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.

[Bad Dong]

Автор сообщения: ThundernoX

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

Thanks for the suggestion, I have tried that though, I've tried no File size to Auto File Size as well as setting it to the max and unfortunately it didn't work :P Thanks though

[Bad Dong]

Автор сообщения: Rishna

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.

I know you were serious lol :P I have run SFC and CHKDSK, I ve checked for Windows Integrity issues and Windows 10 has programs you can run within itself that are an additional System File Checkers. I also have programs installed from the Computer Repair and Solutions Store I work at and they haven't detected any windows, software, or hardware critical, moderate or even minor errors. I also checked to see if Windows Updates could have caused issues and tried reverting and updating and blah blah blah and it still no work :P

Im still going to work on finding a solution. Worst comes to Worst I'll do a full reload but I am hoping to find an easier solution as there are a lot of VPN networks I use for completing Tech Solutions with companies and I dont want to have to redo all those connections - Its not hard , just annoying :P

[jgiuseppe]

I'm having the same problem, from time to time the game started to freeze, first were small stops like a lag then started to crash even, I need to restart the computer, I have no idea what is causing this, I can play 30 minutes Or 2 hours, there is no time or place to go

fx 6300
gtx960 2gb
in medium configs 1600x900

[Bad Dong]

Автор сообщения: jgiuseppe

I'm having the same problem, from time to time the game started to freeze, first were small stops like a lag then started to crash even, I need to restart the computer, I have no idea what is causing this, I can play 30 minutes Or 2 hours, there is no time or place to go

fx 6300
gtx960 2gb
in medium configs 1600x900

Yeah its completely random for me. But will always happen during a DS Session lol. Low, Med, High, or Max Configs. Setting Shadows, Light and Shaders to Low did help me with the game stuttering but it still freezes. I'll continue to work on solutions and "IF" i get it working or not I will keep this up to date!

Its extremely annoying. I will say though if you are able to log out of your computer (*CTRL + ALT + DEL) and log out it will shut down Dark Souls the same way and you don't have to restart your computer.

[Bad Dong]

Update on the issue. The system still freezes and crashes even in windowed mode (al all graphical settings from LOW to MAX) the only difference between playing in Windowed and Borderless is that in Windowed the game allows you to exit it without having to restart your computer when the game crashes. :P

[Bad Dong]

I dont think anyone is paying attention to this anymore but for anyone who was looking at this for solutions I am talking to Bandai support right now and they're providing some solutions for now, So I will post those solutions down and maybe they'll help you :P

Please ensure your Operating System and Drivers are up to date and restart your computer.
If possible from the game screen please lower it the resolution until the game works. If possible, you may also change the resolution in the configuration files of the game.
Also take it out of full screen mode to window mode from the game menu.
Ensure no other background programs are running.
Verify your game cache on Steam to make sure the game downloaded properly.

Please note, that some players have had some issues with their SLI setups and Dark Souls III.

[Bad Dong]

Hiya everyone. So after going through a lot of solutions I finally just tried repairing my system by going into safe mode. If you have Windows 7 or Vista when your system is turning on continuously hit F8 untill the menu pops up. For Windows 8 and 10 hold down SHIFT and restart your computer youll reboot (kepp holding SHIFT) Once in that menu choose Safe Mode in CMD. once in there run a CHKDSK C: /r /f - Yes I tried this many times before however windows can interfere with it so running that in Safe Mode reduces the amount of programs running.

C: may be different for you, itll be the main drive windows is on. 90% of the time its on C:

After the CHKDSK runs go back into your OPerating System open CMD as Administrator (right click) and run that same command, if it asks you to do it on the next startup hit yes or Y and restart your computer. It needs the CHKDSK's for it to properly work, afterwards run Sfc /scannow in CMD and it should be good to go. Hopefully. If anyone is reading this and has any questions feel free to comment on this or send me a message and I can try and help with any of the solutions i tried :P Hopefully this works for you

Praise the Sun,
Bad Dong

[eL_FaRMaZoN]

So, I read the logs, changed various settings of the system and found out the following:
Dark souls consume a lot of memory, consumption grows when changing locations. My system crashed when it tried to increase the paging file to a larger size.
I launched Dark Souls in a window with a resolution of 1280x720 and minimal graphics settings and got a sane warning instead of crash that there is not enough memory in the system and I'd better close the game.
Ignoring it and play for 5 minutes, after which the game was crashed.

I can notice that this is very strange, because I perfectly, without a single error of the system passed the previous addition with medium graphics and in the resolution of 1920x1080

So, if you can not solve the problem, try to allow the system to manage the size of the paging file (if it's disabled or fixed) and also try to run the game on the minimals in a small window and see what happens. Although I found the root of the problem, I do not have a solution, I really want to know what to do: (
And yes, you can try to put DirectX from the game folder, some people say it helps.

[Megalocyte]

Turn off Xbox DVR.

[eL_FaRMaZoN]

All overlays (steam, nvidia, xbox) disabled.

[cedmoy [swe]]

Hello!

I'm a bit late to the party, it seems :P Just bought this wonderful game however, and also having huge crashing issues... Very much at start but then turning down ligthing to low seemed to help a little, sometimes I've run the game for hours without problems, hurray... Recently Im crashing very often (again, frustrating as *&%¤# you know).... No special place - random location wise. Can happen 5 min into the game - or 1 hour. Bonfires or any other places... Helmet or no helmet.

I have Geforce 780. May add that Im not super good at computors...

Things I've tried:
Changed 3d settings as described here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/374320/discussions/0/352788917753659485/
Turned off overlays (nvidia, steam)
Verified game cache in steam

Is it fixed fo you Bad Dong? - Just doing that chkdsk? Well I tried that too just now - no problems with disk - verified. I will run the game and get back to you when it crashes next time - I do not dare to hope it's fixed... Talk to you later...

[eL_FaRMaZoN]

cedmoy [swe], try to allow the system to manage the size of the paging file (if it's disabled or fixed) and also try to run the game on the minimals in a small window and see what happens.

[cedmoy [swe]]

Ok. Played for half an hour. Crashed again.

[cedmoy [swe]]

Автор сообщения: eL_FaRMaZoN

cedmoy [swe], try to allow the system to manage the size of the paging file (if it's disabled or fixed) and also try to run the game on the minimals in a small window and see what happens.

Actually I set i it to fixed for a problem with another game... changed it back (after playing DS3 for some hours) to let system handle it. No change.

Also forgot to mention - did a clean install of latest graphics drivers.... That window thing havent tried.... dont seem to be alot of fun but I will try it for troubleshooting purposes... get back on that....

Thx for fast reply!

[cedmoy [swe]]

Tried windowed. Graphics settings - low. Crashed after 5 min.