Add half my guild and I to the list. Its getting unbearable

[Furbitor]

Ya know, I'll try to keep it short. My guildies and I have experienced a horrendous amount of issues, across a variety of hardware and software, and We would like to hear that these issues are being researched/addressed.

Currently, Issues include,

1. Connection issues. On starting client, client is sending packets but not receiving any, causing client to shut down. Can occur multiple times before client hooks up.

2. Client crashes. Randomly, the client just crashes, and often as not, crashes PC too. As often as every 20 minutes and as far apart as 3 hours.

3. Video drivers crashing. Constantly restarts, if it doesn't crash the client.

4. Black Screen. Client doesn't crash, but screen is black, and will not reset until client/PC is restarted.

5. I am sure there is more, Including the recent random server disconnects, but these 4 above are the mains.


Machines run from cheap to high end. Windows xp to win 7. Running on dx9 to dx11. Something horrible has been done, and in the last 3 months especially bad.

I been playing this game on my comp since March 06. In 2010, I upgraded to gts 250 vid card (dx10) and win7. I have been playing very well all these years, but suddenly, I cant stay in game for longer than 30 minutes, it takes me sometimes 30 minutes to log on, due to poor connectivity, and it is really getting me down.

My guildies are experiencing most of the same things. And I been trying to find solutions. Clean windows installs, clean boots, disable firewalls, no a/v programs, Clean ddo installs, low res and high, Dx runtimes downloads, Audio drivers and video drivers.

All different combinations. failures. sometime I get stability in one area, but hard fault in another. Like it wont crash PC now, just blackscreen.

I look to the internet and view many many gamers across the world having same issues as us, in other games with dx11.

I begin to believe that the fault lies in Directx, its incarntions, and implementation. when trying to play other dx11 games, our comps/clients crash there too. Somewhere there is faulty code, that vid cards can't handle, and its crashing our comps.

I would like to see us rolled back for dx support to dx10 or even 9. get rid of it.

I see in the faq your solution for black screen is run in dx9 anyways, its like your not trying to fix it. just here you go, band-aid it and move on. I realize dx is Microsolths' domain, but you can choose to revert back to dx9

there is no excuse why a game that was good for 7 years now wont play on any system I have, new and old amd and intel, 32 and 64 bit, Something is wrong.

[Jbmat5656]

+1. Either fix it or I'm gone.

[I_was_Whesper]

The first problem I just accepted and just let it slide. That is, I too have to start the game twice. Oh well, bummer.

The other problems pretty much disappear after you delete/rename a file in your game directory called "AwesomiumProcess.exe" AFTER the game checks it's files (you disable it when you see the window to enter your password or select the server). You can't use game store if you do that, but the game doesn't crash. And if you do wanna use the store, restart the game without deleting/renaming that file.

[Arianka]

i'm experiensing NONE of these issues on any of my machines. i run dx11 on all of them and they are win7 pros - 64 bit.

i do experiense lag, rubber-banding, etc though.

[voxson5]

If the problem is DX, then a simple switch over to OpenGL would potentially address this.

Any Mac users experiencing problems like this?

I mainly play on my mutant of a desktop Win7 machine, but gaming on the go is on my MBP & apart from lag due in part to having to tether off my phone, it plays splendidly.

[Furbitor]

If the problem is DX, then a simple switch over to OpenGL would potentially address this.

Any Mac users experiencing problems like this?

I mainly play on my mutant of a desktop Win7 machine, but gaming on the go is on my MBP & apart from lag due in part to having to tether off my phone, it plays splendidly.

agreed. but I don't think DDO supports OpenGL.

[Furbitor]

i'm experiensing NONE of these issues on any of my machines. i run dx11 on all of them and they are win7 pros - 64 bit.

i do experiense lag, rubber-banding, etc though.

Cool. My machine had none of these issues for years,either, with a dx10 card. Now it cant. I read so many posts about ppl who have dx11 cards and newer gear than I having issues. My gts 250 is pumping 550 fps outside of ddo and is rocking steady.

[Furbitor]

The first problem I just accepted and just let it slide. That is, I too have to start the game twice. Oh well, bummer.

The other problems pretty much disappear after you delete/rename a file in your game directory called "AwesomiumProcess.exe" AFTER the game checks it's files (you disable it when you see the window to enter your password or select the server). You can't use game store if you do that, but the game doesn't crash. And if you do wanna use the store, restart the game without deleting/renaming that file.

Yup. killing off Awesomejunk.exe definitely helps, so much I use auto kill any process, to stab it in the heart. But this funky game keep glitching, wether I leave awesomecrap running or not.


I too don't mind bugs if I know they getting addressed. Its getting so bad I encourage my guildies to head back to Unreal. When I hosted the server, I made SURE it ran smooth as ice.

