game freezes required hard reboot

[JaimeLannister]

Game runs like a dream when it decides to run, but eventually after an hour, or 2, or however long the game decides it will randomly completely freeze up and I cant alt F4 or ctrl alt delete or anything, i have to hold down the reset button my PC and hard reboot it.

at first I thought it was DX12, but nope, It also happens on DX11.

how do I figure out what is causing this? IM pretty sure its the game because this dosent seem to happen with other games I play.

i7-6700k, GTX 980, 16GB ddr4 ram, samsung 500gb SSD

please help

[JaimeLannister]

cmon guys no one has any ideas on this? Im about to demand a refund on this game, im sick of having to hld down the button to reset my PC every time this game freezes, just happened yet again after half an hour of playtime.....

[cerebus23]

Check your computer temps? Does any other game do the same thing?

[Jurassic Fart 2]

This does not sound like a game fault, and your [Intel] hardware is more than sufficient to the task. I'm assuming your motherboard is equipped with an Intel chipset, so your issue can't be blamed on AMD (whose compatibilities are questionable at best, issues ranging from crippling framerates to OS crashes on game launch).

I'd suggest first verifying your game cache; any detectable corruption of code will cause automatic repair.

If problem still exists, what I think to be the more likely culprit gets bumped to the front of the suspect list: the environment that Hitman operates in (your Windows OS). There are a few areas you should focus your attention upon:

1) Free / swap space: I notice your SSD is "only" 500 GB. A lack of sufficient free space will seriously compromise your system's ability to effectively deploy memory- and processing-demanding applications like Hitman. Check to see how full your disk is and offload (back up on a different drive) occupied sectors where that data is not immediately needed. Uninstall (or move to a different drive) space-hogging applications that are infrequently utilized.

2) Perform a comprehensive disk cleanup removing no longer needed installation files, temporary files, et cetera, including all but the latest shadow volume copies (system restore points)—and empty your Recycle Bin.

3) Defrag your drive. Don't be satisfied with Windows Defrag—it is a HORRIBLY inefficient application. Raxco PerfectDisk is great. You'll needed to optimize your disk so that the most frequently-used applications will be re-queued, and consolidate free space. (this will require at least two separate time-consuming operations)

My advice assumes that your system has not been compromised by malware.

[JaimeLannister]

Thank you for the helpful post IDGAF.

My SSD does have 110GB free space atm so I think that would be sufficient. I did just empty my recycle bin of a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of files though per your advice.'

I did already verify that games integrity on steam and everything seemed ok. I will try the defrag stuff next. I regularly run spybot search and destroy on my pc so malware shouldnt be an issue.

This dosent seem to happen with any other game... it happened a while ago tonight after playing for half an hour, then after rebooting I played for another 1.5 hours with no issues.... so it seems totaly random when it happens.

the game has been running in "exclusive full screem" mode, I dont kow what that means but I changed it to just regular fullscreen to see if that makes a difference.

Thank You!

[Jurassic Fart 2]

Oh, yeah—that's plenty of free space, but Windows is monumentally bad with file fragmentation (Linux distros don't fragment, but few game developers work on those platforms).

Windows also has another significant problem: On older versions of Windows I used to have to regulary reformat my hard drive every three months because playing DVDs became impossible; bugs creep into Windows installations that have been running a long time, although Windows 7 and 10 made great improvements in this regard.

P.S.: "Exclusive Fullscreen Mode" is actually just Fullscreen. Games that have "Exclusive Fullscreen Mode" as well as Fullscreen actually makes "Fullscreen" Borderless Windowed, which may place a slightly higher load on processing.

[IEVI]

Originally posted by Kill Screen:

Same here. i ran fine for first 20 hours of play. Now it randomly freezes to a black screen with the audio still playing in the back ground.

most likely your gpu driver crashing and restarting

[Jurassic Fart 2]

GPU Driver "crashing and restarting?" With the GTX 980? That would be the nVidia Geforce application, which should yield a related messagebox, if that were indeed the case—and not very likely, considering the detailed above-spec dependent hardware. My system specs are lower than the OP's (i5-6600K / GTX 970 / 16 GB SDRAM), and my GPU driver has never crashed ONCE.

[JaimeLannister]

I am not getting black screen and the audio stops, the picture will completely freeze and remain until I manually reset my pc.

[Jurassic Fart 2]

I used to get the same thing—what I affectionately call a "hard freeze"—when I tried running GTA IV on an old AMD machine whose GPU exceeded specs greatly but the CPU only slightly (AMD FX Black 6-Core) but RAM was at spec. The GPU was an MSI Twin Frozr III that ended up overheating and killing itself as well as dangerously overstressing the processor…bucaasue I unwisely overclocked to eliminate the "Hard Freeze," the cause of which had never actually been able to scientifically determine—only that forcing a crash gave me control of my screen once more.

Whatever the precise cause, your memory allocations are being swamped, and the processors, too. It's frustrating as Hell, I know. It's puzzling me—looking at it from a hardware issue only—as you're running an Intel machine as I am, same SDRAM capacity, a processor one generation faster than mine, and a GPU slightly better…and I am not experiencing this issue.

I'm also running my machine for over 168 hourse continuously without heat problems (water-cooled CPU, and it's a non-smoking environment).

…which is why I lean strongly to believing your issue lies in the software environment. I didn't say anything before, but…is Spybot Search and Destroy your ONLY malware protection? It's a very good application—for the price—but, I'm afraid that it, combined with AVG Free (for instance), and Lavasoft's Ad-Aware is COMPLETELY unable to offer sufficient protection against contemporary threats.

I've been using Webroot (tier three) antivirus for something like seven years. It costs, but I've been infected only three times in the last seven years. Your OS could have fallen prey to threats that your current protection can't even detect.

[RiskyDevil]

Same sh-it =/
i5 4670k / 780ti / 16Gb, dx12/11, W10x64

Originally posted by egonlistic:

IM pretty sure its the game because this dosent seem to happen with other games I play.
please help

+

[Jelly Sandwich]

Your spec is all ok. I have a worse PC and I can run Hitman without a problem. I guess something is wrong with your computer.

[Jeff Stephen]

Check the event viewer to see what's causing the error. With the latest nvidia drivers 382.05, I noticed this showing up a lot. "Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered" This was on a newly installed W10 PC but once I loaded up W8.1 the issue went away. Seems to happen regardless of using DX11 or 12.
i5 4670K, 16GB, GTX 1070 FTW.

[Jackal]

I have a similar issue in that my problem will happen at complete random, and it seems like it's setting up for a 'hard freeze' because it will hitch (i.e. fps goes from 115 to 6) but then .75 seconds later it returns until it happens again some minutes/hours later. Not sure what to think, as I don't have anything similar happening in other games.

[Klauth]

Like others have stated:
- temps issues (overclocking BTW ?): check for temps with hwmonitor or similar
- other HW issue maybe

Hitman being very taxing on CPU, unlike any other game, can go to thresholds no other game go to on your rig, therefore triggering cooling issue. Of course, root cause is defective cooling, not the game being taxing. A proper rig must be able to sustain full load for entire days ...

I NEVER had to hard reset on a Hitman crash. Each time, ctrl-alt-suppr does the trick and shows a "hitman has crashed" windows: I close it and relaunch the game.

[Jeff Stephen]

Those having this issue are you on W10 or earlier versions?
I suspect W10 is still unstable.