PC Crashes or BSoD When Playing Stellaris

[Nuukov]

So ever since 2.6.0 (and 2.6.1) when I have been playing Stellaris, occasionally my whole PC will crash. So far I have only noticed this happening in multiplayer as I have not played much singleplayer and the bit that I did (for maybe like 2 hours) I didn't have an issue. When playing, the issue can occur either after 5 minutes of playing, 30 minutes, or several hours.

When it occurs it plays out as follows: one of two things will happen, the first is I hear my PC make the sound as if something has been disconnected (like if I pulled out my mouse or keyboard) - then immediately my mouse cursor won't respond, I cannot use my keyboard (to minimise or do Ctrl+Alt+Del). The game is still "running" but time does not move forward. I also seem to get disconnected from the internet (as I have been playing with friends and talking over Discord and Discord immediately disconnects when all of this happens). I have no choice but to hold down the power button to turn off the PC and then turn it back on again.

The second scenario is that Stellaris will suddenly freeze and appear to crash. I can still use my mouse and keyboard and minimise, but my PC is slowed down and any attempt to open the task manager seems futile. After maybe 30-60 seconds my mouse cursor's responses will become severely delayed and then my PC will go to the blue screen of death and then restart.

This is extremely frustrating and I am only having these issues while playing Stellaris. I would appreciate any help as it means I cannot seem to play Stellaris with my friends, as it may crash my whole PC at any moment. My PC as a whole is only a few months old and has very good specs (GTX 2070 GPU, 16gb of RAM etc). I have tried checking the integrity of the files, deleting the Stellaris folder in Documents and having other people host apart from myself. It still crashes under all circumstances.

 

[AndrewT]

BSoD and hard crashes are almost always driver or hardware problems, I'm afraid!

DXDIAG is a program you run from a command prompt or the Windows start menu 'run' dialog box (or 'search programs' in Windows 7 or later). After running it will open a window and start collecting info with a progress bar in the lower-left corner. When it completes click the 'save all information' button and save it to a file then attach that file here.

Please attach your Documents/Paradox/Stellaris/settings.txt and pdx_settings.txt .
From your Documents/Paradox/Stellaris/logs/ folder, attach system.log .


Please report the temperatures of your CPU and video (GPU)
1/ before starting the game up and
2/ after say 10 minutes' play.
If your PC's vendor has given you no way of reading temperatures, install
SPEEDFAN http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php

 

[Nuukov]

@AndrewT thanks for your response! I've attached the information you've requested.

 

[Roudin]

I'm having the exact same issue since the latest patch version. If a fix is found please post it here so I can see if it potentially lines up with my problem as well.

 

[AndrewT]

@AndrewT thanks for your response! I've attached the information you've requested.

No clues in those files at all, I am sorry. I don't even see any bluescreen or LiveKernelEvents in dxdiag there.

Next time you see a BDoS please write down or photo the text in the screen, which will be useful.

In Windows Event Viewer, are there any useful Error or Warning events in the few minutes leading up to the computer crash?

 

[Nuukov]

No clues in those files at all, I am sorry. I don't even see any bluescreen or LiveKernelEvents in dxdiag there.

Next time you see a BDoS please write down or photo the text in the screen, which will be useful.

In Windows Event Viewer, are there any useful Error or Warning events in the few minutes leading up to the computer crash?

I had reinstalled the game since it last crashed, that might be why. I checked in dxdiag and couldn't find anything that might tell me the cause of the crashing. All I was getting was errors saying that the PC shut down unexpectedly.

 

[AndrewT]

Is this at all associated with using the Envoy button, as a matter of interest?

If not, I've just had another similar report, interestingly using exactly the same nVidia card. Can you please contact nVidia and see if there are any known issues with this with it?

 

[Nuukov]

Is this at all associated with using the Envoy button, as a matter of interest?

If not, I've just had another similar report, interestingly using exactly the same nVidia card. Can you please contact nVidia and see if there are any known issues with this with it?

I've not noticed it happening when I have used the envoy button myself. I will contact Nvidia as soon as I can though. Again, thanks for all your help!

 

[Roudin]

Well I thought I had a fix as I had played for around 2.5 hours in a row and a total of 4 hours without any problems. However, no sooner did I post the fix than it suffered a failure. It has improved as I was able to play for a significant amount of time. Also, the effects of the failure changed from a total system crash to a graphical freeze. My screens were frozen, but audio and such continued to play in the background without a full BSoD system crash. I still had to manually do a hard restart to clear the graphics though. I'm attempting a few more settings changes prior to requesting further assistance from Nvidia. Here are the settings changes made to the GPU so far.

From the query posted on the Forum of paradox Interactive we see that the issue is very specific to the game Stellaris, also you have tried most of the troubleshooting steps by yourself like uninstalling and re-installing the drivers, rolling back drivers to the previous version and importantly have also performed a clean installation of the windows on the system, however the issue still persists.

Would you please be able to make the below mentioned changes in the NVIDIA control panel and check if that makes any difference:

NVIDIA Control panel->Manage 3D settings
Under global settings find
Power management mode->Prefer maximum performance
Threaded optimization->Off
Triple buffering->Off
Vertical Sync->Off

Apply the changes and check if the game is working fine?

