Constant CTD issues

[Bagpipe]

So i took the gamble I had been delaying since launch now that it went on sale.
Got a few hours in with very little problems but the minute i was free to do my own thing exploring planets and what not, nothing but CTD issues over and over.
First was memory access errors which I have been scouring the web for resolutions to and came up with some issue with AMD chips and something to do with Vulkan's memory management which has been fixed but not quite sure if updated to starfield yet??
Anyway, I checked all my page file was set up right, turned off XMP, checked a whole bunch of obscure windows settings for anything that might possibly upset this game purely because bethesda made it and... still crashing!

Except now, the dmp files dont even really give any justifiable clues other than the game doesn't really work properly on AMD chips i guess...

Anybody any experience so far with an AMD chip and this game and if so have you got around the constant crashing.
I mean I was prepared for disappointment but the fact it went fine for a few hours to get me past the refund window is very sus.
Will insert the oft touted disclaimer here that I am currently playing countless other high demand (more demanding in some cases) games and have no issues to speak of, so I will not hear of any "it's your rig" nonsense that devs seem to hide behind these days please XD

I swear between Windows, Nvidia and AMD PC gaming is just not very fun these days

[decimus28]

What is the exact memory error it's giving you in the crash dump?

[Bagpipe]

Originally posted by decimus28:

What is the exact memory error it's giving you in the crash dump?

There have been several. But most are to do with invalid pointer.
Have tried soooo many tweaks to my set up. XMP on, enable/disable certain bios cpu features, windows security features on/off, honestly must have tried 20-30 things by now and i haven't even had 10 hours of play. My 8 hours in game so far has a total of nearly 5 hours of very interrupted play, the rest is trying to get the thing to work.

I just get the feeling that they haven't quite fixed the memory usage issues that the game had to begin with, which I was not aware of until I was forced to delve through the online archives of people complaining about there own stability issues.

I rolled back windows, updated again when it made no change. Same with gpu drivers to be sure. I have been at it all day and not one bit of difference.
Deleting the DxCache in nvidia folder helps for about 3 minutes then it starts again.
100% worse when planetside, that is one thing that I have noticed. Even with graphics settings on lowest it crashes.
The performance is fine on High to be fair, not tried ultra for obvious reasons but it is the stability that is the problem for me.

Really wanna, grudgingly, refund it because to be honest I am quite enjoying what I have seen so far and was ready for spending the weekend with it but I guess not.
Sorry for the rant btw

[decimus28]

No problem on the rant, I went through 10 hours of troubleshooting with everyone on this forum blaming hardware until we got a better idea of what was happening in my case.
10 hours is pretty early for the bug I've been looking into but I'll mention it so you know in case it's related to yours. I am curious at to what errors you seeing though in case there is more bad lines of code.

The line causing the issue for almost everyone I've seem mention null pointer crashes is
mov [rax],al
where RAX = 0000000000000000
it causes a NULL_POINTER_WRITE error

It will show up as something like
Starfield!agsSetDisplayMode+0x239c1c (the 0x239c1c is the line's offset in 1.8.86)
or just something like
Starfield.exe+12CED9C (if debugger symbols aren't loading. offset changes on version here too)

Big thing is the line
mov [rax],al trying to write to 0000000000000000

This issue is in the code and isn't dependent on personal hardware. The save file causing the issues can be shared with another user for them to also have the crashes. Usually hits around 100+ hours without going into NG+ as the save file bloats making it closer and more likely to reach the limit of FF3FFFFF for formIDs making it jump to the bad code. Dropping a something like a resource and clicking on it with the console open will let you see how close the issue is.

[MunkyX]

This crashed happen on old save or new save?

[Bagpipe]

Originally posted by MunkyX:

This crashed happen on old save or new save?

any save to be honest. Just managed about 20 minutes after disabling virtualization completely and disabling core isolation in windows settings. Removed complete nvidia shader cache in safe mode too at the same time as reinstalling gpu drivers too so one of those stopped it happening for a little while then i got another pointer read/write error in the .dmp.

Have opened a ticket with Bethesda but its really disappointing when I am not even 10 hours in to a relatively expensive game. I am not at 8.3 hours on steam of which my save reads around 5 hours play time though I have replayed the same 5 minutes over about 100 times trying to remedy this.

Went back to older saves etc and it still happens... it's exhausting

[AoD_lexandro]

Core isolation is a known cause of random CTD's when gaming. As a standard user you do not really need its security features so its safe to leave disabled. Core isolation is really intended for workspaces and networks. I could give a long winded technical reason but I don't want a "wall of text" and/or confuse you.

You should reset all your other changes to "normal", then try checking the event log once the game crashes. It should then start pointing towards a possible culprit instead of a blank error.

[Bagpipe]

Originally posted by AoD_lexandro:

Core isolation is a known cause of random CTD's when gaming. As a standard user you do not really need its security features so its safe to leave disabled. Core isolation is really intended for workspaces and networks. I could give a long winded technical reason but I don't want a "wall of text" and/or confuse you.

You should reset all your other changes to "normal", then try checking the event log once the game crashes. It should then start pointing towards a possible culprit instead of a blank error.

Since I have made these changes this is the only time that I have not been able to find anything relating to the crash in event viewer. There is a dmp file in the game folder though pointing to the same memory issues so it is still seemingly something wrong with the software itself and not hardware config etc.

My next option is to try the disabling of shadows through the ini files but that seems like a ridiculous length to go to in order for a game to work. That's just a game that's not ready imo

[Volk]

Nothing worked for me after hours upon hours of looking, applying fixes, and retrying, but I eventually found out that I had an event trigger in widows event logs "Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered," and located a registry entry fix detailed HERE: https://gameplay.tips/guides/starfield-crash-fix-for-display-driver-nvlddmkm-stopped-responding-and-has-successfully-recovered.html
So far no crashes after I applied the registry fix. I wanted to share this in common posts so people can find it easier.

[Bagpipe]

Originally posted by Volk:

Nothing worked for me after hours upon hours of looking, applying fixes, and retrying, but I eventually found out that I had an event trigger in widows event logs "Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered," and located a registry entry fix detailed HERE: https://gameplay.tips/guides/starfield-crash-fix-for-display-driver-nvlddmkm-stopped-responding-and-has-successfully-recovered.html
So far no crashes after I applied the registry fix. I wanted to share this in common posts so people can find it easier.

Coincidentally, I had already applied a similar edit to the registry a while back after issues with another game. Though this issue I have is unfortunately not related to this particular setting unfortunately.

[Pippin]

Originally posted by Volk:

Nothing worked for me after hours upon hours of looking, applying fixes, and retrying, but I eventually found out that I had an event trigger in widows event logs "Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered," and located a registry entry fix detailed HERE: https://gameplay.tips/guides/starfield-crash-fix-for-display-driver-nvlddmkm-stopped-responding-and-has-successfully-recovered.html
So far no crashes after I applied the registry fix. I wanted to share this in common posts so people can find it easier.

Thanks for a possible work around, but i don't really see the need to tamper with your system registry because BGS is too slow for a hotfix release.
Bethesda should of jumped on this as soon as it was detected when it was causing problems.
As usually its up to the community to find a work around. That's just lazy game design by a supposedly 250+ staff at BGS. SF was polished at release but boy does it have major issues when it goes wrong.