Graphics Help

[Abilbo]

I am not sure if this is a problem with my graphics card, or if its something with DDO, since I only started having the issue with the expansion that came out over a month ago. I am running an AMD7770 card, using DirectX11 on a HDMI monitor, and now when i play the game, about every 30-45 minutes, the game just up and crashes. Crashing is nothing new to this game, but always before it seemed to have some kind of reason behind it, like i had switched characters to many times without resetting the client, or if I had been zone hopping, it would crash. Now it doesn't seem to matter what im doing, the game just crashes and I don't have to be doing anything in particular to have it happen. I was wondering if anyone has encountered the same issue and if they have found a work around to this. The only other thing that I have noticed, that may or may not be a factor in the game crashing, is that every time i log into the game, I have to reset my gamma corrections, to what ever level I wish them to be at. Whether i close the game, or it crashes, when I start the game up, every time the gamma correction is set at its default value of 1.00

In the last week, I have crashed at the end of 2 shroud runs and 1 epic devil's assault just to log right back in, to find that the players couldn't be bothered to give me the 2 minutes to relog, before they opened the chests, thus denying me the chance of loot. I realize that this is a player issue and not a graphics issue, but if the game didnt crash, then I wouldn't have to worry if the PUGS i was running with were idiots.

[Marcus-Hawkeye]

I had a guildy that would crash randomly. Using the DDO preloader fixed his issue:
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...eload-official

[Abilbo]

The preloader fixed the crashing that happaned everytime I started the game. Now the game just crashes at random intervals.

[kuro_zero]

OS?

Did you recently upgrade your videocard and were you perhaps using an nVidea card before? If so you may have traces of the old drivers that are causing havok. Is it only DDO that crashes or any game?

[Toro12]

Jumping to the conclusion that it is a graphics problem with absolutely zero evidence is a bad idea.
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First thing I would try would be a complete uninstall and reinstall of DDO.
Do you get any error messages or just a straight crash to desktop ?
Do you know how to check your windows error log?
Any sort of monitoring software that tells you the state of your hardware , temps ect?
Getting any unusual color splashes across the screen before crash?

Lots of questions I know but your really didn't give us a whole lot of info to work with.
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Fix your gamma problem by setting your default gamma on the character select screen rather than on the character you log in with first. Solved my gamma problem. Well till the next update occurs anyway. Then you have to change it again.

[Abilbo]

Jumping to the conclusion that it is a graphics problem with absolutely zero evidence is a bad idea.
-----------
First thing I would try would be a complete uninstall and reinstall of DDO.
Do you get any error messages or just a straight crash to desktop ?
Do you know how to check your windows error log?
Any sort of monitoring software that tells you the state of your hardware , temps ect?
Getting any unusual color splashes across the screen before crash?

Lots of questions I know but your really didn't give us a whole lot of info to work with.
===========

Fix your gamma problem by setting your default gamma on the character select screen rather than on the character you log in with first. Solved my gamma problem. Well till the next update occurs anyway. Then you have to change it again.

The game just crashes to desktop, sometimes there are error messages, sometimes not. As for the windows error log, I doubt windows could find water if it was on a raft in the middle of the ocean. In all the years that I have run windows, when i had crashes of any kind, and the error log came up with the message "windows is searching for a solution to this problem" never resulted in anything. This frequent crashing is post 19.2 expansion. Before this expansion i had crashes in the game, as did most players after playing for long periods of time, and either i had switched toons or was zone hopping and the game would crash.

A perfect example of the crashing i get now is as follows. I start the game, log into my main character, joined a CITW Raid, got buffs from the ship, jumped to the harbor, to the expansion portal, to the eveningstar cavern, to the quest entrance, all of which took about 10-15 minutes. Entered the quest, started the first fight and crashed to desktop. Started the client back up, entered the raid, played for maybe 25 minutes, was at the 2nd fight where you attack LLolth and the game crashed again. Logged back in, finished the raid, zoned out, ran through eveningstar turned in the quest, ran back down the cavern to use the ship portal, popped onto the ship and headed towards the bar to sell//repair and crashed again. Didn't bother to restart my client because now i was just to frustrated.

This is the only game that I have played recently that gives me this kind of problem. I have not made any hardware or software changes to my machine in sometime. When I did upgrade my Graphics card to the AMD from a Nvidia one, I did remove all of the NVIDIA software from my machine.

Since expansion 19.2 I have not successfully stayed in the game for more than 50 minutes before the game crashes. I am not the only person suffering from this, there are alot of posts on the forums that read very similar to mine. I suspected a graphics issue, because of the gamma correction issues, and because i noticed that when the game crashed the gamma correction that I had made ingame, seemed to be affecting my desktop, so that when i crashed my desktop was lighter/darker than it should have been.

