Crash and PC restart

[generalcoffeemug]

Recently installed an RX 6600 XT and now the game crashes in less than an hour every time I run it. I've tried all the usual things like reinstalling drivers, trying a new game save, rebuilding a new game world, verifying integrity of game cache, etc. I tried disabling graphics all options and using minimal settings. This game worked with my old build up to late 2021, only difference of which was the GPU. Looked around and couldn't find much. Anyone else having this issue? I really don't want to have to wait for the game to update or wait for Radeon to update drivers.

 

I already checked the crash logs myself and couldn't find anything to fix the problem but if anyone can find something I missed here is the latest crash log which expires in 6 months:

https://pastebin.com/j1xSNRNz

 

I also monitored the resource monitor up to crashing which showed nothing being written to disk, only read so I don't think this is a pagefile issue. Additionally I moved the page file location to a disk with more space and still got crashes every time. So I ruled out the pagefile being the problem. And the event viewer didn't have errors or warnings related to the game, memory, or any other hardware in the time frame leading up to crashes.

 

Not sure what else I can do other than wait for the game to patch, or wait for my GPU's drivers to patch, or get a new GPU at some point in the future. Anyone else having this issue?

[meganoth]

Maybe get a new OS. W7 is not in support anymore and if it is an incompatibility with the OS waiting will not solve it. I don't know what the stance of the game developers is with W7 support though. Do they still test the game on W7? @Jugginator Do you know?

 

But there is more you can try:

I see "ERR Invalid magic bytes in world header" which points to data from previous alphas "interfering" with operation even though it seems to be largely ignored. If you want to keep that old stuff move savegames and worlds to somewhere safe, then use the game launcher and change to tools tab to delete all old configuration. Then try again with a new world.

 

Furthermore there might still be a bug that doesn't free memory after creating a world so you should restart the game completely after creating a new world.

 

You say the game crashes, but in the title you say the PC restarts i.e. crashes. What is it exactly? If the latter there is more to it than a game bug. I would test memory first, then use prime95 to see if cpu or power supply has problems. Then test if maybe the graphics driver has a part in this: Try turning off all graphics features and see if you still get crashes. If not, add features until you experience crashes, then you can identify which graphics feature is the culprit (IF it is a graphics feature at all that instabilizes the game)

 

Edited February 26, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Star69]

I'm really not sure if it will help but I'd try excluding your saves folder from your antivirus. Like Meganoth said, the game is having trouble reading your saves folder. I'd also suggest cleaning your game files. Bring up the game launcher, select tools tab and check every box then hit clean. After that verify your game files twice as once doesn't always catch any errors. If your pc crashes and restarts then your issue is not the game but something outside the game and I'd do what Meganoth suggested.

[generalcoffeemug]

11 hours ago, meganoth said:

Maybe get a new OS. W7 is not in support anymore and if it is an incompatibility with the OS waiting will not solve it. I don't know what the stance of the game developers is with W7 support though. Do they still test the game on W7? @Jugginator Do you know?

 

But there is more you can try:

I see "ERR Invalid magic bytes in world header" which points to data from previous alphas "interfering" with operation even though it seems to be largely ignored. If you want to keep that old stuff move savegames and worlds to somewhere safe, then use the game launcher and change to tools tab to delete all old configuration. Then try again with a new world.

 

Furthermore there might still be a bug that doesn't free memory after creating a world so you should restart the game completely after creating a new world.

 

You say the game crashes, but in the title you say the PC restarts i.e. crashes. What is it exactly? If the latter there is more to it than a game bug. I would test memory first, then use prime95 to see if cpu or power supply has problems. Then test if maybe the graphics driver has a part in this: Try turning off all graphics features and see if you still get crashes. If not, add features until you experience crashes, then you can identify which graphics feature is the culprit (IF it is a graphics feature at all that instabilizes the game)

 

I was running the game fine late last year with windows 7 for as long as I wanted. The only thing that has changed with my new build is the GPU.

 

The game freezes then the PC black screens then restarts. The power supply is more than enough for this build. Already tried turning off game features and running the game with minimal settings but the game still similarly crashed.

1 hour ago, Star69 said:

I'm really not sure if it will help but I'd try excluding your saves folder from your antivirus. Like Meganoth said, the game is having trouble reading your saves folder. I'd also suggest cleaning your game files. Bring up the game launcher, select tools tab and check every box then hit clean. After that verify your game files twice as once doesn't always catch any errors. If your pc crashes and restarts then your issue is not the game but something outside the game and I'd do what Meganoth suggested.

