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Okay so this game has gone from a buggy game to malware now.
coldnapalm
Member Posts: 9,653 Arc User
So for the last couple of months, the game has been buggy as all hell and crashing WAY more than normal. However the last two weeks, when the game crashes, it literally takes out EVERY other program that is running at the same time. Discord, web browser...everything that is running. What is worse, as of last patch, when the game crashes and it takes out my Discord that is running, it causes Discord to get corrupted and needs to be re-installed. I have no idea how the hell you managed to TRIBBLE things up so badly that it causes other things to crash...but to corrupt files of other files...WTF is happening here?!?
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I'm assuming you're on windows 10. For your processor I need you to pull up the Settings tab and go to the System tab. Go to About, then under processor I need you to copy and paste the info under the Processor bit along with how much RAM you have. I also need to know what version of windows you have, such as the latest version 2004.
For your video card pull up the Settings tab again and go to Display. Scroll down until you see Advanced Display Settings and click that. You should see it saying "Connected to: (video card here)". Copy and paste that for me. You will also see "Display adapter properties for Display (number here)". Click that and it should bring up a box telling you how much dedicated video memory you have on the card.
Having this info will let me know the exact specs you're using so I can try to search for possible issues with those items and eliminate some of the more serious items as possible issues. I also don't want to tell you the wrong thing for the wrong part and something worse potentially happen if you catch my drift.
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To eliminate a few more potential culprits. Do you have the game installed on a SSD or HDD? If it's on a HDD, what brand of drive is it and how many RPM can it get? If it's on a SSD, what brand and kind of connection is it, such as PCIE or SATA? I ask because I once had a HDD get stuck spinning at 7200 RPM and bogged down my windows a few years back. Also certain off brands of SSD can be hit or miss. Want to eliminate the nastier stuff as possibilities first if you catch my drift. For your rig, what do you have as an anti-virus/malware type program(s)? Some of those don't always play nice. I'm also assuming that all drivers are up to date? I'm assuming your windows is good to go on updates as well?
When you have your rig fired up and you're doing a normal gaming session, what kind of stuff do you have running in the background and in general such as processes and programs? Are you launching through ARC, Steam, or just using the launcher itself? Do you have any crash logs from STO saved by chance? If you do and don't mind wiring that over I can look through that and hopefully get an idea of what could be up. It will get sorted somehow come Gre'thor or high water.
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For example, if a bad memory location is only returning a value of 0, then programs that don't access that location or that expect it to be 0 might not have a problem, but a program that wants to change it to something else could have a problem. And depending on what the memory location is being accessed for, the results could vary wildly, from a miscolored pixel on a screen to a full blown crash. (So one program might crash while another might not have any noticeable problems. Or might not have a problem unless a very specific sequence of events occurs.) And it's possible the memory location might only have an intermittent failure, which would complicate things quite a bit.
-For your computer, how many storage drives do you have in it? Such as in my case I have 2 SSD and 1 HDD right now.
-What kind of power supply do you have and how many watts is it? Also how old is your power supply? Mine is an EVGA 650watt as a reference for what i'm looking for.
-When everything crashes, does it just crash to desktop but otherwise leave the computer running? Does it full on bluescreen or what exactly does it do?
From the answers you've given and what my guy is saying we're concerned one of two things could be going on. First is that your power supply could be overloading with everything going on. The second is that one of your RAM sticks could be having a fit and memory dumping.
-For the graphics card, that thing alone is going to need at least 400watts just to keep it happy. For the processor it says it only eats about 65watts of power from what we've found, but in reality they're actually close to 165watts. If you don't have a strong enough power supply, this can cause issues that will feel like hardware failure because they can't get enough power, so they take a dump like a car that can't get enough gas. Power supplies generally are able to supply extra energy in bursts as needed. However if the power supply is older or damaged, the capacitors that allow it to do so could be burned out.
-If it's the RAM memory dumping, this can cause files and other programs to corrupt depending on what was loaded into the RAM at the time the memory dump occurs and what it was messing with. Generally memory dumps occur when a RAM stick is failing, or something happens with software. Assuming that one of your RAM sticks is memory dumping, the trick will be figuring out if it's one of the sticks failing, or if there is something else at play.