[Thrudh]

So what's different between your machine and the other half of the guild that isn't having any problems?

DDO runs very smooth for me... I'm really surprised that a clean windows install and clean ddo install didn't fix the problem... Have you tried replacing the video card? Since a fresh install, and different drivers haven't helped, maybe it's a physical problem with your video card and it is just on the edge of being fried.

[Phoenix-daBard]

1. Connection issues. On starting client, client is sending packets but not receiving any, causing client to shut down. Can occur multiple times before client hooks up.

This one is annoying but easily fixed with a third party tool. Search for DDOPreloader. It works around the issue that Turbine needs to fix.

2. Client crashes. Randomly, the client just crashes, and often as not, crashes PC too. As often as every 20 minutes and as far apart as 3 hours.

I've been having a problem with this the past two months but it seems to be related to the issue I found with number 3.

3. Video drivers crashing. Constantly restarts, if it doesn't crash the client.

My machine has been having issues mostly in DDO but sometimes when DDO hasn't been started. I used a crash dump analyzer to track down the issue and it seems to be a video driver update for my card released through Windows update to Win7x64 machines that was for Win8x64. Highly annoying. I'm still determining if reverting the driver fixed this.

4. Black Screen. Client doesn't crash, but screen is black, and will not reset until client/PC is restarted.

I get this when the video driver crashes without taking out the PC.

5. I am sure there is more, Including the recent random server disconnects, but these 4 above are the mains.

I've only had this happen rarely and usually a quick check reveals that I shouldn't have gone with Frontier for my ISP.

I hope this post helps.

[Furbitor]

So what's different between your machine and the other half of the guild that isn't having any problems?

DDO runs very smooth for me... I'm really surprised that a clean windows install and clean ddo install didn't fix the problem... Have you tried replacing the video card? Since a fresh install, and different drivers haven't helped, maybe it's a physical problem with your video card and it is just on the edge of being fried.

I see these problems across many different machines. It just isnt on my main, but my $5 dollar emachine yard sale special, alienware towers, etc etc.

I currently am installing xp 32 bit back in my main and keeping it clean nothing else installed. AND installing Low res DDO,
again...

and when it runs... it does run smooth as ice. I am thinking somewhere, somehow, a file conflict is sending my rigs into la la land.

And If it was my vid card... why would it replicate in my spare pc's? and it just isnt ddo, all dx11 games I try to fail too...

That points to not ddo's fault, BUT... If DDO is using code that causes this issue, it needs to be helped

[Furbitor]

This one is annoying but easily fixed with a third party tool. Search for DDOPreloader. It works around the issue that Turbine needs to fix.



I hope this post helps.

Yeah its a great little program.. My entire guild uses it.

And yeah just love the crashing vid drivers.

[Furbitor]

am working with ddo tech support team on this. I will post what we are doing and what works. Fingers cross!

[Erdrique]

I will be looking forward to seeing if they can help you. I have been having connection issues lately as well. I even blogged about it at the beginning of the month and thought I had resolved the issue. I had originally thought it was due to my old router but now I'm not so sure because I ran into some log in problems this morning.

I'm beginning to think that the issue is more related to various ISP companies and them turning on and off access to various websites/servers. I have no idea how any of that stuff works but my connection problems seem to clean up after a short period of time (sometimes after a few hours within the same day) and other times it takes a few days (such as when I blogged about it above, where I basically lost a weekend's worth of questing). When I can get into the game, I typically have no problems at all, just the regular lag issues that the majority of the player base encounters. And I don't typically run into many log in problems.

Unfortunately I ran into some problems today. This morning, I was able to get to the character selection screen and was then booted after coming across a time out error as I was trying to load my character into the game. I re-logged and got to the character screen once again, selected another character, and loaded into the world just fine. I then logged that character out and logged in my original character I was trying to log with the first time. That time, I was able to log in and was able to do some maintenance. I then moved from House P to House K without a problem and then tried to go from House K to the Crafting Hall and then crashed. After that point, I couldn't log back into the game, I couldn't even get to the character selection screen.

What was interesting, when these things were going on I was also trying a Trace Route gls.ddo.com. I had tried two attempts and the route never connected. Even when I was connected in game.

In either case, I hope it will be working when I get back home from work today and I'll be interested in seeing if your connection issues get resolved. I just wish there was a way for the staff at Turbine to routinely test the different ISP companies to see if they are currently having issues or are blocking access to their servers and work with them as opposed to the players. I admit that I do not know enough about internet protocols or connections and kind of feel that my hands are tied with situations like this. If Turbine could stay ahead of this it would really help out the playerbase, at least in my opinion.

