Dead Screen Hang

[Taxman66]

Sorry for the wall of text, but this is weird:

I upgraded to the newest patch last night. Deleted the cache and started playing for a while (after the recalc).

I must've played an hour so, but as soon as I reached a new tech (Spice Trade in this case) the game hung with a frozen screen. I couldn't Alt-Tab out and was forced to cold boot the machine. No minidump was generated.

Now the oddness: I tried started playing again this morning (the machine was left on, for MS Security Essentials to do its thing) and my profile was somehow messed up. At the opening screen the resolution was at a lower setting and going to settings the graphics settings were set to low. Additionally I didn't see my 1920x1080 option available. So I tried to start vanilla BTS and got a similar situation (but got a pop-up saying my graphics were below minimum spec). Anyway rebooted the machine, restarted vanilla BTS and was then able to reset the profile properly (then did the same for C2C). Although the C2C profile had to be recreated/copied over as it said there was an error loading it. - I'd guess this was all a result of program hang.

Having fixed the profile, I tried to load the autosave and got a CTD.
Don't have viewports on as of yet (but only 35-40% of the map has been revealed) and I'm not that far into the game.
Minidump and autosave included

 

[Koshling]

Sorry for the wall of text, but this is weird:

I upgraded to the newest patch last night. Deleted the cache and started playing for a while (after the recalc).

I must've played an hour so, but as soon as I reached a new tech (Spice Trade in this case) the game hung with a frozen screen. I couldn't Alt-Tab out and was forced to cold boot the machine. No minidump was generated.

Now the oddness: I tried started playing again this morning (the machine was left on, for MS Security Essentials to do its thing) and my profile was somehow messed up. At the opening screen the resolution was at a lower setting and going to settings the graphics settings were set to low. Additionally I didn't see my 1920x1080 option available. So I tried to start vanilla BTS and got a similar situation (but got a pop-up saying my graphics were below minimum spec). Anyway rebooted the machine, restarted vanilla BTS and was then able to reset the profile properly (then did the same for C2C). Although the C2C profile had to be recreated/copied over as it said there was an error loading it. - I'd guess this was all a result of program hang.

Having fixed the profile, I tried to load the autosave and got a CTD.
Don't have viewports on as of yet (but only 35-40% of the map has been revealed) and I'm not that far into the game.
Minidump and autosave included

The auosave is corrupt - my guess is that the hard crash occurred mid-way through writing it. A crash such as you describe can only occur due to a hardware error (overheat maybe?) or (potentially) a driver bug, most often video drivers. You might find something in the critical errors in the Windows event log to give clue. Off the top of my head I'd say overheating is the most likely cause if you'd been playing for some time - have you blown dust out of your computer's fans/vents lately?

 

[Taxman66]

Should not be overheating. I clean/vacuum the vent every couple of weeks and use liquid cooling (which the pump was replaced 4 months ago).

I can check to update the Nvidia drivers later.

 

[Koshling]

Should not be overheating. I clean/vacuum the vent every couple of weeks and use liquid cooling (which the pump was replaced 4 months ago).

I can check to update the Nvidia drivers later.

Ok. My previous system did exactly what you describe periodically, mostly in Civ, but occasionally in other (usually graphical) apps. I never was able to pin it down, but it felt like it was probably heat related. In my case it persisted across a change in video card manufacturer, so I suspect (in my case) it was likely a motherboard issue. Anyway, fro me it was a once every few days thing and I just lived with it.

 

[Taxman66]

Just checked, my drivers (Nvidia driver 320.49 for GTS 450) are up to date.

Ok. I can chalk it up to a hopefully rare occurrence. My system is reasonably robust (i7 870 2.93GHz, ASUS P7P55D-E LX Motherboard, Win7 Home Premium with 16GB (yes I know C2C won't use it all)

The screwing with the profile thing scared me for a bit.