Did STO brick my machine?

javrin · October 2014

So ever since the release of Delta Rising. I've been getting a "Pixel Compilation Error" at the bottom of my screen when I start the game up, but the game seemed to run more less fine. After reading today's patch notes, I figured the issue was fixed. So I log in to the game and see the same error and think to myself "Oh well, the game still runs." However, when I go to select my character, I get stuck at weird screen like someone turned the brightness up to 3 times the max setting and my system is completely frozen and unresponsive. I wait about 20 min. to see if the problem will resolve itself before shutting down my system. Now my system won't post and just beeps when I try to start it up. Ironically, I had been debating buying the Delta Operations Pack and had finally decided to pull the trigger. I was logging into the game to make sure it was still available in the C-Store (so I could use what little dilithium I had) when this happened. GG.

tl;dr
Crashed my system after character selection, system won't start up anymore.

I hope these new graphical issues get resolved quickly...

dirlettia · October 2014

Sounds like there was more going on there than STO. If I were to hazard a guess I would say your Graphics card has died. When you turn the computer on count the beeps and look that up on a working computers browser as the number of beeps should say what is wrong.

Likely you will need to remove your old card and switch to an alternate graphics output.

haplo013 · October 2014

I get the same message at the bottom of my screen as well when logging in. My Card is a bit old, but i doubt that multiple peoples cards would go bad at the same time.

dirlettia · October 2014

The message isnt the indication of a bad card. The screen going white and then the comp beeping and not booting up is an issue. My own computer is 7 years old and still has no issues here with STO and thats a laptop as well! Really your hardware was about to go anyway and STO did not help it along.

javrin · October 2014

After some research it seems the beeping indicates the system cannot detect the display (its a laptop as well). Apparently a fried video card would produce the same symptoms. That being said, my system is only about 2.5 years old and I find it strange the video cards would suddenly decide to take a dump without warning. Oh well, I guess we'll see what happens after its repaired. Until then, no STO

phantomeight · October 2014

3 beeps in the BIOS = bad video card. If it's a card that slides in, pull out and re-seat it. If it's on board.... see if you have a slot for one or its time to get another computer.

EDIT: Didn't realize it was a latop. Unless it's a gaming one with a removable card... parts and labor for replacing a laptop motherboard costs as much as a new one unless you can do it yourself.

javrin · October 2014

The laptop is an Alienware M18x so it does have removable video cards. Hopefully only one card has to be replaced and not both...

mrseavers · October 2014

That message is not from your card being bad or going bad. I got the same message and my card is only a couple of months old and doesn't have a single problem with any other game.

These problems are purely the fault of this bugged update.

However it may be possible that these problems put a lot of stress on your system. After all, quite a lot of people suffer from severe crashes that involve hung up/removed devices on a software level.

cosmicsunwind · October 2014

after the DR patch, when using DX11, my R9 290 was throwing out corrupted textures everywhere, like when the ram on a gpu is fubar. It was fixed in today's patch and now I can run DX11 without crashing and getting major artifacts, but there is the ocassional texture glitch, I was actually starting to think myself that the game wrecked my card somehow.. now i'm worried

kdfrulzfeddroolz · October 2014

Javrin, I do not know if this had anything to do with the death of your video, but since DR released I've noticed some maps are causing my GPU to get really hot and I can hear the cooling fan kick in high gear to compensate. I have a very clean system (no dust) and a case made for high airflow and in playing STO with this card for 3 yrs this is the first time it's ever done that. :eek:

I turned on the Nvidia system monitor so I could watch the fan speed and temperatures, then when I went back sure enough the rpm went up as the temperature started to spike, I left the map and temp went back down and so did fan rpm after it cooled.

It's possible your GPU ran hot for too long and croaked. After searching the forums for similar complaints I see STO has had a history with overheating graphics cards in the past.... with the launch of DR it appears that this bug may have come back. :rolleyes:

sfc · October 2014

mrseavers wrote: »

That message is not from your card being bad or going bad. I got the same message and my card is only a couple of months old and doesn't have a single problem with any other game.

These problems are purely the fault of this bugged update.

However it may be possible that these problems put a lot of stress on your system. After all, quite a lot of people suffer from severe crashes that involve hung up/removed devices on a software level.

I'm not a computer expert, but I don't think you read the rest of his post. That does sound like a dead card. His card was obviously dying and STO pushed it over the edge.

mrseavers · October 2014

nakedsnake001 wrote: »

I'm not a computer expert, but I don't think you read the rest of his post. That does sound like a dead card. His card was obviously dying and STO pushed it over the edge.

You can't say for certain that "his card was dying".

I get the same kind of errors and if my card would die after the next crash you can't just say that it was dying, because it wasn't at all.

javrin · October 2014

kdfrulzfeddroolz wrote: »

Javrin, I do not know if this had anything to do with the death of your video, but since DR released I've noticed some maps are causing my GPU to get really hot and I can hear the cooling fan kick in high gear to compensate. I have a very clean system (no dust) and a case made for high airflow and in playing STO with this card for 3 yrs this is the first time it's ever done that. :eek:

I turned on the Nvidia system monitor so I could watch the fan speed and temperatures, then when I went back sure enough the rpm went up as the temperature started to spike, I left the map and temp went back down and so did fan rpm after it cooled.

It's possible your GPU ran hot for too long and croaked. After searching the forums for similar complaints I see STO has had a history with overheating graphics cards in the past.... with the launch of DR it appears that this bug may have come back. :rolleyes:

I honestly only got to play DR for maybe 6 hours and I didn't notice my fans hitting full tilt. When I first started playing STO a little after the LoR launch, my system never ran hot or had frame rate issues. After I came back from hiatus about 6 weeks ago, I noticed some maps were causing severe frame rate drops to the point that I avoid them entirely.

At this point, I'm willing the believe the graphics card may have been on its way out. But everything I'm reading in this and other threads leads me to think that STO wasn't so much the straw that broke the camel's back, but the anvil.

rsoblivion · October 2014

Sounds like STO was just the application that pushed one of your cards over the edge. The miscompiled pixel shader problem seems to stem from the DirectX type used.

I only get the pixel shader error popup with DX9 selected. Works fine with DX9ex selected and crashes to desktop with DX11 selected in the Display tab of the Options menu. On second restart of the game DX11 is now working.

deceon55 · October 2014

It's not a bad card I got this message on tribble before the launch of Delta Rising but not on Holodeck. Since the Launch I get it on Holodeck. So your card is fine.

Did STO brick my machine?

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