Here's how I fixed my random crashes

[Rod]

First, please take this with a grain of salt. I don't expect this solution to work for everyone. Clearly, different people are experiencing random crashes for different reasons, whether it be hardware, drivers, etc.

In my case, I had been dealing with random crashes in TF2 since day 1. Sometimes I could play for an hour between crashes, and other times the crashes would occur every 5 minutes. The common theme was that my crashes always dropped me back to the desktop with no error messages and nothing in the crash log.

These are the things I tried that did NOT work:

- Adding more RAM from 16GB to 32GB.
- Screwing with different VRAM / paging file settings.
- Rolling back Nvidia drivers to 436.xx and deleting GeForce Experience.
- Lowering graphical settings in-game.
- Switching to the "testing" branch within Steam.

Now here are the three major things I did today that DID work -- and I can say this after having played for 6 hours straight today with NO crashes:

- Lowering the GPU's memory clock and core clock in MSI Afterburner.
- Forcing the game to run in borderless windowed mode.
- Creating a shortcut for TF2 with a few command line switches.

First, about lowering the GPU clock frequencies... My card has always been overclocked, but this was never an issue with any other games. I considered my overclock to be extremely stable and had no reason to believe this was causing issues in TF2.

At any rate, I dropped about 30 MHz off the core clock and 100 MHz off the memory clock in the interest of improving stability. This was based on a hunch after I checked the Windows System log in Event Viewer and noticed Nvidia driver errors around the same timestamps that my TF2 crashes were occurring.

Now, even if your graphics card is not overclocked, my research online has led me to believe that lowering your clock speeds (effectively underclocking your card) is still a viable solution if your crashes are GPU/driver related.

As for forcing the game to run in a borderless window, I used a nifty utility called "Windowed Borderless Gaming" from WesTech Solutions. It's available free online and is relatively easy to set up. Just make sure you read the manual on the WesTech site and apply a profile for TF2 correctly. I also manually set the resolution to 2560x1440 in the tool. You can set the tool to always run at Windows startup and automatically run TF2 in a borderless window every time. I also had to go into GeForce Experience and TF2's options menu to choose the "windowed" option for TF2.

Finally, the command line switches I applied to the shortcut as follows: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Transport Fever 2\TransportFever2.exe" +vt_maxPPF #32, -cpu count =8, -enableHT, -noPause

You'll need to change your number of cores accordingly.

Granted, it's entirely possible that only 1 out of these 3 solutions actually solved my problem. But I'm just so happy to finally play without crashes that I don't care to dig any deeper and find out specifically which of these methods was the true solution.

Interested to hear if anyone else has any success with this!

[Rod]

My specs:

AMD Ryzen 7 3700X (8-Core 3.6 GHz) (OC to 4.05 GHz)
32GB DDR4 3200 RAM
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Super (8GB GDDR6)
1TB M.2 NVMe SSD (800GB free)
Windows 10 Home 64-bit

[Rod]

Has this information helped anyone else with their game crashes?

[lHommeTout]

Hello, I try the 3rd part only (Creating a shortcut for TF2 with a few command line switches) and it didn't solve my crashes...

[Rod]

Messaggio originale di lHommeTout:

Hello, I try the 3rd part only (Creating a shortcut for TF2 with a few command line switches) and it didn't solve my crashes...

Maybe try the Windowed Borderless Gaming utility. It's a pretty lightweight tool and easy to use. It's seamless once you get it up and running.

[lHommeTout]

Messaggio originale di Rod:

Messaggio originale di lHommeTout:

Hello, I try the 3rd part only (Creating a shortcut for TF2 with a few command line switches) and it didn't solve my crashes...

Maybe try the Windowed Borderless Gaming utility. It's a pretty lightweight tool and easy to use. It's seamless once you get it up and running.

I try it: I still have crashes (perhaps a little bit less). Seams also depending of the map...

[Martin]

Messaggio originale di Rod:

First, please take this with a grain of salt. I don't expect this solution to work for everyone. Clearly, different people are experiencing random crashes for different reasons, whether it be hardware, drivers, etc.

In my case, I had been dealing with random crashes in TF2 since day 1. Sometimes I could play for an hour between crashes, and other times the crashes would occur every 5 minutes. The common theme was that my crashes always dropped me back to the desktop with no error messages and nothing in the crash log.

These are the things I tried that did NOT work:

- Adding more RAM from 16GB to 32GB.
- Screwing with different VRAM / paging file settings.
- Rolling back Nvidia drivers to 436.xx and deleting GeForce Experience.
- Lowering graphical settings in-game.
- Switching to the "testing" branch within Steam.

Now here are the three major things I did today that DID work -- and I can say this after having played for 6 hours straight today with NO crashes:

- Lowering the GPU's memory clock and core clock in MSI Afterburner.
- Forcing the game to run in borderless windowed mode.
- Creating a shortcut for TF2 with a few command line switches.

First, about lowering the GPU clock frequencies... My card has always been overclocked, but this was never an issue with any other games. I considered my overclock to be extremely stable and had no reason to believe this was causing issues in TF2.

