My "FF XIV has crashed again" jpurnal.

[skitatic]

Basically I am making this journal to keep track of my crashes to hopefully show devs of what's happening to me, and by the looks of the forums, many other people.

Some history first, if you wish to view my full system details the dxdiag can be viewed here. If you don't want to (totally understand) then just know that my computer is more than enough according to the minimum requirements stated by Square Enix to play the game.

I started playing, after being convinced by a few mates, during Beta 4. During this time I had no problems with playing. Seriously, didn't even have login problems. However this changed come the early release of the game. The game suddenly would randomly freeze my entire machine, some times twice in 10 minutes, sometimes would run for 4 hours and be fine.

After the usual, make sure your drivers are up to date, do a stress test, restart your router, stand on your head, tickle your balls while feeding a monkey and 2 reformats including installation of windows (and the game) on a brand new drive, the issues continued to happen.

Stress test results can be found here (currently being added as I have to do them again as I didn't keep logs):
GPU
RAM - Just ran MemTest86 3 times, no errors, you'll just have to trust me on that one.
Heavy Load - 1 hour test, no problems.
My computer's temps after 2 hours of playing

A suggestion was that it was because of the congestion on the server, and having tried anything and everything to fix the issue by this point I sat and prayed that this would be the answer. And at first it was good.

I managed after the servers coming back up to finish a whole dungeon without crashing. Now I am 50 on my BM, and have done every dungeon while levelling, and this is the first time I made it through an entire dungeon without crashing. I thought my problems were solved I was over the moon. Then it went all wrong.

This journal is based from that moment. From the moment were there was really nothing else I, or anyone else I spoke to, could think of in order to resolve the issue.

This is currently a work in progress. Time and dates are in AEST.

4/9/2013 - Approx 10pm - Standing around in town doing nothing talking on vent - Computer goes to a grey screen. A new type of crash and I could still hear and interact with people on vent. Because this was a different crash to normal I thought it might be a one off. Hard booted my machine and 1017 trying to get back in. Gave up went to bed.

5/9/2013 - 10:19am - Mining outside Ul'dah - Typical freeze. Nothing responses. Hard boot computer.

5/9/2013 - 10:59am - Mining outside Ul'dah -Same. Typical freeze. Screen locked, nothing responses. Hard boot computer.

5/9/2013 - 9:28pm - Standing around in town -Was trying to re-enter game. Just crashed.

5/9/2013 - 10:38pm - Raiding - Crash during 2nd last boss. Hard Boot. Error 1017.

5/9/2013 - 11:02pm - Loading Screen - Freeze. Hard Boot. Attempt to get back into game, Error 1017 (You sure you did the server upgrades Square?) then goes into not being able to find JP server list.

6/9/2013 - 8:47am - Running around - Game crashed to a gray screen. Hard Boot.

6/9/2013 - 10:00am - Chopping down trees outside Grindana - Game freeze. Usual problem. Hard Boot.

6/9/2013 - 10:16am - Chopping down trees outside Grindana - Game freeze. Usual problem. Hard Boot.

6/9/2013 - 10:20am - Start screen - Game freeze. Usual problem. Hard Boot. Giving up for a bit. Go watch some smut online or something.

6/9/2013 - 12:29pm - Chopping down trees outside Grindana - Started playing 12:02. Game decides to restart my computer. Remember I don't have any of these issues doing anything else.
More to come I'm sure until issue is looked at seriously.

6/9/2013 - 10:42pm - Raiding - Game freeze. Usual problem. Hard Boot.

6/9/2013 - 11:41pm - Standing in Limsa sorting out my ARC gear - Crash to grey screen. Hard Boot.

7/9/2013 - 10:07am - Picking up level 15 fishing class quest - Awww! We were doing so well today. Started playing at approx. 6:45am. Anyway usual freeze. Hard Boot.

7/9/2013 - 7:08pm - Standing around in town - Freeze. Usual problem. Hard Boot. Shame was going good for a period.

7/9/2013 - 9:18pm - Fishing - Freeze usual problem. Hard Boot.

7/9/2013 - 9:21pm - Start Menu - Freeze usual problem. Hard Boot.

7/9/2013 - 10:07pm - Fishing - Freeze usual problem. Hard Boot.

8/9/2013 - 1:23pm - Fishing - Freeze usual problem. Hard Boot.

8/9/2013 - 9:25pm - Dungeon - Freeze usual problem. Hard Boot.

9/9/2013 - 3 Crashes in 4 hours of play - Kinda getting over updating every time it crashes so just going to do a daily update to show that the issue is still very much there. Usual issues. Freeze. Hard Boot to fix

10/9/2013 - 2 Crashes in 2 hours of play - Usual issues. Freeze. Hard Boot to fix.
EDIT: A great thread with a lot of people having a similar issue to the one I am having.
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...sh-BSOD-issues

[skitatic]

Heading to bed for tonight, just too much frustration.

[Astralen]

Have you tried deleting your "My Documents/My Games/Final Fantasy XIV - A Realm Reborn" folder? Next time you log in the game should recreate this folder. A possible side effect could be that you loose your in-game System Configuration settings and perhaps your key bindings (although I believe they are server side and not client side).

[skitatic]

Have you tried deleting your "My Documents/My Games/Final Fantasy XIV - A Realm Reborn" folder? Next time you log in the game should recreate this folder. A possible side effect could be that you loose your in-game System Configuration settings and perhaps your key bindings (although I believe they are server side and not client side).

I've reformatted the computer twice onto a brand new hard drive. I think that might have deleted that folder. Thank you though for your suggestion, wish it was that easy really do.

[Astralen]

I've reformatted the computer twice onto a brand new hard drive. I think that might have deleted that folder. Thank you though for your suggestion, wish it was that easy really do.

Sorry, I didn't read that part.

If it's not software related then perhaps it's hardware related? Do you have problems with any other demanding games?

[SheknItrch]

I can offer some suggestions:

1) Check your PSU power. Could be too small for your rig.

2) Try to open the computer cover and set up a desk/floor fan to constantly blow cold air inside.

3) If you overclocked your CPU/GPU/MB/Memory, try to reset to the default settings.


See if any of this helps.

[skitatic]

I can offer some suggestions:

1) Check your PSU power. Could be too small for your rig.

2) Try to open the computer cover and set up a desk/floor fan to constantly blow cold air inside.

3) If you overclocked your CPU/GPU/MB/Memory, try to reset to the default settings.


See if any of this helps.

Hey mate. Unfortunately...
1) Plenty of power.
2) Standard setup especially coming in the Aussie summer.
3) Had them on default, crashed, overclocked, crashed, set back to default, crash.

[Astralen]

Since SheknItrch dove right into Troubleshooting then I would like to add two things:

Crashes due to overheating can show differently depending on if it's the graphics card or the CPU that overheats. If there is something wrong with the GPU then you normally see artefacts. Since you have not mentioned any it leaves us with the CPU. Try to dust off the cooler and fan by using a compressed air canister. Also check the GPU just in case.

[Nekodar]

Did you run memtest as part of your stresstesting?

[Leoniz]

From the looks of it this might also be your system and not just the game, not sure what it might be. Just saw the dxdiag sorry was asking for your specs.