Crashes

narek15 · July 2014

Hi everyone!

I have been playing Neverwinter for some time, and it played like a charm. Some time after Icewind Dale update the settings have been changed, and after that my game started to crash due to graphics about every 2-3 hours. It's not really a big deal, but it does get frustrating. In fact I have to restart my computer every time after the crash, apparently from what I think my graphics card is running out of memory, which it didn't do before in this game, since if I try to turn the game on again the system gives out a graphics error, throws me out into desktop, colors look very bad and I can only use low resolution. Intel 3000HD is my graphics card, and yes it is integrated, which didn't affect performance of the game in any way before.

P.S. I am still running Windows XP, I know it's old and in fact the support for it will end soon, but I was wondering if after that Neverwinter will still work well with Windows XP. Considering that they don't change the engine, I would think it should run well, but I was wondering if anyone heard anything.

charononus · July 2014

Well your regular ram is your graphics ram with an intel hd graphics. This could be compounded if you are running a 32 bit version of xp with lower ram support. While you technically meet min spec, min spec usually runs worse and worse over time with online games that get support like this as every patch usually has more and more stuff.

Now with that in mind that it will eventually not be playable, what are the rest of your specs? processor, ram, etc. All of that will have an effect. Also is this a laptop? You end up pushing the graphics card hard with something like you're running and it could be getting heat damage. I had a laptop with a intel hd graphics and win 7 that I gave myself a burn on playing neverwinter.

narek15 · July 2014

charononus wrote: »

Well your regular ram is your graphics ram with an intel hd graphics. This could be compounded if you are running a 32 bit version of xp with lower ram support. While you technically meet min spec, min spec usually runs worse and worse over time with online games that get support like this as every patch usually has more and more stuff.

Now with that in mind that it will eventually not be playable, what are the rest of your specs? processor, ram, etc. All of that will have an effect. Also is this a laptop? You end up pushing the graphics card hard with something like you're running and it could be getting heat damage. I had a laptop with a intel hd graphics and win 7 that I gave myself a burn on playing neverwinter.

Thanks for the response!

Yeah, I knew about the technical aspects and how computers work, I was trying to see how the game's changes can affect my future game play. So far I don't have that many problems, the game usually plays smoothly, unless there are a whole bunch of other players around.

The part about eventually not being able to play the game is indeed dreadful... To be honest I also believe this may have to do with my settings: after I've downloaded the game I've had some settings written down from STO, and they worked very well. After the last patch they were reset, so may be if I actually put the settings back in precisely as they were (which is the hard part, since the latest large update really changed where all the settings are).

And yes, this is a laptop. My specs are: Windows XP 32-bit, Intel i5-processor, I also technically have 4 GB of RAM installed, however because Windows XP allows only 2.16 GB of RAM, I only have that much, I can use all of my 4 GB of RAM in my other OS. My Intel 3000HD integrated video card takes only 316mb of RAM from my regular RAM.

I have been playing Neverwinter, STO, LoTRO and others for almost as long as I had this computer (which is about 4-5 years) and thank God I never ever had any heating problems.

Once again thanks!

tyrtallow · July 2014

That sometimes happens to me, and in my case allowing the game to verify files seems to fix it until the next crash (usually after a few months).

Did you check your max physics/particles setting after a crash? Apparently this setting affects graphics card strain tremendously but for some reason it's not on the graphics/video tab in-game (I forget exactly in which tab this setting can be found).

charononus · July 2014

Work on finding the settings to lower them. Then if you haven't done this already tweak xp for max performance. You can find some instructions on this here: http://www.blackviper.com/2002/04/17/black-vipers-windows-xp-super-tweaks/

You should be able to play at low settings like this for some time yet, but the thing that will kill you is the ram limitation eventually in my opinion. I would plan on probably needing a new system to continue playing within the next year or two though. Good luck.

asriazh · July 2014

There is a way to enable at least 4gb support for Win XP 32bit. You can find out more about it here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/Dn613975%28v=vs.85%29.aspx.
Maybe that helps, especially if your graphicscard uses shared ram.

Oh yeah, and limiting your texture memory at the games graphics settings to below what you have might help too. That way, even if the game wants to use more texture memory than you told it you have, there will still be some headroom.

dragon5ak · July 2014

hi guys, anyone know how long time I need to wait before its done with the patching? it has been there quite a while without anything happens.

charononus · July 2014

There should be a progress bar. There is quite a large amount of data to download if you have a fresh install.

epselus · July 2014

My game uptdated today and when I try to get in, the progess bar gets to about 3/4 and then it crashes. This windowopens from Cryptic saying my launcher crashed..like I didn't know...

and I'm suppose to tell them what I was doing when it did..the launcher crashed, what else could I have been doing??? Go figure that question...