STO can pull alot of resources when it wants to, and it's possible that if one of the two things above is going on, STO is simply the catalyst for an already existing issue. I know this is alot to throw at you at once, but the good thing is we know more of what it's not, which brings us close to the solution.
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It is entirely plausible that STO is attempting to access some resources that both these are trying to also use, so my first suggestion would be to disable either Norton or Malwarebytes alternately and see if the stability issue with STO resolves itself. If it does so, it might be worth considering removal of said antivirus.
If you really want to use two, then consider an cloud based agent style one (such as Cylance Smart Antivirus or Crowdstrike) as your secondary as this will not require the same resources as a full program style one.
I am going to bet you... Well, I am going to claim a stake, that I bet it's actually Norton and STO that's not getting along. Norton has been really bad software for years, it's worse than.. Well, I guess on the same level as McAfee.
Norton just puts a heavy pull on your resources without offering much protection, or actually doing more harm usually. Also, why do you have two anti virus programs? This was usually a "no no" back in the days, I dunno how it are these days.
But yeah, I've been running STO fine since beta release.. I do have rubberbanding issues, random disconnects like every other player. But not that the game application physically crashes or freezes, so no.. STO doesn't contain a virus or malware, remove your tin foil hat.
And I'm on a "budget" laptop, lol. I bet it's you having Norton and Malware bytes, and a ton of other gunk running in the background.. Bloatware.
And yes... It does sound like a memory fault, when you're running all this gunk. It's loaded somewhere, so if that fails.. Because of STO, it could be STO is a bad coded.. I've seen STO had this problem a few years ago? That the game had a problem releasing memory back to the system fast enough..
Especially on systems with low amounts of RAM (not your case though), but it could be a combination of STO doing memory poorly (which wouldn't be a problem on a well to do computer), but for you.. It crashes the buffer its in, so everything stored in that memory is corrupted. That's why STO is able to corrupt files of other programs.
I'd fun a full hardware diagnostic, but if you got a custom built gaming rig... You don't have access to such a bios function I assume.. Hmm..
Now you mention a Ryzen 5 1600 at 3700 Ghz. I looked it up because I have a 3600 and the base clock on that is 3600 Ghz, so I wasn't surprised to see the base clock on a 1600 is listed at 3200 Ghz with boosting to 3600 Ghz. I assume that means you're overclocking your 1600 so have you considered downclocking it or setting it back to factory defaults to see if that helps?
The above command will scan Windows for corrupt files and attempt to fix them. Very rarely this command can stop windows from loading but that only happens in something like 0.5% of cases or less and only when windows is already badly corrupt. So do a backup first just in case.
STO does seem to be in the worst state it’s been for years. Constant crashing, being kicked to the desktop are well known bugs within STO that like you say have been way worse than normal recently. This bug is practically bad when you load into TFO’s and get kicked out of game, that crash is 100% a bug within STO and not our devices.
If the bulk of the crashes are when you start a TFO its very likely STO not your PC.
Something like BDO may be much better optimized with a better code base. You really don't know its not a hardware issue just because it runs one thing fine and not others, because different software can stress the hardware in different ways.
Honestly dude, you don't need an overclock for what you're doing anyways. Try disabling the overclock and running everything as normal for a bit.
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That might've been true decades ago, it is not true today - modern computer components are DESIGNED to be overclocked - that's why all companies that have their own tuning software for things like CPUs, GPUs, motherboards and so on all include overclocking as a standard feature.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
The reported problem happens at the same point as the common well known bug in STO where the game crashes/kicks you out on loading a TFO. The same bug that often effects multiple players at the same time ruling out our own systems. Its still worth trying without an overclock but everything is pointing to STO not the overclock or systems. Anyway on the system he has an overclock is normal and how its designed to work. I forced my overclock off and it made no difference. My Discord doesn't get scrambled but I get the same crash/kick to desktop bug around 1 in every 6 TFO loading screens if its a good day I might go 1 in 10 runs without a crash. Entire groups experiences it. Often on voice chat its, Pottsey+ player B, + Player C have all crashed again on TFO map move. Sometimes I make it into the map and others crash out, sometimes it just me that crashes out, sometimes is 3 of us. Never had 5 of us. Seems to be around 1 to 3 people when it happens.
