CRASHING to desktop all the time! Anyone else having the same issue?

[Kerria]

It is a total shutdown of game all in one sec time. No, it is not my rig. Just to say that up front. My specs far exceed the requirements. I know of two other players having same issue. I ran the repair option. Have not done a reinstall yet but my friend has reinstalled twice with no help. I have not done a service ticket, but friend has to no avail. Just trying to see if this is happening to a lot of us or just us poor few.

[Baahb3]

One of my guildies had this issue last night as well. It might be why they took down IoD, to fix some instability issue it introduced.

[Arjen]

It is a total shutdown of game all in one sec time. No, it is not my rig. Just to say that up front. My specs far exceed the requirements. I know of two other players having same issue. I ran the repair option. Have not done a reinstall yet but my friend has reinstalled twice with no help. I have not done a service ticket, but friend has to no avail. Just trying to see if this is happening to a lot of us or just us poor few.

Yep, all the time.

I've got a couple of desktops with very similar specs (i9 9900k, GeForce RTX 2060, 32GB Ram) and on one DDO hardly every crashes and on the other it's at least once a day and locks up frequently. No other game or application has this behavior and drivers/firmware/etc are all constantly updated.

[Cordovan]

We have seen a few reports of a crashing issue that have been reported to us since yesterday's launch of Isle of Dread, but we don't as yet have a good cause to track down. We are currently suspicious that this could be related to an audio file issue, so if you have been experiencing an unusual and regular crashing issue since yesterday, we could use more information:

Server:
Time:
What were you doing (specific quest name, specific part of landscape, etc.):

Being able to track it to a certain area will help us locate what we think might be happening, but at the moment the number of available files to look through makes it a bit of a needle in a haystack.

[Chacka_DDO]

It is a total shutdown of game all in one sec time. No, it is not my rig. Just to say that up front. My specs far exceed the requirements. I know of two other players having same issue. I ran the repair option. Have not done a reinstall yet but my friend has reinstalled twice with no help. I have not done a service ticket, but friend has to no avail. Just trying to see if this is happening to a lot of us or just us poor few.

It might be a problem that is foremost caused by the DDO client that shuts down when there is a memory error, I always had that problem on different systems (different AMD and Intel CPUs and Nidia and AMD graphic cards) usually I had such a shut down at least once per day and sometimes even several times in a few minutes.
But after I got once the tip that DDO has a problem with memory errors my solution was to buy a system with ECC memory (memory that can correct 1-bit and some 2-bit errors) and after that, I had literally never again that problem, only in some quests like Big Top it can still happen because this is seemingly a different problem.
It is of course also possible that it is a different problem that came with the Isle of Dread (like Big Top) but so far I also had never any client shut down problem with Isle of Dread on my system.

Therefore I don't say the culprit is your system because you have most likely only such problems with the DDO client BUT the good news is that you can do something about it, so higher quality RAM modules might help and to be sure the culprit is not memory errors on your system, use ECC memory.

[R1ncewind]

We have seen a few reports of a crashing issue that have been reported to us since yesterday's launch of Isle of Dread, but we don't as yet have a good cause to track down. We are currently suspicious that this could be related to an audio file issue, so if you have been experiencing an unusual and regular crashing issue since yesterday, we could use more information:

Server:
Time:
What were you doing (specific quest name, specific part of landscape, etc.):

Being able to track it to a certain area will help us locate what we think might be happening, but at the moment the number of available files to look through makes it a bit of a needle in a haystack.

For me so far the crashes happen more often after I minimize ddo and then go back and move too fast after it. Ill make a better report next time it happens. but I hope this info could help

[ekaterina]

"We are currently suspicious that this could be related to an audio file issue"

One of the standard approaches to sudden crashing is to completely disable audio - not as a permanent fix but to see if it makes a difference. Audio causes more problems that aren't *obviously* audio related than most people realize.

So if anyone has more crashes recently - try this and report the results (whether it helps or not).

Go to options and click whatever you need to click to turn sound completely off (game is down now so I can't take a look).

[adamkatt]

I crashed 9 times in two hrs using the 64 bit client yesterday around 2-4 pm pst.. later that night i switched to the 32 bit client and then i was getting disconnects every 5 min or so.. i left the dread isle after that and tried some older content with zero issues. this all occurred in the slayer zone(the big one)

[gam3rfi3nd]

happened to me a couple of times the other day.

[Xitix555]

A while back I had a few such crashes and another thread here suggested unchecking Enable EAX in sound settings. Did not have crashes after that.

[Vannessya]

I bug reported this before the launch.
Teal (the hireling) was doing that to me.
Computer freeze. Game crash. No error message.

When Isle of Dread came out, I immediately went in the wilderness to see if the crash would happen, and it did.

