Re: Sporadic Crashes

by Zafireria
Reply

Original Post

Sporadic Crashes

[ Edited ]
★ Apprentice

Greetings.

 

So I have these sporadic crashes that can happened at any time, anywhere from between 5 minutes till hours of gameplay. The game freezes for less than a second then crashes to the desktop. Has been going on for a while, I sadly didn't play for quite a while so I don't which patch it might've started at, I started playing a bit after the patch that broke the CC chairs, the May patch? I think.

I got all packs except for Country, Oasis kits, the Paranormal stuff pack and Batuu Game Pack, tho I do own the latter, it is not installed.  

 

Now I am going to be honest from the start, I use mods and CC. However due to the crashes being sporadic I could be playing for hours before getting a crash, so trying to eliminate CC/mods is being quite tedious, I have attempted to do so and have cleared some mods to not be the cause of the crashes. But I was hoping that the logfiles attached (crash report, Dxdiag etc) could help give a pointer at what could be the cause. Is it the game, my PC, or is it mods/CC? And if the latter, is it a script, trait, CC, etc. Might be a bit of a stretch but you can always hope.

 

So far the things I have tried to stop the crashes are;
Repair the game.
Uninstalled and installed the game using Origin.

Reinstalled Nvidia graphic card. 

Switched from Origin to EA Desktop App.

Uninstalled the game while it was on Origin and installed it again using EA Desktop App. Then reinstalled it again.

Restarted my PC.

Checked my RAM, looked all good.

Bought Bust the Dust (heard people were having issues with it not being installed so I hoped it would stop it)

Removed some mods, deleting some CC (still going but it takes it time, which is why I hope someone here could give pointers) 

Fully updated the game.

Reset the document folder. By removing the Sims 4 folder to the desktop then boot up the game so it made a fresh one. 

 

I have attached;

Crash report. (the site refuses to upload it, saying "The attachment's lastcrash.txt content type (text/plain) does not match its file extension" no clue how to fix it)

Dxdiag report.

Picture of the event viewer showing the faulting module seems to be TS4_x64.exe.

 

If you need any other file, let me know. Also the game never throws an LE (LastException) file when it crashes. 

 

 

Thanks for reading. 

Sincerely,

Zafireria

 

Edit: Added Document folder reset. 

Message 1 of 14 (460 Views)

Re: Sporadic Crashes

@Zafireria  The error in the Event Viewer and the lone Sims 4 error in your dxdiag are both access violations, which can have any number of causes.  One is a bad mod or custom content item though, and that does seem like a reasonable possibility given that you can play just fine for a while.  But if you want to get more information before removing all your mods and cc, you can create a .rar file from the LastCrash and attach it to a post here.

 

One other useful troubleshooting step would be to play in a clean boot.

 

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-clean-boot-windows-10

 

When you reboot, go through the Task Manager's background processes list and shut down anything that's not strictly necessary, for example components of your Razer and Corsair software, which are crashing frequently enough to have crowded out any other Sims 4 errors.  Don't open anything other than the game and Origin either.

——————————————————————————————————————————

I don't work for EA. I'm just trying to help fellow players with their games.
Message 2 of 14 (428 Views)

Re: Sporadic Crashes

★ Apprentice

@puzzlezaddict The Access Violation error is the reason I checked my RAM as it's one of the more common causes for that error apparently, but everything seems to be fine with the RAM.

One thing that is puzzling me about the error tho is that it only happens to Sims 4. I play other games (right now I am playing Horizon Zero Dawn) and none have crashed, not once, even been playing sims 2 and 3 and no crash there either. I figured if it was an interference from software or hardware, wouldn't other games be affected? That's why my suspicious was on my mods/CC rather than anything else, but I suppose it could be completely unrelated.  

