[BNW] Frequent And Intermittent Crashing

[Mattplus]

Hi all,

I'm new to these forums and could really do with some help please.

I'm not new to Civ 5 and have had it running on multiple machines over the years, never with any problems.

About a year ago I bought a new custom built machine and while the performance is brilliant on most games, for some reason Civ 5 just doesn't like running for very long before it, without warning, exits to desktop.

Before many of you roll your eyes for yet another OP wanting to know why his game isn't working (I don't blame you, I'd probably do the same), I've spent hours looking into this and for the life of me can't figure it out. But what I can say is that nothing anyone has suggested so far has made any difference. So again, please forgive me, but I would really appreciate the help.

The problem (described the best that I can):

Game starts absolutely fine.
After a variable amount of time (sometimes as little as 2 minutes, but never more than 10 - 20 minutes) the game freezes for about a second, then closes immediately. I never experience blue screens.

My system specs are the following:

- Intel i9-9900k (all core OC @5Ghz)
- Nvidia 2080ti (driver version 441.12)
- 2TB Samsung 970 EVO
- 32GB RAM
- Windows 10 Pro 64 bit (version 1903, build 18362.535).

Peripherals:

- Samsung 4k TV (via HDMI)
- LG 1080 monitor (via HDMI)
- Logitech G19
- Logitech Z Cinema
- HyperX Cloud Revolver S (connected via a Sennheiser 3D G4ME1 adapter)
- Razer Mamba Tournament Edition

I did wonder if any of my drivers weren't working correctly, but I've installed the latest versions of all drivers for peripherals. It's worth noting that I've had all these same peripherals working with the game on my old machine, so I don't think that they are the problem.

Things I've tried:

- Updating my graphics drivers (they're not the latest right now, but I really don't see that it will make a difference at this point).
- Reinstalled Windows.
- Tried disabling DEP for the game, though Windows won't let me.
- Tried DX versions 9, 11 and Touch for the game, all of which result in the same.
- Disabling my over clock configuration.
- Windowed mode and full screen.
- Disabling VSync and GPU Texture Decode.
- Manually reinstalling required versions of DX.
- Running Advanced System Repair (which never reports any problems).
- Verified the integrity of the game files via Steam.
- Running as Admin and in compatibility mode for Windows 8.

There are probably something that I've tried but missed off the list (apologies).

It's also worth noting that my old machine is running Windows version 1803, as are my friends that play the game. Whereas this machine is currently running 1903, it was 1809 which also didn't work. Could this be the problem? Annoyingly when I reinstalled Windows the version it installed was 1809 so I couldn't get back beyond this to check myself.

I do not run mods so the game shouldn't have anything interfering with it.

I've checked the Event Viewer which shows that the game crashed with the following:

Faulting application name: CivilizationV_DX11.exe, version: 1.0.3.279, time stamp: 0x546cd0a8
Faulting module name: CivilizationV_DX11.exe, version: 1.0.3.279, time stamp: 0x546cd0a8
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x002ba03e
Faulting process ID: 0x6b3c
Faulting application start time: 0x01d5be47c7950302
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization V\CivilizationV_DX11.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization V\CivilizationV_DX11.exe
Report ID: 3e98c29f-2399-4f7f-8cc7-ffc5702923b8
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

I've also had a look at the dump file in the Civ 5 directory which shows the "Exception Information" to be the following:

"The thread tried to read from or write to a virtual address for which it does not have the appropriate access."

Does this point towards an issue with RAM? I've not got round to scanning the RAM yet, but had assumed it was probably alright due to everything else (e.g. SQL Server, Visual Studio, other far more demanding games) running perfectly fine.

I've attached a DxDiag file just in case anyone wants to have a look.

Many thanks in advance.

 

[Petek]

The exception code (c0000005), indicates a memory access violation. If you haven’t already done so, search for the error code and see if anything turns up.

Thanks for such a complete description of your problem!

 

[Mattplus]

Firstly, thanks very much for your quick reply. And no problem about the detail, I figured the more information I could provide the easier it would be for you guys to help with any possible solution - so thanks again.

Yes, I did have a look into the exception code earlier and to be honest, I didn't get very far with it. I should probably spend some more time researching it a bit. But it seems to be fairly vague; sort of like it's either a hardware thing or a software thing - well, yeah, that just about covers every computational problem ever - thanks Microsoft!

I did download and run Memtest which didn't find any errors, so in theory this means there isn't a memory issue at least. I've displayed the results below, in case it helps with anything.

