[a21] Sibling's PC was basically built for 7 Days, yet they can't even get past the main menu.

[vergilsparda]

They don't have a forum account so I'm posting for them, but I built my sibling's computer with pretty ok specs (at least I think so!), enough that they can run 7 Days easily; even easier than my own, which isn't as powerful. I also partially built it so they could stream (but they rarely do that now). This is a long one I know but TL:DR the system is well within the requirements to play 7 Days to Die and yet the game cannot even so much as load a world, despite settings identical to my own set up (which works without issue).

 

Their specs are as follows:

• Ryzen 7 5700X
• Radeon RX 6600XT (8GB)
• B550-PLUS motherboard, not sure if it matters, but you never know
• 32 GB DDR4 ram (16x2)
• 500GB SSD (2, actually, one for windows itself and one for game installs, which is identical to my own rig except I have windows on an HDD)

 

They installed and booted up the game for the first time, which worked fine? We turned EAC and Gamesense off because neither of us play on random servers and they trust their friends not to cheat, plus they want to play with mods (however we did not install mods on the first go-around). Gamesense is a just a preference, no hard feelings there or anything like that.

 

I had them set their video, game, and audio and settings to something reasonably low to start out with, in case setting it too high would have caused crashes, and had them make a 6k map to start out since again, sometimes 8K maps cause even me problems. Basically I wanted to take the babiest of baby steps to make sure everything worked (call me a PC hypochondriac if you must!).

 

The game crashed trying to make a map (on New Game instead of in the RWG Previewer). They didn't touch the game window while it was generating the map (I know sometimes if you click it, Windows will be all 'this program isn't responding! close now!!!!", so I made sure to tell them not to touch it while it was doing its thing). I thought maybe the crash was because they had a lot of programs open, but they didn't—only Steam, 7DTD, and Discord, and I've never had a problem using Discord while playing (even with the in-game overlay for Discord enabled) so I figured it was fine. Regardless, I had them close Discord to see if that was the problem. It wasn't.

 

They tried to make another 6K map (this time in the RWG previewer), the game crashed. They tried a 4K map in the RWG previewer, it didn't crash. We thought everything was fine. They tried loading into the 4K map with default new game settings (except the server was not listed, and was 1 player only, so essentially single player, an option I choose all the time without issue); the game crashed trying to load into the world. Nothing has been touched, the game is completely vanilla and currently still in stable A21 since I didn't want them to update to an experimental while all of this was still happening. Unfortunately, their log folder is completely empty, and neither of us can figure out why. Maybe the game couldn't get far enough to generate a log file? I really don't know : (

 

We've even tried loading into Navezgane since it's less taxing given it's a hand-crafted map with smaller towns and cities, but even that won't work. And none of this was a 'windows thinks the program isn't responding' thing, which I at first assumed it was. it more like an unusual 'game just crashes to desktop after a certain point' thing. I even had them verify their game files twice and uninstall and reinstall the game from scratch.

 

I know sometimes the 6600XT can be extremely finicky according to some people that own them, but it's definitely more powerful than my RX580 and so is the CPU. Their system should be able to run it, but, for some reason, it refuses. Windows 10 itself is also updated, as well as their GPU drivers. The system can run pretty much any other game without difficulty, including Borderlands 3, which is a pretty taxing game when it comes to things like post-processing and even CPU processing because of all the NPCs and explosions and chaos the game creates, but it's never outright crashed on them. They can even play something like VR Chat, Saints Row (2023), and other modern / 'taxing' games. It's just 7 Days that seems to not want to work.

 

I'm not even sure what to do at this point so maybe someone else has had this problem and can help with figuring it out. If the game generated a log file I'd put it here but the folder is completely empty. : /

[Fox]

Were proper drivers installed or just the crappy Windows Update drivers? Motherboard and GPU need proper drivers from the manufacturer in order for games to run properly.

[NekoPawtato]

10 hours ago, vergilsparda said:

I'm not even sure what to do at this point so maybe someone else has had this problem and can help with figuring it out. If the game generated a log file I'd put it here but the folder is completely empty. : /

When they are on the main menu and hit F1 there should be a button "Open Logs Folder" to open the folder location of the logs -- is that location empty?