 

I am surprised Razer is crashing, I knew Corsair were but not that it was that frequently. Corsair controls the fans in the PC and Razer controls the mouse, so if I were to stop those programs the fans wouldn't be managed and the DPI on my mouse with skyrocket to the point the cursor would fly all over the screen. I'll have a look and see if I can get them to stop crashing, if I can't I'll try and see if I can close them down and have another software take over the fan management.

 

I don't use Origin btw I switched to EA Desktop App, Origin was using 99% of my CPU and causing the PC to force shutdown Origin (only happens when I try to repair or install Sims 4, other games seems to be fine for some reason) 

As for the clean boot windows, would a reinstalling of Win10 be good enough of a test? (getting a NVMe SSD where the OS is going to be on, so would have to reinstall win10) if not I'll look into it.

 

I attached the crash file. 

 

Thank you for your time. Sorry for the time it took to respond. Timezones so I was sleeping. 

 

 

Attachment
Download this attachment
Message 3 of 14 (407 Views)

Re: Sporadic Crashes

@Zafireria  Don't worry about the late reply; it's not a problem.  (I was sleeping when you posted as well.)

 

Each game uses a its own combination of system resources and can call those resources differently.  For example, Sims 3 and 4 both use DirectX 9, as opposed to newer games that might use DX11 or 12; Sims 3 uses VC++ 2005, while Sims 4 now uses the latest (2015-2019) VC++ runtimes, and perhaps still the 2010 versions; I haven't tested.  Other programs on your computer may interact with these resources as well, in ways that may or may not conflict with a particular game.

 

As for hardware, it can be similarly complicated, and perhaps more difficult to diagnose.  But either way, the point is that either hardware or software can still be involved even when only one game is crashing.

 

Having said that, this does sound very much like a mods or custom content issue.  I suggested the other steps first in case you didn't want to test without mods and cc, since sporadic crashes are difficult to test effectively.  But what you could do is try saving very often, maybe under a new save name, and hopefully find a way to reliably generate a crash.  Then you could remove your mods and cc, confirm that the game doesn't crash without it, and start adding back the content, quitting without saving each time so you're essentially playing through the moment when the game would crash over and over.

 

As for reinstalling Windows, that is better in some ways than a clean boot and worse in others.  It would of course address any issues with Windows itself, but if you installed the same software afterwards, you could be reintroducing the same issues.  A clean boot takes 30 seconds to set up plus however long it takes for your computer to restart.

 

Your fans running at max for one play session isn't going to hurt anything.  If your Razer mouse is unusable without its control app, you can use a different mouse to test, or just reenable the one crucial Razer app and hope it's not the issue.

——————————————————————————————————————————

I don't work for EA. I'm just trying to help fellow players with their games.
Message 4 of 14 (371 Views)

Re: Sporadic Crashes

★ Apprentice

@puzzlezaddict Well that would makes sense that games interreact with different resources, it sadly does make software hard to troubleshoot as well as hardware as you said.

 

It's not really a case of me not wanting to test cc/mods, its more that I can't replicate the pattern that causes the crash, meaning it could take me potentially days before I would find the cause. 

I do save often, tho I didn't think about saving it under a new save, so that might be a way to try and catch a pattern or something.

Do you know what could potentially cause a mod/cc to crash? Scripts? Too many autonomous crashing with each other? A loop somewhere? Any information could greatly help in finding the culprit.

 

I figured the win10 reinstalled wasn't going to be 100% optimal since some of the software are on a different drive and won't be wiped when installing Win10 so if its a software issue then it wouldn't go away. However, I don't have that many software on the drive so it might just be as easy as wipe the other drives as well if the crashes persistent. 

 

Glad to know that one play test won't blow up my PC or cause harm. Still something I will keep as a last resort of all the other options suggested doesn't work.

 

Were you able to get anything from the crash report? I am not sure if you can read it, but you asked for it, unless that was an answer to my comment about me not being able to attach it. 