[LarryBouleDingue]

For me,since U19,DDO client random crashed alot.

Turns out my problem was sound card related.

To fix it ,i had to disable EAX in sound options and change hardware mode to software.

Did not crash once since.

I also defrag and optimized my main hard drive with Auslogics DiskDefrag,
wich helped performance a little.

[realism]

It sounds to me that it a PC issue with either conflicting drivers when the hit "x" point or it could be a bit of RAM that is causing the issue. If you could Post your PC specs we might be able to get you some more insight into the issue. This type of problem though really should be posted in the technical help section of the forums.

Initially what I am seeing is that you crash during intense periods of play (raiding) where there is a bit of a strain of upkeep on some computers. Low amount of RAM accessible is a possibility, as is having a small section of bad RAM that causes the crash when the total amount of RAM needed hits x point. If you have less than 4 GB of RAM, consider upgrading. You could also try running Memtest for a few hours and see what happens, if you get any bad RAM reported.

Other thought could be a driver conflict somewhere, if it only crashes like this during gaming times, I would say it could be a conflict among, sound driver, graphics driver, or Chipset. Although could be motherboard as well, Check for latest BIOS. Make sure you are up to date on the latest drivers.

There are a few graphics cards that have issues with DDO, but unless it is a recent replacement I doubt this would be the issue.

Other than the above, the only thing I can think of would be a bad sector of the download. Could try removing DDO, defrag hard drive (if its a plate disk) and re-install DDO.

[Abilbo]

For me,since U19,DDO client random crashed alot.

Turns out my problem was sound card related.

To fix it ,i had to disable EAX in sound options and change hardware mode to software.

Checked my audio settings in game, and EAX was already disabled, thanks for the thought though. Tried changing the sound options to different one of the 4 that were listed, but only one actually let the game produce sound.

[Abilbo]

Fix your gamma problem by setting your default gamma on the character select screen rather than on the character you log in with first. Solved my gamma problem. Well till the next update occurs anyway. Then you have to change it again.

This does not work as you have stated. I Started the game, and then before i selected a character, I changed the gamma correction from 1.00 to 1.40 to brighten the screen up just a bit. I logged into my main character, buffed up, went to GH and went to 1 quest. 27 Minutes after logging in the game crashed. No warning, no flickering, no weird visual or audio effects. The game just stopped working. I restarted the game, and checked the gamma correction and it was back to 1.00

[xXbikergirlXx]

Firstly I am mostly computer illiterate! but after the expansion came out I had the same issue which I solved by turning down my in-game graphics settings, I still get zoning crashes but other than that none. My pc is ancient and I have an older AMD card than you but although my card supports direct x11, I have always played DDO on direct x9 because when set to direct x11 the game constantly crashes. Might be worth a try to see if you at least stay in game.

[Draksel]

I am not sure if this is a problem with my graphics card, or if its something with DDO, since I only started having the issue with the expansion that came out over a month ago. I am running an AMD7770 card, using DirectX11 on a HDMI monitor, and now when i play the game, about every 30-45 minutes, the game just up and crashes. ...

Had similar issues of random crashes. I would get what would appear to be bad lag, with everything stopping for ~10 seconds, then crash. I discovered I was having a heat dissipation issue, but solved that by opening up the side of the case and placing a regular small floor fan (Caframo?) blasting into the case. No more crashes!

[Toro12]

The game just crashes to desktop, sometimes there are error messages, sometimes not. As for the windows error log, I doubt windows could find water if it was on a raft in the middle of the ocean. In all the years that I have run windows, when i had crashes of any kind, and the error log came up with the message "windows is searching for a solution to this problem" never resulted in anything. This frequent crashing is post 19.2 expansion. Before this expansion i had crashes in the game, as did most players after playing for long periods of time, and either i had switched toons or was zone hopping and the game would crash.

Ok viewing the error log has nothing to do the the autofix
So you get errors occasionally with the crash ? That is important information to include any time you are looking for help with a problem. What error is it , what does the error message say?

A perfect example of the crashing i get now is as follows. I start the game, log into my main character, joined a CITW Raid, got buffs from the ship, jumped to the harbor, to the expansion portal, to the eveningstar cavern, to the quest entrance, all of which took about 10-15 minutes. Entered the quest, started the first fight and crashed to desktop. Started the client back up, entered the raid, played for maybe 25 minutes, was at the 2nd fight where you attack LLolth and the game crashed again. Logged back in, finished the raid, zoned out, ran through eveningstar turned in the quest, ran back down the cavern to use the ship portal, popped onto the ship and headed towards the bar to sell//repair and crashed again. Didn't bother to restart my client because now i was just to frustrated.

