Really disappointed

[Surly_Badger]

That still doesn't mean it's not your PC. I've had plenty of bizarre problems with various programs over the years from faulty hardware, ranging from poor regulation on one of the power supply rails to bad RAM to a faulty motherboard.

It's also particularly tough with games, because in order to get desired graphic performance you're basically bypassing the operating system and mapping the graphic card into the process' address space - it's possible (and fairly common) to have an interaction in which the game pushes something to the graphics card, the card's driver returns something that's mis-aligned or has a pointer that's wrong (either because of a buggy driver or a buggy card) and the user-mode process takes a crash because of problems in the data. Sometimes it can be a problem in the user-mode process, as well - put things into the graphic rendering pipeline wrong and the user-mode process' memory may get corrupted or locked. That sort of bug is generally a showstopper that gets fixed pretty quickly. Bugs where there are subtle interactions between the graphics card and process are insanely hard to debug for the application developers because they'd need exact revs of cards and exact revs of drivers and they'd have to reproduce the entire interaction that caused the crash. In order to get the kind of framerates we gamers insist on, basically every graphical game is a "badly behaved process" that bypasses the kernel's protections in order to get speed. The designers of APIs like OpenGL and DirectX do what they can to firewall the process from kernel memory and card memory, and to prevent things from stomping on eachother by dint of design in the communications APIs but basically the driver and the user-mode application have control of the bus between them and they can screw up anything they want to between the two of them.

In other words, it's not uncommon at all for a bug in the top half of a card driver, or the bottom half, to manifest as a bug in the user-mode code. It could also be an unhandled exception (though those tend to get sorted out pretty quickly) for example a card driver that used to return one set of possible options suddenly starts getting it wrong and tanks the application because the application was expecting a return code between -1 and -25 and suddenly got -26...

Non-game apps don't have this kind of problem because they tend to rely on operating system level APIs where the O/S is careful about marshalling data in and out between kernel and application memory, and is able to error-check for compliance with standard requests. That's what an operating system does: provides common reliable services for user-mode processes. When a game program pushes straight past the kernel (which it has to do; windows' kernel task-switching is not efficient enough for 60fps graphics) it's accepting that there will be bugs.

When I first installed World of Warcraft on my game box, it crashed a few times. I noticed that when it crashed there was a particular clipping happening on certain textures, so I upgraded the graphic card driver and it never crashed again. Unfortunately, "that's gaming on a PC" and it's why consoles are generally pretty stable: standard hardware, lockstep driver configurations - they don't have to worry about weird interactions between a card some guy jiggered the GPU timing on and a card driver that the user hasn't updated since they bought it 3 years ago...

(Sorry that was a bit long-winded. I'm exploring and just got chatty between jumps)

 

[Vandaahl]

I remember in the quirky connection days the launcher would not show up when a connection could not be made. Have you tried to disable your firewall for a brief moment?

 

[Dbrn47]

ED has always been stable for me until I upgraded to a GTX 980. Now I have driver crashes. Even though ED is the only game doing this right now, I don't blame the game. I've been in contact with both EVGA and Nvidia. We are at the point where EVGA wants to RMA the card but Nvidia doesn't think it's the card that's the problem. Intermittent problems with a specific game isn't always one thing, sometimes it is the game, sometimes it isn't. That's why there are crash logs. With computers it can literally be ANYTHING in your system. There's one crash log that indicates my hard drive while others indicate other things.

Point is, exhaust your options before you blame one thing.

 

[AndyC77]

I have never had the game crash on me. Is that unusual?

 

[Trader38]

I've been playing (almost every day i'm sad/glad to say) since early Jan 2015 and only crashed once after an update that was corrected within 24 hours.
Yes i get graphic stutters but i'm using Win Vista which is apparently not supported.
Great game, really enjoying it.
To OP: Not trying to rub it in but just maybe the problem's your end ?

 

[Blackfoxx]

I've had ED installed for months and after many updates, the worst i've had is where it can't connect.. and that is it? crashes to desktop due to untrapped errors? zero. not one.. and that is no lie, fabrication or anything.. that has been my experience in what you describe.

 

[jcrg99]

It is really disappointed and upset. Having spent $60.00 on a pc game that is so buggy. You would think after months of gamma, bate, alpha, ect. And a couple of months live that I could expect a game that doesn't randomly crash to desktop. Or refuses to allow me to even log in. And b4 you say it I have read the forums, and have gotten the crashes down to once every hour or two. But it seems the devs all say it's our equipment and not their software and close the threads citing them as solved. I put a ticket in today for the not being able to login problem, as I had no other choice. I like the game, so fan boy, don't yell at me to uninstall and leave. I just am really upset. If it was something I bought in store I could atleast return it for a product that worked. But apparently it is "working as intended".



Intel i7 3770k 3.5
sabertooth z77 mobo
16g dominator ram
geforce gtx 660 X 2 in sli
corswair water cooling

Have you tried to format your PC and reinstall your operational system, installing only the basic stuff to make all your hardware working (drivers) and then, install Elite in the first place and give it a try?

Devs won't make such suggestion for PR purposes, and make you more of having to do such immense task... but...

You know... Games are all sensible to codecs and other things that are installed/reinstalled in Windows, letting garbage there which impact, and that devs are never able to reproduce, because the possibilities are infinite and its almost impossible to figure out what is impacting.

And clearly your problem is very specific to your config because nobody else is getting.

If you are so fanboy... you would try... good luck! I wouldn't think twice if it was my case.

I know... It's painful, but you have to understand that in reality, devs can't reproduce all environments... that's why is so much easier to deal with consoles, because they are all standard, but PC varies in such ways that no team in the universe is capable to deal with all possible issues that some people can get. Try to be realistic and deal with the situation in your side... and then, share with people here and with Frontier how you fixed it in case some unlucky guy like you having the same exact problem or similar issue.

