Random crashes on both 41 and 42

[StivKobra]

First of all, my bad for not reading the instructions to post crashes in Support. Here's the copy of my post:

I got the game recently, but I am surprised at how often the game keeps crashing for me. I keep watching the streams of the game, and not a single time the game crashes for others. I am not running any mods, I even lowered some of the settings to save RAM, as the most often cause I keep hearing is that the game runs out of memory and crashes, but even when I kill every single app I have and only let the game and Steam run, the game can still randomly crash - whether it's during a fight, driving, exploring, or even doing regular stuff in the base. Right now, the latest crash happened in the settings menu of all places, where I was just lowering the settings even more in hopes of preventing the crash.

https://pastebin.com/xajPAgBA

Here's the pastebin of the console.txt file after the crash. I don't see anything in particular that could have caused the crash.

The game just crashes to desktop like that. There is a freeze of a second or two, and whether you click something or not during the freeze, the game crashes to desktop like you've Alt+F4 it. I have 16GB of RAM, so I don't think that it's the issue. Other specs are also in the pastebin.

All of my drivers are up to date, I even did a complete, clean uninstall of the game and reinstalled it today, but the crashes keep occuring. They are so random, one time it can happen 2 hours into the game, one time it can happen 5 minutes into the game.

If anyone has any suggestions, or can discern from the pastebin what was the exact cause of the crash, I'd be very grateful. I play the game singleplayer only as well, if that information helps. I am a very new player, I even started playing on the custom world with lower zombie count (hoping it would help prevent crashes).

The latest two crashes happen at the start of the game, 10-15 seconds after leaving the starting house and going outside. Pastebin:

https://pastebin.com/rUzmq9HZ

https://pastebin.com/gB7tWdix

[StivKobra]

Here's the link to the logs.zip as well:
https://limewire.com/d/b17f603d-051e-42f6-987b-c1484e339aaf#rqZTMSM0AXj7mFprRNLCfnQrn9d8mmKu9HsfmDmtWUg

[TankGoodness]

Is your game installed on an external drive?
Mine is... and I could not run my game yesterday. I finally unplugged my external drive and plugged it back in to a different USB port and the game did not crash. Good luck

[Beard]

Can you share the latest “hs_err_pid” file found in your main game folder “Steam\steamapps\common\ProjectZomboid”?

[StivKobra]

Originally posted by Beard:

Can you share the latest “hs_err_pid” file found in your main game folder “Steam\steamapps\common\ProjectZomboid”?

This is what's extra weird: that file just doesn't generate for some reason. I am looking at that folder location right now, but there is no hs_err_pid, not a single file or folder starting with the letter "H". I can provide a screenshot for proof if needed. Do I have to run the game in a specific way or choose a specific setting in order for that file to be created? I just got a crash again, this time after several hours long session on 41 latest build. If it helps, here's the pastebin for it: https://pastebin.com/45XTLCbs
Also the log zip: https://limewire.com/d/2dfb801c-46ff-4fc0-a25b-29dac277fdab#2KCXdJzBzF7vHFLj6_3xUVdSIsPQ7-jxxZTO86TUWPw

The log.zip says that it's from yesterday, but I got the crash 10 minutes from making this comment, around 12:25 AM, 4th of December.

[Beard]

Hm, that file should always generate during a crash. Though based on the logs you sent, it seems like there may have been an issue when you switched to Build 42 as the logs do not look right.

Can you try doing a full reinstall?
First, uninstall the game, then go to "Steam\steamapps\common\ProjectZomboid" and make sure there are no leftover files or folders there.
After that, go to “C:\Users\%UserProfile%\Zomboid” and delete everything there except the “Saves” folder.
Then just install the game again and see if that helps.

[StivKobra]

Originally posted by Beard:

Hm, that file should always generate during a crash. Though based on the logs you sent, it seems like there may have been an issue when you switched to Build 42 as the logs do not look right.

Can you try doing a full reinstall?
First, uninstall the game, then go to "Steam\steamapps\common\ProjectZomboid" and make sure there are no leftover files or folders there.
After that, go to “C:\Users\%UserProfile%\Zomboid” and delete everything there except the “Saves” folder.
Then just install the game again and see if that helps.

Just tried it. Unfortunately, it didn't help. B42 seems to just crash few minutes into the game, didn't even get to leave the starting house. B41 can go for at least an hour without a crash. "hs_err_pid" file is still missing. I'll just keep on playing with B41 for a while, it's alright. Thank you for the support so far.

[Beard]

In that case, can you check the Windows Reliability monitor for any ProjectZomboid application crashes there? If you do find any, can you share a screenshot of the Technical Details section so we can check the errors that show up there?

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3575353/troubleshooting-windows-10-with-reliability-monitor.html
https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/sk-sk/000178177/how-to-use-windows-reliability-monitor-to-identify-software-issues

This should give me more information in the case that the err pid is not created, since hopefully Windows would report the crash instead.

[StivKobra]

Originally posted by Beard:

In that case, can you check the Windows Reliability monitor for any ProjectZomboid application crashes there? If you do find any, can you share a screenshot of the Technical Details section so we can check the errors that show up there?

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3575353/troubleshooting-windows-10-with-reliability-monitor.html
https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/sk-sk/000178177/how-to-use-windows-reliability-monitor-to-identify-software-issues

This should give me more information in the case that the err pid is not created, since hopefully Windows would report the crash instead.

Oh wow, didn't realize you could use it for that, interesting. I've actually found all the crashes. Here are the screenshots in imgur: https://imgur.com/a/e9tIwuI

[Beard]

It looks like the errors point to nvoglv and some hardware errors as specified in Windows.
nvoglv is the Nvidia OpenGL driver, responsible for the game basically.

This would imply that the Nvidia driver itself is crashing.
In which case, can you try doing a clean reinstall of your Nvidia driver as well?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPqUeU09cf8

[StivKobra]

Originally posted by Beard:

It looks like the errors point to nvoglv and some hardware errors as specified in Windows.
nvoglv is the Nvidia OpenGL driver, responsible for the game basically.

This would imply that the Nvidia driver itself is crashing.
In which case, can you try doing a clean reinstall of your Nvidia driver as well?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPqUeU09cf8

Sadly, it didn't help. I get the same kind of crash. I guess it's just my GPU that's at fault. Which is a shame, I bought this laptop less than a year ago, brand new. I did the sfc /SCANNOW to check the integrity of the files and ran a few software the repair system files. But there was no change. Sometimes crashing in game, sometimes while in the main menu tinkering with settings.
Not sure there is much left to do to try and fix this issue, considering that it looks like it's a hardware issue with bad drivers. This is most likely because I have a laptop. Oh well.
Thanks for all the help so far. Sorry for taking away your time.

[Beard]

You could try rolling back the drivers as well, though I am not sure I can suggest much more than that.

[StivKobra]

Okay, so I managed to find a "fix". I've went to the game exe's and placed them in Windows 8 compatibility mode and made them run as administrators. I also placed the game in the alternate launch mode on Steam. This way, the game is running without a single crash, been playing for like an hour now.
The drawback is that the game runs kinda slowly, even with lowered settings. Still, that is basically no problem for me. I used to play Dark Souls on like 20 FPS when I was a kid, my PC back then was really bad, so every game I played I had to put on the lowest settings and still had horrible FPS.