Game completely freezes up PC

[voge3]

I have played previous alphas from an old MSI gaming laptop. Monday I got a new computer: Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-10900K CPU @ 3.70GHz   3.70 GHz, 32gb of ram, Geforce RTX 3090, with a z490 phantom gaming 4 motherboard. I am pretty sure nothing is wrong with any of the hardware on my PC. I even have the stats displayed on the screen while in game. the CPU rarely gets about 25% and the GPU rarely gets above  40%. Tuesday was the first day I downloaded the game and spent 3 hours playing, with no crashes. Wednesday I got home from work and fired up my saved game from the previous day. after about 45 minutes of playing, the game completely froze. I was unable to do the ctrl+alt+delete and get to the task manager, I was unable to bring up the windows bar, nothing. I had to hard restart the PC. I tried again, and again, reading forums, reinstalling everything, clearing everything, changing settings as suggested for old alpha versions, I have exhausted all known/found "potential fixes" online. I havent been able to find anybody else that has had the exact same issue. I have read where people say their game freezes then crashes, at the load in, and randomly, but have not read a single person that has stated that their computer completely locks up and have to do a hard restart to get anything to happen. I have seen where poeple talk about posting logs, unfortunately, when my computer freezes completely, and I hard restart, it doesnt seem to be logging anything, at the time the game freezes. 

[Star69]

I would still post your log as that is your only hope of anyone helping you find the problem. Also, when you installed A20 on your new computer, did you install A19 then update to A20 or did you just install A20?

[Boidster]

The game log is begun as soon as you start, and is not deleted upon crash. Look here:

C::\Steam\steamapps\common\7 Days To Die\7DaysToDie_Data\

 

(or wherever you installed Steam). Also, you may wish to try the General Support forum.

 

You won't want to hear this, but given that this is a brand new PC, I would suspect it's an underlying issue in the system which only manifests when its under stress, like when playing a game. Memory timing, CPU/GPU overclocking, drivers, etc. Of course "everything is working fine" is the usual response here, but the fact of the matter is that the game plays perfectly well for hundreds of us with similar specs so you'll want to be open about troubleshooting the PC itself, not wondering how 7D2D is broken. Good luck, these things can be a real PITA I know.

[Pernicious]

Agree with Boidster. That sounds like the symptoms of faulty hardware, because modern operating systems is so good at abstracting hardware away from applications now, that it's very rare that a poorly written app can crash the whole PC. Drivers, more likely, but apps, usually it just makes the PC really slow and difficult to kill the process.

 

Try running Prime 95 for at least an hour to test memory and CPU: https://www.mersenne.org/download/

 

And FurMark for stress testing your GPU: https://geeks3d.com/furmark/

 

If either of those two crash, you know which it is.

 

If neither crash, run both together for an hour, if it crashes then, your case cooling is insufficient.

[voge3]

okay, sorry, I used a poor choice of words. This computer is new to me. My best friend bought 2 of them about 9 months ago. Why he bought 2, is waaay beyond me, guy has bookoo bucks and just does unethical @%$# all the time. He ran Grand Theft Auto, League of legends, and a couple other games on this computer no problem. Hes going through a divorce and she took the kids back to her hometown about 4 hours away. so now he has 2 locations he lives at, one with them when its his time with the kids, and one her in Kansas City when he does not have them. I am still open to the fact that I may have some bad drives/hardware, but he did not have problems when he used this PC to run his games. I am going to try to post my log now as the game just crashed again on me, and see if anybody finds anything odd/off with it. im not sure how to post from a specific response, but @Star69 I only installed A20, never had A19 installed on this PC.

[voge3]

Im going to post this here first to make sure Im doing it right as people have asked... this is my first time on this forum, and im quite the novice as far as the game goes, and figuring out some of these file/setting/data things. I used to play a lot of computer games back in the early 2000's, but boy have things changed. The laptop I was playing on was another friend of mine who had it already loaded, and introduced me to 7DTD, got hooked, got this computer literally as A20 arose, now having trouble getting passed day one without losing it all

https://pastebin.com/efNVcHZg

[Mahnogard]

The fact that the log ends without any errors makes me think that the system itself killed everything, it didn't come from the game. It may not be that anything is "bad" with that hardware, but since this is a new-to-you computer, that means it's been moved around recently. Stuff gets loose sometimes. If you're comfortable doing so, I would suggest taking out and re-seating both your RAM and your GPU as a first step. If the GPU is "off" just a tiny amount, it can be totally fine... until it's not. Not a bad idea to check the connections from the power supply as well. 

 

You can also open the start menu, search for "reliability history", open that and see if there are any telling "critical events" entries for the day it happened. May be some clues there as well.

