Tried forcing openGL and reducing VRAM use, though that shouldn't be necessary on a GTX 970, to no avail.
Deleting the crop-cache.dat file allows it to start reliably, but this is not a good solution when trying to change mods or settings and the client auto-restarts.
File corruption is that config files and most of the logfile get written over with null bytes, eliminating all previous settings and removing most trace information.
The surviving part of the logfile is:
Code: Select all
0.002 2018-12-25 19:44:54; Factorio 0.16.51 (build 36654, win64, alpha)
0.002 Operating system: Windows 10 (version 1803)
0.002 Program arguments: "N:\Factorio_0.15.10\bin\x64\factorio.exe"
0.002 Read data path: N:/Factorio_0.15.10/data
0.002 Write data path: N:/Factorio_0.15.10 [46792/228806MB]
0.002 Binaries path: N:/Factorio_0.15.10/bin
0.403 System info: [CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5650 @ 2.67GHz, 12 cores, RAM: 3192/18423 MB, page: 3841/40055 MB, virtual: 4254/134217727 MB, extended virtual: 0 MB]