The crash/kick out of game on entering a TFO is 100% a bug with STO not our systems.
Not everything is, no. Intel sells a number of their chips as locked, certain motherboards don't have any support for overclocking anything. Generally though, if it can be overclocked it seems like it is well within the realm of 'normalcy' to do so, at least within reason.
When I put my computer together, I went on a hunt for info to understand how it all works, how it should work and whether all the parts are working fine and so on. I had no intention of overclocking any of it, but I ended up misunderstanding some info I saw somewhere and what I was seeing in monitoring software and started trying to figure out if there was something wrong with my system, as I thought the CPU was getting too much voltage.
Turns out it was probably fine the way it was, but in learning all I could about that, I came to the conclusion that overclocking doesn't have to push a thing to the absolute limits, it can be tweaking it differently to get positive performance changes out of it. In my case I ended up pushing the CPU clock up as far as it could go while lowering the voltage. So my CPU is overclocked but actually runs cooler than factory settings, which is interesting.
Stability testing was the hard part, though, because it can run programs fine for a while at clocks that are too high for that fancy piece of glass, but eventually crashes randomly. So stepping it down a few times from where I thought it was stable was a bit annoying, but it seems to be completely stable now, and still runs faster and cooler.
In coldnapalms case, I imagine the OC was fine, however its possible the chip could just be degrading over time. Stuff gets old and wears out, and the 1600 is several years old now. Maybe that is not the problem, as if it is a common crash as pottsy says, then it probably is STO in some way. Still ruling out the OC should be an easy step to take.
Troubleshooting means ruling things out systematically, no matter how stupid it seams. Even asking the dumb question of is it plugged in properly? You'd be surprised how many times I've found that to be the problem when other people ask me for help IRL. Obviously that isn't the issue here, but going down a list of possible issues one by one to rule them out is how you find the real problem.
Again, whether BDO or STO stress more or less may not matter, it can be how they stress. STO coding is a mess! We all know this. It may be demanding things that stress the CPU in just the right way to crash, as its originally coded for older hardware, older, defunct versions of windows, and is crazy spaghetti in any case.
As for BDO, I played just fine on an old i5 3570 with an R9 270 which are far older than your system. I don't know how it is now with remastered, it wasn't my cup of tea, but if anything it still shouldn't stress the CPU much at all and it should be the GPU taking the brunt of things. It isn't a single player game, the server still does most of the calculations, the client primarily draws pretty pictures, and I'd bet it is coded better than STO.
And finally I think you can just use Ryzen Master to play with your OC without going into BIOS. Its AMD software.
I'm aware of that issue, however when dealing with crashes and stuff like this, the normal culprits have to be eliminated first before automatically assuming it's the game at fault in instances like this. A thousand different things can potentially cause a crash or an issue, especially with all of the different possible configurations of system out there. Once the usual culprits have been eliminated, then we can focus on the game as being the fault. If the power supply was/is at fault, then it doesn't have to be consistent to be the power supply. Depending on what each of the games is trying to do it can draw more power in one instance than the other. If you have any of the crash logs I can look at and pass to the devs, by all means please post them or send them to me so a bigger data sample can be looked at.
It may very well be 100% the game, but I still have to ask as it's entirely possible it can be both. Again if I had the system in front of me I could probably tell you what's going on in about 10 minutes. Without being able to actually examine the machine itself, there's only so much we can do through pure text communication. Some stuff doesn't always translate as well from tech to normal person if you catch my drift.
We have to ask regardless. Overclocks can and often do eat a ton of resources. It's the logical thing to test first. As said above I could probably tell you what it is in 10 minutes if the machine was in front of me. Again it's also possible more than one thing can be going on at once. Next time I catch my IT guy on I will see what he says and go from there. Can't promise anything but will see what we can come up with.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator