Crash on Startup

[Big Pivot]

Hello,

I just rebuilt and upgraded my PC. Everything except the hard drives and GPU. Everything seems to be running smoothly in other games, but I've had a ton of trouble with this one.

I press play on it, and it shows the little screen/window with all of the characters. Then nothing else happens. It just crashes and Steam says "Play" again.

I've tried to Google the solution to this problem that seemingly a lot of people are having, and each one has its own solution.

I've uninstalled it and re-installed it about 3 times now. I've made a backup of my saves and deleted the entire folder for DQXII in Documents/My Games just to see if the saves were corrupted for some reason.

I've enabled and disabled Steam's online save uploading feature. I've manually downloaded and installed every DirectX Redistributible. My graphics drivers are updated. I manually underclocked/volted my GPU. I'm not using any extra antivirus/anti-malware except Windows Defender.

I've checked the Crash Contexts in Notepad and found that every single one of them has a blank "ErrorMessage," so I can't even Google an error code.

I know this is a shot in the dark, but I'm like... 100+ hours into the game and I really want to finish it.

If anyone could help with diagnosing the issue, I'd be eternally grateful.

-BigPivot

[Tim Allahn SnAckbarr]

From this thread,

Originally posted by Tim Allahn SnAckbarr:

You might check

Documents \ My Games \ DRAGON QUEST XI S \ Steam \ Saved \ Crashes

and

Documents \ My Games \ DRAGON QUEST XI S \ Steam \ Saved \ Logs

-- there's a decent chance you have a minidump file in one of those two directories (likely in one or several subdirectories, i.e. "UE4CC-Windows-******")

Do you have a UE4Minidump.dmp ?

You might also check the configuration files location and clear them out (just in case that isn't covered by uninstalling/reinstalling the game):

Documents \ My Games \ DRAGON QUEST XI S \ Steam \ Saved \ Config \ WindowsNoEditor

[Big Pivot]

Originally posted by Tim Allahn SnAckbarr:

Do you have a UE4Minidump.dmp ?

Yeah, I do have them. I have 21 separate folders with crashes. Some of them (about 3-4) were a different kind of crash because it let me submit a crash report to Square. In any case, the Error Message is completely blank.

I think I remember reading that I need to feed them into a debugger, but I don't know where I would find one of those.

You might also check the configuration files location and clear them out (just in case that isn't covered by uninstalling/reinstalling the game):

Documents \ My Games \ DRAGON QUEST XI S \ Steam \ Saved \ Config \ WindowsNoEditor

Before I posted this, I basically cut and pasted the entire DRAGON QUEST XI S folder to my desktop and tried to see if it would set up its own new set of config files, and that's not the case. They definitely did not get deleted when I uninstalled the game. I have my originals, but the Documents folder doesn't currently have anything related to DQ in it.


What exactly am I looking for with these files?

[Tim Allahn SnAckbarr]

Originally posted by Big Pivot:

Before I posted this, I basically cut and pasted the entire DRAGON QUEST XI S folder to my desktop and tried to see if it would set up its own new set of config files, and that's not the case. They definitely did not get deleted when I uninstalled the game. I have my originals, but the Documents folder doesn't currently have anything related to DQ in it.

What exactly am I looking for with these files?

Okay -- that's more-or-less just in case there's a borked configuration that isn't working with your new hardware (as described in OP) causing the crash. Sounds like the game isn't making it far enough to create a new set of config files anyway.

I would have suggested trying the solution in the thread I linked earlier, except it sounds like you're reliably getting the splash screen, at least.

Originally posted by Big Pivot:

I think I remember reading that I need to feed them into a debugger, but I don't know where I would find one of those.

Correct -- I have WinDbg myself (you can grab it yourself, but it's a bit of a PITA to set-up, tbh). If you'd like to upload a few of those UE4Minidump.dmp files to a GDrive, I'd be happy to take a look. Obviously, I can't make any promises, but it might give us a clue.

[Big Pivot]

Here is a Google Drive link of all of the crashes in their own folders. If I count correctly, there should be 21 different crashes, lol.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1gOrD5718S_C9GOh0OaEVNQcXKo0ZuKIX?usp=sharing

I super appreciate your time and effort on this. I'd imagine it's not the coolest thing you could be doing with your time, and I appreciate it.

[Tim Allahn SnAckbarr]

I'm seeing a NULL_CLASS_PTR_READ memory access violation, full output:

ntdll!NtGetContextThread+0x14
00007ffd`fb7aec54 c3              ret

analyze -v

rax=0404040404040404 rbx=00000000256a0718 rcx=0000000000000000
rdx=00000000256a0718 rsi=00000000256a0768 rdi=00000000256a4880
rip=00000001435d6c14 rsp=00000000008cea00 rbp=0000000000000000
 r8=00000000256a4080  r9=0000000000000000 r10=00000000008cec10
r11=0000000000000000 r12=0000000000000800 r13=0000000000000000
r14=00000000008ceaa8 r15=0000000000000002
iopl=0         nv up ei pl nz na po nc
cs=0033  ss=002b  ds=002b  es=002b  fs=0053  gs=002b             efl=00010206
DRAGON_QUEST_XI_S+0x35d6c14:
00000001`435d6c14 4c63490c        movsxd  r9,dword ptr [rcx+0Ch] ds:00000000`0000000c=????????
Resetting default scope

EXCEPTION_RECORD:  (.exr -1)
ExceptionAddress: 00000001435d6c14 (DRAGON_QUEST_XI_S+0x00000000035d6c14)
   ExceptionCode: c0000005 (Access violation)
  ExceptionFlags: 00000000
NumberParameters: 2
   Parameter[0]: 0000000000000000
   Parameter[1]: 000000000000000c
Attempt to read from address 000000000000000c

PROCESS_NAME:  DRAGON QUEST XI S.exe

READ_ADDRESS:  000000000000000c 

ERROR_CODE: (NTSTATUS) 0xc0000005 - The instruction at 0x%p referenced memory at 0x%p. The memory could not be %s.

EXCEPTION_CODE_STR:  c0000005

EXCEPTION_PARAMETER1:  0000000000000000

EXCEPTION_PARAMETER2:  000000000000000c

IP_ON_HEAP:  000200020000bb80
The fault address in not in any loaded module, please check your build's rebase
log at <releasedir>\bin\build_logs\timebuild\ntrebase.log for module which may
contain the address if it were loaded.

FRAME_ONE_INVALID: 1

STACK_TEXT:  
00000000`008cea00 00020002`0000bb80     : 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 00000001`4353a641 00000000`256a0718 : DRAGON_QUEST_XI_S+0x35d6c14
00000000`008cea08 00000000`00000000     : 00000000`00000000 00000001`4353a641 00000000`256a0718 00000001`43530842 : 0x00020002`0000bb80


SYMBOL_NAME:  DRAGON_QUEST_XI_S+35d6c14

MODULE_NAME: DRAGON_QUEST_XI_S

IMAGE_NAME:  DRAGON QUEST XI S.exe

STACK_COMMAND:  ~4s ; .ecxr ; kb

FAILURE_BUCKET_ID:  NULL_CLASS_PTR_READ_c0000005_DRAGON_QUEST_XI_S.exe!Unknown

OS_VERSION:  10.0.19041.1

BUILDLAB_STR:  vb_release

OSPLATFORM_TYPE:  x64

OSNAME:  Windows 10

IMAGE_VERSION:  1.0.0.0

FAILURE_ID_HASH:  {e813b094-8a21-93bf-19f2-e5e3d7e82116}

Followup:     MachineOwner

This is just the dump in "UE4CC-Windows-6E5B1FD94663A5DA241F46B0B15EB8ED_0000" for now- i'll look at a few of the others here in a moment to see if they match.

[Big Pivot]

So it's a RAM issue? I'm definitely not a programmer, so I don't understand the nomenclature.

My RAM is running at its advertized speed of 3600 MHz, and all 16 GB are recognized, so I have no clue what could be wrong with it.

[Tim Allahn SnAckbarr]

Originally posted by Big Pivot:

So it's a RAM issue? I'm definitely not a programmer, so I don't understand the nomenclature.

My RAM is running at its advertized speed of 3600 MHz, and all 16 GB are recognized, so I have no clue what could be wrong with it.

It looks like a segmentation fault (although that is more typically a "INVALID_PTR_READ" instead of "NULL_CLASS_PTR_READ" as in your case -- which might help us in finding out why it segfaulted).

Segfaults can occur for any number of reasons, but essentially the program referenced a pointer that had the wrong address stored in it, causing it to try to access memory outside of its address space (in a good case, the program just crashes, in bad cases, your PC BSOD's).

Since you say that other games run just fine, and I assume you don't really experience any BSOD's or crashes, your RAM is probably fine. It also doesn't look to be related to DirectX or any graphics drivers.

I suggest you might try to (re-)install the Visual C Redistributable[support.microsoft.com] (link for "vc_redist.x64.exe"), as some people have reported it solving very similar issues with other games. It's actually a dependency of Dragon Quest XI that Steam will (usually) install for you (typically briefly pop-up a box that says something like "Installing Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime" as you try to run the game for the first time). It's possible that something with your rebuild may have affected it.

I'll keep looking for other possible causes as I check some of the other minidumps.

[Big Pivot]

I already installed all of the Redistributables. I have both the x86 and x64 versions of 2005, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013, and the 2015-2019 redistributables. Should I uninstall or reinstall any of them?

[Tim Allahn SnAckbarr]

Originally posted by Big Pivot:

I already installed all of the Redistributables. I have both the x86 and x64 versions of 2005, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013, and the 2015-2019 redistributables. Should I uninstall or reinstall any of them?

I would try to re-install 2015-2019.

I also don't think you should be using any of the x86 redistributables since you run a 64-bit system (my guess is that they wouldn't even install in the first place and would tell you that "your hardware isn't compatible" or something to that effect if you tried to run the installer).

[Big Pivot]

I uninstalled the x86 redistributables, but then Razer Synapse wouldn't work. So I reinstalled everything and gave it a restart.

Now it completely boots up entirely fine.

Then I copy-pasted the old DRAGON QUEST XI S folder back into the Documents, reenabled Steam Cloud Sync, and restarted another time.

Now everything works perfectly. I'm back in my 100+ hour save game and all of my configs are all good.

I greatly appreciate your time. Thanks a ton!

[Tim Allahn SnAckbarr]

Originally posted by Big Pivot:

I uninstalled the x86 redistributables, but then Razer Synapse wouldn't work. So I reinstalled everything and gave it a restart.

Now it completely boots up entirely fine.

Then I copy-pasted the old DRAGON QUEST XI S folder back into the Documents, reenabled Steam Cloud Sync, and restarted another time.

Now everything works perfectly. I'm back in my 100+ hour save game and all of my configs are all good.

I greatly appreciate your time. Thanks a ton!

That's great!

If you could click the top-right of this post and "mark as solution", that might help someone else who comes across this issue. This is (at least) the 3rd time that reinstalling vc_redist x64[support.microsoft.com] has fixed very similar issues with DQXI not launching.