[0.8.2] Crash on Startup Standalone, then also via Steam

Technical Support
31

Last update for a bit here. Got things to do and I’m mostly just overlapping what Maelstromicus has already done.

I scrubbed the Steam installation from my system. Uninstalled via Steam and searched all drives for “Last Epoch” and “Epoch” and nuked everything. Found a bunch of crash logs and some .DAT files in my user profile directory that Steam left behind. Got rid of that. Rebooted computer.

Left Steam unlaunched. So that’s out of the picture. Downloaded the standalone launcher. Installed. Launched. Same crash to desktop after a brief glimpse of the login screen. Reboot. Try it again. Same crash.

So I’m at the point where a clean, fresh, new install of the game will not work for me. That’s very disappointing.

Win10 Home, i7 processor, 16 GB RAM, nVidia GeForce 1070, default installation directory and settings.

32

Right, many thanks for sharing you guys. At least now the devs know that I am not the only person struggling with these issues.

Update to the Cause:

I updated all of my Visual C++ Residtributables today from the earliest version all the way up to 2019. I have both the x86 & also the x64 versions installed, so all available MS C++ code is on my PC.

I have both the standalone plus the Steam versions installed to test both. All install directories for both are added to exceptions in both my AV s/w (Kaspersky) and also my Firewall (Comodo ((The working firewall only ancient version, not the modern bloated crap))).

The Standalone still crashes straight to desktop regardless of settings: elevated privileges on/off, AV on/ff, Firewall On/Off. I give up completely with this, it seems that the compiled coding in this is busted,

Now, more interestingly, the Steam version.
It no longer crashes before the login screen, apart from the first “fresh” attempt, and when this does ctd the image shown immediately prior to that crash is briefly the Unity window with a small red icon in it with an exclamation mark.
After that, on a restart of the client it gets past the ctd.

1st of all it gets to the loading screen with no login options first. So I am assuming that it is trying to log in with my Steam credentials. The oval is shown with the “entering blah blah”. This goes nowhere, and it goes back to a login screen which at the top shows the LE-13 error. I then enter my login credentials from here, click enter and it does nothing. IF I spam click Enter, then sometimes it will also go to the oval with the “entering blah” message. However it then eventually goes back to the login screen again.

This is a ton further than I got most of yesterday, so whether this is due to the last patch or one of the attempted “fixes” I tried I have no clue. It’s odd though that the Steam version gets to this point, but the standalone exe ctd’s every time.

Anyway here’s my latest files.
Crash_2021-05-27_135925734.zip (31.7 KB)
le_graphicsmanager.ini (492 Bytes)
Player.log (11.2 KB)
Player-prev.log (5.9 KB)
version.txt (6 Bytes)

33

Screenshot of what I see for less than a second and the brief Unity error box. All of this (the game, the error box) disappears completely without letting me interact with it. So this is as far as I can get.
Unity_Crash_screencapture.zip (1.8 MB)

34

Just a quick note here… @Maelstromicus is using Win 7 while it looks like @hillsteve and @Nymphios are on WIndows 10… so its important to differentiate the issues here otherwise the waters are going to get very muddy…

I will reply to each after looking at the files you have included…

35

@Nymphios

Based on problem description and the files you provided:

  1. Windows 10 Os is patched 19042, graphics drivers look recent enough… integrated graphics is old but hopefully not involved

  2. In game settings are a bit of a mix and perhaps you may want to dial back the Ultra option on your 1050 - Ultra settings are a known cause of instability… even on high end GPUs and your is (like my 1060) pretty old now. I would also change the grass density setting in favour of more performance… Framerate limits etc look good.

  3. At the end of your Dxdiag file, there is a diagnostic section… This includes all the recent errors and crashes you are having… I see the Last Epoch crashes… and they are all reporting that the crash involves nvwgf2umx.dll which is part of the Nvidia Drivers… You did not specifically say that you did a full clean driver re-install and it may be that something is wrong with the driver files that will not be fixed by just running an update… I would recommend the windows safe mode driver removal and reinstall process - you can do this manually or use a tool like DDU explained here by the EHG developers

You didnt include any error logs that the game may have created so thats about all I have to go on for now… the driver issue could very well be the cause of your problem and this would not be the first time someone has posted and had that issue.

