Game keeps freezing randomly - no error log

[feraminn]

My save file has 15h playtime and I have played for over 20h, to show how often I had to repeat a day until now.
This is not fun.

Normal single player, game freezes randomly, sometimes at loading screen, mostly at different times and scenes during the day - just walking is enough to freeze, no specific actions or talking to anybody needed. I cannot repeat it, as there is no common error. It happens on both full screen as well as windowed mode. Without and with SMAPI. Audio is on and everything is updated - I just installed everything like 2 days ago with complete reinstall today.
I have tried every single step of the "How to fix your game" as well as all kinds of other suggestions found online.

Neither the game itself nor SMAPI produces an error log. Windows just says "A problem caused this program to stop interacting with Windows." After the screen freezes I can only either close it or wait - waiting doesn't do anything.

I run this on Windows 10 and, obvs, through Steam.

[Amberbaum]

Do any other games have similar problems like your Stardew Valley game? Because that may indicated that your OS/drivers may be buggy. Or your firewall/antivirus program may be overzealous. Some other program may be responsible for SV not to properly work.

For example some Skyrim users are having trouble with their saves. Why? Because they have OneDrive from Microsoft installed. It accesses their documents folder and causes a conflict with which program has the right to write in there at the moment.

Another weird problem with win10 users was that their game crashed constantly. So they had to create another user profile in their windows 10 and play Skyrim from there.

[Queen Droxxanna]

I have that happen occasionally too. But there is a solution. i think its just a loading issue with your PC.
I simply hit the Windows button on my keyboard, the click the mouse back over the game screen and it fixes the freeze.
Its annoy to have to do that , I know, but its a quick fix, and works every time.
Hope this helps you.

[feraminn]

Originally posted by Amberbaum:

Do any other games have similar problems like your Stardew Valley game?

No other game has any issues. PC is about 2 months old. Memory test says everything is fine. The game is excluded in firewall, OneDrive is not connected. I have disabled NVIDIA's audio in cases that's interfering, making sure the audio source does not change for some reason. I have no other program open. It still freezes.
I noticed that it does freeze sooner with SMAPI - without it I have at least a chance of finishing one day before it happens.

Thanks anyways, if you have any other idea I'm open to try everything.

Originally posted by soaringfreedom:

I simply hit the Windows button on my keyboard, the click the mouse back over the game screen and it fixes the freeze.

Thanks to you too, sadly it doesn't work in my case.

[Amberbaum]

Originally posted by THE DOCTOR:

-snip-

Darn.

I need to mention here that there is a 1.5.5 beta up for grabs on Steam. The developer is currently testing out a 64x Stardew Valley Windows build which will be officially available once it's ready.

You can access it via your steam library/stardew valley/preference/beta tab/drop down menu.

Maybe the beta will help. Maybe once the beta has been ironed out of it's bug you will be able to play without problems. I know that some people had to download the linux 64x Stardew Valley package to properly play their game, because the 32X bit Stardew Valley windows version (still the current one) can't handle the amount of mods they have installed. So maybe there is still hope for you to be able to play it without it constantly freezing.

If you are feeling brave maybe give the beta a go. There is a SMAPI version for the current beta available too and since SMAPI is mostly maintained and developed by Pathoschild nowadays you can bet that they updated all their mods for the current beta.

Good luck.

https://forums.stardewvalley.net/threads/stardew-valley-1-5-5-technical-update-beta.8893/

[Queen Droxxanna]

this sounds great, but i have so many mods installed, I'm worried i might mess up my game if it try this now, as I'm not a tech expert. Its been a trial and error path for me as I've added mods, made mistakes in compatibility, and had to undo a few times. But I will watch the progress here.

[Amberbaum]

Originally posted by soaringfreedom:

this sounds great, but i have so many mods installed, I'm worried i might mess up my game if it try this now, as I'm not a tech expert. Its been a trial and error path for me as I've added mods, made mistakes in compatibility, and had to undo a few times. But I will watch the progress here.

Active modders are already preparing their mods for the jump to the newest version. And if a mod became abandoned there's still the forums that pick up the work.

[Queen Droxxanna]

good to here Amberbaum, thanks

[feraminn]

Thank you Amberbaum, I'll keep that in mind, if I'm brave enough.

In the meantime, I have found a half-baked solution, I can play it now and instead of completely freezing it just shuts down the audio. I don't know what it does and why exactly it works or what the problem itself actually is, but I'll describe it here in case it can help someone else.

With the game being frozen, I opened the task manager and (via right-click Stardew Valley) created a dump file. I opened this dump file in Microsoft Visual Studio and clicked on "Run Diagnostic Analysis" - this opens another window telling me "Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Xact.pdb not loaded because Just My Code is enabled." Something about symbols not being loaded. After disabling Just My Code via the button in the field below, it seems to load those symbols, and the game never froze again in 10h playtime. It does cut the audio sometimes, but the game itself is fine and restarting it brings back the audio for a while.
I do have to open Visual Studio and debug every time before playing though, otherwise it still freezes.

In case someone is wondering, I have reinstalled and repaired XNA two times before all this, but that didn't help.

[Amberbaum]

Huh... what if some of your windows frameworks are broken? Like .NET Framework?

This was probably already mention in the fix your game thread, but you never know.

[Cloud995]

I think its related to the controller, when i turn it off it was great

[PathWisp]

Originally posted by Queen Droxxanna:

I have that happen occasionally too. But there is a solution. i think its just a loading issue with your PC.
I simply hit the Windows button on my keyboard, the click the mouse back over the game screen and it fixes the freeze.
Its annoy to have to do that , I know, but its a quick fix, and works every time.
Hope this helps you.

Thank you so much, you saved my wife a lot of heartache. We were certain she had lost a really good day <3