Tried all this just now with a brand new save on the default world and the "ERR Invalid magic bytes in world header" isn't showing in the crash log file but the game still crashed the same way as before after about 20 seconds.

[SylenThunder]

PC black screening and restarting is a PC issue. Troubleshoot your crash codes.

[Beelzybub]

@generalcoffeemugTry this driver. AMD says it's the last ever driver for win 7. You might get lucky, but really, with no more driver updates for win 7, you're gonna have to move on.

Edited February 27, 2022 by Beelzybub (see edit history)

[generalcoffeemug]

5 hours ago, SylenThunder said:

PC black screening and restarting is a PC issue. Troubleshoot your crash codes.

Maybe, but I doubt it. I never get crashes other than when using this game. And I have used the GPU already for other games that are more demanding.

1 hour ago, Beelzybub said:

@generalcoffeemugTry this driver. AMD says it's the last ever driver for win 7. You might get lucky, but really, with no more driver updates for win 7, you're gonna have to move on.

I'm getting a "links aren't supported outside of the AMD site" message from that link. And I also reinstalled the latest driver again recently.

Edited February 27, 2022 by generalcoffeemug (see edit history)

[SylenThunder]

6 hours ago, generalcoffeemug said:

Maybe, but I doubt it. I never get crashes other than when using this game. And I have used the GPU already for other games that are more demanding.

Other games may appear to be more demanding, but they're only demanding of the GPU. 7 Days taxes your whole system because it's very CPU and RAM intensive where other games are not.  There is probably not another game that demands as much from your core system components that this one does. If you have some hardware or a driver that is borderline, 7 Days will find it before even some benchmarking software does. 90% of the time the weak component is the PSU.

[generalcoffeemug]

8 hours ago, SylenThunder said:

Other games may appear to be more demanding, but they're only demanding of the GPU. 7 Days taxes your whole system because it's very CPU and RAM intensive where other games are not.  There is probably not another game that demands as much from your core system components that this one does. If you have some hardware or a driver that is borderline, 7 Days will find it before even some benchmarking software does. 90% of the time the weak component is the PSU.

Well, the PSU I have is old something like 8+ years old but no problems until running this game and its wattage far exceeds what my system maxed out would need.

[Beelzybub]

52 minutes ago, generalcoffeemug said:

its wattage far exceeds what my system maxed out would need.

You can test if your ps is at fault by running a stress test. Download and install prime95 and furmark. Run both at the same time. Set your cores in prime95 to 4 or 5 cores so that the gpu and furmark have something to work with. This will max out your power draw and if the ps can't keep up, it shuts down the system.

 

I had a 500 watt ps that also was about 8 years old and would shut down at 230 ish watts used. On 7D2D shut it down. Also, there was a benchmark that shut it down, one of the unigen ones. And prime95+furmark would shut it down.

[generalcoffeemug]

2 hours ago, Beelzybub said:

You can test if your ps is at fault by running a stress test. Download and install prime95 and furmark. Run both at the same time. Set your cores in prime95 to 4 or 5 cores so that the gpu and furmark have something to work with. This will max out your power draw and if the ps can't keep up, it shuts down the system.

 

I had a 500 watt ps that also was about 8 years old and would shut down at 230 ish watts used. On 7D2D shut it down. Also, there was a benchmark that shut it down, one of the unigen ones. And prime95+furmark would shut it down.

I ran some tests earlier today with OCCT, prime 95, and PCmark10 and nothing happened.

[meganoth]

On 2/27/2022 at 2:32 AM, generalcoffeemug said:

I was running the game fine late last year with windows 7 for as long as I wanted. The only thing that has changed with my new build is the GPU.

 

Yes, but that creates a new situation and in this situation it is entirely possible that an OS bug, a graphics driver bug or a bug in the game is now triggered that wasn't before. Though a hardware problem is still the most likely cause as an OS has lots of checks to insure that a program running amok doesn't take it down as well. A graphics driver bug is a close second as a large part of the graphics driver is running on the OS level and can do lots of harm.

 

No graphics driver is ever without bugs. But usually they get corrected or developers of games and other programs simply program around any bugs in the graphics drivers they notice. Which means that testing a game with all versions of graphics drivers and circumventing problematic cases is part of making a game stable. Now **if** the problem were in the graphics driver there won't ever be a bug fix from AMD that you will ever get on W7 and additionally there may not be any circumventing fixes by TFP as well. If you can't find a cause you could make a bug report and see if something comes off it.

 

On 2/27/2022 at 2:32 AM, generalcoffeemug said:

 

The game freezes then the PC black screens then restarts. The power supply is more than enough for this build. Already tried turning off game features and running the game with minimal settings but the game still similarly crashed.