Only other place I could think to try, is there a player.log file under AppData\LocalLow\The Fun Pimps\7 Days To Die? (Assuming you're on windows)

[vergilsparda]

4 hours ago, NekoPawtato said:

When they are on the main menu and hit F1 there should be a button "Open Logs Folder" to open the folder location of the logs -- is that location empty?

Only other place I could think to try, is there a player.log file under AppData\LocalLow\The Fun Pimps\7 Days To Die? (Assuming you're on windows)

Unfortunately yes, it's that folder that is empty. Which is very odd, because even when I do something that throws an error on load, the log still like, exists? It's very weird all around (and I'm not blaming the game or the devs, this has to be user error, but idk the error!

 

5 hours ago, Fox said:

Were proper drivers installed or just the crappy Windows Update drivers? Motherboard and GPU need proper drivers from the manufacturer in order for games to run properly.

yes, I always make sure to have them update via AMD's official drivers, and they're usually always up to date. 

[Fox]

Do you have Riva Tuner or anything that monitors gameplay or fps externally from the game? Apps like these are known to conflict with this game and cause instant crashes like that.

 

Also, just to confirm, is it a crash to deasktop or a hard crash and restart?

 

How brand new is this computer? Have you played other hardware demanding games on it yet with success? Basically, what I'm getting at is, is your hardware stable with no memory faults or PSU issues? Overclock settings / Ram timings tuned properly, etc? Often times, ppl are cheap and only get the bare minimum when it comes to PSU total watts output and reliabilities. Have you done a memtest86 yet (test your ram to make sure it has no errors which is still a very common issue even in 2023).

[Beelzybub]

11 hours ago, vergilsparda said:

yes, it's that folder that is empty

Start the game from Steam or the Launcher to generate a log file.

[vergilsparda]

 

7 hours ago, Fox said:

Do you have Riva Tuner or anything that monitors gameplay or fps externally from the game? Apps like these are known to conflict with this game and cause instant crashes like that.

 

Also, just to confirm, is it a crash to deasktop or a hard crash and restart?

 

How brand new is this computer? Have you played other hardware demanding games on it yet with success? Basically, what I'm getting at is, is your hardware stable with no memory faults or PSU issues? Overclock settings / Ram timings tuned properly, etc? Often times, ppl are cheap and only get the bare minimum when it comes to PSU total watts output and reliabilities. Have you done a memtest86 yet (test your ram to make sure it has no errors which is still a very common issue even in 2023).

 

From sibling directly, they're not as tech savvy so they're just relaying in their own terms, bear with them: "It's not a crash that shuts down or restarts the computer, it just a crash to desktop. It freezes up, says its not responding, and then crashes after a a little while."

 

I also had them try and load into a new world again today, and they had no success, but I did learn a little more at least: It will get to the 'loading Game Data' stage of entering a world, and then after a certain amount of time, it will crash, regardless of if they touch the game while it's loading. I did tell them not to touch it and let it run its course, which I assume they did.

 

Rapid fire on the questions you asked as best as I can answer them:

• No Riva Tuner or Afterburner or any other program like that, just Xbox Game Bar. I use it myself on my system to monitor stuff while playing 7DTD and pretty much all of my other games, so I deemed it safe. They've booted the game without it active before though, and it still has the same issues, so I doubt it's related to that (but I'll do a test tomorrow if they'll let me)
• PC is quite pretty new, less than a year old. It was a birthday gift!
• Hardware is exceptionally stable except in this one instance; they've gone so far as streaming while playing "demanding" games
• No overclocking or tuning, but I did @%$# up the specs in the original post. They have 4x8GB, not 2x16. I'm the one with 2x16. Could that be the issue? 🥴
• 650W PSU, which was a number I saw thrown around a ton with other users who also have the same/similar set up, but could be under-powered. I'd have to check it tomorrow, sibling's currently in bed
• No memtest86 but it's something I can do tomorrow as well

 

Just now, Beelzybub said:

Start the game from Steam or the Launcher to generate a log file.