One thing that did strike me as odd is why would the game be trying to read from a location that either doesn't exist or it doesn't have access to? My old machine (that I've been running Civ 5 on today, without issue) also has 32GB of RAM and apart from the aforementioned version number being different also runs the same OS, so it's not like the game can't handle a system with that RAM configuration.

If it's an access issue then this sort of brings me back to DEP, but as I mentioned I couldn't get this to work and I've read in another thread in this forum that someone else had the same issue. I'm not sure what else could be blocking it.

Summary
Report Date 2019-12-29 19:43:19
Generated by MemTest86 V8.3 Free (64-bit)
Result PASS
System Information
EFI Specifications 2.60
System
Manufacturer PC Specialist LTD
Product Name Intel Z370 Liquid
Version System Version
Serial Number 1456743001
BIOS
Vendor American Megatrends Inc.
Version 0602
Release Date 10/19/2018
Baseboard
Manufacturer ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
Product Name ROG MAXIMUS XI HERO
Version Rev 1.xx
Serial Number 181037747300122
CPU Type Intel Core i9-9900K @ 3.60GHz
CPU Clock 3646 MHz [Turbo: 5063.3 MHz]
# Logical Processors 16 (8 enabled for testing)
L1 Cache 4 x 64K (179028 MB/s)
L2 Cache 4 x 256K (85496 MB/s)
L3 Cache 16384K (43608 MB/s)
Memory 32698M (20876 MB/s)
DIMM Slot #0 8GB DDR4 XMP PC4-28700
Corsair / CMK16GX4M2B3600C18
18-19-19-39 / 3596 MHz / 1.350V
DIMM Slot #1 8GB DDR4 XMP PC4-28700
Corsair / CMK16GX4M2B3600C18
18-19-19-39 / 3596 MHz / 1.350V
DIMM Slot #2 8GB DDR4 XMP PC4-28700
Corsair / CMK16GX4M2B3600C18
18-19-19-39 / 3596 MHz / 1.350V
DIMM Slot #3 8GB DDR4 XMP PC4-28700
Corsair / CMK16GX4M2B3600C18
18-19-19-39 / 3596 MHz / 1.350V
Result summary
Test Start Time 2019-12-29 14:31:38
Elapsed Time 5:09:55
Memory Range Tested 0x0 - 86E000000 (34528MB)
CPU Selection Mode Parallel (All CPUs)
ECC Polling Enabled
# Tests Passed 48/48 (100%)
Test # Tests Passed Errors
Test 0 [Address test, walking ones, 1 CPU] 4/4 (100%) 0
Test 1 [Address test, own address, 1 CPU] 4/4 (100%) 0
Test 2 [Address test, own address] 4/4 (100%) 0
Test 3 [Moving inversions, ones & zeroes] 4/4 (100%) 0
Test 4 [Moving inversions, 8-bit pattern] 4/4 (100%) 0
Test 5 [Moving inversions, random pattern] 4/4 (100%) 0
Test 6 [Block move, 64-byte blocks] 4/4 (100%) 0
Test 7 [Moving inversions, 32-bit pattern] 4/4 (100%) 0
Test 8 [Random number sequence] 4/4 (100%) 0
Test 9 [Modulo 20, ones & zeros] 4/4 (100%) 0
Test 10 [Bit fade test, 2 patterns, 1 CPU] 4/4 (100%) 0
Test 13 [Hammer test] 4/4 (100%) 0

 

[Petek]

My system has the same CPU and video card. I don’t get ctds, but I can’t run the game at the highest graphic settings. Try changing the in-game screen resolution. I use 2048x1536, 30 Hz. HTH.

 

[Mattplus]

Thanks very much, I'll try that tomorrow after work.

If you don't mind me asking, what's the reason for not being able to run it on highest settings? Do you get a low framerate? Or are there other issues?

 

[Petek]

With some resolutions, the screen colors are all washed out. With others, the display is corrupt: Most of the screen is black. A few elements scroll diagonally across the screen. I think the problem is with my TV, which serves as the monitor.

 

[Mattplus]

That's interesting to know, I wonder if modern hardware just isn't capable of running the game properly for whatever reason...

Based on what you said I tried dropping the resolution to 1920x1080 in windowed mode which weirdly has resulted in the game running for almost an hour without issue. I'm not sure if this was a coincidence or not, but it's far longer than I've ever been able to play this game on this machine before. Annoyingly, at around the 55 minute mark it exited to desktop and looking at the event viewer again it's exactly the same error, so I feel as though dropping the resolution may have masked the problem, but not fully resolved it.

