[1.0] Game crash randomly and frequently

[tl54nz]

Factorio would crash randomly and frequently. I have started multiple tutorials, freeplay sessions, which would all crash eventually (usually in about half an hour).

Sometimes it'd crash the entire PC, forcing me to do a manual reset. Sometimes it'd force Windows go into BSOD mode. Sometimes it crashes to the desktop.

Latest OS version(Win 10), latest drivers for everything and no mods. I have played other far more demanding games for hundreds of hours without any issues.

I really love the game but it's so hard to play it when I have to reboot my PC every half an hour. Thank you.

[Rseding91]

If you're getting blue screens of death it means you have hardware issues, driver issues, or your operating system files are corrupt. Factorio cannot cause a BSOD.

I recommend running this: https://www.memtest.org/

[tl54nz]

Hi, thanks for the quick reply.

I have run memtest, Windows built in RAM test, driver verifier and Intel CPU test tool. None of them came back with any issue.

So far among all the games I play, Factorio is the only one that crashes. Some games I play are very demanding on the system which has no issue.

I have also tried to use the integrated GPU (Intel HD Graphics 630) instead of the discrete RTX 2060, which still results the same crashing.

Are there any other possible things I can test or try? Really love the game. I have put in 39 hours despite hard crash every half hour or so. Thank you so much.

[Waldorf The Greatest]

I play Factorio over several years. About 3000hours. Never had problems. Last month I bought a brand new gaming computer.

Devices and Drivers
PROCESSOR
Intel® Core™ i7-9700 CPU @ 3.00GHz
GRAPHICS
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER
MEMORY
16 GB

Now I have the same issues. The Factorio game crashes randomly sometimes after a couple of hours, sometimes after 12 hours. It is randomly.

My question is, are you playing with time control?, I mean can you speed up the game by 2x, 4x, 8x speed? I am not sure but every time I speed up the game I have the idea that is will faster will crash. (but of course it can be because the time to crash is also faster??????)

What did I do:
- Disabling Steam Overlay,
- FPS to 60
- Forced open GL
- Max threat rendering 2
- Flip presentation off

And the problem still occurs....

Many thanks for everyone who has the solution for this nasty problem.
In advance,
Waldo

[Waldorf The Greatest]

Yes, It only happenes with Factorio. All other high quality games will play without any problems.

[Rseding91]

Sorry, but where it's crashing has only and ever been caused by peoples defective hardware. I believe you that other games aren't crashing but that really just doesn't matter. If it's crashing where it's crashing and as frequently as you say it is: that's defective hardware. Hundreds of thousands of other users are running the exact same game and same code with zero issues.

You can not believe me if you want; but that doesn't fix the crashing on your end. Believe me when I say it: I would love if it was an error in our code that I could just fix - then I wouldn't have to keep trying to convince people their hardware is broken.

[gabberworld]

when you play game, to you use any usb hardware what powered from usb? i had long time ago issue with one hardware what caused BSOD because it used too much power from usb port, issue go away when i buy usb hub with own power supply.

[tl54nz]

Thanks you all for the replies. I think I may have found the cause. I am writing this up in case anyone else has the similar issue.

I noticed the game became stable when I am using Windows Driver Verifier to stress test device drivers. This is counter intuitive as stress tests generally should make programs less stable rather than more stable. I managed to isolate the driver set to just the graphic drivers through numerous reconfigure and reboot.

Anyway, I realized that if I kept the graphic card/driver busy enough, the game would not crash. This may have something to do with Windows power management. I switched the power plan from the default Balanced to High Performance. So far the game hasn't crashed after about 8 hours of play. I think my system was managing power saving too aggressively, causing this, which also explained why I don't have this issue with more demanding games.

Thanks again for helping out.