 

📝 Will do once they're awake again! I thought they were already starting it from Steam and the launcher since that's usually how they start other games, but perhaps not. If this entire fiasco is because of this I'm going to die because it's such an easy fix LOL

[Fox]

Xbox Game Bar just sounds like bloatware to me, but to each their own I guess. I will say though that the features you mention does sound like Riva Tuner, and why that conflicts with this game is because you can set it up to be more or less aggressive with feature implementations which is what causes the problems. So if you can, set it up to be less aggressive or just disable it completely in task manager and see if that works.

 

Also, try disabling anti-virus software before running the game to see if that has any effect (If it's just Windows anti-virus, then it's fine as that does nothing anyway). For some reason, anti-viruses can occasionally get in the way of games. Same thing with VPN if she has one.

 

The thing about brand new computers is that they should always be stress tested as hard as possible to see if there's any faults in the hardware because warranty's aren't forever and the sooner you prove it's broken or stable, the better in the long run. By stress tests, I mean CPU Burn-in test, GPU simulated tests as well as a demanding game test for PSU (or run all 3 at the same time and bring the PC to it's knees in fps). That 650watts PSU you mentioned is within the bare minimum for that hardware, but if it's an average or poor quality PSU, then it's possible it's not enough. If you have a spare PSU laying around, you could try connecting the GPU directly the spare PSU and turn that on and then the PC and see if the game will load up. (spare PSU will need the green wire connected to any black wire on the 24 pin connector, unless all wires are black in which case use an adapter to be safe)

 

No tuning tells me the ram is running at 2100MTs with DOCP off, which hinders some performance. Go in BIOS and enable DOCP and set the ram to the recommended settings. Having 4 sticks of ram could get a little finicky with stability but it should be fine given the generation of CPU being used.

 

Right now, in my opinion, all fingers are pointing at that Xbox Game Bar as the culprit. It's definitely either a hardware issue or software conflict. It's just a matter of ruling things out and narrowing it down to the right thing.

Edited August 7, 2023 by Fox (see edit history)

[FinkPloyd]

I have 4x8Gb RAM and have no issues.

 

I recently spent a few hours remotely fixing someone's new PC issue.

It would crash at the last moment when runnning any game.

They had plugged the monitor into the motherboards, not the graphics cards, HDMI port,

 

Edited August 9, 2023 by FinkPloyd
clarity (see edit history)

[Fox]

6 hours ago, FinkPloyd said:

I have 4x8Gb RAM and have no issues.

Unless you have the exact same hardware configuration, your 4x8gb of ram working for you is completely irrelevant to this topic. It'd be like saying the spark plugs in your car work fine.

 

As for plugging into the wrong port... it's always funny to see ppl make that mistake, even in 2023, and I forgot about that one as possibility, so good on you to mention it here.

[vergilsparda]

So sorry for such a late update: I did the DOCP thing as directed, and had them run the game from the launcher: the game loads up until "loading block textures" now and then crashes to desktop. They just installed a21.1 stable and we validated all the files, they are all valid. 
 

at this point I don't know what to do because this hasn't happened before. Before we could at least get into game, but now it won't even do that.
 

edit: fixed not being able to load it, however it's the same issue of loading into a world tries to load from game data and then crashes; we still can't get to the logs folder. EAC is also now on and everything is default except graphics (I cranked them down to the lowest they will go). It's now the only game that won't load on their PC, as all others seem to work fine.

 

edit edit: the folder (appdata/locallow/7DaysToDie) that should have player logs in it is still also completely empty. It's like it just won't generate them 😕

 

We also did not use the game bar at all, I found out and Adrenalin was active in game as an overlay so I got rid of it, and also stopped a bunch of startup programs that were bloating startup, but apart from doing a mem test later we don't know what's going on.  Thankfully they don't want to play right now (they're on a FO76 kick right now) so it isn't a super pressing issue but it is there. 

Edited August 12, 2023 by vergilsparda
Update (see edit history)

[NekoPawtato]

1 hour ago, vergilsparda said:

edit edit: the folder (appdata/locallow/7DaysToDie) that should have player logs in it is still also completely empty. It's like it just won't generate them 😕

What about the AppData\Roaming\7DaysToDie\logs folder? Anything in that one now that you ran the game via the launcher?