Tried all this just now with a brand new save on the default world and the "ERR Invalid magic bytes in world header" isn't showing in the crash log file but the game still crashed the same way as before after about 20 seconds.

 

 

[generalcoffeemug]

33 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

Yes, but that creates a new situation and in this situation it is entirely possible that an OS bug, a graphics driver bug or a bug in the game is now triggered that wasn't before. Though a hardware problem is still the most likely cause as an OS has lots of checks to insure that a program running amok doesn't take it down as well. A graphics driver bug is a close second as a large part of the graphics driver is running on the OS level and can do lots of harm.

 

No graphics driver is ever without bugs. But usually they get corrected or developers of games and other programs simply program around any bugs in the graphics drivers they notice. Which means that testing a game with all versions of graphics drivers and circumventing problematic cases is part of making a game stable. Now **if** the problem were in the graphics driver there won't ever be a bug fix from AMD that you will ever get on W7 and additionally there may not be any circumventing fixes by TFP as well. If you can't find a cause you could make a bug report and see if something comes off it.

 

 

 

I already put in a crash report to AMD. The last thing I could try for now is installing a different OS, yeah.

[Beelzybub]

4 hours ago, generalcoffeemug said:

The last thing I could try for now is installing a different OS

You could get more info on what is causing your system to restart with the free app from Nirsoft called BlueScreenView.

It can tell you which software, hardware, or driver caused the error. Also, Windows Event Viewer will have one or more

entries related to the unexpected restart.

[Fox]

What is your PSU specs (brand, model, etc)? I know you said it's fine and adequate for the new GPU, but I'd still like to know.

 

I myself felt the need to trade my 2 year old Corsair 750w 80+ Bronze PSU for a new EVGA 850w 80+Gold PSU so as to not worry about "dirty" power fluctuations and whatnot due to my new EVGA RTX 3080 purchase. I imagine the 750w PSU might work fine with the card, or at least for a while, but I also know PSU degradation is a very bad thing on power hungry hardware and putting a large amount of stress on a PSU that isn't really rated to handle it long term is also bad.

 

When a screen blacks out and restarts with no blue screen or anything, it's almost always a hardware issue, most commonly PSU or Ram related (or overclock settings if you're into that, keeping in mind that overclocks don't always stay stable forever, especially if you're on the edge... silicon degrades like anything else). Running benchmarks don't always uncover the problems either. My suggestion would be to run memtest86 which specifically tests all aspects of the ram for errors, and the software is completely free, just requires making a bootable cd or USB stick. As for testing power issues, that's a tricky one as it would likely require multiple benchmarks (for both CPU and GPU) running at the same time while also transferring junk files while rubbing your belly and chewing bubble gum. Seriously, you have to not only push it hard, but also cause sudden power spikes too in order to find that power limit as gaming tends to only push the power limits occasionally like power spikes (when loading new chunks or something or bloodmoon spawning, etc), unless your PSU isn't rated with much wattage in the first place in which case it would likely happen pretty quickly when gaming. Benchmarking is a somewhat stable power draw except when loading the next scene (3DMark might be better for power spikes test, but I don't think it's free). Also, 8+ year old PSU is a pretty old PSU... capacitors degrade over time. A good habit to keep in mind is to deduct 2 - 5% of total wattage capability from the PSU for every year it gets used regularly (percentage depends on the quality of parts inside the PSU). So in your case, that's roughly 16% to 40% total wattage lost due to degradation.

Edited March 1, 2022 by Fox (see edit history)

[SylenThunder]

50 minutes ago, Fox said:

I myself felt the need to trade my 2 year old Corsair 750w 80+ Bronze PSU for a new EVGA 850w 80+Gold PSU so as to not worry about "dirty" power fluctuations

I just did the exact same thing because I had the dirty power fluctuations with my two 1070's in SLI. Replaced it with an MSI A850GF 80 Plus Gold literally two days ago. My original PSU was Also a Corsair CX750M that was purchased between a year and a half to two years ago. (Which I only got because the warranty replacement for my 8/9-year-old 750W Fatal1ty PSU was shipped without a 24-pin cable, and I just gave up trying to get the right one from support after several failed attempts.) Snagged the MSI on sale for only $10 more than the POS Corsair too. (Still need to re-install Windows cause the damn issues corrupted my primary SSD.)

 

Most PSU's are only really good for 3-5 years, and are warrantied as such. At the time the OP would have purchased theirs was a really bad era for caps as well.

I'll also note that when I noticed the issue with the Fatal1ty, it tested just fine running OCCT, P95, and Furmark. Yet the system would tank if I ran 7 Days or Ark.  Eventually I load tested the rails, and found that they were bad.

