17 réponses à ce sujet

[Nightfall07]

First of all: sorry for posting an other topic about crashes.
I tried to use the search function but for some reason I can't find anything? :s

anyway. I just bought this game 3 days ago and so far I can't say I enjoyed it much. It keeps crashing!!

I myself am somewhat of a PC-noob. I'm fine using software and such. But I know nothing (or very little) about hardware or technical operations of computers.
I hope someone can help me, because I'm getting comfused and frustrated with all the crashing and the different opinions how to sovle it that I read on this forum.

This is my system info:
Vista 64bit
Intel Core Quad CPU Q6600 @2.40Ghz
4gig RAM
NVIDIA GeForce8800GT VRAM 512MB

I bought the game from Steam, if that's relevant.

This is a rundown of my experience of the game. I'll try to be as detailed as I can to try and show the exact nature of this problem:

*During the part in the human noble castle I had only one crash to desktop with the simple message 'Dragon age origins stopped working". This is the same error message I always get ,btw. This crash happed at a random time.
-I did nothing to 'fix' it at this point.

*CONSTANT crashing in Ostagar. Specificly when crossing the bridge, exactly on the point when the road slopes upwards. I actualy got passed that point by forcing my character to walk instead of run Don't know why but that worked.
-At this point I updated my Nvidia driver (to 191.07) hoping that might have been the problem.

*When my character walk near the area with the infirmary the game becomes a slideshow and crashes a few moment later. Walking around other area's was not a problem. So I avoided that area and continued the game.
-At this point I began searching this forum for help. I saw something about memory leaks (which I don't really understand) and read something about setting the affinity of Dragon age program to use less then 4 cores. I tried this but I can't say it makes a difference. I also read something about 100% CPU usage. I start checking this but CPU usage stayed at around 50-70%. However memory usage get bigger and bigger. At his point it's around only 500.000kB (start menu) and 800.000kb(when standing in Ostagar). Later more on that.

*Entered the Wilds to do the quest. It went rather well. But I notice the load sreens doing some stange things. First the screen stayed dark. I could only faintly see the word loading and the rest was very very dark. I had to load a savegame (I died ) and the load screen was just black. Then when it ended loading that round tribal ornament that rotates while the game is loading appears all jagged and zoomed in to much. (hard to explain. But normaly when the game ended loading you get the animation of that ornament seems to zoom in and fade out. But now it just appeared out of nowwhere and the fade wasn't working. Long story short: a f*** up end-of-loading-animation)
-I did nothing at this point.

*Back in Ostagar. Went well. Even the part with the infirmary didn't slow the game down now :s Anyway. Continued the story. The attack starts and I only see a black screen.... It sounded like a really cool cinematic but I didn't see a thing. Pressed ESC and got the game interface back but the game itself stayed black.
-Pressed quicksave and I exited the game (first time I did 'exit game' rather then ending it with a crash) Restarted it, reload the quicksave and it worked again.

*The tower didn't give me any problems. Just a HUGE drop in FPS when fighting the enemies outside the tower. The next cinematic worked fine. Continued the game and got to Lothering. After doing the tower, the conversation with Morrigan's mother and waling around in this town I thought my problems where over. BUT! I wasn't happy about the way I handled the problem with the merchant/priestess and reloaded a savegame that was saved the moment I endered Lothering. I run passed the bandids and FPS slow down again, by the time get to the templar the game crashes. Also I now notice some strange graphical glitches on some NPC's clothing. It gets all patchy and strange shimmers. Like some sort of broken photoshop filter. But it only happens on 2 or 4 NPC the rest is fine.
-I CANT GET PASSED THIS. It keeps crashing. I tried an other savegame thinking it might be broken or something. But it didn't work. I can't even ALT+TAB out of the game anymore or it instantly crashes. But when I alt+tab before it crashes I can see it's using about 70% CPU but also 1.300.000 kB memory I have never seen an application go that high. (and I played a lot of games demanding games like Supreme commander, Crysis, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Empire: total war,... who all played flawless btw).
I also read something about over heating. I hope that's not the case. I shut the PC down all night, so it was cool. Turned it on. Started DA, loaded the game bam! crash. If it played the whole thing in the Wild and the whole Tower scene without crashing. It can't just overheat after LESS THEN 60 SECONDS in Lothering, can it??
Also I don't have a lot of money. (actualy had to save up to buy this game) So getting extra cooling is not very appealing to me. Also a friend said there is no room in my PC to add an extra and there already are 3 fans+ 1 on the CPU and 1 on the GPU. Even more cooling??? that seems ridiculous! (but then again I'm a PC noob what do I know :s) And without the guarantee that that's really the problem, that's not an investment I'm willing to make for 1 game overdemanding game. 