 

 

Message 5 of 14 (364 Views)

Re: Sporadic Crashes

[ Edited ]
★ Apprentice

@puzzlezaddictNow that I think about it, you mentioned Sims 3 and 4 runs on DirectX 9, when I played Sims 3, not only did it lag a lot, but I believe it actually did crash, but due to the lag I just uninstalled the game, which is probably why I didn't remember the crash straight from the bat.

Another thing that is suddenly clicking is that before I noticed any crashes I installed a Reshade that asked which DirectX it was using so it could install. I have since uninstalled the Reshade completely and reinstalled Sims 4 and it still crashes, but now I am thinking that maybe Reshade modified the DirectX somehow and that it didn't "reset" when uninstalling the game and the Rehade. Which would explain if Sims 3 also crashed, I wasn't using Reshade with Sims 3 and I can't remember if it was still installed or had just been uninstalled. But I first installed Sims 3 after I had begun to use the reshade.

So is it possible it might be the DirectX that is faulty? Or would that have showed up on the Event Viewer as the DirectX instead of the Sims4.exe?

If it could be the DirectX, how would I go about fixing it?

Message 6 of 14 (359 Views)

Re: Sporadic Crashes

@Zafireria  I didn't get anything useful from the lastcrash, so I asked someone else what I should look for.  I couldn't find a known issue that matched the info in yours though, suggesting that mods or cc is probably the culprit.  (Not definitely, just probably.)

 

As for what issues with mods or cc might cause this... all of the above?  I'd also add poorly made or outdated cc that isn't being applied or rendered properly: you might only see a problem when a sim is wearing that cc item and is being rendered in-game.

 

Another option you have is to go to the MCCC Discord and upload any lastcrash or lastexception files.  The server has some bots that can read the files and identify known issues, although there's no guarantee that the info will be more specific than "something is outdated or conflicting."

 

If DirectX 9 was crashing, that would show up in your dxdiag and in the Event Viewer.  It can be corrupt without directly crashing though.  It's easy enough to reinstall DX9 just to be thorough: download the installer from Microsoft and run it, no need to uninstall beforehand.

 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/download/details.aspx?id=8109

 

Sims 3 lags and crashes for a lot of reasons.  If you want to troubleshoot that at some point, feel free to come find me in the TS3 forum here.  But its poor performance is not necessarily evidence of any issues in common between the two games.

——————————————————————————————————————————

I don't work for EA. I'm just trying to help fellow players with their games.
Message 7 of 14 (356 Views)
Highlighted

Re: Sporadic Crashes

[ Edited ]
★ Apprentice

@puzzlezaddictCC would explain the sporadic nature of it, if it only crashes when the sims wearing the faulty CC (like jeans) shows up in the neighbourhood, wouldn't really apply for furniture's unless they are able to show off their Bookcase etc, somehow. I know its not the hair, that got replaced completely due to the new patch and it has still crashed.
Suppose it could be traits as well. Oh boy why are things so complicated.

 

I'll look into the bot that can read the file see what it says.

 

I'll give reinstalling DirectX a go and see what happens. After that I'll have a look at doing the New Save and see if I can catch a pattern, could try and play without mods at all and see if it still crashes, I just hope that option doesn't take forever to do. 

 

Thanks for the pointer to TS3 forum, but one crashing game at the time, heh. 

 

Edit: I forgot to ask, where to I extracted the DirectX files? It doesn't say anywhere where it needs to be extracted. 

Message 8 of 14 (345 Views)

Re: Sporadic Crashes

@Zafireria  Sorry, I didn't see your edit right away.  You can extract the files to whatever folder you want, for example a random folder you make on your desktop.  Among the extracted files will an installer, with the .exe extension; you run that to actually install DX9.

——————————————————————————————————————————

I don't work for EA. I'm just trying to help fellow players with their games.
Message 9 of 14 (327 Views)

Re: Sporadic Crashes

★ Apprentice
@puzzlezaddict Oh thank you! I did find it but wanted to make sure I did it right. Thanks for all your help. I'll try out the suggestion and return if none of them worked.
Message 10 of 14 (320 Views)