Andromeda crashing on initial load with 6950 XT, four beeps preceding game start

[mlemmlemlem]

Hey all,

Got a Radeon 6950 XT reference a week ago and haven't had much luck starting the game since then. I got the Steam version. Last GPU was a 1080 Ti with no similar issues whatsoever.
For, context CPU is a 7950X with 32 gigs of ram. Video of the issue

Weird thing that loses me sleep is those four beeps before the game launches (but fails at doing so miserably). There's also a massive amount of coil whine for as long as the loading screen seems interactive, which ceases right away as the crash happens.

The weirdest thing is that I managed to start it once after a long ordeal involving messing up my windows bootloader and reseating the GPU and my system NVME drive among other things. After I put everything back together and rebuilt my boot partition, I noticed that No Man's Sky was fixed (had another issue with HDR and low fps) so gave Andromeda a shot too. It had the same issue, tried game undervolting from Adrenalin and it loaded right away!

I don't remember for sure, but the initial beeps probably went away too.
Until I had that driver version, it was working perfectly even after removing the undervolt. Two days ago I removed my driver b/c it had terrible VR performance and Andromeda hasn't ran ever since.

Things I've tried so far:

• Two different drivers, 2022.11.2 and 2022.5.1, both clean installs with DDU beforehand
• All the radeon switches that make beeps (chill, boost, antilag)
• Disabling adaptive sync
• Undervolting (auto and manual)
• Undervolting game specifically only
• Underclocking GPU
• Disabling AMD smart access memory
• All the compatibility settings and toggles on that page windows 11 offers
• Enabling / disabling HDR in windows
• Clean boot (disabling all non-microsoft services in msconfig)
• EA app instead of origin
• Clean install of win 11 on another drive with only the bare minimum needed for the game - this gave me "registration error DSOUND.DLL missing" - don't remember exact wording
• Removing / reinstalling chipset drivers
• I'm on latest BIOS so that upgrade is done
• Disabling virtual memory
• Setting virtual memory to a fixed 16 gigs on my boot drive (SSD)
• Disabling hibernation
• Running the game in admin mode
  The following two make the coil whine go away
• Turning on vsync from the driver
• Capping FPS to 100 via RivaTuner
• Setting system resolution lower (from 3440x1440 to like 720p)
• Trying a cracked game exe file

I'm hoarding the crash dump files that all basically say the same thing:
Process name: MassEffectAndromeda.exe
Exception code: 0xC0000005
Exception information: The thread tried to read from or write to a virtual address for which it does not have the appropriate access.
Here's a recent dump: image1 image2 dump file

dxdiag

Any help is greatly appreciated, I'm approaching my wit's end here.

[holger1405 · Accepted solution]

@mlemmlemlem 

I'd run your Crash dump through WinDbg to get a few more information.

It is an access violation on trying to execute code in an memory area that is flagged as non execute.

Meaning there should not be any executable code in this area in the first place.

Unfortunately, the address that throws the error is not in a module recorded by the dump or there are corruptions in the dump, so the module in question is not identified.

This could be a Software or Hardware error, but it is not possible to determine which one until you got the second Windows installation to run.

DSOUND.DLL is a Microsoft DirectX DLL.

• Inside the second Windows installation>
• Hit Windows key and X.
• Choose either “PowerShell (Administrator)” or “Command prompt (Administrator),” or "Windows Terminal (Administrator)", whichever option is offered.
• Inside the PowerShell or CMD, enter “DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Checkhealth” without quotes. > ENTER.
• If errors are found, notify us. If no errors were found reaped steps 1 & 2.
• Inside the PowerShell or CMD, enter “DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth” without quotes. > ENTER.
• The system will start validating soon. If it throws an error, please list it here.
• After it reaches 100%, hit Windows key and X again.
• Again, choose “PowerShell (Administrator)” or “Command Prompt (Administrator)”
• Inside the PowerShell or CMD, enter “sfc /scannow” without quotes. >ENTER.
• Post the message you receive at the end of the processes here.

The coil whine just happens because of high FPS in the menu and is not concerning. 

