Dark Souls 3 Crashing - SOLVED (Comment #22)

[Bad Dong]

Hey Everyone! I am having some issues with my Dark Souls it seems like as soon as I light the Bonfire in Firelink it sets off some chain reaction where my game can freeze at any point in time. I have created a Reddit post but I'm new to it so my post generally get ♥♥♥♥ on lists and I thought I try and get suggestions here.

Below is the post I created on Reddit and to add to it I have now tried with 6 different characters, with all forms of video settings from Low to High and have verified the game settings in Steam, I have uninstalled and reinstalled and verified again. and the below issues continue to happen. I have brought my graphics driver back to the drivers used in April of 2016 and every update since and still to change.

Any suggestions are welcome.
Sorry for the long post and thank you in advance.

My game is continuously crashing. It freezes at random points in the game and is never consistent in where or when it freezes. It can Freeze at Firelink, Catacombs, Demon Ruins, Irithyll; it doesn't matter where I am it can freeze. It can freeze at the Main Menu, During a cutscene, When a location loads in, 5 minutes into the game, 10, 11, 15, 17, whatever amount of time into a game it can just say "nah man you too causal and are unable to Praise the Sun, git gud" and then freezes.

I have tried all graphics settings. Low, Medium, High, and Max and I have tried the Low Lighting tricks and none have worked. I am a level 68 Knight so using the Knight trick obviously doesn't work either.

I am looking for any solutions you may have. I have tried many things, as I am a Computer Technician and know how to diagnose and effectively fix machines and their respective software but at this point in time I can no longer figure out what may be causing the issue and how I may be able to fix it. Any serious solutions are welcomed as I just want to be able to play the game without it inevitably freezing! :P

Specs Below.
Windows 10 Pro 64-Bit ; Intel i7-4770K - Not Overclocked ; GTX 960 4GB SLI with GTX 650 Ti SC 4GB ; 32GB of DDR3 Ram.

[Lydia Scott]

Try switching back to driver 373.06.
Edit: For your GTX

[Bad Dong]

Originally posted by Praiser of Sun:

Try switching back to driver 373.06.
Edit: For your GTX

I have tried every driver dating back to April of 2016, 373.06 was back in October of 2016 so unfortunatley I tried that. Thank you though :P I appreciate the help!

[Lydia Scott]

Originally posted by Bad Dong:

Originally posted by Praiser of Sun:

Try switching back to driver 373.06.
Edit: For your GTX

I have tried every driver dating back to April of 2016, 373.06 was back in October of 2016 so unfortunatley I tried that. Thank you though :P I appreciate the help!

Try going to task manager when the games launched going to programs and setting priority to high. If that doesn't work have you tried window mode?

[Bad Dong]

Originally posted by Praiser of Sun:

Originally posted by Bad Dong:

I have tried every driver dating back to April of 2016, 373.06 was back in October of 2016 so unfortunatley I tried that. Thank you though :P I appreciate the help!

Try going to task manager when the games launched going to programs and setting priority to high. If that doesn't work have you tried window mode?

Yeah, ive set Priority to HIgh, and Realtime as well as giving it 30 of my 32gb of ram lol and it just doesn't want to properly function. I did try windowed and oddly enough it made me crash everytime I tried to Travel, where borderless just crashes whenever it wants.
Im a Computer Technician so I know my way around windows and its poor way with games and unfortunately I have tried increasing CPU processing power for the game, RAM Usage, and edited the Registry to try and allow it take whatever it needs and it doesn't lol.

Sweet name btw - just realised what it was :P

[Lydia Scott]

Originally posted by Bad Dong:

Originally posted by Praiser of Sun:

Try going to task manager when the games launched going to programs and setting priority to high. If that doesn't work have you tried window mode?

Yeah, ive set Priority to HIgh, and Realtime as well as giving it 30 of my 32gb of ram lol and it just doesn't want to properly function. I did try windowed and oddly enough it made me crash everytime I tried to Travel, where borderless just crashes whenever it wants.
Im a Computer Technician so I know my way around windows and its poor way with games and unfortunately I have tried increasing CPU processing power for the game, RAM Usage, and edited the Registry to try and allow it take whatever it needs and it doesn't lol.

Sweet name btw - just realised what it was :P

Thanks. Have you tried verifying game cache?

[Bad Dong]

Originally posted by Praiser of Sun:

Originally posted by Bad Dong:

Yeah, ive set Priority to HIgh, and Realtime as well as giving it 30 of my 32gb of ram lol and it just doesn't want to properly function. I did try windowed and oddly enough it made me crash everytime I tried to Travel, where borderless just crashes whenever it wants.
Im a Computer Technician so I know my way around windows and its poor way with games and unfortunately I have tried increasing CPU processing power for the game, RAM Usage, and edited the Registry to try and allow it take whatever it needs and it doesn't lol.

Sweet name btw - just realised what it was :P

Thanks. Have you tried verifying game cache?

