Lockup During Certain Georgian Oil War Campaign Missions

[maddogg]

Did search on the forums and I could not find anybody else who have similar issues (or my search skills are not so good).

 

On certain missions (for example the 2nd mission in Georgian Oil War Phase 2 campaign), the sim freezes within few seconds after the mission starts. Doesn't lock up the OS but I do have to go to the task manager and kill DSC.exe which takes me to the BS UI. This has happened with 100% regularity. Can't get past this mission to progress the campaign. I even redownloaded the campaign files, restarted the campaign and still the same result.

 

There was no .CRASH file for this event but I did find an error file which has a timestamp around the time when the sim froze.

 

System Specs:

i7 920 (no OC)

Nvidia GTS 250

6 GB RAM

TrackIR 4.0

Realtek Audio onboard chipset

Vista 64 (a big mistake)

Patched to 1.01b

 

I run the program as an admin and have shut off UAC. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Error.zip

[EtherealN]

See if you can narrow down a specific variable where this happens - open the mission files in the mission editor and see if you can identify something that is special to the ones where the lockup occurs.

 

A tentative guess of mine would be that those missions end up with some kind of sound or other occurance that for some reason disagrees with your hardware or software.

 

Another question is - have you tried reinstalling the simulator? (As long as hardware stays the same this does not cause a loss of activations.) Could be a corrupt file somewhere, perhaps caused by something going wrong in the patching process. If you are able to identify the mission files that this occurs in you could reinstall and test them right away (note that you do not have to play the campaigns through the campaign screen for this, they are all accessible through the mission editor under the Campaigns folder). If the problem does not occur in a raw 1.0 install it was probably related to the patch in some way.

[maddogg]

Thanks for the quick reply & suggestions.

 

I've been looking at the mission that's been troubling me (ATO-B-P2.2.miz) in the editor. I did not notice anything unusual from the mission settings and I can't determine anything from the error files.

 

I finished the Georgian Oil War big campaign before under v.1.0 but using the 1.01 campaign files which was released before the patch. Never had the issue back then.

 

Hopefully somebody @ ED will look at the error file and may be able to determine what the issue is. I will reinstall DCS when I run out of options. When I first installed DCS, StarForce demanded activation 2x (all within few minutes) and I'm afraid if I do any unistall/reinstall, I may lose another 2 activations in the process.

[splashman]

Hi,

 

i have the same problems.

 

If i play this (ATO-B-P2.2.miz) mission i get to ~20sek and then BS freezes.

 

I have the same problems e.g. with the 'Airbase under Siege' mission, there i get to ~2-3 sec -> freeze.

 

It must be something sound related because if i disable sound in BS -> Options everything is fine.

 

I recently bought a new system especially for gaming (ROF, BS) because my old system had similar errors and most people told me then, that it must be my system. But to be honest, i tend to belief that the problems are BS related. All other games ran fine on both systems ( aside from a crash once in a while, but no constant hickups like in BS).

 

I even made a complete reinstall of BS with a new download (MD5 checksums checked ).

 

Old system was AMD/ATI, new one is Intel/nVidia.

Only issues i had with the setup of the new systems where sound card related, x-Fi driver wouldn't work properly in the beginning but that's now fixed (Thanks Goose81 :) )

 

I checked the freeze error with the X-Fi installed and also with onboard sound (X-Fi removed physically) both times same behaviour.

 

DxDiag shows no problems.

 

System Specs:

Q9650 (no OC)

Nvidia GTX 275

4 GB RAM

TrackIR 3Pro (VE)

X-FI Gamer

Vista 64 (only some sound driver problems, now fixed)

Patched to 1.01b

[EtherealN]

That is interesting. I just testflew those and were not able to replicate the issue.

 

Could you try running that mission with all unecessary peripherals removed? That is, no TrackIR, Freetrack, no joystick etcetera. Report if that changes anything. If nothing else it would help eliminate those things as causes.

 

Any information from error.log, errors.log and any crash file would be neat as well.

[splashman]

Hi,

 

i just tried to run the mission without sound to get no freeze but this time it didn't work. Don't know how i managed it last time, perhaps i didn't wait long enough, the freeze can happen at different times.

 

I made 8 attempts to run the ATO-B-P2.2.miz, everytime i got a freeze, but at slightly different mission times:

 

4,9 sek

4,9 sek

5,1 sek

1,5 sek

1,5 sek

12,9 sek

 

Everytime i cleared the temp folder and ziped it afterwards, i'll attach two zips exemplary.

Note, i had to rebname the zips to miz to circumvent the file size limit.

 

regards

Temp_2_4,9 sek.miz

Temp_8_13,5 sek_no_sound_no_radio.miz

[maddogg]

I too have the same problem with "Airbase under siege" mission. I disabled TrackIR and joystick and tried running these missions again but no luck.

 

Splashman's times until freeze is typical with the crashes I have. As soon as I look up the cockpit to program the flare dispenser and turn on the dust protection system, the screen freezes though the mouse cursor can still be moved around the screen.