 

And again, PC crashing is a PC issue. Just because the game triggers the crash does not mean it's a problem with the game client. Troubleshoot your stop codes, and do the needful.

[generalcoffeemug]

3 hours ago, Fox said:

What is your PSU specs (brand, model, etc)? I know you said it's fine and adequate for the new GPU, but I'd still like to know.

 

I myself felt the need to trade my 2 year old Corsair 750w 80+ Bronze PSU for a new EVGA 850w 80+Gold PSU so as to not worry about "dirty" power fluctuations and whatnot due to my new EVGA RTX 3080 purchase. I imagine the 750w PSU might work fine with the card, or at least for a while, but I also know PSU degradation is a very bad thing on power hungry hardware and putting a large amount of stress on a PSU that isn't really rated to handle it long term is also bad.

 

When a screen blacks out and restarts with no blue screen or anything, it's almost always a hardware issue, most commonly PSU or Ram related (or overclock settings if you're into that, keeping in mind that overclocks don't always stay stable forever, especially if you're on the edge... silicon degrades like anything else). Running benchmarks don't always uncover the problems either. My suggestion would be to run memtest86 which specifically tests all aspects of the ram for errors, and the software is completely free, just requires making a bootable cd or USB stick. As for testing power issues, that's a tricky one as it would likely require multiple benchmarks (for both CPU and GPU) running at the same time while also transferring junk files while rubbing your belly and chewing bubble gum. Seriously, you have to not only push it hard, but also cause sudden power spikes too in order to find that power limit as gaming tends to only push the power limits occasionally like power spikes (when loading new chunks or something or bloodmoon spawning, etc), unless your PSU isn't rated with much wattage in the first place in which case it would likely happen pretty quickly when gaming. Benchmarking is a somewhat stable power draw except when loading the next scene (3DMark might be better for power spikes test, but I don't think it's free). Also, 8+ year old PSU is a pretty old PSU... capacitors degrade over time. A good habit to keep in mind is to deduct 2 - 5% of total wattage capability from the PSU for every year it gets used regularly (percentage depends on the quality of parts inside the PSU). So in your case, that's roughly 16% to 40% total wattage lost due to degradation.

Thermaltake 1200W. Its installed upside down and I don't feel like taking it out to get the exact model and my accounts don't have an order history for it so I must have ordered it as a guest. Seems pretty healthy after I stress tested it earlier.

[Star69]

I agree with everyone here....most likely power supply. If you have a multimeter, there are online guides that are very simple that you can test your rails(pins on the 24 pin adaptor). It's easy, cheap and accurate plus costs no money, only the pain of unplugging. Power supplies are finicky little @%$#s. Generally, I take an easier yet slightly more expensive track.....I always have a backup power supply so if I'm questioning the ps, I'll just swap out and run the rig with the  replacement until I take time to test the potentially faulty supply.

[Jugginator]

As far as technically supporting the 64 bit windows 7 yeah but it's really out of date at this point of course.

 

I would check eventviewer, but as others have said I would check hardware. Could be your ram, too.

 

Yes newer/other games like Ark/Battlefield may seem more taxing but they aren't hitting ram/cpu/power as much; I actually use 7 days as a stress test for ram timing adjustments/tinkering as well as undervolting (to see if it's stable). 

[Beelzybub]

On 2/26/2022 at 1:55 AM, generalcoffeemug said:

Recently installed an RX 6600 XT

Maybe check the 8 pin power cable for the card. Swap it out for a different one.

[Fox]

2 hours ago, Jugginator said:

As far as technically supporting the 64 bit windows 7 yeah but it's really out of date at this point of course.

Security wise, sure, it's out of date (although, let's be honest, Microsoft's security is a joke and always has been), feature wise that could hinder gaming... debatable. I'll bet I could still get this game to run on Windows XP (the limited 3.2GB of usable ram and old / slow hardware being the only problems), unless this game doesn't support DirectX 10 anymore (I think that was the limit of Windows XP right?).

[SylenThunder]

3 hours ago, Fox said:

Security wise, sure, it's out of date (although, let's be honest, Microsoft's security is a joke and always has been), feature wise that could hinder gaming... debatable. I'll bet I could still get this game to run on Windows XP (the limited 3.2GB of usable ram and old / slow hardware being the only problems), unless this game doesn't support DirectX 10 anymore (I think that was the limit of Windows XP right?).

Correct. AFAIK there shouldn't be any issues at all with running on Windows 7 64-bit. It's better than trying Vista or 8.