[holger1405 · Accepted solution]

@mlemmlemlem 

I'd run your Crash dump through WinDbg to get a few more information.

It is an access violation on trying to execute code in an memory area that is flagged as non execute.

Meaning there should not be any executable code in this area in the first place.

Unfortunately, the address that throws the error is not in a module recorded by the dump or there are corruptions in the dump, so the module in question is not identified.

This could be a Software or Hardware error, but it is not possible to determine which one until you got the second Windows installation to run.

DSOUND.DLL is a Microsoft DirectX DLL.

• Inside the second Windows installation>
• Hit Windows key and X.
• Choose either “PowerShell (Administrator)” or “Command prompt (Administrator),” or "Windows Terminal (Administrator)", whichever option is offered.
• Inside the PowerShell or CMD, enter “DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Checkhealth” without quotes. > ENTER.
• If errors are found, notify us. If no errors were found reaped steps 1 & 2.
• Inside the PowerShell or CMD, enter “DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth” without quotes. > ENTER.
• The system will start validating soon. If it throws an error, please list it here.
• After it reaches 100%, hit Windows key and X again.
• Again, choose “PowerShell (Administrator)” or “Command Prompt (Administrator)”
• Inside the PowerShell or CMD, enter “sfc /scannow” without quotes. >ENTER.
• Post the message you receive at the end of the processes here.

The coil whine just happens because of high FPS in the menu and is not concerning. 

[mlemmlemlem]

Bro you're a legend. I downloaded WinDmp and although it came to the same conclusion - unspecified module at fault - the analysis started with this: *** WARNING: Unable to verify checksum for d3d11.dll

So I just renamed the d3d11.dll in the game's root folder to something else and it loaded. After over a week of struggle this is such a huge relief!

Fun fact, the four beeps that preceded game launch are gone as well. They've been coming from the System sound channel, checked in sndvol.exe

[holger1405]

@mlemmlemlem 

Good to hear! 🙂

I am just curious why there is a "d3d11.dll" in the game folder in the first place?

Did you used Reshade at some point?

[mlemmlemlem]

Nope, game's bone stock. Out of curiosity, I did a local file check in Steam, and it didn't seem to bother reinstating it. Hella confusing though - I've reinstalled this game tens of times at this point, and the issue's been there each and every time. Might be a faulty install sequence in steam? 🤔

[mlemmlemlem]

Now if only HDR didn't stop working. This game really doesn't want me to play it now, does it?

[holger1405]

@mlemmlemlem 

HDR works globally in Windows, so it might not be the game in this case. 😉

[mlemmlemlem]

I'm afraid in my case it is. HDR in games is unlinked from HDR in windows in general, and every other use case I have with HDR is without issue.

I've tried everything I could come up with seemingly relevant to try and fix it:

• clean install of both driver versions i mentioned before
• disabling adaptive sync
• disabling the iGPU
• disabling GPU scaling
• switching between 8 and 10bpc
• disabling fullscreen optimizations
• running in fullscreen, borderless and windowed modes
• switching between HDR on/off 100s of times
• switching between HDR10/dolby vision 100s of times
• turning HDR on/off in windows

Turning on Windows HDR and running in borderless mode, game still won't acknowledge the HDR capability of my monitor. I'm kinda angry about that, because it worked once and SDR is a soggy biscuit in comparison.

[mlemmlemlem]

Ok this is new. EA games all won't detect HDR - MELE, MEA, BF1, Apex. My steam Games - No Man's Sky, Doom Eternal - do without issue, even in borderless window mode. I wonder if it's EA's fault somehow.

[holger1405]

@mlemmlemlem 

---

mlemmlemlem wrote:

I'm afraid in my case it is. HDR in games is unlinked from HDR in windows in general...

---

No.

On a Windows PC the entire chain, from the PC over the Game to the Display needs to be HDR compatible and HDR must be activated as well on all components.

Some games will switch Windows to HDR mode if you enable it in the game menu, but it needs to be enabled in Windows to work in a game.

Are you are using Origin or EA app right now?