[splashman]

Bump.

 

Any progress?

[maddogg]

Reinstalled the program under C: instead of Program Files (x86) and the problem still exists. I also noticed that the 2nd mission of the "Republic" campaign has the same problem but the freezes do not occur 100% of the time like the missions mentioned above.

[Panzertard]

Hi guys - both of you mentions "freeze" and splashman disabled sound and found a "workaround" - no freeze.

Here's my requests;

- Maddog, will disable sound (the hardware through bios / device manager) make it work again?

- Both, dxdiag files please - may provide some more data on your setups, really helpful in this scenario. :)

 

EDIT: Now if we see the connection between sounds and freeze - then I would start thinking of finding "custom codecs" on your computers. If you do use the OS default sounds codecs (and havent installed any other Codec-packs to fix any other games etc), then we may have to continue to dig. ;)

Edited October 18, 2009 by Panzertard

[maddogg]

I disabled the motherboard audio chip and ran the ATO-B-P2.2 & Airbase under siege missions again and they stilll froze. I have to use task manager to kill the simulation and return back to the Black Shark user interface.

 

I've included a DxDiag report and hopefully that might shed some clues. Thanks for looking at this problem.

Maddogg DXDIAG.txt

Edited October 18, 2009 by maddogg

[splashman]

Hi guys - both of you mentions "freeze" and splashman disabled sound and found a "workaround" - no freeze. Snip ...

 

 

Hi,

well, as i stated in one of the previous posts it happened one time, with sound disabled that the missin ran through, but i didn't verify it with multiple tests.

Was happy, because i THOUGHT i had found a solution.

But the last time i tested it with multiple test runs even with sound disabled i got the freeze.

 

I attached both versions of DxDiag, 32Bit and 64Bit, not sure, which is needed.

 

Thx so far.

DXDiag.zip

[Panzertard]

I've looked close at your steups - I cannot find anything specificly wrong there.

So I went ahead of testing the mission again - and I'm able to produce some sort of issues there myself.

 

In one and the same flight;

My #2 enganged some units (I think it was when he fired some missiles):

2 x the game switched to desktop automagicly, it felt like Nvidia Display recovered from a crash - except but it wasnt that.

Was able to switch back to the game and continue again.

I've never seen this kind of issue previously.

 

Some enemy air units entered the area, we engaged those - while my missiles was flying I got;

1 x lockup / freeze. Had to kill the DCS process to recover.

 

So there might be something with this mission - and our setups.

- I can see that all 3 of us use Nvida - two of us have the latest 191.07 driver - splash is using 190.62.

- TrackIR 3 or 4 for all of us. (I doubt this is part of the issue - tests will show).

- We're all on NT 6.x (Vista or Win 7) x64.

 

Apart from that I think this one needs further investigation.

If you guys are able to come up with something that can make a difference, give us a hint.

 

I'll try to test the mission again with some older drivers, to see what difference that makes. (181.x series if I can find it for Win7).

 

Just a final note: This issue may take a bit to figure out - so if you guys desperatly need a workaround to continue the campaign I might suggest a few things.

* Be sure you dont use any mods at all if you want to progress in the mission.

* You may want to try to use another Nvidai driver (older in this case).

* If you do have a secondary boot (with XP or something) you might be able to continue the mission there. But I doubt you have a dualboot just sitting there, right? ;)

Edited October 20, 2009 by Panzertard

[splashman]

Hi,

 

all my test regarding freeze in the ATO-B-P2.2 mission were done without joystick & TIR connected. Someone asked to do it that way.

I usually only enable the extended info on top of the screen to get the mission time readout. Then i wait for some seconds to make sure that the mission doesn't freeze without unpausing, ~30-50sec.

Then i unpause and wait for the freeze, between 1,5 -12 sec mission time, with a preference in the range of 5sec.

Only thing i didn't do was to reboot between tests.

 

Thx

Edited October 20, 2009 by splashman
spelling

[maddogg]

 

I'll try to test the mission again with some older drivers, to see what difference that makes. (181.x series if I can find it for Win7).

 

;)

 

Nvidia's website has an archive of old drivers. They have 181.71 available. I was thinking of trying the older Vista64 drivers but my copy of Win7 should be arriving any day and I'll give it a try on the new OS. Also, maybe I should do a dualboot installation just to be sure Win7 isn't another M$ fiasco.

[dsobbe]

In the Georgian Oil Wars, Phase 2, mission ATO-B-P3.3, The program stops and a Vista error window pops announcing that "the program has stopped working and will close". The program then goes to the debrief screen where the scores are all zero.

