Large Crash Dump Files

[Denmother]

Not sure if this is a known issue, but my Kenshi has been creating crash dump files between 5 and 9 gigs in size. Found out when I was running low on space in my SSD, and I ran WinDirStat which showed me this:

https://imgur.com/a/hWo2iuh

I've since deleted the files, but just wanted to give a heads up if this is a new issue.

[SnugSnug]

I had similar issue with .22 i reported here.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/233860/discussions/1/2605804632885024044/

0.26 mentioned a new save logging system for troubleshooting, might be related, especially if your game is kicking out a lot of error warnings.

[Morkonan]

Yeah, I get these too and it's annoying. Windows loves generating ginormous error reports that don't really do anything but take up space.

I use CCleaner to clear them out after I close Kenshi. Works great and keeps Microsoft from telling me that it "couldn't find a solution to my problem" and asking me "Did this help" after trying to upload that omnibus error report ... Yay?

I originally started with CCleaner to clear out troublesome caches and the like, but now that I'm playing Kenshi it's absolutely necessary. Highly recommended. (Didn't link it because I didn't want to get accused of promoting it or something. Great app, free, easy to setup, gets rid of all basic error cache reporting.)

For Win 7, Kenshi also generates reports in the user's local apps directory, IIRC. Eventually, all the reports, if not removed, will be larger than the game's footprint on the drive...

[Hatsune Neko Gaming]

i do not know what files those are but they can not be Kenshi dumps.
this is the format,
CrashDump1.0.xx_x64.dmp

plus they do not go in a dump folder, but into the Kenshi main game folder.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by HaTsUnE_NeKo:

i do not know what files those are but they can not be Kenshi dumps.

Windows Error Reporting will make crashdump files for certain types of crashes if/when it can. I'm no OS specialist, but I think there's a way to compartmentalize something like that so that the OS doesn't end up basically copying "everything possible" to send of to Windows Error Reporting. It may depend on the type of crash reported to the system.

And, OS's will deal with them differently. For instance, Win7Pro dumps these system reports in the appdata/loca/crashdumps as well as Microsoft/windows error reporting directories.

plus they do not go in a dump folder, but into the Kenshi main game folder.

That's for regular dumps made by Kenshi, but it doesn't do that for the on-exit crash-dumps, which get generated by Windows every time some players exit Kenshi and have all the juicy stuff Microsoft wants so they can... "help you with your problem." :)

(Note: In my experience with a few Kenshi crashes unrelated to the exit-crash issue, it doesn't always catch them in time to make a .dmp file.)

I don't know how Win10 handles that OS error reporting.

[Hatsune Neko Gaming]

then that's a windows issue. as its making a dump file nearly the size of the game itself.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by HaTsUnE_NeKo:

then that's a windows issue. as its making a dump file nearly the size of the game itself.

Exactly. The OS dumping everything it can, which is everything Kenshi left in memory, one would think, as well as anything any other process got upset about. It does spawn from Kenshi's own issue, though.

It's annoying, but doesn't have to be permanent. IIRC, only the tracking may accumulate natively? ie: The wer dumps get tagged as "sent" and the cache will be freed up eventually. (Depending on system settings.)

That's why I suggested CClearner, as it's an old, faithful, "clean&safe" app that is free and clears out old cache files easily. Since the issue may largely be out-of-scope for Kenshi/LoFi, it's a doable solution.

I regularly clean out all sorts of caches due to other apps (Render/point-clouds/simulations) and handle it all at once, so I don't know what caches Windows will store or if or how they will eventually accumulate. I'd hope Microsoft would safely prevent that.

Edit:Add - I generated some dumps using the failsafe "Exit Kenshi" method. :) In Win7Pro, the local/appdata/crashdump files seem to be persistent and individually numbered and are around 23 mb ea for me.

WER reporting config: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/wer/collecting-user-mode-dumps

Basically, it should be holding no more than 10 dumps, or a little over 2 gig of Kenshi dumps. (Not sure of OS particulars for Win7/Win10, but the WER config should still be relatively the same, I would think. It's also user-configurable so an authorized user or even an app could make changes to that.)