Game crashing far too often, even with no mods included and fresh installed

[adis_knight]

I've been playing Crusader Kings II since it's launch last year but boy, the crashes have been happening so frequently that I'm starting to get bored.
I use to make my own mods and play with them and I don't create or delete anything, just change the values and still the game crashes at random.
And now, even without any mods the game is crashing! Even with a fresh install!
I'm playing the game with all DLCs purchased and enabled.
Hope someone can help me.
Running the game on a Windows 7 64 bit; AMD APU A8-3850; NVidia GeForce 5500 Ti 1024MB; 8,0 GB DDR3; 500GB Western Digital HD

 

[Wezqu]

Did you manually delete the game folder and Crusader Kings II folder thats in My Documents -> Paradox Interactive after you uninstalled? If you didn't then you did not do a clean install. Your save files are in the Crusader Kings II folder in my documents so don't forget to move them if you do a clea install. The steps are uninstall, manually delete main game folder and Crusader Kings II folder from My Documents -> Paradox Interactive and reinstall the game.

 

[adis_knight]

Yes, I uninstalled it from Steam and deleted the Paradox Interactive folder in My Documents...
It looks like the game is crashing whenever I run it at full speed (speed 5)
If I play it on speed 4 there are no crashes whatsoever but on speed 5 it crashes at random

 

[Wezqu]

Did you delete the main game folder thats under Steam after you uninstalled and not just the one in My Documents?

 

[adis_knight]

The main game folder had already been deleted on steam uninstallation.
Sometimes I think that the problem is indeed with the speed 5...although there was a quite hideous bug that happened to me today while playing ironman mod with Oustlandet on the 867 start. The game crashed after I had gained a few counties within the kingdom of Sweden and, apparently, it saved before the crash.
When I returned I had been transformed into a republic and only had my demesne counties. I could not play it because whenever I tried the game ended saying: "You have become the ruler of a republic and therefore are no longer allowed to continue playing."
I have absolutely no idea why this happened. Must be a bug.

 

[AndrewT]

Please post a dxdiag.txt (you can delete everything after the "Sound devices" section for brevity) and your Documents/CK2/settings.txt. Zip up your whole Documents/CK2/logs/ directory and attach or link that here too please.

 

[adis_knight]

Here you go.
Hope you guys can help me out of this one.
I love this game very much.
Played it for more than 300 hours already!
xD

 

[AndrewT]

Well, I can't see anything wrong in there, although we didn't get the [sound devices] part of dxdiag from you, nor your settings.txt .

Next time it crashes without mods active, please note down for us exactly what happens. Was it after any particular event or action? Did any errors pop up? Did you have to kill ck2 with Task Manager, or it died by itself, or you had to reboot your PC to recover? Did anything odd happen on the screen or in sound before the crash? And post the new game.log file from /logs/ here for us then too.

 

[adis_knight]

Ok, here is everything you need.
Sorry, I got it wrong about the "after sound devices" part.
As for how and when the game crashes: it's always at random, like when I'm in the middle of a battle, when I'm moving around the map, even when I'm just sitting still. It always crashes to desktop without any warnings whatsoever, just plain game closed, back to desktop...smooth crash ¬¬'

 

[AndrewT]

You've attached a save game here. Is that because it's only this one game that's crashing, others are OK?

Try editing settings.txt as follows, to turn of all sounds and simplify graphics as much as possible.

fullScreen=no

multi_sampling=0

master_volume=0

draw_trees=no
draw_rivers=no
draw_postfx=no
draw_sky=no

draw_citysprawl=no

If that helps at all, we an undo those one by one to see which.

 

[adis_knight]

I'll try doing it next time I play it at home.
I've been testing it on minimum resolution and no multi_sampling but to no avail, still crashing.
I'll try doing it with all these settings off.
I've also noticed that when I turn off Avast 8 there were no crashes. I could play for over 20 years at a time. While playing it on other settings the crash comes ranging from less than a year to 3 years.
Will update if the issue continues or not with Avast off.
All games I try crash. Modded, unmodded, Ironman.

 

[Had a dad]

Where do you have it installed?

Also here is how to add an exception for Avast

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=36381.0

 

[adis_knight]

I have the game installed as follows: "C://Steam/SteamApps/Common/Crusader Kings II"
I'm currently testing the game with the Avast 8 exception on, will comment on the results for today.
Thank you.

 

[adis_knight]

So far I've tested the game using the Avast exception but to no avail...the game still crashes.
Turning off Avast while playing, however, made the crashes vanish...i can't believe it's all Avast's fault...I've been playing for hours on speed 5 on both modded and unmodded versions of the game and no crashes happened.
Will test the game using the settings off and Avast on, will try to report today still.

 

[adis_knight]

Seems like running the game with Avast 8 off has improved considerably but still has the crash plague. I've been able to play for several years as the ruler of Khazaria and then the crash came along. I've also tried playing it with Avast on and disabling the settings feature such as sound, trees, rivers, post_fx, sky and citysprawl. The crashes still plague the game, and in few years of play time too.
Guess there must be something else to these crashings...perhaps it's a hardware problem...

 

[AndrewT]

But disabling Avast! seems to dramatically reduce the number of crashes, yes? I suppose we could try uninstalling it altogether, maybe you need to move to a different AV product.

Another possibility would be a full clean reinstall of the whole of Steam, if you don't have too many games in it. Move all valued save games elsewhere and uninstall all games from in Steam (delete local files). Then uninstall Steam itself and manually delete all leftover files and directories, under where Steam was and where the games write user data. Then reinstall Steam, set steam.exe to run as the admin user, and install CK2 and test it again please.

 

[adis_knight]

Ok, I'm currently trying the game with Avast Off and fullscreen Off and it hasn't crashed for a long time. Will be testing it now on ironman mode and on modded versions.
If it still fails I'll try to do the harsh solutions you mentioned.
Thank you for your time. Will update future results here.

 

[Had a dad]

you would also want to make an exception for the my documents folder as that is where several file changes are happening.

 

[adis_knight]

Ok so, doing as you said "Had a dad" I made exception for both the game.exes and the documents folder on Avast and it worked wonders! I've been able to play on ironman mod as Ostlandet for over 67 years straight and not a single crash occurred! I reformed the norse faith and created the empire of scandinavia with 3 characters played.
Looks like Avast was the bringer of pain.
Thank you so much for all the help.
Keep up the good work!
;D

 

[Physicus]

I have the same problem as written above, but none of the solutions works for me..
The game runs extremly slow and crashes after about 1 year ingame-time.
This started about 1 week ago .. i tried to re-install the game a few times removed all the mods and manually deleted all the files i even checked my anti-virus-programs if they cause the issue but none of this worked so far.

I'm playing on : Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit ; AMD Radeon HD 6570 2804 MB

dxdiag tells me that : The files aticfx64.dll,aticfx64.dll,aticfx64.dll,amdxc64.dll arent signed.
And i should contact my hardware manufacturer to find a signed driver.