EDIT: one last thing… based on your support badge… I am assuming that you played the game some time ago… have you been sticking with the updates or has it been a long time and you are hoping to use the same config/savegames etc… I ask because sometimes* the new patch doesnt work that well if you have a very old set of saves i.e. you missed a few patch interactions and the game struggles to convert the old saves etc… just something I thought of based on your forum name support badge…

36

@hillsteve

Welcome to the forums…

Unfortunately you didnt provide any sys info, dxdiags or game logs so its tricky to immediately guess what could be specific to your case…

Please could you add the files…

37

Hello, had a look at the problem.
I have a strong feeling it is not on end user end, neither totally on dev’s end, but on Unity’s end.
Here is why.
In the player log we see the game was built with Unity 2019.4.23f1 which was released on 24th of march.
In the error log we see:
No mono DLL path set. This app is either running IL2CPP, or the crash occurred before mono was initialized.
Which gives this result when searching on Google: https://forum.unity.com/threads/standalone-build-pc-crashes-when-built-with-il2cpp.681682/
This specific problem was due to the size of the project it seems (it links to https://fogbugz.unity3d.com/default.asp?1156527_9rk0vni8p77ive6q)

In the player log we see some objects are missing like:
The referenced script on this Behaviour (Game Object ‘GUI’) is missing!
The referenced script on this Behaviour (Game Object ‘SceneLoader’) is missing!
…
more strangely:
The referenced script on this Behaviour (Game Object ‘Rock’) is missing!

That could be indeed explained by memory issue due to the size of the project (not enough memory to instantiate all objects).

But I have an alternative “opinion”:
As the dev updated Unity, this could be due to the build system or regression in the Unity SDK. I myself noticed regression in 2019.4.23f1 in my little project.
So my suggestions are as follow:

  • build 0.8.2d with the same Unity version that worked in the past (let’s say 0.8.1 was working for the OP and was build with Unity 2019.4.19f1 → build 0.8.2d with 2019.4.19f1.
  • build a previous version of the game that was working for the OP (let’s say 0.8.1 to keep the above example) with Unity 2019.4.23f1.
    Then the OP can test both versions.
    I think we can eventually get nice conclusions out of this.

[edit] Saw after posting there is a newer 2019.4.27f1 version. That could be interesting to give it a try as well.

3 Likes
38

I deleted the Last Epoch folder in AppData (to reset settings and delete old saves) and did a clean re-install of the graphics drivers and it still crashes before the login screen.

39

Drivers via safe mode removal etc? Ok…

What does the Diagnostics part of the dxdiag say? or Windows Error logs? Does it still reference the Nvdia driver file as part of the problem or has it changed?

Does the error and player logs from LE still report the same thing?

40

Sorry, forgot to include logs on last post.

Player.log (30.6 KB)
le_graphicsmanager.ini (489 Bytes)
DxDiag.txt (115.1 KB)

41

Thanks Imarion for your info above. That is indeed interesting to note. I’m pretty also convinced now that this is nothing to do with my OS setup, having tested/amended everything under the Sun. I’m awaiting someone from LE to actually look into my account linking with Steam to see if I can even get into game on that client, or indeed if the LE-13 is in fact another false flag trail.

42

With all the traction now in this thread, and all the hard work and detailed info provided, I am a little curious now as to why there have been zero responses from Eleventh Hour Games personnel, and yet there are many in the “logging” thread? (5 official responses from 2 different employees)

I appreciate that this might not be as straight forward an error to fix, but some official acknowledgement of our plight would go a long way towards assuaging my growing annoyance and feeling of being ignored…

43

Apologies for hijacking Maelstromicus thread - this really should be in its own one…

Ok Thanks…

It does look like there is new error has been added - StackHash_9980 in ntdll and the player log still references the same driver (nvwgf2umx) as where the problem happens but it has more info there now…

I cannot find anything that makes sense with these errors wrt. your problem tho… Some people did reinstall of their OS and solved the issue (doesnt help)… others had problems with antivirus software (replaced)… still more had issues with data execution protection settings (disabled)… others had memory handling issues (specific to a particular app)… there are even some that refer directly to problems with graphics drivers which were solved by clean reinstalls which you have already done.