[der_kluge]

Signing into the game twice is the life I live nowadays. I posted about it a while back, and didn't get a response. I'm excited to see some mention of this DDOPreloader thing. Perhaps that will solve my issue.

[Steven]

Here are a couple of idea's to try some have helped me while I was updating some components on my system.

1st connection issues. Try https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...eload-official
2nd set dndclient service to high
3rd check you memory I had 4 gigs and had a lot of crashes. Was bumping the top of my memory went to 7 GB and this was fixed
4th try going to dx9 even though your card will handle it my old card was dx11 but still had to play as dx9 or get black screen for no apparent reason.
5th you already found is kill the new awesome service that spawns 12 different instances of itself
6th I don't personally have one but have friends that moved to a SSD drive and improved there virtual memory time and increased perfomance

Not sure if these will help you but this is the items that helped me overcome some of the issues you where having. Hope it helps

[schelsullivan]

DDO preloader for the win. The other issues I havent experienced and my PC is old and slow as dirt (I run DDO Direct X9 with all graphics as lowest and in 1024 X 768)

[Dawnsfire]

I used to have many of those issues. I have fixed most by running DDO on a flash drive. I still have the usual lag/rubberbanding and such. Good luck finding your solution!

[Furbitor]

OK. said I would reply. and a LONG week I have had....

I am gonna post the suggestions of the ddo tech support team in order they wanted me to try.

Be warned, Normal troubleshooting procedures should be tried one at a time, extremely time consuming, but most through. I will separate my replies between each session.

#1.
Thank you for your request. To better aid us in troubleshooting, please follow the steps outlinedhere to send us your systems DirectX info, and then the steps here to also include an MsInfo file as well.

Once we have received and reviewed the files we will certainly assist with additional troubleshooting steps. (If you need any assistance or encounter any issues generating those files please note this in your reply.)

I sent them my info.

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#2.
Thank you for your request. Please open the userpreferences file found in yourDocuments > Dungeons and Dragons Online folder and within that file under the section titled[Display] make the following changes:

Change AllowFakeFullScreen=True to False
Change SyncToRefresh=False to True
Change Antialiasing= to Disabled if set to 2x/4x etc. (e.g. Antialiasing=Disabled )
Change AllowDesktopCompositing=False to True

Under the section titled [Render] change the GraphicsCore option to D3D9 (i.e. GraphicsCore=D3D9 ).

Under the section titled [Troubleshooting] change the MaximumFrameRate option to 57 (i.e. MaximumFrameRate=57 ).

Exit the file and choose yes when prompted to save changes prior to launching the game to test these settings.

Some additional settings changes can be made from the in game Options menu:

Under ADV Graphics disable the Player Mesh Combining setting.
Lower the Player Crowd Quality Control slider to 0.
Under Audio make sure the selected sound playback setting is "Generic Software on.." and thatUse EAX is disabled.
Under the Troubleshoot section lower the Engine Speed setting to Medium.

Please detail any changes utilizing these settings.


Everything above has only the effect of lightening the load on my vid card/system. As if my card couldn't handle ddo, like it has for years....
the end results was ddo played poorly, the video driver still crashing, and the settings caused my comp to blue screen crash too.

In the ddoclient.log file it was full of errors.

sent my new logs and wait..

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#3.
Thank you for your reply. A blue screen error is almost always related to a hardware level fault occurring or drivers related to a hardware component. The game has an average system usage 'footprint' that may be causing it to encounter/trigger this fault more often than other apps.

Just to test if the absolute "bare minimum" settings have any effect on the issue, please try the following:

Starting at character select go into the 'options' menu
Under 'graphics' set the "Graphics Quality" option to very low, and the "Graphics Hardware" to DirectX 9 (if it is on 10 or 11 currently)
Switch over to the 'audio' section and enable "Disable Game Sounds"
Open the 'troubleshoot' section and put "Engine Speed" down to very low as well.
Exit the game client and restart it, so it saves and applies the settings

At this point please log back in to test using these settings, only temporarily but long enough to determine if there is any change to the issue encountered. After testing please reply to this email and detail the results if any are noted and we will certainly assist with additional troubleshooting steps.



Ok. so I did the above, and ddo still played like garbage. My vid drivers still crashed, and running NvidiaInspector, I could see realtime when the voltages would just drop the second the drivers crashed.. And not until I stopped the ddoclient process it would respond again. The game quit blue screening my machine, but the display would go pitch black, while I remained in-game able to talk.

Sent new log files and wait...
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That the driver itself is closing on Dx9 modes indicates that they more so than the hardware itself may be what is affected. Is there any change if you update to the 331.82 drivers from Nvidiahere? Greetings Furby, Thank you for your reply. The 400 series and newer chipsets are the only Nvidia ones to support DX11 modes, for the Intel onboard system the Intel chipsets can erroneously report they support DX10/11 modes but they cannot apply those features because they cannot emulate them in software rendering mode as they do with the DirectX 9 features. If the 250 is trying to enable DX11 this may be why the blue screens occur, for the Intel chipset system also see this linkhere, there was a recent update to DX that causes blue screens on certain Intel chipsets detailed in that article that may be applicable on that system.