Edited August 12, 2023 by NekoPawtato (see edit history)

[vergilsparda]

7 minutes ago, NekoPawtato said:

What about the AppData\Roaming\7DaysToDie\logs folder? Anything in that one?

 

this is what's in there, from today. I'm having them send them to me now, since I assume they're going to be important 

[vergilsparda]

Here is the launcher.log, and here is the log file with the super long name, the newest one from when we tried to load into navezgane at default settings (only changed the server visibility to unlisted, and all the graphics settings to "lowest" preset).
 

 the "[redacted]" you see is my sibling's name for their user on windows 10, I did my best to keep it private on their request but everything else is the same, copied directly from the two files generated. There were others, but they were just from previous times we tried, so I figured that they weren't important since the result was the same (gets to "loading game data", then freezes for pretty much infinity until it either crashes on its own, first by the game music skipping and repeating, then crashing to desktop, or is forced to crash by clicking on the window at any point until the windows 10 "this program has stopped responding" pops up).

 

they also wished to pause for the night since it's frustrating them quite a bit that it won't work, so I figured id let it go until tomorrow when I can hop on their PC while they're asleep and try it there (they won't mind that). 
 

of note is that their GPU driver does need to be updated again but the update is very recent since it was not there when I first posted my topic, so I don't think that's the issue. I'll memtest tomorrow as well. 

[Fox]

Ok, so they're loading off of D drive... is it safe to assume that's a hard drive and not ssd? I wonder if this game even still supports hdd anymore.

 

Someone else can correct me if I'm wrong, but the log doesn't feel complete, and I see no game stopping error at all. There's an audio related error but that's completely minor and wouldn't do anything to prevent any game from loading.

 

Game music skipping and repeating still sounds like a hardware lockdown issue to me though even though that doesn't really make sense to me either sicne other games work fine on it.

 

Also, Fallout 76... eww. I don't know what's worse, the excessive hype ppl have for Baldur's Gate 3 with 10 year old textures or Fallout 76.  😋

Edited August 13, 2023 by Fox (see edit history)

[vergilsparda]

33 minutes ago, Fox said:

Ok, so they're loading off of D drive... is it safe to assume that's a hard drive and not ssd? I wonder if this game even still supports hdd anymore.

 

Someone else can correct me if I'm wrong, but the log doesn't feel complete, and I see no game stopping error at all. There's an audio related error but that's completely minor and wouldn't do anything to prevent any game from loading.

 

Game music skipping and repeating still sounds like a hardware lockdown issue to me though even though that doesn't really make sense to me either sicne other games work fine on it.

 

Also, Fallout 76... eww. I don't know what's worse, the excessive hype ppl have for Baldur's Gate 3 with 10 year old textures or Fallout 76.  😋

 

Both of their drives are SSDs, I made sure of that. Could it be because one SSD is external and the other is internal? I don't think they have it on their external (and other games on it work just fine), since they still have room on an internal drive. I think I just let them pick whatever name they wanted for it and they chose D. I know my own drive is Y (because I named my SSD Yamato, like from Devil May Cry).

 

It is weird that the log doesn't seem complete, doesn't it? But I guess if the game doesn't load all the way then it doesn't generate a full log file? If I could screen record the entire process into a video for y'all I would, but like I said they don't want to continue tonight (but I think I could get them to let me try tomorrow morning).

 

It doesn't really need much visuals but essentially we were just sitting there for... idk maybe ten, fifteen minutes before we gave up just waiting for the game to load, and any movement or touching of the game window at all caused it to freeze and crash. Even something as simple as Alt-Tabbing to see task manager caused it to freeze. Even my own game, on slightly worse hardware, doesn't take that long to load (I think at most maybe five minutes with one hang up, and that's while playing something like Undead Legacy). There was no screen or game blackout or loss of HDMI or sound, just the repeating main menu music, or whatever music plays when you load into a world. Haven't played myself in a few days so I can't remember which one it is right now. Could it be something like audio drivers or windows drivers unrelated to the game or to AMD entirely, especially since you said the audio would be a hardware issue? they don't have audio issues with other games as far as I'm aware.