This sounds a lot like an overheating issue

This is the only game that I have played recently that gives me this kind of problem. I have not made any hardware or software changes to my machine in sometime. When I did upgrade my Graphics card to the AMD from a Nvidia one, I did remove all of the NVIDIA software from my machine.

Since expansion 19.2 I have not successfully stayed in the game for more than 50 minutes before the game crashes. I am not the only person suffering from this, there are alot of posts on the forums that read very similar to mine. I suspected a graphics issue, because of the gamma correction issues, and because i noticed that when the game crashed the gamma correction that I had made ingame, seemed to be affecting my desktop, so that when i crashed my desktop was lighter/darker than it should have been.

It is possible it is a graphics issue. From the description you have provided it sounds like an overheating graphic card but very difficult to tell without more info.
Error messages would be nice.

Also have you yet tried uninstalling and reinstalling ddo? It is also a possible corrupt game file.

[Furbitor]

In the last week, I have crashed at the end of 2 shroud runs and 1 epic devil's assault just to log right back in, to find that the players couldn't be bothered to give me the 2 minutes to relog, before they opened the chests, thus denying me the chance of loot. I realize that this is a player issue and not a graphics issue, but if the game didnt crash, then I wouldn't have to worry if the PUGS i was running with were idiots.

this has happened to me several times.

On the video issue, there is something horribly wrong. Its a combination of things. First, this game was built using dx9, which is notably for software-based memory allocation for video rendering.
With Microsloth changing to dx10, they went to hardware memory allocation, using the video card to handle memory issues. When the change came many computer was crashing due to software and hardware trying to do the same job, conflicting. eventually it was programmed out. Dx 11 inherits many traits of dx10.

It should come as no surprise, that certain graphical renders will send your video card into heebee-geebee land, as many possible potential varibles vie for your systems memory.
for instance I am running win 7 64 bit on 2 gb memory. it is sufficent, most of the time, but when the game gets really intense, or for no reason at all, my vid card reaches for more memory, but 16 instances of awesomuim.exe, which 5 of them are hung, eating large chunks of what few bits of memory I got left.... Causes my video drivers to crash. Frequently.

I been using Killallprocessess to halt the awesominium invasion, and it significantly speeds up loading screens, and it helps, but I stilll find crashing an issue.

My solution is probably to upgrade to a dx11 vidcard, (to use dx11 instructions my old card cant understand), add memory (not untill I upgrade my comp) Or just suffer.


Suffering seems to be the cheapest atm.


good luck!

[Abilbo]

So you get errors occasionally with the crash ? That is important information to include any time you are looking for help with a problem. What error is it , what does the error message say?

The only "error" message that pops up is the "DDO has stopped working" message box, that is sometimes followed by the "windows is searching for a solution to this" box, which never finds anything to report anyway.

Also have you yet tried uninstalling and reinstalling ddo? It is also a possible corrupt game file.

I have uninstalled and installed the game to see if that would fix it, with out any success. I have ensured that my BIOS is up to date and that all the hard ware on my machine has the newest drivers. While I am not sure exactly what the problem is, I am fairly certain it is not a hardware issue on my machine, as NOTHING else on my machine causes any crashing, nor do I have any issues with programs not working properly. Since the game was working reasonably well before patch 19.2 and now does not, I know the issue most likely lies with DDO. Since everytime I log in or out, or change characters, I have to reset my gamma correction, because the game is changing it to the default setting every time, I have a reason to believe that its a graphics issue. I even tried just starting the game, changing the gamma correction to the level that i wished it to be, and then exited the game without logging into a character. I then started the game up again, and had to reset the gamma correction because it had changed it to the default setting again.

[Marcus-Hawkeye]

Check your audio settings. Apparently there is a known issue. Got to your options:

Options => Audio => Sound Playback => Software (Change from Hardware to Software.)

This has reportedly helped a number of people.

[Abilbo]

Check your audio settings. Apparently there is a known issue. Got to your options:

Options => Audio => Sound Playback => Software (Change from Hardware to Software.)

This has reportedly helped a number of people.

Thanks for the effort, it didnt help at all, this was how my system was set up already. Ive done what anyone would do, when they can't play the game they are paying for. I cancelled my subscription and found another game to play. I might be back in the future, who knows, but for now, I am just fed up.