I know this is a long post and I'm probably rambling a bit. But after 3 days of frustration it is getting to me. :s
I've been waiting for this game ever since news about it's development was released. And it seems like the game itself is wel worth the wait. But I CAN'T ENJOY IT WITH ALL THE CRASHING!!!! This is seriously the most unstable game I have played. And I played the buggfest that was Daggerfall

anwyway I hope someone can help me...or the game gets patched to be more stable or something.
I guess this is why other non-computer-wizard gamers  prefer consoles....(but I refuse to go walk that path of darkness )

Modifié par Nightfall07, 21 novembre 2009 - 01:41 .

[ZipyTheWndrSlug]

I have had 4 crash to desktops on a similar system. I have a Intel® Core™2 Duo CPU E8500 @ 3.16GHz instead.



I know there is memory leaks on multi core processors, so as a short term fix, try restarting your computer after you are done playing.



If you are playing for long stretches, you are most likely just running out of memory.



on a side note, I to did a search for "vista 64 + crash to desktop" and got 0 returns.

[Mustang68jd]

I've tried many tricks and I can't seem to avoid the random crashes either. Sometimes I just have to constantly reload every 5 minutes as it keeps crashing to desktop with the "stopped working" message. I'm also using Vista 64 with an Intel Quad core chip.

[Hawat1]

Hi,



I'm having exactly the same problem, wiith crashes at the same places. But it's a digital EU version (so it's not the steam version). My computer is a Intel Quad COre 2.50Ghz (Q8300) 2gb ram, Nvidia Gforce GTX 260 and a vista 32.



What I have found until now on the net, someone was pretending that the problem came from the drivers, I update from the 190 version to 191 and now I'm running the beta 195 and having the exactly the same problem. Someone suggested me to try an even older version, but I haven't tried this yet.



If it's a memory leak, why does the game crashes at exactly the same spots? (last time 35 sec after loading the saved game, Bridg of Ostagar)



I installed both patches, some problem at the same spot.



An other strange thing is that if this is a recurring problem, why are there so few posts about it? Maybe it comes from incompatibilities between some (minor software / hardware) the we both have and not the majority of the users, but cannot figure out what it could be.



So any ideas would be great, for the moment the only credible lead would be the older driver. But a lot of people have no problems with the 191 version.



Thank you

[Hawat1]

Important update



I juste set all the video options to low and the constant crashings in Ostagar. Specificly when crossing the bridge, exactly on the point when the road slopes upwards, have stoped, no more problems. Maybe my video card was juste to weak to handel this.



What I did exactly was Turn Grafic details to low, turn anti-Aliasing to off, put texture detail to low and removed the Frame-Buffer Effects. I will try to turn these option on one by one agin to isolate the cause.



Hope this helps you as it helped me.

[Hawat1]

Ok, last post after my tests. You only need to put the texture details to medium in config and you can play without problems. It's always disappointing when you cannot make a full use of your hardware because of poor programming but it seems to be very common.



For example you get the same crash with Modern Warfare 2 with the same workaround. I just hope BioWare will make a true patch that will allow users to play with texture details at high.



Good luck to you all.

[Nightfall07]

Wow I can't believe I didn't think of that myself. That did work!!! I have actualy played the game for 3 hour without a single crash.

Thank you!!!!!!!