Please can you try the following sequence:
Do a reboot of your machine…
Run Windows Update
Run System File Checker
Reboot
Run Steam
Verify LE game files
Close steam, reboot
Close any auto starting apps and graphic overlays and any other things running - even if it seems irrelevent…
Start Steam and try the game again.

44

System File checker successfully repaired a few corrupted files, but didn’t say which or even how many. I did everything and still the game crashes before the login screen.

DxDiag.txt (115.1 KB)
le_graphicsmanager.ini (489 Bytes)
Player.log (54.9 KB)
Player-prev.log (19.0 KB)
version.txt (6 Bytes)

45

At least it fixed something even if we dont know what…

I just realised that you are using a laptop - the bane of my existence when it comes to fixing errors as the bloody things never play fair…

Is it running any special configuration that sets it into different modes - e.g. battery save, performance etc… Can you make sure that its set to the fastest it can go and not on any automatic mode that controls the power or GPU/CPU speeds?

Can you disable the integrated graphics from Bios etc to make sure that its not active when trying LE?

Can you check your Windows Update history for two update patches - KB5001330 and KB5001337… If you find either, please uninstall them… They were an april update that messes with some peoples gaming… Microsoft has replaced them since but some people still have them running.

46

Sfc leaves a log file on your PC. idk about in Win10, but in Win7 the log file sits in your Windows directory at C:\Windows\Logs\CBS

It’s the CBS.log file. Now, reading it is fun…

If you google that you’ll find the solution which is to make a copy of that file to your desktop with .txt as the suffix, it is then openable by any text editor like notepad++.
The google result I found ages ago even had a little script made that automated the copying etc for you.
That CBS file contains tons of wonderful information on what sfc did. It shows the good files, the irrepairable files (for manual fixing), and also the corrupted files that get replaced.

Hope this helps, can’t stick a link in atm as I’m in game in poe… (as I can’t play LE and support have not got back to me at all on my 13 error). No problems for hijacking the thread Vapour, if someone gets helped then at least some good has come of the thread, as it seems that for the most part it’s getting ignored as an ugly inconvenience (sorry, starting to get a little salty now).

47

I have a low power mode when on battery and a maximum power use-the-most-electricity mode when plugged in. I have the game set to always run on the 1050 via the Nvidia Control Panel and don’t want to mess with the BIOS (I was almost left without a GPU earlier as the drivers didn’t want to install after I uninstalled and I had to keep trying until it worked). I don’t have either of those Windows updates installed. Still bupkiss.

48

Is this power mode the standard Windows one or specific to your laptop manufacturer? Sorry to harp on about this but I have had endless issues with laptops trying to dynamically control performance of components even after you tell them not to - even on full plugged in 'drain-the-power-station" modes. Yes… as you can tell I hate laptops… :frowning:

This is NOT a good sign… a safe mode driver installation (as mentioned you try above) shouldnt struggle at all unless its the wrong driver or there is something else actively preventing the driver install… considering the dxdiag errors and the errors from LE, you have to be 100% confident that the drivers are installed properly and are the best/right ones for your hardware…

49

Hi, got the same problem here, starting up the game brings me to the account log in screen, then the pc freezes. Every now and then it manages to bring up my game account, but usually it simply freezes with the windows message that the application is not responding. I reinstalled the game and my drivers are up to date afaik. Up to patch 8.1 I never had a problem before, since 8.2 the game crashed ingame quite often and the login problem showed up. Please help, I have attached some files, if you need more, let me know…
le_graphicsmanager.ini (524 Bytes)
Player.log (10.3 KB)
Player-prev.log (10.3 KB)
version.txt (6 Bytes)

50

Andragoon, you do also need to send in a proper ticket as well as posting here mate.

We have yet to have any official involvement in this thread at all, so sending in a ticket via the support page will at least formally log your problem. You can also attach the files there. I would suggest not only sending in the above files, but also running a dxdiag and saving the results/attaching that, then also looking in your crashes folder to see if there are any log files there as well. The crash folders normally lurk under C:\Users"YourUserNAme"\AppData\Local\Temp\Eleventh Hour Games\Last Epoch\Crashes\