Yes, I tried that before trying an Uninstall and reinstall and it didn't work. Then i uninstalled and reinstalled, verified the game cache and it still freezes. It's honestly just weird. I have friends who have helped me through the game who have similar hardware and software setup and they have no issues and theyre stumped as to why its just me that is having the trouble :P

I just want to play lol I am straight up addicted to it and cant play! :P

[Lumen]

As odd as it sounds, have you checked for overheating?
Otherwise random crashing can have many reasons eg. faulty hardware/drivers.

Also check you 3d-settings for ds3, if you haven't created a profile for it, it's probably still in "adaptive" mode which could also crash your pc, make sure to set it to full-performance with your nvidia tool.

[Bad Dong]

Originally posted by Rishna:

As odd as it sounds, have you checked for overheating?
Otherwise random crashing can have many reasons eg. faulty hardware/drivers.

Also check you 3d-settings for ds3, if you haven't created a profile for it, it's probably still in "adaptive" mode which could also crash your pc, make sure to set it to full-performance with your nvidia tool.

My cooling is fine, I replace thermal paste every 6 months (Arctic Silver) and have more than optimal cooling for my processor - I dont overclock but my processor can and because of that I just took the leap to a self contained liquid cooling which doesnt need to be refilled ever but it has a built in liquid level as a precaution and extra liquid if it ever needs to be topped off. Which the lowest it ever got was to 96% - It recommends 97-100% capacity.

Graphics card and System all have there fans cleaned of dust and the fans motors are kept to optimal lubrication (Giggity). the 960 and 650 both have two fans on them and have 2 case fans at the back drawing the hot air out as the front and top fans blow cool air on them.Its honeslty annoying how cold my desk gets because of the 8 case fans and the circulation.

With that said all of my temps are gauged with a lcd monitor on my system and if any significant changes outside of my small window of perfection (something the user can set and something I have set to a very reliable margin) are made I get an alert and can speed up or speed down certain fans or cooling to increase or decrease heat if it gets too cold or too hot. You want to be a nice threshold between.

I didnt originally have a profile set up but after testing for a while I created multiple profiles or different setitngs and each had varying results. The best of result of course was what you stated as a Full-Performance but alas it still freezes. :P but I do keep it at full performance

Not sure why i relpied with a novel lol but I appreciate the suggestion and am thankful that people like you are actually replying :P so Thanks!

[Bad Dong]

I just want to say this has been up for less than an hour and I am getting more useful responses and possible solutions than I have on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and any forum I have been on; and I am absolutely and honestly thankful for every response I recieved and makes me realise the steam community is AMAZING!

Thanks! Love you all! :P

Its not fixed ... yet, but I have fatih in this community :P

[Lydia Scott]

Originally posted by Bad Dong:

I just want to say this has been up for less than an hour and I am getting more useful responses and possible solutions than I have on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and any forum I have been on; and I am absolutely and honestly thankful for every response I recieved and makes me realise the steam community is AMAZING!

Thanks! Love you all! :P

Its not fixed ... yet, but I have fatih in this community :P

Have you tried reinstalling it. I'll assume you have but if you havent try it.

[Bad Dong]

Originally posted by Praiser of Sun:

Originally posted by Bad Dong:

I just want to say this has been up for less than an hour and I am getting more useful responses and possible solutions than I have on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and any forum I have been on; and I am absolutely and honestly thankful for every response I recieved and makes me realise the steam community is AMAZING!

Thanks! Love you all! :P

Its not fixed ... yet, but I have fatih in this community :P

Have you tried reinstalling it. I'll assume you have but if you havent try it.

Yup like six times haha :P Ive even tried a full and complete delete all data and do a fresh install but still get the freezing

[Lumen]

No real clues then maybe check your hd if you had a crash in between like
cmd.exe: chkdsk d: /f /x (replace d: with your game install drive)
cmd.exe: chkdsk c: /f (windows wants to restart)

Try turn on/off auro render adjustment in the main gfx options - off would be best but give it a try.

If you got the nvidia geeforce exp. tool running, try quitting it before opening ds.

[Bad Dong]

Originally posted by Rishna:

No real clues then maybe check your hd if you had a crash in between like
cmd.exe: chkdsk d: /f /x (replace d: with your game install drive)
cmd.exe: chkdsk c: /f (windows wants to restart)

Try turn on/off auro render adjustment in the main gfx options - off would be best but give it a try.

If you got the nvidia geeforce exp. tool running, try quitting it before opening ds.

Ive tested my Hard Drives and they dont have physical or softwatre errors and I have run multiple software, virus, and CMD scans that i could. I have tried it without the gefore tool and with it and everything between.

However I haven't tried turning off auto Rendering. I test that now and see if it helps at all :P thanks

EDIT: It didn't work lol! Thanks though!

[ThundernoX]

Enable your HDD/SSD Page File, or set it Higher. That should fix it:)

[Lumen]

I was serious with the hard drive check :D
Screwed up shadercache can give you some serious crashes and it's not allways acting the same (load order/etc.), doesent even have to be the cache but when the filesystem got a error the disk access alone could crash it.
Had it once myself on ds3 and steam's file validation did pass and changed nothing because the error was in the file system not in the ds3 files.