Edited December 24, 2021 by Mahnogard (see edit history)

[voge3]

In the reliability history, under the critical events, it is showing a couple times where the NVIDIA container stopped working. That was at 3 am 12/23/21. The first time it happened though was around 6pm 12/22/21. I didnt get the NVIDIA container stopped working critical event at all on 12/22/21 though. The only other critical events are the windows was not properly shut down, but I didnt think there was anyway for me to get out of the locked screen without hard resetting the PC. 

 

Thanks for the help @Mahnogard. I am going to shut the PC down and Re-seat the RAM and GPU. See if that helps with anything!

Edited December 24, 2021 by voge3 (see edit history)

[Pernicious]

So do you know if the PC is actually frozen then?

 

Try Control - Alt - Delete together, or Control - Shift - Escape together. Wait at least 30 seconds. If the screen changes, the PC hasn't hung, just 7D2D

[voge3]

@Pernicious I have tried the control alt delete, the windows key, but I have not tried the control, @%$#, escape. I have waited more than 30 seconds a few times, but not every time. I am going to reseat the hardware and try running the game again. curious what the NVIDIA container stopped working means under the critical events on the Reliability History. The other thing I have been monitoring is the CPU Utilization and the GPU Utilization while in the game. I have the Performance overlay box in the top right corner of the screen that is always visible. Neither the CPU or GPU seem to spike\be stressed when the "freeze" happens. the CPU rarely gets above 30% and the GPU rarely gets above 40%. the CPU usually hangs around 20%, and the GPU usually hangs around 35%... I am currently running the CPU stress test, for about 35 minutes now, doesnt seem to be skipping a beat even though the utilization is at 100%. gonna continue to let it run for another 25 minutes and make sure nothing crazy happens, then shut it down and reseat the hardware, then do the GPU stress test then the combo stress test if neither can duplicate the problem. thanks all for all the help! Im kind of a noob again at all this stuff, so much has changed the last 12-15 years in the computer world.

[Pernicious]

Containers are kind of like micro-operating systems. They are another layer of abstraction further from the hardware. Nvidia use it to hold their other processes, and again abstract them from the hardware, so if one of the processes go rogue, it can't affect the underlying PC. Don't know how long you've been gaming, but if you remember the days where a problem with your video card meant a full reboot, now a problem with your video card more often means, a long pause, screen goes black, and everything recovers.

 

What I did find out today though, is that if the container stopped working, the problem is usually the other way around - That is, something outside the container caused the container to fail. So it's possible that you have a corrupt driver which is causing both issues?  Do you have GeForce Experience installed and the driver is the latest?

[Mahnogard]

  

24 minutes ago, voge3 said:

Thanks for the help @Mahnogard. I am going to shut the PC down and Re-seat the RAM and GPU. See if that helps with anything!

You're welcome! 

 

If you continue to have problems, you may just need a clean driver install. Many people swear by using DDU, a utility for cleanly removing old drivers, but I don't do it that way so I'm not going to try to give advice on something I don't actually do myself. (For the past several years, I've just used the "clean install" option that Nvidia themselves have in their driver installers / Experience and I haven't had any issues.)

 

The container stopping is an issue that people have had for years.  It's a common error because of how the Nvidia software works. But it's one of those things that can either be a problem or happen because of another problem, if that makes sense. But often a nice, fresh driver install clears it up if it's the Nvidia software that's causing it. 

 

Graphics stuff is weird. Everything can be fine and then one game makes one call that manages to hit on that one thing that's off and then it just flounces off in the most dramatic way possible. The worst part is that the GPU stops sending so you have no idea what's going on because of the black screen. 

Edited December 24, 2021 by Mahnogard
clarity (see edit history)

[voge3]

I was gaming back when WOW first came out, I was very young, like 12-13. got into building pc's, but then once I got into highschool and started playing sports, I fell behind. Then at 18 started working and bought a house, so I didnt really game then either, and I just got back into the gaming world probably about a year ago. Yes  i remember the video card problems used to intel a whole system reboot, I was not aware now days things are different. I do have the GeForce experience installed, and the drive is the latest. Last night I even uninstalled, and reinstalled. I just did it again a few minutes ago. Havent tried to play again yet. About to run the GPU stress test now. The CPU stress test has been running over an hour with the CPU utilization at 100% it has been flawless.

[Pernicious]

2 minutes ago, Mahnogard said:

If you continue to have problems, you may just need a clean driver install. Many people swear by using DDU, a utility for cleanly removing old drivers, but I don't do it that way so I'm not going to try to give advice on something I don't actually do myself. (For the past several years, I've just used the "clean install" option that Nvidia themselves have in their driver installers / Experience and I haven't had any issues.)