I resolved this by changing my Game Launcher from 64 bits to 32 bits.
Now it is working without crashing.

Its easy to try. I hope this help.

[Gabrael]

I also started getting sum game crash not long ago, it was before the isle of dread release, but i don't think it's been an issue for more than a week, so whatever fix or stealthfix the game had prior to the release might be where to look at

[R1ncewind]

We have seen a few reports of a crashing issue that have been reported to us since yesterday's launch of Isle of Dread, but we don't as yet have a good cause to track down. We are currently suspicious that this could be related to an audio file issue, so if you have been experiencing an unusual and regular crashing issue since yesterday, we could use more information:

Server: Ghallanda
Time: 17:32 -4gtm
What were you doing (specific quest name, specific part of landscape, etc.): teleporting to Van Ritchen Tower after teleport, and after returning from the desktop and Edge, the game crushed

Being able to track it to a certain area will help us locate what we think might be happening, but at the moment the number of available files to look through makes it a bit of a needle in a haystack.

answer in red

[PsychoBlonde]

I was able to fix this for myself after hours and hours of trial and error.

Step 1:
Check in Windows Event Viewer that you're getting an error related to OpenAL32.dll
(Search for Windows Event Viewer in your apps, fire it up. Click on the arrow next to Windows Logs to expand the list. Click on Application. There should be a red circle around a ! that says Error. The General box should say something like "Faulting application name: dndclient64.exe, version buncha numbers, time stamp buncha garbage
Faulting module name: OpenAL32.dll further unintelligible garbage"

Basically it should look like this:



Step 2: get a clean copy of OpenAL32.dll by installing the Microsoft vBasic redistributables. Basically, follow the instructions in this video:



Step 3: Once you have both the x86 and x64 redistributables downloaded and installed and you've restarted your computer, go to your DDO files and find the OpenAL32.dll file and just delete it. No, seriously, delete it. This will force the game to use the clean copy you just installed from your general files. If something weird happens you can go to your recycle bin and undelete it, but nothing weird should happen.

Step 4: no more crashing due to OpenAL32.dll

However MAKE SURE BEFORE YOU START THIS PROCESS THAT THE CRASHES ARE BEING CAUSED BY OPENAL32.DLL.

[Arjen]

Anecdotal update, ran the game for several hours today with the sound disabled and experienced no crashes or any hard lock ups.

[adamkatt]

Lol i just stepped into the isle picked up a quest with guildies and in town standing on the pier at the first quest i get dropped to desktop again... this is the best new content ever! (64 bit client)... edit switched to the 32 bit client, no crashes tonight after the switch.. and to think the 64 bit client is supposed to be better....

[Mindos]

Step 3: Once you have both the x86 and x64 redistributables downloaded and installed and you've restarted your computer, go to your DDO files and find the OpenAL32.dll file and just delete it. No, seriously, delete it. This will force the game to use the clean copy you just installed from your general files. If something weird happens you can go to your recycle bin and undelete it, but nothing weird should happen.

My first thought was that the game would just download the file again. /shrug If it works, it works.

(can you check if the file is still gone from your install though just for curiosity's sake?)

[Jerous]

I have the crashing straight to desktop bug.

Server:Sarlona
Time: About 10 times on launch day over the course of about 90 minutes (have not tried since I applied a workaround, see below)
What were you doing (specific quest name, specific part of landscape, etc.): Crashing in dread slayer area ONLY, no specific place in the slayers was just rare hunting. All other zones seemed to be fine for hours on end.

I followed PsychoBlonde's advice and turned the 'mute all game sounds' toggle in the settings on and then it didn't happen again.

After I turned my sound off the zone seem to be 'smoother' and felt like it was less laggy as I was turning and running.

I have yet to turn my game sounds back on to test if it's still crashing though.

[Bnsfv]

We have seen a few reports of a crashing issue that have been reported to us since yesterday's launch of Isle of Dread, but we don't as yet have a good cause to track down. We are currently suspicious that this could be related to an audio file issue, so if you have been experiencing an unusual and regular crashing issue since yesterday, we could use more information:

Server:
Time:
What were you doing (specific quest name, specific part of landscape, etc.):

Being able to track it to a certain area will help us locate what we think might be happening, but at the moment the number of available files to look through makes it a bit of a needle in a haystack.

Surgubben
Server:Ghallanda
Time:11.05 cet
What were you doing: outside Bully wugs and booby traps. started to run to next quest.

[PsychoBlonde]

My first thought was that the game would just download the file again. /shrug If it works, it works.

(can you check if the file is still gone from your install though just for curiosity's sake?)

It did, but I now have a much newer version of the file in place. Who knows, we'll see if it sticks.