But I tried to play other games to see if it was a unrelated problem. in UT2004, a DX9 game, ran flawless for about 40 mins. then the screen pixlated. Fearing a bad video card, I swapped my GTS 250, (a rebranded 9800GT) for my "Buddies" 9600 GSO. Both was DX10 cards, and right away I notice the video drivers crashing again. Before I could do anything, the water cooling on my comp sprung a leak and damaged my motherboard. I tried to log on with the E-machine (I know, I know..) and it has similar issues. It refused to stay running.

So I had a pile of 2 dead comps and parts....

so I pulled the machine apart and put in in a real atx case, fed with a real powersupply, and put the 9600 gso in it.

.... and it runs amazing. It has no crashing drivers, doesnt shut down and is running at optimum settings. I don't know why, meebe the old supply was failing in the emachine... it still has the sluggish network connection that plagues all of us. But, I am back online, and I am unable to help diagnose this further.

I sent this letter to ddo support, and mebbe you guys can get something usefull out of it. Good luck!!

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First of all thanks for your time and effort to help me in this matter. I was not able to Identify the cause of the Crashing driver. The BSOD screens varied from fix to fix, no doubt the inability of my system to handle various drivers and run certain programs. I am not sure if my video card was ever at fault, instead that my mobo had finally cross into dementia, and the video card was left holding the bag.

Like I said, since 2006 this rig run DDO with its original 6600 gt dual gpu card till 2010, then was replaced with the gts 250 (re-branded 9800gt), running this game for all these years at high settings.

I "borrowed" a 9600 GSO card, and tried it at high settings and got the same results, indicating the card wasn't at fault. I did clean installs of ddo on clean installs of windows xp and win 7, 64 and 32 bit. The required libraries for .net and runtimes, and so forth prevent me from determining which files are conflicting with my drivers. I am not skilled enough to trouble shoot this issue.

In my experience, when troubleshooting a issue like this one, I would try one thing at a time. You guys had me change 10 different setting at once, I recognize trying to lighten the load on my gpu to see if alleviates the issue. It never overheated. But I could see, with the help of NvidiaInspector, the realtime usage and voltages of my card on the fly, and when my driver crashed... or blackscreened in ddo, the voltages dropped to nothing and usage went flat.

After the ddo client process was killed, the volts came up and I could use my comp. Somehow the driver issue was causing the video card to stop, or error.

Win7 has a driver monitor program, Forget its name, and it regularly queries the video card for status updates.. in the spirit of if the vid card isn't keeping up, win 7 doesn't get the proper response in allotted time, it shuts the video driver off and reboots it, to help prevent game hangs. if the video card has conflicting orders, doesn't respond, win 7 auto-crashes it. there is a way to edit the registry to lengthen the timeout, and give cards a longer chance to recover... but eh.

Currently, I am running on the Emachine EL-1850-01e. Its a Celeron cpu, G41 chipset, has GMA-4500 onboard video, and 2 gb ram.
It ran ddo ok, although It also was crashing video drivers in ddo. The issue preplexes me. Well I had an incident, and my old GN-K8NXPSLI machine had crashed due to my fault. I seen my mistake and I could still run it, but not before I cannibalized it for parts.
Now the emachine is "upgraded" with 600 watt power supply (had 220 watt flex-itx) and the 9600 gso video card.

since then, this $5.00 yard sale special now runs DDO on optimum settings, driving 2 -23 inch monitors, and not crashing its video driver.

I have no good reason. Except my old mobo was finally earning its rest, but why this emachine which was crashing is now stable. its the same drivers, files and installation it had in it's old case, with only the addition of a much better PSU and a discrete vidcard.

Well, I know this issue still exists, And my suspicions lie with MicroSloth, the legacy of the changes in Directx9 to DX10 memory allocations,
and the updates to DirectX aren't properly backward compatible with older hardware.

I wish I had my supplies out of storage, I would have loved to try to put a real DX9 card back in the machine, one that was made for it.

Thanks and please close my ticket.

Wish you luck in helping others.
Thanks for trying to help me.
Furb (khyber)


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[Theocides]

I noticed most of my problems with the game after Hasbro took over. First having to log in, then close out and log back in to be able to play. Then having the game kick me mid-session without any problems coming from my internet connection. I stopped wasting my money on the VIP status and now gotten to the point where I just don't want to take the 20 mins needed to even be able to start playing. A good game wasted on corporate incompetence.