Some help would be appriciated.

Tks

munchkinkitty · July 2014

I have the same thing, except instead of graphic error, mine says cryptic error. Not sure how to fix it, and it crashes on me quite often. I'll try turning down my graphic settings to see if it helps.
Also does this to me on the preview shard, I can't even access it actually, it crashes on me with the same error every time i try to load a character. Is there a way to adjust the settings without having to log on to a character?

Unknown · July 2014

This content has been removed.

narek15 · July 2014

Hi everyone! Thanks so much for your help! As it turns out the error was originally on my part. I forgot to put all of the settings as they were. Long story short, my whole problem was in shaders! All I had to do was put my shaders down to medium, and I played for a really long time and haven't had a single crash. In fact the performance is better after the update now, so once again the game runs like a charm. Send me a PM if you'll need help with the game's settings, in case my advice didn't help, I think I've got it figured out. I just hope that it will still run after Tyranny of Dragons since Windows XP support will expire!

P.S. PAE really helped with performance, I believe it did help with RAM, so thanks a lot for that too!

stonedkittycatx · July 2014

Sorry for thread-stealing but because I can't post my own threads I'll use this one.

So, tried playing Neverwinter for almost a week now, keep crashing all the time. At first I thought it was overheating (Laptop user). but it comes to random, sometimes I can run the game for 15 mins, sometimes for an hour. Sometimes the computer is hot, sometimes it's not, so hard for me to finds the issue.

Some specs:

Win 7 64 bit

8GB Ram

AMD A10-4600 APU with Radeon HD graphics 2.30 GHZ

AMD Radeon HD 7600M Series (7660G series, not sure why two cards for graphics are listed)

So for the overheating I have a coolin pad (Three strong fans that I can place anywhere underneath), I've lowered all the graphics to 0 basically (The game looks like blurry <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>), and nothing helps.

To point out, I had the same issue with Star Wars: The Old Republic, it was solved by putting graphics to medium and using a software that dumps my RAM every 5 min to ensure no flooding, SWTOR has a memory leak issue afterall. However, this software doesn't improve Neverwinter it seems.

So yeah, sometimes I can barely make it by the character screen, sometimes I can do 1-2 dungeons, it's really randoms.

Please, any ideas you may have. This is the first of literally dozens MMO's that I actually enjoy, would hate to have to abandon it because of my computer.

mrseele · July 2014

Well, as I am also unable to create a new thread for this and did not find one better suited, let me tell you about the gameclient.exe crashing at a certain location in protector's enclave. As I am not familliar enough with Neverwinter to describe the location to you with just words, I took a screenshot of all I am able to see of the game world since then: Link to my puu.sh image. This is taken directly after login with my character and after that the screen keeps frozen and the game becomes unresponsive.

It all started about half a year ago (i guess ...), when I started the game for the first time after a long pause and immediately got stuck on a similar screen, but on another location within the enclave (near Sergeant Knox). I then searched the internet for an explanation and/or solution, but ended up uninstalling the game because I continously stayed unsuccessfull.

Now, today, I gave it another try and was happy to see, that I was finally able to play again and wandered around the enclave for a little sightseeing, just to familliarize myself again with the game, when I came along the location shown in the linked picture above (not very far from Sergeant Knox, right around the next corner), where the game froze with an audio static and forced me to forcequit the game. (It was a slightly different image then, because my character was visible and there were different players around)

I then restarted the game, rellogged in with my character for about ten or eleven times, each time getting a sceen similar to the one linked above and an unresponsive game. With every try, I changed settings (maximised window <-> fullscreen, GPU and CPU sliders to verly low and back, DirectX 9 <-> 9ex <-> 11, reduced file streaming on <-> of ...), resulting in no change whatsoever. I also monitored my system (CPU and RAM usage) for the whole time, which showed no indication of any misbehaving.

Loading my second character worked fine, until I again entered the area and got stuck the same way, but this time from the other side (about the same distance from the blue circle, near the lion and the ark). I have no explanation of my own and I dont want to delete any of my two characters, so I, again, want to but can not play the game.

I would very much appreciate any help you guys can offer me, so I finally can play Neverwinter again.

PS: My system: Win 7 Pro 64 Bit, 6GB RAM, 4x2.7 GHz CPU, NVidia GeForce GTS 250 with up-to-date drivers; game launched via Steam. Setup has not changed since the game worked perfectly fine for me (a "long" time ago) (except for the driver versions, of cause).

Crashes

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