 

lol, fallout's a huge part of our family tbh, it's my mom's favorite game and subsequently mine and my sibling's. they enjoy playing it so to each their own, it gives me a headache because of the frame rate 😕 I also apologize for any spelling errors or general 'wtf are they talking about' right now, I'm high as a kite on pain medication and that's why I didn't respond for a few days loool

[Riamus]

A couple notes just to avoid any questions...

 

There game works on HDD but it's extremely slow, especially during the cleanup process that happens every 20 minutes, when it will freeze the game until complete and that can take minutes instead of seconds on an HDD.

 

If the game crashes to desktop (closing due to not responding or Alt-F4), it will often not have a complete log and will often not show the cause of the crash.

 

I am not sure the cause of your trouble but I might suggest pressing F1 while on the main menu.  Then, when you load the game, you will see if anything is happening, even if it is very slow.  Alternatively, try another map as single player.

[Fox]

I think at this point we might need to come at this from a different angle and / or start over. Oh, and just remembered... you did install motherboard chipset drivers from the manufacturer too right as that's also important?

 

Has the game ever run on this new computer. If yes, what exactly has changed between when it worked and when it didn't? If no, then start narrowing the field of what could be causing it. Make sure all important Windows updates have completed (you can prevent the optional ones from installing, though I would at least look at them to see if they're driver related). I'd also start with swapping out peripherals as they're usually the easiest to do (do not use a usb headset during this test as this was a cause for crashes a few years ago), then move onto uninstalling any and all third party stuff that might affect gaming (don't just disable them as a lot of them only pretend to close completely and the others still mess with the registry even while disabled). Make sure no third party antivirus or VPN is getting in the way, Norton and Avast are especially bad for that. Uninstall the game completely including deleting any player profiles and any traces of the game at all... make it not exist at all. Then re-install it fresh on C drive and see what happens. If still nothing, start swapping out internal hardware components if you can and are confident enough to do it.

 

I'm quite confident the game itself isn't at fault here as there are tens of thousands of ppl playing this game right now and none of them have this weird issue, and the game has been around for over 10 years, so hardware conflicts with this game would be extremely unlikely at this point. I also don't think it's the type of hardware being used or it not being good enough. I think there's just a weird and random glitch somewhere that just needs to be sourced out.

 

Also, stop worrying about not touching anything while it's loading. If it crashes while moving the mouse, then that only serves to save you some time as it was guaranteed going to crash anyway. Moving the mouse only informs the task manager sooner that the game isn't responding.

 

Now back to Fallout... lol. I love Fallout too as I grew up playing the entire series. My favorite was always Fallout 2. I'm not sure why so many preferred Tactics as the story and gameplay seemed very bland, but to each their own. Fallout 3 and New Vegas was also my favorite but I feel like it fit in a different category of game style especially since it reduced a lot of the role play elements. Fallout 4 was ok I guess, but further reduced role play elements, and the story was in some way inconsistent and weird. Fallout 76 was just a hot mess at release and still is to this day. They took away so many promised features and made it into something that can only be described as barebones and unfinished.

 

I'm heading to bed now and will be away all day tomorrow, so I hope this helps and / or keeps you busy until then.

Edited August 13, 2023 by Fox (see edit history)

[Riamus]

5 minutes ago, Fox said:

Also, stop worrying about not touching anything while it's loading. If it crashes while moving the mouse, then that only serves to save you some time as it was guaranteed going to crash anyway. Moving the mouse only informs the task manager sooner that the game isn't responding.

I'd point out that this is only partially correct.  For example, the RWG generator will go non-responsive at one point.  If you don't close the game, it will complete the generation.  So letting the not responding crash occur can prevent things from actually completing.  That being said, I haven't noticed a not responding issue when loading the game before.  But even if you get that, there's no guarantee that the game will not finish loading if you allow it.  A not responding error just means the game hasn't informed Windows that it's still doing something in a little bit.  If it's using a lot of resources to do something, this can happen and isn't anything to really be concerned about.

 

In any case, you can move the mouse all you want and use the keyboard and so on.  Just don't choose Close when you get the not responding error and don't click a bunch of times on the game when it's not responding or Windows will close it on its own.