 

[Varrag]

Strange. ED is among the most stable games I've played, and I don't even want to describe my rig (hint: many of you probably own more powerful cellphones).

 

[Dandare71]

It is really disappointed and upset. Having spent $60.00 on a pc game that is so buggy. You would think after months of gamma, bate, alpha, ect. And a couple of months live that I could expect a game that doesn't randomly crash to desktop. Or refuses to allow me to even log in. And b4 you say it I have read the forums, and have gotten the crashes down to once every hour or two. But it seems the devs all say it's our equipment and not their software and close the threads citing them as solved. I put a ticket in today for the not being able to login problem, as I had no other choice. I like the game, so fan boy, don't yell at me to uninstall and leave. I just am really upset. If it was something I bought in store I could atleast return it for a product that worked. But apparently it is "working as intended".



Intel i7 3770k 3.5
sabertooth z77 mobo
16g dominator ram
geforce gtx 660 X 2 in sli
corswair water cooling

If you really want a refund it is possible, just keep asking in tickets and the forums and you will have to be very persistent without breaking any rules, even try a charge back at the bank and tell them the game is faulty and does not work on hardware its supposed to.

The mods and other bootlickers will try and keep you quiet and may get hostile, if your hostile back they close your posts, they even close post even if you don't break their self righteous rules.

They might go on about eula's (companies writing their own one sided rules), they mean nothing much in the real world and do not effect consumer laws or rights so don't take any notice of the stuff they say because its fiction.

 

[Dagless]

Have you tried to format your PC and reinstall your operational system, installing only the basic stuff to make all your hardware working (drivers) and then, install Elite in the first place and give it a try?

LOL. Seriously?

You realise some people use computers for more important things than playing Elite?

 

[Asp Explorer]

LOL. Seriously?

You realise some people use computers for more important things than playing Elite?

That was perfectly sensible advise, and I would suggest the same backup, reformat and reinstall. If people have important stuff to do on a computer (like making money), they usually have a backup computer in case something goes wrong with their main money-making computer. Gaming isn't important or usually makes money, so it takes place on yet another computer that isn't connected with doing important stuff.

 

[OxKing]

The only time my Game has crashed was when i had bad RAM.
I noticed the Game crashed 3 Times in a row of 30 minutes, without it being updated recently.
So i made a memtest68+ usb boot stick and see, one of my Ram modules was broken.
Then i got straight to 16 GB because Elite + Browser or Star Citizen alone had consumed more then 8 GB of ram before.
But now it is just at ~6 GB maximum. Not even with Lightroom and 50 Browser Tabs i get over 8GB.
Also the Game had run fine with only 4GB RAM and Cache on my SSD enabled as i sorted out the bad Memory Bar.
So i guess my RAM had a dent since my PC existed, where i played since Public Beta 1 with very rare Crashes.
(Except when it didn't even started, or had matchmaking issues because of the Internet Connection or Netcode issues. Like coming out of Supercruise or after Hyperjump.)

I can't speak for SLI or even nVidia cards or any other configurations but mine, but for me the Game runs rock solid now.
You may try to disable Firewall or AntiVirus stuff. Overclocking. Or even your SLI Configuration.
But i think the very majority of players have no issues of crashes with this game anymore since release.
Otherwise the forums would widely spread with such posts. Hope you find a configuration that works for you.

 

[Surly_Badger]

If you can't log on you may want to check and make sure you haven't got some malware that's hijacking your IP stack. That could also cause crashes.

 

[Goilveig]

even try a charge back at the bank and tell them the game is faulty and does not work on hardware its supposed to.

That is a very bad idea, for a number of reasons.

First, in this case, there's no legal grounds for a chargeback, particularly since there's a very, very, very strong chance the problem is with the computer and not the game.

Second, if you try to initiate the chargeback process and the chargeback is denied, you will typically owe fees for the attempt. You can lose more than you aim to gain back.

Third, are you really going to do that to your credit worthiness over a small amount of money like a game? Doing a chargeback even once can get you onto blacklists and could potentially drop your credit score and/or lead to denials of new lines of credit. That hardly seems worth it for something this inexpensive. The one group of people you really don't want to tick off are the credit bureaus.

 

[Surly_Badger]

Sell the game to someone on the forum.

 

[Monsoon]

I m running on an old mac booted in bootcamp and I have never ever crashed...probably local issue
I hope you find how to fix it

 

[RG-870]

There's a lot to criticize about ED - and I am the first to start complaining about all those issues. But if it comes to stability I can't remember a single crash since I started playing ED in Beta. I'm running ED at near max settings on an Intel i5 3570K, AMD 7950 + 16GB RAM on Windows 7 64bit.

 

[sqzbox1]

I feel for you sir! I can't imagine life without ED now - and the game is stable as I am sure you have figured out by now. There is a lot of good advice here and all I can add is to try and swap out components if there is any way possible for you to do so. Try a different graphics card. Try a different set of memory chips, and so on. Not at all an easy process but it is a last resort sort of situation, is it not? I am 100% sure that the problem is at your end - maybe the pc, maybe the comms, but it is at your end. In my (meagre) experience, troubles like this do not go away - they just gradually get worse until the problem component fails completely. It is worth the effort to sort it out.

 

[SCADVID]

Now I can't log on. "failed to parse server response"

That's an internet issue, not hardware (unless it's a USB choking the I/O that can cause all sorts of intermittent problems).

If you're using proxies recheck those settings, too.

 

[AsukaZ]

I had lots of login issues and CTD's when trying to use a tethered mobile phone for internet connection. The service just wasn't up for it. I switched to a 4G provider and haven't had a problem since, so it could be your ISP.

Surly Badger I found your long winded post quite interesting.