At any rate, I dropped about 30 MHz off the core clock and 100 MHz off the memory clock in the interest of improving stability. This was based on a hunch after I checked the Windows System log in Event Viewer and noticed Nvidia driver errors around the same timestamps that my TF2 crashes were occurring.

Now, even if your graphics card is not overclocked, my research online has led me to believe that lowering your clock speeds (effectively underclocking your card) is still a viable solution if your crashes are GPU/driver related.

As for forcing the game to run in a borderless window, I used a nifty utility called "Windowed Borderless Gaming" from WesTech Solutions. It's available free online and is relatively easy to set up. Just make sure you read the manual on the WesTech site and apply a profile for TF2 correctly. I also manually set the resolution to 2560x1440 in the tool. You can set the tool to always run at Windows startup and automatically run TF2 in a borderless window every time. I also had to go into GeForce Experience and TF2's options menu to choose the "windowed" option for TF2.

Finally, the command line switches I applied to the shortcut as follows: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Transport Fever 2\TransportFever2.exe" +vt_maxPPF #32, -cpu count =8, -enableHT, -noPause

You'll need to change your number of cores accordingly.

Granted, it's entirely possible that only 1 out of these 3 solutions actually solved my problem. But I'm just so happy to finally play without crashes that I don't care to dig any deeper and find out specifically which of these methods was the true solution.

Interested to hear if anyone else has any success with this!

MSI Afterburner? That's like in the top 3 of the top 4 crash causes. One of the issues with these performance systems, is they default overclock your system. Just having them in memory can be a major issue. Even if you don't use them actively. IF you found underclocking the gpu works, it could be a psu power issue, when demand is made.

Anyhow.. play the game for a few days to a week.. see if it does stabilise.. if not, you have something to work on.

Also

I also manually set the resolution to 2560x1440 in the tool.

is this the default of your monitor? What settings are you using ingame? aa etc?

[Rod]

Martin, obviously you missed the part where I said all my problems were solved. My game runs like a dream now and has done so for the past 2 weeks since implementing these changes.

[donmiwi]

Messaggio originale di Rod:

My specs:

AMD Ryzen 7 3700X (8-Core 3.6 GHz) (OC to 4.05 GHz)
32GB DDR4 3200 RAM
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Super (8GB GDDR6)
1TB M.2 NVMe SSD (800GB free)
Windows 10 Home 64-bit

if your settings fixed the crash problem then probably you had a cooling issue with your graphics card or the entire system (most probably though your GPU card because you said you lowered the memory clock of the card).
I have practically the same system as you, the only difference is that I don't oc the CPU (it's really not worth and only causes problems) and Windows 10 Prof. The rest is identical. I use a Fractal Design R6 case with 3x 140mm fans installed and a Noctua DH-15 CPU fan.
Never had unexplained crashes. I run the game not windowed in WQHD (2K) resolution and highest graphics settings. The game in his momentary status is a GPU hog, put yourself in the game in the wood and you get easily a 100% workload. Badly programed piece of software. If then you don't have an optimized cooling solution installed you run into problems.

[Artemis *Seven*]

Messaggio originale di donmiwi:

Messaggio originale di Rod:

My specs:

if your settings fixed the crash problem then probably you had a cooling issue with your graphics card or the entire system (most probably though your GPU card because you said you lowered the memory clock of the card).

You don't necessarily have to have cooling or power problems with your GPU for an OC to cause a crash. Why exactly that is possible is slightly beyond my expertise, however there have been a couple games in the last 6 years or so that triggered crashes on my OC'd GPUs (I've changed twice since the first one). The OC was always super stable, having passed hours of stress testing, so I was never really sure how a lesser workload could trigger a driver meltdown...

It's just how it is. Whenever I encounter a similar situation, checking the system logs for the driver crash event is my first action, disabling the GPU's OC is the second :)

[CushyCrux]

Dear Rod, what you wrote makes sense. I saw overclocked GPU's in the past decade that had exactly this problem (980 TI OC, 7870), some games crashed and lowering the clocks about 10 to 30 mhz fixed these problems. Some times this components have stability problems from strong fluctuating power consumption in a scenario where bad programmed shaders can produce hotspots in the pipeline and or power spikes. To prevent that, there is a tech called load line callibration, which can stablilize overcolcked componets, but also can produce even more extreme spikes in power cosumtion, which then can cause a crash of PSU, also the power limit of gpu's can be reached very strictly. This is another Problem, where some GPU's just take to much power over the PCIE Slot instead of the 6/8 Pin 12 Volt Cable.

Just be happy, thanks for sharing, and don't listen to all the experts here.

[Torpedo]

It works for me like a charm.

[w43322]

Hi Rod, I am running into the exact same issue (crash to the desktop with no error messages and nothing in the crash log) Unfortunately, I have tried all the above 3 solutions and none works. This is frustrating me to death. Please add my friend so that we can talk in details! Your help will be invaluable to me.