Still, almost an hour is definitely playable so thank you very much for suggesting that - I would never have thought to try that. Ha!

I'll try it again with lower settings as well as resolution to see if that makes a difference.

I also tried going offline with Steam, something I read somewhere suggested that might make a difference - I'm not sure why. So now I'm going to have to figure out which if any made the improvement.

Thanks again.

 

[Mattplus]

Hi again everyone, hope you all had a great new year!

Thought I'd post back to let you know my progress and maybe this will help someone else in the future.

So, I played about with different resolutions and settings and in the end what made the biggest difference was setting Steam to be offline. I've still not fixed the problem, but am getting closer to an hour of play before the game crashes when Steam isn't online. There must be something between the two applications that are causing the problem. However as others clearly don't have this problem, I'm wondering if the version of Windows 10 that I have is causing the issue between the two. I don't know.

Anyway, thanks for all your help. I'm not sure if I'll ever resolve this fully, but it's good enough for now.

 

[Petek]

Thanks for the update. Out of curiosity, what happens if you disconnect completely from the Internet before starting the game?

 

[Mattplus]

I'm not sure to be honest, the game seems to have reverted to crashing after 10 minutes or so.

Disabling the steam overlay doesn't seem to make a difference either.

Since the Mircosoft documentation doesn't seem to state anything about the exception code that isn't already in the error message I did some digging through Stack Overflow, but they just suggested "debugging the application" which I'm not able to do without having the source code. I've had a brief look into decompiling the code and attempting to debug it that way, however it seems like an incredibly messy process. Plus I imagine it's written in C++ which is completely out of my comfort zone as someone who normally works with C#.

So, for now at least, it looks like I'm back to square one.

 

[Petek]

That's a bummer. Have you tried either searching for civilization 5 error c0000005 or running the Windows 10 System File checker?

 

[Mattplus]

I've just ran the System File Checker which didn't find any issues.

Yeah, I've done various googling on civ 5 including the error code, error message and numerous other searches but there just doesn't seem to be much out there. I guess there are hardly any people experiencing this issue. I'm really wondering if there are a combination of factors here meaning that it's an ultra niche problem.

That said, I did come across the following Q/A on Microsoft's website, dating back to 2010.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...c0000005/e54a68cf-31ff-4f2f-ab38-e8f48db27e73

Which seems to describe the exact problem that I'm having. But as usual the answer is completely irrelevant. In fact the answer seems to be confused with an issue with Internet Explorer rather than Civ 5. I followed the suggestions anyway, but they made no difference.

 

[eurirusty]

Hi all,

I'm new to these forums and could really do with some help please.

I'm not new to Civ 5 and have had it running on multiple machines over the years, never with any problems.

About a year ago I bought a new custom built machine and while the performance is brilliant on most games, for some reason Civ 5 just doesn't like running for very long before it, without warning, exits to desktop.

Before many of you roll your eyes for yet another OP wanting to know why his game isn't working (I don't blame you, I'd probably do the same), I've spent hours looking into this and for the life of me can't figure it out. But what I can say is that nothing anyone has suggested so far has made any difference. So again, please forgive me, but I would really appreciate the help.

The problem (described the best that I can):

Game starts absolutely fine.
After a variable amount of time (sometimes as little as 2 minutes, but never more than 10 - 20 minutes) the game freezes for about a second, then closes immediately. I never experience blue screens.

My system specs are the following:

- Intel i9-9900k (all core OC @5Ghz)
- Nvidia 2080ti (driver version 441.12)
- 2TB Samsung 970 EVO
- 32GB RAM
- Windows 10 Pro 64 bit (version 1903, build 18362.535).

Peripherals:

- Samsung 4k TV (via HDMI)
- LG 1080 monitor (via HDMI)
- Logitech G19
- Logitech Z Cinema
- HyperX Cloud Revolver S (connected via a Sennheiser 3D G4ME1 adapter)
- Razer Mamba Tournament Edition

I did wonder if any of my drivers weren't working correctly, but I've installed the latest versions of all drivers for peripherals. It's worth noting that I've had all these same peripherals working with the game on my old machine, so I don't think that they are the problem.

Things I've tried:

- Updating my graphics drivers (they're not the latest right now, but I really don't see that it will make a difference at this point).
- Reinstalled Windows.
- Tried disabling DEP for the game, though Windows won't let me.
- Tried DX versions 9, 11 and Touch for the game, all of which result in the same.
- Disabling my over clock configuration.
- Windowed mode and full screen.
- Disabling VSync and GPU Texture Decode.
- Manually reinstalling required versions of DX.
- Running Advanced System Repair (which never reports any problems).
- Verified the integrity of the game files via Steam.
- Running as Admin and in compatibility mode for Windows 8.

