Computer crashing during gameplay, sometimes blue screen of death.

[bbgun2821]

Hello!

I've been playing this game for a while now and it's run fine only until recently when I started to dip into mods. Now, I cannot fix it despite the purges I've done to the game. I really want to mess around with some of the complicated mods involved in the game, and My system is more than capable of a computer to handle it (GTX 1080, 16gb RAM, i7 7700, etc...) There have been several different errors, all of which have come and gone in no particular pattern.

Here is what has happened:
-MACHINE CHECK EXCEPTION (Blue Screen)
-DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION (Blue Screen)
-Game Freeze, no computer freeze, task manager to close.
-Game Freeze, computer freeze, hard restart required (no task manager functionality)
-Sudden crash during gameplay (no heavy machinery, just a new load after a few minutes, sometimes a half hour, no pattern to follow)
-Sudden crash during load screen.
-Loading screen freeze

Here are some things I've tried:
-Rebooting
-Updating drivers through a Factorio google thread (involving focus on Standard SATA AHCI Controller)
-Updated NVIDEA Graphics Card to newest version
-Updated Windows 10
-Adding –dxgi-blit-model to Steam Launch Options
-Adding --single-thread-loading to Steam Launch Options
-Reinstalling Factorio
-Verified integrity of game files through Steam
-Cleared Factorio Mods folder in AppData
-Deleted config.ini file in the Factorio Config folder
-Limiting Framerate (not an issue at all, just tried it)
-Allocated additional RAM.
-Turned off Firewall (Windows Defender)
-Turned off Firewall (Kapersky)
-Turned off Steam Overlay


I've tried just about everything I can think to do and there's no reason my computer shouldn't be able to handle the mods. If anyone has any advice, please offer!

Thanks in advance,

BB

[Rseding91]

Blue screen of death means hardware or driver issue on your computer; not something the game caused.

If you go to C:\Windows\Minidump\ there should be severa small .dmp files there. If you could upload one or more of those I could maybe tell you what piece of hardware or driver is broken.

[bbgun2821]

Blue screen of death means hardware or driver issue on your computer; not something the game caused.

If you go to C:\Windows\Minidump\ there should be severa small .dmp files there. If you could upload one or more of those I could maybe tell you what piece of hardware or driver is broken.

That's interesting. I might add that the computer has never before had this issue for 2 years after my upgrades to it. The most recent one being a SSD addition where I switched OS to a new drive. I'd also like to add that I have never had this issue with any other application. All of the crashes and blue screens are a direct result of any time I open the game, and I've never triggered something to activate it through means otherwise. I'll upload the files and please do let me know what you find. I hope it isn't too bad.

Thanks so much for the help!

[Rseding91]

From a quick look over some of the dump files; they point at power issues. As in not enough power or under voltage. Possibly a bad power supply?

[bbgun2821]

That's interesting. We replaced the power supply for not being strong enough not too long ago. It was an upgrade to a 650 Corsair.

Out of curiosity, is there any particular reason why this power supply issue would ONLY happen during playing Factorio? I find it hard to believe that the power supply is holding me back from playing it, considering I regularly plays Skyrim with a BOAT LOAD of mods, which is usually one of the most taxing things, to which the game runs perfectly fine.

I'm not opposed to making another upgrade, I just really want to be sure before hand, and the fact that it's only an issue that occurs when playing Factorio (none of these issues ever occurred until I started playing this game) doesn't make me feel confident in dishing out the cash to upgrade quite yet.

Thanks!

[orzelek]

You could try to get some kind of motherboard monitoring tool and try to record voltage levels reported there while playing.
That way you can see if they are ok or drop below proper levels.

[starlinvf]

That's interesting. We replaced the power supply for not being strong enough not too long ago. It was an upgrade to a 650 Corsair.

Out of curiosity, is there any particular reason why this power supply issue would ONLY happen during playing Factorio? I find it hard to believe that the power supply is holding me back from playing it, considering I regularly plays Skyrim with a BOAT LOAD of mods, which is usually one of the most taxing things, to which the game runs perfectly fine.

I'm not opposed to making another upgrade, I just really want to be sure before hand, and the fact that it's only an issue that occurs when playing Factorio (none of these issues ever occurred until I started playing this game) doesn't make me feel confident in dishing out the cash to upgrade quite yet.

Thanks!

It depends on how the system gets loaded in operation. I've seen this before in other games, where fault tolerances can be vastly different due to how much, how fast, and in what order things are accessed. Some times it is bad code, but its never entirely possible to rule out code sussing out a specific set of conditions that lead to a higher level flaw in the supporting infrastructure (APIs, middleware, drivers, or even hardware flaws). Thats how Freakazoids are made, after all.

Knowing windows... it can even be a bad cell in the SSD feeding corrupted data, and everything thats supposed to catch it hasn't. I don't have the software atm to read the dumpfiles.... but knowing what modules (if in pattern) are faulting can give some guidance on what order to check things.

But considering a couple things further...... is the system Overclocked? how old is the CMOS battery? And whens the last time you did any case maintenance that involved reseating stuff? The cause could be something deceptively stupid/simple as weak contacts that fault on weird stress conditions. It might also be worth doing a chkdsk (scan only) to see if any errors pop up. SSDs don't need routine maintenance (it does it on its own); but if its acting wonky, its worth noting (cuz you'll have to check it after in case).

[Jap2.0]

considering I regularly plays Skyrim with a BOAT LOAD of mods, which is usually one of the most taxing things, to which the game runs perfectly fine.

I feel like that would be in general more taxing on the GPU, while Factorio tends to be more CPU/memory taxing.

[starlinvf]

considering I regularly plays Skyrim with a BOAT LOAD of mods, which is usually one of the most taxing things, to which the game runs perfectly fine.

I feel like that would be in general more taxing on the GPU, while Factorio tends to be more CPU/memory taxing.

Part of my brain chuckled at this. Not because its wrong or anything.... but mostly because modding in skyrim makes it run better (because vanilla is just a mess, and modders had to fix it for them), and modding in factorio makes it run worse [less good] for the traditional reasons (IE more things to process).

But don't let low res or sprite based graphics fool you. Light levels in minecraft is so expensive to calculate, they had to handle it as a block value to make it easier for the game logic to handle. Or that GPU load cost is heavily linked to visible surface area, despite being able to instance textures, simple geometry, and in relatively low resolutions.

If WUBE ever does a white paper or lecture on their optimization strategy and approach, I'd love to see it (despite half of it easily going over my head).