EQ1 5box rendering freezes but game receives input

haunaben · Post by **haunaben** » Wed Nov 25, 2009 2:06 pm

I'm running 5 instances of EQ1 on IS (not using WinEQ2). System specs: win 7, quad core 3.0ghz, 4gb ram, nvidia gtx260 896mb vram. Also running EQPlayNice with background fps = 30 and BGRate=30.

After about 30 minutes of play, 2 of the 5 instances stop rendering (gray with some lines through it), but they still receive inputs and function properly.

Can running out of system memory cause this (rendering stops on some instances but they still receive inputs), or would it cause the instance to crash completely?

Memory is my first guess - I'm getting down to only 300mb free with 5 instances running. I just want to know if I'm looking in the right place.

Post by **Lax** » Wed Nov 25, 2009 2:27 pm

When you run out of system memory, your PC will start storing more of what would be in RAM on disk instead, so it shouldn't crash, no. The game should continue to work, but some textures may start appearing as a solid color instead (I think in EQ it's white, some games use green, some use purple, and so on).

The first thing I'd do is check for new video drivers. I don't know what would cause the issue you're describing if not an issue with the video card (or driver).

haunaben · Post by **haunaben** » Wed Nov 25, 2009 7:01 pm

Thanks for the reply.

After the crash my sound card stopped working, device was showing an error in device manager.

I reinstalled my sound card drivers and rebooted. Been running for hours with no problems - must have been some issue with it's drivers before I started playing.

haunaben · Post by **haunaben** » Fri Nov 27, 2009 10:45 am

Guess I'm not out of the woods yet. After I got out of the tutorial and into zoning through PoK it started up again after about 30 mins, and always after I zone. If I restart the IS instance that failed the next time I zone a different instance gets hit.

I tried latest drivers for my GTX260 but still same behavior.

I agree it's very much a video card / driver issue, but just wondering what else I can try beside a new/different card.

If it's of any consequence, I'm using 1 instance on my primary monitor, and 4 instances on my secondary monitor using windownapper to tile them. Only the instances on the secondary monitor get the graphics freeze.

moagar · Post by **moagar** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 6:00 pm

This is also occuring for me as well, the 2nd and 3rd sessions will loose video altogether but they still receive keyboard input. This began after the last November eq1 patch for me. I've updated to the latest drivers for my GTX 275 card as well and the problem is still occuring. Prior to that patch everything has been rock solid.

Draknocht · Post by **Draknocht** » Tue Dec 08, 2009 2:00 am

I have also been having rendering issues, but mine came about on updatign to v34 ISboxer. I have not back dated it yet but the following is some of the error messages that start popping everywhere.

EQ failed to reset
STND_BA_1_IT10743.ANI is a 0 length file in the EQG Loading is aborted
STND_BA_1_IT10932.ANI is a 0 length file in the EQG Loading is aborted
STND_BA_1_GBN.ANI is a 0 length file in the EQG Loading is aborted
STND_BA_1_BSE.ANI is a 0 length file in the EQG Loading is aborted
STND_BA_1_MSO.ANI is a 0 length file in the EQG Loading is aborted
NRUN_BA_1_MSO.ANI is a 0 length file in the EQG Loading is aborted
WALK_BA_1_MSO.ANI is a 0 length file in the EQG Loading is aborted
LTRN_BA_1_MSO.ANI is a 0 length file in the EQG Loading is aborted
RESET DEVICE FAILED

after the spew of some of or all of these crash desktop.

I am still trying to decipher how to do the debug so I can post, I have the EQ dbg txt file for it, but the debug.dmp file I have not a clue how to view it or if it would even be relevant to this.

These crashes are more prodominent in 2 zones POK and Guild Lobby, possible coincidence though since I been in those zones more frequent since updating ISB.

My system specs are as follows;

Motherboard: ASUS M4A79 Deluxe
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 940 BE (3.0 GHZ)
RAM: 8GB (2 pairs Twin2x4096-8500 DDR2 Corsair Dominator w/ Airflow fans
Video Card: 2x Diamond Radeon HD4650 1GB/GO DDR2
PSU ( Brand & Model): Corsair HX650W
Monitor (connection used): Acer X223W LCD
Hard drives: WD Caviar Green 500GB 16MB/SATA
Optical Drives: Liteon 24x DVD/CD Writer
56X CD Player (don't remember the Brand)
Additonal Drives: Ultra USB 2.0 Floppy Disk Drive / All in One Card Reader
Additional PCI cards: None
Case & Fans: NZXT Tempest (6 Fans)
Logitech G11 Keyboard & Logitech Marble Track Mouse
Operating System : Windows XP Pro SP 3

I know the ram over 4gb is worthless, just never got around to upgrading to vista and now Win 7 is out...

