Game Crash Tied to DLL Corruption/RAM Issue?

[xaudionegative]

A couple of weeks ago I installed Last Epoch for the first time. It was the only game installed on my system at the time, and since downloading it, I had not downloaded or installed any other programs.

The game played well, but did experience a crash from time to time, nothing serious. However, about a week into playing the game, one of the crashes caused my computer to BSOD, and on attempting to recover, I started getting multiple book errors, resulting in a boot loop. Eventually, I was able to get back to the desktop after doing a system restore, and ran a scan / DISM protocols and came up with the fact that my EhStorShell.dll was corrupted. This file had not been corrupted prior to these crashes as I’d just gone through a cleanup about a week earlier and had the reports showing an all clear.

After being up for about 2 hours, the machine once again started crashing/boot looping, and eventually ended up requiring a full HDD format and reinstall of windows. Once I was able to do so and got windows back up and working, I ran a memtest that showed my RAM now had a hardware problem and needed to be replaced.

At this point everything is back to normal, I have a fresh install of windows and new RAM. I wasn’t able to provide any of the standard requested files due to the format I had to perform, so I’m essentially here to ask if there is any chance that LE could have been responsible for the breakdown of my system. It was the only change I made to my system in at least a month before things went wrong, and for as much as I was genuinely loving the game, I’m hesitant to reinstall now that things are good again for fear that the issue might repeat.

Any insight into this issue would be appreciated.

[vapourfire]

Hey there… Welcome to the forum…

From my experience helping out here, I doubt LE is directly involved in your troubles… LE in its current state CAN behave a little like a benchmarking tool because its generally unoptimised and does stress hardware if you are not conservative with your in-game settings. LE can potentially max out components like GPU/CPU & use up all available RAM if not restricted by settings.

It is unfortunate that you dont have game logs, system logs or even dxdiag reports prior to your reformatting Windows & replacing the RAM… that may have given a better indication of what could have happened.

My gut feeling is that LE simply stressed out your system - your comment about crashing from time to time is 100% an indicator of the performance related instability the game currently has - the game doesnt generally crash unless the settings are too high or its experiencing a known issue like a corrupted save etc… This stress in turn highlighted some underlying issue(s) that compounded into what you have experienced.

There have been plenty of instances where people have tried to play LE without appropriately limiting it, only to experience issues like GPUs overheating and throttling because a fan was faulty or chosing Ultra quality settings and the system running out of memory because a single stick of RAM was intermittently failing.

EhStorShell.dll is not something that LE would have any impact on, but with your hardware RAM issues its very likely that any number of corruptions could have occured at a Windows level… Again, without system logs its just guesswork.

You havent provided any indication of your hardware components so I cannot say if LE will run well on it or what settings I would recommend but I doubt very much that LE directly caused any of your problems - I think they were there already, LE was simply the straw that broke the camels back.

That said, I would recommend that you double check your system at all levels, software drivers, BIOS levels, hardware FANs, power supply etc… even including opening the case and cleaning it out. I would run a variety of synthetic benchmarks and even burn in tests to ensure that your system is as stable over time and verifying that components are running in spec (i.e. GPU staying within recommended Temps, Harddrive actually performing at expected speeds etc)…

If the system and logs are within norms for whatever hardware you have, then LE should be fine - provided you chose settings appropriately…

[xaudionegative]

Thanks so much for the response. To try and help lend some clarity to this issue, I’ve uploaded a current DXDiag report so you can see the system specs, as well as the CBS log that I was able to email to myself from after the big crashes but before I did a full restore.

High level, I’m using an Acer Predator Helios 700 with an i9-9980HK, RTX2080, 32gb SK Hynix (prior prior to switching to new TimeTech post crash) RAM, DX12, Win10 Home. I was indeed running the game on ultra, not realizing there was an issue with optimization, but was not having any heating issues (was sitting at around 72 C when playing). After the crash, I was able to open up the body of the laptop and discover that my rear facing fans had a significant amount of dust built up between them and the chassis (I’m talking like a piece of felt solid), so there were some airflow issues, but the fans coming out the sides and bottom were totally clear.

Based on your feedback, it seems like I was not limiting the game enough, which may have overtaxed my system (specifically my RAM) which set off a chain reaction of other issues. At this point, everything I’ve got is updated to the latest firmware, so that in mind, I’ll give the game another shot and see how it goes (with limited graphics, hah)

Thanks again, please let me know, if you decide to review the attached log, if you find anything specific.

DxDiag.txt (93.3 KB)
CBS.log (1.8 MB)

[vapourfire]

Honestly cannot really see much from the additional info…

The only things that stand out are general Windows Update and some Microsoft Store Update issues… but these could just be as part of updating your system to get to a stable state… You can see them in the diagnostic section of the dxdiag report (at the end)… From my experience these are typical on a new install and usually after a few updates/reboots etc, things like this fix themselves… You may want to google them and reset things like the Store App and make sure that optional updates that apply to your hardware etc are installed properly… So long as these errors dont keep happening I doubt there is anything to worry about.

Laptops… Cooling… clogged rear vents… This could be what messed up your RAM… your 72C for GPU or CPU was fine, but your overall cooling may have had a negative on the ram physically. I.e. the main components were getting sufficient cooling but it could be that the laptop was unable to vent sufficiently on other components which dont have active cooling - like RAM… Again, guesswork but probably likely due to your findings.

For now, I dont advocate anyone using Ultra - imho, the graphics quality it provides over Very High or even High is small but the improvement in stability etc is very noticeable - and performance is better too…

Another key aspect for LE right now is that you need to keep it limited somehow… I see your screen is 144hz… Its unlikely your GPU will be able to maintain 144fps at higher quality and if you dont limit it (framerate limit in settings), then LE will attempt to max out your GPU as much as it can - even in situations where it shouldnt need to and this is what causes most of the instability currently in the game. For your hardware I would recommend you cap the framerate at ~80fps (or whatever setting doesnt exhibit screen tearing)… The key is to monitor GPU usage and keep it between 60-70% while doing nothing standing in town… This leaves headroom for the GPU to max out when it needs to but not being flatlined all the time. You can obviously do this through resolution, quality settings & fps limits… For a laptop, I would also consider temperature & noise issues - i.e. you may find dropping settings dont make that much of a difference visually but allow you to run cooler/quieter…

In an ideal world, LE would be more optimised and need less capable hardware, but its in beta so I usually recommend that people temper their expectations right now… 0.9 - the next patch with multiplayer will also be the first patch that the devs have committed to performance improvements so it should impact on how the game plays - I am hopeful but realistic and honestly have no idea how much of an improvement could be expected. This patch is estimated to be release sometime after Sept… most of us are hoping for Oct/Nov ish…