[FinkPloyd]

You are geting an error;

WRN [EOS] [LogEOSRTC - Warning] EOS_RTCAudio_GetAudioInputDevicesCount is deprecated. Use EOS_RTCAudio_QueryInputDevicesInformation with EOS_RTCAudio_GetInputDevicesCount instead.

 

This thread also has that error

 

 

[vergilsparda]

4 hours ago, FinkPloyd said:

You are geting an error;

WRN [EOS] [LogEOSRTC - Warning] EOS_RTCAudio_GetAudioInputDevicesCount is deprecated. Use EOS_RTCAudio_QueryInputDevicesInformation with EOS_RTCAudio_GetInputDevicesCount instead.

 

This thread also has that error

 

 

is there anything besides having residual mod data that could cause the error? they've never had any mods installed prior to this. I wanted them to start vanilla to get used to the game before they tried any sort of mods n such.
 

I also did verify the game files, but only once, and funnily enough that was after I had cleaned the game files (it was one of the things I did a couple days ago before they kicked me off their PC). The single verification said the game data was completely fine (no "failed to validate" notification). 

this is also happening on any new world they create, regardless of what world it is (navezgane, RWG, not sure about the pregens but I'll try those too), no matter how many times they try a new game. I can keep trying but I fear it may just give the same error over and over again.

 

I suppose all I could do is have them uninstall and reinstall the game completely (which they won't want to do for a while... they're a bit stubborn sometimes lol). That's really all I can think of. 
 

they might be leaving to do some shopping for quite a while today so I can probably hop on their computer and try while they're gone, I feel much better and less like a zombie today than I did a few days ago (oh the joys of new medication 😞). I'll also try updating drivers, BIOS, etc, everything that was mentioned here earlier. I made a list!

[BFT2020]

Since it is a new game install, go into game launcher, tools, and clean out everything.

 

Then have Steam validate the game files at least 2 times.

 

Start it up and run it again

[FinkPloyd]

17 hours ago, vergilsparda said:

is there anything besides having residual mod data that could cause the error? they've never had any mods installed prior to this. I wanted them to start vanilla to get used to the game before they tried any sort of mods n such.

 

Did you add a drive from an old PC that had run 7D2D and used mods?

 

If so check that drive for an out of date 7D2D user data folder.

[vergilsparda]

18 hours ago, FinkPloyd said:

 

Did you add a drive from an old PC that had run 7D2D and used mods?

 

If so check that drive for an out of date 7D2D user data folder.

 

No, they were brand new drives from newegg, and as I've said, they've never played or installed mods ever, because I wanted them to play vanilla 7 days to die to get used to it (they're coming from console like I did, but they're skipping over every other alpha and going right into a21, or at least trying to). I didn't even send them my Mods folder (or at least a list of the mods I use for say, a private server together). It's 100% vanilla, first-time installation, brand new game, brand new data folders, brand new everything, and nothing has been touched.

 

I also apologize if I sound grumpy, I am definitely not meaning to come off that way at all but my toothache is makin' me grumpy so sometimes it shows through text regardless of if I try and sound nice or polite; I promise I'm just trying to explain as best I can and I have no ill will towards anyone here since y'all are trying to help!!

 

Unfortunately I actually have to give up on this right now because my sibling is being stubborn and they're getting extremely annoyed whenever I try and help them because it cuts into their PC time (even though I've asked a million times about doing it while they're not on it, but y'know, siblings and logical solutions to annoying problems, am I right lol), so this will have to be on hold until I can somehow get on their PC myself to see what's going on. If there's any update or it miraculously starts working out of nowhere I'll post here with all the logs and stuff to see if you guys can parse them for information, but apart from doing everything said here there's not much else I really do.

 

And since I think someone asked, they don't use USB headphones, they're plugged into a standard headphone jack on their PC case through earbuds, though they do have an extension cord thing that allows for microphone access as well (which has not affected any other games at all, and works perfectly for them in multiplayer games). Audio drivers are up to date and not corrupted, and they're not playing through speakers or anything like that either. HDMI cord is pretty much brand new and works fine as well, I don't know if that could be a potential issue but I figured I'd throw it out there.

 

Once they get an itch to play 7DTD I'll convince them to just let me do what you all have suggested here but unfortunately until then there isn't anything more I can do