 

[Nuukov]

@AndrewT I've tried to get through to Nvidia, and either I'm a peanut brain or their support system is just too difficult for me to navigate. I tried connecting to a direct chat but I could never get in contact to one of their agents, neither could I find anyway to just to send their support team a simple ticket. I hope that the post from @Roudin above is sufficient for you, but if you need a response off nvidia from me too I can try again.

 

[Nuukov]

@AndrewT I have tried using the settings NVIDIA recommended in the post by @Roudin, I am still experiencing the problem.

 

[Roudin]

@AndrewT I have tried using the settings NVIDIA recommended in the post by @Roudin, I am still experiencing the problem.

I am as well. The settings changes seemed to be promising at first with several hours of play unaffected, but then I ended up suffering a crash again and the problem resumed. I'm still working with Nvidia.

 

[Reyouka]

Any word on this? I'm also experiencing the same kind of crash, also have a Geforce 2070 Super. Game locks up, video and audio are fine but my keyboard and mouse refuse to respond and I get disconnected from the internet. Forces me to hard reset the computer for anything to happen.

 

[AndrewT]

Any word on this? I'm also experiencing the same kind of crash, also have a Geforce 2070 Super. Game locks up, video and audio are fine but my keyboard and mouse refuse to respond and I get disconnected from the internet. Forces me to hard reset the computer for anything to happen.

Can I ask you to please contact nVidia on it also? It seems clearly like their problem now.

 

[OverLord Xan]

When it occurs it plays out as follows: one of two things will happen, the first is I hear my PC make the sound as if something has been disconnected (like if I pulled out my mouse or keyboard) - then immediately my mouse cursor won't respond, I cannot use my keyboard (to minimise or do Ctrl+Alt+Del). The game is still "running" but time does not move forward. I also seem to get disconnected from the internet (as I have been playing with friends and talking over Discord and Discord immediately disconnects when all of this happens). I have no choice but to hold down the power button to turn off the PC and then turn it back on again.

I am having this issue, i would start playing and my mouse and keyboard would stop responding, the game keeps running but i can't do anything, this usually happens a few moments before a save for me, and the only way i can fix this is to turn off my PC via power button,
(AMD Redeon Vega VII, 16 gig RAM, AMD Ryzen7 2700X)

 

[AndrewT]

I am having this issue, i would start playing and my mouse and keyboard would stop responding, the game keeps running but i can't do anything, this usually happens a few moments before a save for me, and the only way i can fix this is to turn off my PC via power button,
(AMD Redeon Vega VII, 16 gig RAM, AMD Ryzen7 2700X)

Everyone else in this thread had a Geforce 2070 so yours is very likely a different issue. Still hardware though!

Please start a new thread and attach there the info I asked for up in post #2 here, thanks.

 

[Zamer]

I am having this issue, i would start playing and my mouse and keyboard would stop responding, the game keeps running but i can't do anything, this usually happens a few moments before a save for me, and the only way i can fix this is to turn off my PC via power button,
(AMD Redeon Vega VII, 16 gig RAM, AMD Ryzen7 2700X)

I have the same problem. Everything freezes after some minutes of playing and only thing i can do is shut down computer. Sometimes this not happen but i don't know what it depends on.
[AMD Radeon R9 200 / HD 7900 Series, Intel Core i7-4770K]

 

[RylethIV]

so,any fix for this?

mine is also disconnecting the usbs (mouse,keyboard and wireless) and giving black screens (monitor unplugs but audio still working in game),

already checked hardware (mobo,cpu,gpu,ssd,ram,psu) and all are working perfectly, stellaris is the only game i can reproduce this crash,all other games are running smoothly for hours,using a 1060 instead of 2070

pc specs are ryzen 3 3200g,16gb ram,gtx 1060,512gb nvme ssd

checked event log for any clues but theres nothing except for the unespected shutdown warning (force reset/restart since i cant see/do anything on the pc at all during the crash)

 

[AndrewT]

already checked hardware (mobo,cpu,gpu,ssd,ram,psu) and all are working perfectly, stellaris is the only game i can reproduce this crash,all other games are running smoothly for hours,using a 1060 instead of 2070

pc specs are ryzen 3 3200g,16gb ram,gtx 1060,512gb nvme ssd

I have the same video card as you and don't get this ... I'm not sure this is the same issue as others here are seeing actually.


DXDIAG is a program you run from a command prompt or the Windows start menu 'run' dialog box (or 'search programs' in Windows 7 or later). After running it will open a window and start collecting info with a progress bar in the lower-left corner. When it completes click the 'save all information' button and save it to a file then attach that file here.

Please attach your Documents/Paradox/Stellaris/settings.txt and pdx_settings.txt .
From your Documents/Paradox/Stellaris/logs/ folder, attach system.log .


Please report the temperatures of your CPU and video (GPU)
1/ before starting the game up and
2/ after say 30 minutes' play.
If your PC's vendor has given you no way of reading temperatures, install
SPEEDFAN http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php

 

[RylethIV]

temps 45c on boot,67-68 on idle,74-79 during gaming for ~30 minutes,temp log and asked files in attachment