The details of the error are:

 

Problem signature:

Problem Event Name: APPCRASH

Application Name: dcs.exe

Application Version: 1.0.1.0

Application Timestamp: 4a7acae0

Fault Module Name: ZweiBlau.dll

Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0

Fault Module Timestamp: 4a79748b

Exception Code: c0000005

Exception Offset: 000120df

OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.768.3

Locale ID: 1033

Additional Information 1: 3311

Additional Information 2: 38a4fb6e0136c71b73ee49b1743b7892

Additional Information 3: eaff

Additional Information 4: a548d147c22b40bbaeaab6fd2709233e

 

This error occurs at random times during the mission and doesn't seem related to screen activity.

When I run this mission outside of the campaign, that is as a single selected mission, it runs without error. Hope this helps.

I would upload data on this problem, but cannot figure out how to do that on this site. I'd appreciate it if someone could point me in the right direction.

 

ADDITIONAL INFO ADDED 10/24/09:

I've found that the above error can usually be triggered by zooming in on the Shkval screen (Ins/keypad2) during high mission activity. Also, that view will alternately cause a freeze up. When the Task Manager is brought up to close the program the following Vista Application Error message pops up:

 

DCS:DCS.EXE Application Error

The instruction at 0x0 CE 7220df referenced memory at 0x 00000000. The memory couldn't be written.

 

Then, as above, the mission closes back to the debrief screen where the scores are all zero.

Edited October 24, 2009 by dsobbe
Addition info

[Panzertard]

Today I've been able to run a few more tests.

When I started I was getting the freeze 2-5 seconds into the mission (right after unpausing). Quite odd - since I was able to fly it properly the other night.

Tried starting up the mission 3 times - no such luck - same freeze.

DCS Process is running - no crashlogs - no events to record anywhere.

Used drivers 191.07 at that stage.

 

Took the time to downgrade to 182.06. Killed antivirus - ensured that I had a quite healthy system.

Disabled TrackIR and Saitek.

3 attemps - 3 freezes.

 

I will now do the full test of reinstalling, and test from v.1.0 and 1.0.1 with Nvidia 182.06 and 191.07.

 

The mission is still ATO-B-P2.2.miz

[Panzertard]

I've been successful at flying the mission 2 times with DCS 1.0, Nvidia 182.06. No freeze - just a tiny "stutter" 5 seconds after unpausing.

Tested with 1 CPU core, and full Affinity. Both successful.

[Panzertard]

- Upgraded to 1.0.1a

- Just set the resolution again - and Simulation mode (was changed to game mode)

- STarted the mission \Missions\Campaign\ATO-B-P2.2.miz again

- Froze 2-5 seconds after unpause.

- Tested 2 more times - same result

 

- Loaded the ATO-B-P2.2.miz from a v.1.0 directory

- Same result - froze

 

- Renamed the v.1.0.1 Ka-50 directory to Ka-50.old

- Renamed a copy of v.1.0 folder to Ka-50

- Started the game with the v.1.0 of the mission

- No freeze.

[Nate--IRL--]

I have this problem with the Airbase under siege mission too.

 

Works Fine with V1.0. Does not work for more than 2sec with a clean v1.01 install or my main v1.01 install.

 

I will try again with the soundcard disabled

 

Nate

 

Edit - Sound disabled made no difference. I'm seeing more of this type of crash in some online missions annoyingly. It is the same type of crash where everything freezes, but the yellow mouse cross hair is still visible and movable.

In one specific instance, I remember it locking up just as I saw the first bullet impact from my cannon on a target through the Shkval.

 

the Airbase under siege mission makes it very reproducible

Edited October 21, 2009 by Nate--IRL--

[Panzertard]

It doesn't seem to be the missions themselves - rather a change (quite lot changed) to the engine or units/objects which seems to contribute to the problem.

[maddogg]

Did some investigation last night and regardless of what Nvidia drivers (Vista64) I tested, it still led to the same problems.

 

Panzertard, I think you may be right. Looking at the original error file that I attached with the original post, plus the new error files in the temp file, I think the problem maybe due to certain objects in the engine.

 

I also discovered another mission with the same problem. ATO C.P5.2 but this time it usually takes 1-2 minutes before the sim freezes.

[EtherealN]

Could you see if there are any timed events in the mission design that would load a specific object at those times? Or trigger zones that would spawn such an object after the player has moved a distance corresponding roughly to that timeframe?

[ViperVJG73]

Sorry, It's not a sytem problem.

Solution:

For the mission ATO-B-P2.2 to many vehicles starting in the WEDGE (CONE) formation.

The game crashed.

When the vehicles start in the LINE abreast formation the mission runs fine.

 

You can change this under "TYPE" in the ME and must check all vehicles in the unit list.

 

changed groups:

-RU IFV2

-RU TANK1

-RU TANK2

-US IFV2

-US TANK1

 

Good luck.

Edited October 23, 2009 by ViperVJG73

[maddogg]

Vielen Dank Viper!

 

Your solution works. I modified the formation for the assets mentioned and the sim no longer freezes. I ran the mission several times to make sure its repeatable.

 

Any idea if this is a 1.01 issue because I don't recall having this problem when it was 1.0.