An observation.
I did a bit back and forth switching of the graphic settings while looking at the memory usage. The game runs fine under highest graphical setting as long as the mem usage stays under 1.3gig. In outdoor towns it gets goes over at some locations. I did some alt tabbing while walking around in Lothering and the moment it went over 1.3 it crashes. Lowering the texture detail to medium does indeed work. Walking around the same areas the mem usage stayed between 1 and 1.1gig.
I don't really know if this means anything but there you have it.

Guess those recommended system requirements are just for show.
There really must be something wrong with that. I see on Steam min req. 1.5 Gig RAM for Vista and recommended 3 Gig RAM for VIsta. But during gameplay my total mem usage never goes under 2.5Gig and sometimes even goes to 3.2.

Anyway. I think I don't need to complain that much anymore. It works now.
The difference between medium and high textures isn't that big so...
I'm happy

Thanks again

[Hawat1]

Glad that helped.



Apperently a 32bits game can only manage a limited ammount of your ram probably the same ammount a modern console will have. The memory allocation is not managed by hand but by a program called the garbage collector. At some points in game apparently on high settings the program gets to much info to store in your ram (supposedly it happens at loading points leading to important zones with a lot of info to manage at a given time. This can be easely avoided but I am certain that the game was first coded with consoles (where there is no sens to incrase or decrease the video settings) in mind with few or no beta testing foir PC. Then they added these settings without thinking about the consequences.

[fiskerton]

I'm on Windows XP, dual-core AMD Athlon 4400 with an nVidia 9600 graphics card on the latest drivers and while I got through the early parts of the game with only the odd random crash every couple of hours (this included Ostagar, the Forest, Redcliff, Denerim), most of my problems came in the Tower of Mages, where the game crashed and froze my PC roughly every 20 minutes or so. Fortunately, I've not had a corrupted save game yet.



Must admit, I haven't raised a technical support call, because ultimately if it's fixable only by modifying graphics settings, that means it's really a bug and only a patch is going to solve the problem, and I don't know if the next patch will be released before I finish the game.

[Balgin Stondraeg]

I'm experiencing something similar (XP, no Vista, no Steam ) but it only crashes when it finishes saving, or when it finishes loading a new area. There's usualy a noticible sluggish slowing down of the game building up to the crash but it waits 'till I save, or finish loading a new area, to do so.



Thankfuly the crashed save is not corrupted but it's still a pain.

[rmidd2]

I have also experienced crashes periodically which take me to my desktop with a windows message saying "dragon age has stopped workikng".  I also installed the game and played it through steam.  My system handles newer games just fine but for some reason DAO crashes.  There may be some relation to a memory dump occuring during large fights and outdoor environments that tax the hardware more heavily, but this shouldn't be happening because I play other games with higher minimum graphics standards without this issue. (ME2 for example)

[PerLindstrom]

Hawat1 wrote...

Glad that helped.

Apperently a 32bits game can only manage a limited ammount of your ram probably the same ammount a modern console will have. The memory allocation is not managed by hand but by a program called the garbage collector. At some points in game apparently on high settings the program gets to much info to store in your ram (supposedly it happens at loading points leading to important zones with a lot of info to manage at a given time. This can be easely avoided but I am certain that the game was first coded with consoles (where there is no sens to incrase or decrease the video settings) in mind with few or no beta testing foir PC. Then they added these settings without thinking about the consequences.

32 bit games can normaly manage 2GB of memory.
If you are running a 64 bit OS, you may try to enable largeadressaware flag, on DAORigins.exe.
For Steam-users DAORigins.exe is located in folder Program Files (x86)\\Steam\\steamapps\\common\\dragon age origins\\bin_ship.
Here is a link to a tool to enable the flag.
http://www.ntcore.com/4gb_patch.php
That gives the game 4GB instead of 2GB.
Solved most problems for me, including mana clash crashes.

If you running 32 bits Windows, you also have to enable the 3GB switch.
http://scorpion.tord...ed/3gswitch.htm
For stabelity reasons set UserVA to 2560, not higher, that gives your game 2.5 GB.

[DeadJediJamie]

PerLindstrom wrote...

Hawat1 wrote...

Glad that helped.

Apperently a 32bits game can only manage a limited ammount of your ram probably the same ammount a modern console will have. The memory allocation is not managed by hand but by a program called the garbage collector. At some points in game apparently on high settings the program gets to much info to store in your ram (supposedly it happens at loading points leading to important zones with a lot of info to manage at a given time. This can be easely avoided but I am certain that the game was first coded with consoles (where there is no sens to incrase or decrease the video settings) in mind with few or no beta testing foir PC. Then they added these settings without thinking about the consequences.

32 bit games can normaly manage 2GB of memory.
If you are running a 64 bit OS, you may try to enable largeadressaware flag, on DAORigins.exe.
For Steam-users DAORigins.exe is located in folder Program Files (x86)\\\\Steam\\\\steamapps\\\\common\\\\dragon age origins\\\\bin_ship.
Here is a link to a tool to enable the flag.
http://www.ntcore.com/4gb_patch.php
That gives the game 4GB instead of 2GB.
Solved most problems for me, including mana clash crashes.

If you running 32 bits Windows, you also have to enable the 3GB switch.
http://scorpion.tord...ed/3gswitch.htm
For stabelity reasons set UserVA to 2560, not higher, that gives your game 2.5 GB.

Sorry Lindstrom, I'm afraid this fix is not universal. I tried using your method and the problem persisted. As of this point I've tried every known fix in the book short of going back to Windows XP which is simply an unacceptable fix when other games run flawlessly otherwise.

[PerLindstrom]

DeadJediJamie wrote...

PerLindstrom wrote...

Hawat1 wrote...

Glad that helped.

Apperently a 32bits game can only manage a limited ammount of your ram probably the same ammount a modern console will have. The memory allocation is not managed by hand but by a program called the garbage collector. At some points in game apparently on high settings the program gets to much info to store in your ram (supposedly it happens at loading points leading to important zones with a lot of info to manage at a given time. This can be easely avoided but I am certain that the game was first coded with consoles (where there is no sens to incrase or decrease the video settings) in mind with few or no beta testing foir PC. Then they added these settings without thinking about the consequences.

32 bit games can normaly manage 2GB of memory.
If you are running a 64 bit OS, you may try to enable largeadressaware flag, on DAORigins.exe.
For Steam-users DAORigins.exe is located in folder Program Files (x86)\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\Steam\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\steamapps\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\common\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\dragon age origins\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\bin_ship.
Here is a link to a tool to enable the flag.
http://www.ntcore.com/4gb_patch.php
That gives the game 4GB instead of 2GB.
Solved most problems for me, including mana clash crashes.

If you running 32 bits Windows, you also have to enable the 3GB switch.
http://scorpion.tord...ed/3gswitch.htm
For stabelity reasons set UserVA to 2560, not higher, that gives your game 2.5 GB.

Sorry Lindstrom, I'm afraid this fix is not universal. I tried using your method and the problem persisted. As of this point I've tried every known fix in the book short of going back to Windows XP which is simply an unacceptable fix when other games run flawlessly otherwise.

Sorry to hear that, I had high hopes that your problem was solved.
It's not an universal solution, I to have CTD sometimes but enabling 4GB have helped me a lot.
Have you tried to set texture detail to medium, that helped OP.
One thing that may help, and that makes the game looks uglier, is to disable Framebuffer effects, it's seems to be more stable without them.

Modifié par PerLindstrom, 25 octobre 2010 - 05:48 .

[AbsolutGrndZer0]

Ok, my game has been crashing a lot ever since I entered the Ruined Temple on my warrior. Haven't had any problems prior, nor problems in the temple on my mage. So, I just tried that NT patch thingy, (I am 64-bit windows) will see if that helps.

[AbsolutGrndZer0]

Nope, just actually tried playing again,played for about 5min then crashed.

[PerLindstrom]

To bad.

It's not an universel solution, I still have crashes but it made the game playable for me, oddly thing that it solved Mana Clash, but not the spell that Templar casts.