There are probably something that I've tried but missed off the list (apologies).

It's also worth noting that my old machine is running Windows version 1803, as are my friends that play the game. Whereas this machine is currently running 1903, it was 1809 which also didn't work. Could this be the problem? Annoyingly when I reinstalled Windows the version it installed was 1809 so I couldn't get back beyond this to check myself.

I do not run mods so the game shouldn't have anything interfering with it.

I've checked the Event Viewer which shows that the game crashed with the following:

Faulting application name: CivilizationV_DX11.exe, version: 1.0.3.279, time stamp: 0x546cd0a8
Faulting module name: CivilizationV_DX11.exe, version: 1.0.3.279, time stamp: 0x546cd0a8
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x002ba03e
Faulting process ID: 0x6b3c
Faulting application start time: 0x01d5be47c7950302
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization V\CivilizationV_DX11.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization V\CivilizationV_DX11.exe
Report ID: 3e98c29f-2399-4f7f-8cc7-ffc5702923b8
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

I've also had a look at the dump file in the Civ 5 directory which shows the "Exception Information" to be the following:

"The thread tried to read from or write to a virtual address for which it does not have the appropriate access."

Does this point towards an issue with RAM? I've not got round to scanning the RAM yet, but had assumed it was probably alright due to everything else (e.g. SQL Server, Visual Studio, other far more demanding games) running perfectly fine.

I've attached a DxDiag file just in case anyone wants to have a look.

Many thanks in advance.

I have the exact same problem. Been playing since 2012 and have not experienced any issue until the past few months.

 

[CivAcc-Sp]

Hey mate, I made an account just to say that I'm getting the exact, identical issues you are.

I noticed that this has only become an issue since updating my CPU to the 9900K. It might even be related to overclocking - from what I've seen others say. But I'm not willing to disable my OC every time I want to play CIV. Try disabling your OC and trying that. I also feel compelled to note that I've got the same motherboard as you too, so it might even be a BIOS setting that CIV is hating. If @eurirusty could let us know his specs, it might narrow things down further too.

If CIV V is broken at 5Ghz / on the 9900K / on the Maximus Hero XI, I think there's nothing we can do. It's such a poorly coded game and the devs have essentially ditched it. The unofficial patch guys can't do anything about these sorts of things too (I asked).

 

[Viperian]

Just made an account so I can echo that I am having the exact same problem as mentioned here.

Launch the game. Between 2-20 minutes hard crash to desktop.
Uninstalled all mods. Reinstalled the game twice. OC on the processor also so maybe that is the deal but if so that is really stupid. No other gamers of software have any problem. Checked the hard drive, memory test everything is fine. I even downloaded Visual studio to open the dump file. Seems to be DX11 related. I have the latest DX12.

I have played this game for a decade with no problem. Had tons of mods super stable. Now totally clean and constant crashing.

Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Version 10.0.19042 Build 19042
System Manufacturer Micro-Star International Co., Ltd.
System Model MS-7B10
System Type x64-based PC
System SKU Default string
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-9900K CPU @ 3.60GHz, 3600 Mhz, 8 Core(s), 16 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. 1.90, 12/26/2019
SMBIOS Version 2.8
Embedded Controller Version 255.255
BIOS Mode UEFI
BaseBoard Manufacturer Micro-Star International Co., Ltd.
BaseBoard Product MEG Z390 GODLIKE (MS-7B10)
BaseBoard Version 1.0
Platform Role Desktop
Secure Boot State Off
PCR7 Configuration Binding Not Possible
Windows Directory C:\WINDOWS
System Directory C:\WINDOWS\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume6
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "10.0.19041.906"
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 64.0 GB
Total Physical Memory 63.9 GB
Available Physical Memory 56.3 GB
Total Virtual Memory 73.4 GB
Available Virtual Memory 62.7 GB
Page File Space 9.50 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys
Kernel DMA Protection Off
Virtualization-based security Not enabled
Hyper-V - VM Monitor Mode Extensions Yes
Hyper-V - Second Level Address Translation Extensions Yes
Hyper-V - Virtualization Enabled in Firmware Yes
Hyper-V - Data Execution Protection Yes

There should be a paypal way that if someone solves this I give them $50 bucks or something. Driving me nuts. Included the dump in case any one can make sense out of that file.