Dragon Age Inquisition; Black screen into a force restart (quad core)

by gudanzuki
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Original Post

Re: Dragon Age Inquisition; Black screen into a force restart (quad core)

[ Edited ]
★★★ Novice

After spending sometime crawling through tech support forums, I've found what may be the answer. There seems to be reported issues with Ambient Occlusions and Post Processing with nvidia's current drivers (347.09) for Dragon Age.

 

Anything higher than SSAO for Ambient Occlusions, and anything higher than "Low" for Post Processing seems to cause crash -> reboot issues.

 

I had Ambient Occlusions set to SSAO already, but my post processing was set to high. I was crashing about every 3-4mins, completely at random (fast travelling, idling, being tabbed out, fighting). I played for ~2 hours without any issues after setting Post Processing to "Low" 

 

I'll update this post I run into any problems. Hope this helps.

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Re: Dragon Age Inquisition; Black screen into a force restart (quad core)

[ Edited ]
★★★ Novice

Alright, I ran into the issue again shortly  after my last post. After more trawling the web for answers, it seems that the issue is not a Dragon Age related issue but a Power Supply Issue.

 

The problem started when I moved my computer from a dedicated wall socket to an old power strip. Despite the power strip being rated at 2400W, it clearly wasn't stable, especially when I had my portable swamp cooler on the same socket. 

 

After moving my PC back to the wall socket (used an inexpensive extension cable) and double checking all the cables from my PSU were attached correctly, I have no longer experienced any crashes after 5hours+ of gameplay.

Message 62 of 77 (1,461 Views)

Re: Dragon Age Inquisition; Black screen into a force restart (quad core)

★ Apprentice

Honestly I didn't consider buying a new extension cable for my pc. Mine is pretty old, it could be the problem. I'm gonna try it and I post here if it works or not.

Message 63 of 77 (1,418 Views)

Re: Dragon Age Inquisition; Black screen into a force restart (quad core)

★★★ Newbie

hi , i have had numerous crashes since i bought this game, played for 10 hours straight before my first crash, ...ive updated my graphics drivers which sorted it tempererily but same issue, i had an error direct x driver hung bla bla bla. i updated direct x and more updates for my graphics cards ...fine for a while but same issue on cut scenes and war table. i then updated my chipset driver which seemed to do the trick but yet again same issue sfter a few more hours. but getting black screen instead of error. i have got 2 gforce 660 sli d. i then set physx to run from my cpu, seemed to sort it out ....not for long. driving me crazy...until i messed about in my graphics setting ingame.....i turned multi sample antianalising off...have all set to high apart from texture at ultra. ambiet occlusion on hbao and post process anti analising on high...my game was crashing every 20 mins or so but now it seems fine....will update if i crash Wink

Message 64 of 77 (1,395 Views)

Re: Dragon Age Inquisition; Black screen into a force restart (quad core)

★★★ Newbie

i can happily say that i have been playing since my last post....no crash!!!! been to war table, cut scenes and everything and its running great.

Message 65 of 77 (1,379 Views)

Re: Dragon Age Inquisition; Black screen into a force restart (quad core)

★ Apprentice

Just an update.
I switched power cords for my pc. It helped, but not too much. Still crashes, even though I have been able to finish the quest where it always crashed. And the multisample anti aliasing was already off for me so I can say it didn't help me hahaha.

Waiting for any other suggestions.

Message 66 of 77 (1,283 Views)

Re: Dragon Age Inquisition; Black screen into a force restart (quad core)

★★★ Novice

I've just started playing this game in 2016 (nearly 2017) and am having the same problem as everyone else. Less than 20 hours in and it just starts crashing randomly: buzzing sound, black screen, can hear music for a bit, and then nothing. Force restart.

 

I also have a gtx 970 and system that's well above the min specs. I'm able to run Skyrim with over 200 mods incl. graphical and ENB without this garbage happening.

 

It's really unfortunate that a 4 year old game is crashing like this. I haven't purchased an EA game in a while, until this one...

 

Hoping against all odds that someone has figured out a permanent solution; after many searches I still can't find one.

Message 67 of 77 (562 Views)

Re: Dragon Age Inquisition; Black screen into a force restart (quad core)

★★★ Novice

Hello,

Did this work permanently and how much did you underclock by? I'm using MSI afterburner to try it.

Message 68 of 77 (554 Views)

Re: Dragon Age Inquisition; Black screen into a force restart (quad core)

Hero

@SystemsOperator You are posting on a thread that hasn't been active in well over a year (closer to 2, really, close to the release of the game), it's unlikely that the people on this thread are still hanging around available to answer your questions. Wink

If you want help, I suggest taking a look at this sticky for an idea of what information is helpful to include (please include a dxdiag report, there are instructions on how to generate and post one in the spoilered section of that sticky) when asking for help. Easier for us than trying to trawl through an ancient thread trying to figure out which issues you're comparing yours to, if that makes sense. Tongue out 


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If a post solves your issue, please mark it as solved, it may help others with the same issue in future. Standard smile


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Message 69 of 77 (536 Views)

Re: Dragon Age Inquisition; Black screen into a force restart (quad core)

★★★ Novice
Fair points, but the thread moves up to the top of the list once bumped by comment, and supposedly people I replied to directly (well, one person) get notified by email as I just did.

Anyway, this is just one of the threads which all describe the same issue I described: same GPU, same simple sequence of events. I've yet to see a resolution anywhere else.

I hoped that nobody came back to this thread because they'd indeed permanently solved the problem on their own. (It was not marked as solved, however). Everything I've searched until now led to dead ends, including EA's suggested optimization tactics. But, here, there seemed to be some effective solutions!

I'm left with this: as per the advice in this thread, I tried underclocking my card and lowering a few settings (AO to SSAO and so on), and clean reinstalled my video drivers. I was finally able to play for about an hour, no crash.

Dead thread or not, I'll report back in case others out there are googling.
Message 70 of 77 (528 Views)