
tips@pcgamer.com
https://www.eurogamer.net/contact-us
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/contact-us


The streamers are no going to help us because they are getting money form ggg. I understand it takes time to fix the bugs but the silence from ggg towards their customers that have problems with the game is unprofessional.

change zone pc hangs only a hold of power button works needs a fix

"

cursorTarget#1174 wrote:

We have users experiencing this problem on older versions of Windows, even on Windows 10. As I remember someone on Linux machine also reported the hard crash.

That's true, I've also seen a bunch of people on Windows 10 (22H2 or lower) report it. I should have wrote "people on 23H2 or lower still see it".

"

cursorTarget#1174 wrote:

Yes but... if System Task / Thread scheduler can't get the control over the task through the switching context (via interrupts) it's not just spinlock.

Yes, although this where it becomes difficult as we can only speculate. They may not even be using spinlocks where the issue is; maybe they are just polling for a condition. If they are using waits through locks (likely they are), then yeah, basically the same problem if the lock is never released. Maybe they just need to throttle back on the waits. Interesting comments on the kernel activity that you had, I'll have to give that further thought.

Nice to speculate though while we wait for an official fix - thanks for your reply. I wish we'd get an explanation at the end as to what the problem was after all this speculation :)

"

Cainrith#2807 wrote:

Peak Memory Usage indicates this is not a (solely) memory issue. 282MB is too low for that in modern PCs.

During the crash, the process wrote a significant amount of data to disk. This could indicate frequent or improper logging/debug output from the game or associated libraries.

It is possible that PoE2 may be missing required DLLs or modules:
LastStatusValue: (NTSTATUS) 0xc0000135 - The code execution cannot proceed because %hs was not found. Reinstalling the program may fix this problem.

There are some invalid window handle errors. Probably due to due to graphics subsystem failures.

There are some access denied errors. These errors often relate to permission issues or conflicts with other processes.

There is a 80000003 breakpoint exception so there is a debug code there from GGG. (So they are working? at least).

My theories (disregard/correct me if you know better I might be wrong here):
The high write operations could lead to I/O contention, especially on slower or failing storage devices.

Overlapping I/O operations and access denial errors: Some sort of software clash perhaps? Third party overlays? Windows desktop?

Some sort of missing dependency?

Interesting! It might be worth running the .exe through something like Dependency Walker if you haven't already to see if it shows up any more information on what's missing unless you could pull anything else from the logs for the DLL-missing exception. It would have to have had the same dependency in PoE1 also though as it's an issue that has carried over from there. It's not unlikely by any means as it's the same engine.

I don't think your theory is wrong. No theory is really wrong at this point, like the other people looking at shader caches. All we can do is speculate and look at what evidence we have while GGG look into it further than we can, and DLL-missing exceptions are worth a look. I doubt anything we do can really fix the problem unfortunately, but getting to the bottom of it at least would be great.