X-fire is disabled for EQ

Let me know how else I can help in resolving this, debugging is not my forte, but I will do what I can at trying to get a debug file on this. It will just take me some time to figure it all out.

Post by **Lax** » Tue Dec 08, 2009 2:17 am

ISBoxer 34 didn't make any changes that would affect that, honestly. Are your video cards linked with crossfire? That may be unstable with multiple game instances. You should get better performance by using them independently -- see http://isboxer.com/index.php/guides/21- ... ideo-cards for how to do this

Anyway, my suggestions are that, check for new video drivers, and if all else fails, try the development build of IS (check box in Patcher window from IS menu, then restart IS). It could possibly help, but I wouldn't count on it.

moagar · Post by **moagar** » Tue Dec 08, 2009 2:36 am

Just to be sure, when the video for the session is lost there is no crash. I can use the keyboard and mouse and move the character around and see it from the other sessions. It's just when you switch to that session it snaps the old one down and nothing takes it's place. Prior to switching sessions the one that fails to display shows correctly in its slave region, only after swapping to the main region does the video go away.

Post by **Lax** » Tue Dec 08, 2009 11:08 am

moagar wrote:Just to be sure, when the video for the session is lost there is no crash. I can use the keyboard and mouse and move the character around and see it from the other sessions. It's just when you switch to that session it snaps the old one down and nothing takes it's place. Prior to switching sessions the one that fails to display shows correctly in its slave region, only after swapping to the main region does the video go away.

I recently fixed an issue that *sounds* like this that people were having in LOTRO on Windows XP after a recent LOTRO update. The fix is in IS build 5071, which is the current development build.

Draknocht · Post by **Draknocht** » Tue Dec 08, 2009 7:38 pm

I am actually hoping that all these issues is on Sony's side and will stabilize after all the expansion patches are done.

Lax, if its any help I can send you the EQ debug I have, or post part of it, it does have the call stack and stack scan in it. File is to big to post the enitre scan... could post it on pastebin and shoot ya link.

Let me know

Drak

Draknocht · Post by **Draknocht** » Tue Dec 08, 2009 7:42 pm

LoL forgot... x-fire is disabled, 2nd card is not in use at all.

haunaben · Post by **haunaben** » Tue Dec 15, 2009 4:05 pm

Sorry I didn't follow up here, I had my settings set to notify me if someone replied to thread, but I never received and email and thought no one had replied

For me the problem seems linked to using windowsnapper + repeater for mouse movement. If I never use repeater I never have a problem. When I enable repeater with a hotkey for mouse clicks one of my instances almost always freezes the video shortly after.

haunaben · Post by **haunaben** » Tue Dec 15, 2009 9:38 pm

Just want to further clarify my experience is exactly as moagar describes - including behavior of snap regions and receiving inputs.

Most of the time my hotkeys are set up well enough I can finish whatever fight I'm on, or I pop open the console and start relaying keypresses like crazy

moagar · Post by **moagar** » Fri Jan 01, 2010 5:20 pm

Lax wrote:
moagar wrote:Just to be sure, when the video for the session is lost there is no crash. I can use the keyboard and mouse and move the character around and see it from the other sessions. It's just when you switch to that session it snaps the old one down and nothing takes it's place. Prior to switching sessions the one that fails to display shows correctly in its slave region, only after swapping to the main region does the video go away.
I recently fixed an issue that *sounds* like this that people were having in LOTRO on Windows XP after a recent LOTRO update. The fix is in IS build 5071, which is the current development build.

Enabled IS to download the development release and I cannot get it to launch my ISBoxer character sets. I can revert back to the current release and it launches them fine but not when downloading the development ones. Is there a trick to getting the development release to launch my character sets to test?

moagar · Post by **moagar** » Sat Jan 09, 2010 4:59 pm

Stopped using mouse relay and problem stopped.