 

DDU is great! It has saved me from a full rebuild a couple times! Especially when I had both AMD and Nvidia drivers installed. (Back then, AMD and Nvidia were much closer, so every year when upgrading, I'd choose whoever was best then, and upgrade just the GPU)

 

If nothing comes out of the hardware stress test, that would be my next recommendation - DDU, GeForce Experience, and get the latest game ready driver through it.

[voge3]

Thanks guys for all the input! I have heard about the DDU as well. I actually was in the process of getting it when it was brought up here. starting the GPU stress test, and going to go from there. Gotta love troubleshooting/diagnostics. 

I do have one more question. this monitor I got has the G-Sync capabilites on it... should i be concerned/look into anything with that being a cause to the problem? not really sure how  that works, my buddy brought the PC over and set it all up, so just trying to get all the info out there in case anybody has input on it? thanks!

Edited December 24, 2021 by voge3 (see edit history)

[Mahnogard]

2 minutes ago, Pernicious said:

 

DDU is great! It has saved me from a full rebuild a couple times! Especially when I had both AMD and Nvidia drivers installed. (Back then, AMD and Nvidia were much closer, so every year when upgrading, I'd choose whoever was best then, and upgrade just the GPU)

 

If nothing comes out of the hardware stress test, that would be my next recommendation - DDU, GeForce Experience, and get the latest game ready driver through it.

Great! Can you post the basics on that? I have no issue with DDU at all, I just don't feel comfortable helping someone with a process that I am not familiar with myself. (As I told my boss the other day, "advise from experience, not conjecture" LOL)

[Pernicious]

1 minute ago, Mahnogard said:

Great! Can you post the basics on that? I have no issue with DDU at all, I just don't feel comfortable helping someone with a process that I am not familiar with myself. (As I told my boss the other day, "advise from experience, not conjecture" LOL)

 

Haha - It's far easier than you think. Just download and extract it somewhere easy to find. (Default extraction path is REALLY hard to find, so make sure you type in the extraction path yourself)

 

Then type "msconfig" into cortana/search/whatever your poison is, to get the Windows System Configuration app up:

 

 

Go to the second tab, (boot), and tick "Safe boot" and minimal.

 

Reboot, and you go into safe mode. Once in safe mode, run the app. The top option is the one you want:

 

(I'm not in safe mode just for the purposes of screenshotting this to reply)

 

When you restart, you're going to get a horrible, horrible resolution. I can't remember if it's 640x480 or 800x600, but anyway, you just have to put up with it until you can reinstall GeForce Experience/NVidia drivers. (Actually, come to think of it, the newer versions of Windows 10 might have basic Nvidia drivers already built in, so you might not - anyway, give a shot)  Oh yeah... You probably want to download that and put it somewhere easy to find before you do this, because the crap resolution means you're going to have a fun time on modern web pages scrolling and panning and dropping down text boxes.

 

 

 

[Pernicious]

Sorry guys, thought I'd do the process myself since it's been a while(I don't have any issues, but I have had both GTX and RTX cards and about 7 or 8 different Game Ready drivers on this over the last couple years since I built this PC, so worthwhile for a bit of a clean up). A couple of things to note:

 

1) It seems like DDU can also do Audio Drivers, so now you have to specify which you want to remove:

 

 

2) You can now prevent Windows from automatically finding you "the best driver", which it never does. This will force you to the low resolution, but also means you don't have an out of date Windows driver installed.

 

 

3) Let DDU reboot by itself - There are multiple stages and some are longish (over a minute), so after the first one said "So and So process complete" and there was a long wait, I thought I was supposed to reboot myself, but just to be sure, I waited another minute. It then kept say "So and so other process complete" and then rebooted. So don't manually reboot.

 

4) It seems if DDU causes the reboot, safe boot doesn't automatically uncheck itself, so you need to run msconfig again, and uncheck the safe boot option.

 

 

[Star69]

@voge3  I agree with everyone that the issue is outside of 7 Days causing your issues. However, once you get this figured out you need to start a new seed. Your log file is showing several chunk errors which usually means that the save is corrupted. Most likely it got that way from the crashes you’re experiencing. Good luck and keep us in the loop as to what you find. Two other tests that I’d recommend are Memtest for the ram and, if you have a spare, switch out power supplies. People good with meters can test the ps in place but I’m not so I have a cheap ps of same wattage to use to rule out power issues.

[voge3]

Update guys!! 

 

SOOOOO... ever since I reseated the ram, and the GPU, I have been running 7DTD flawlessly! fingers crossed, I think the problem is fixed! Thanks again to all for the input, and help!

[Mahnogard]

3 hours ago, voge3 said:

Update guys!! 

 

SOOOOO... ever since I reseated the ram, and the GPU, I have been running 7DTD flawlessly! fingers crossed, I think the problem is fixed! Thanks again to all for the input, and help!

Yay! I'm so glad it's working!! Have fun and kill lots of zombies!