4.377 - Replaced Graphics card now SB doesn't even launch.

[Gibsonm]

Hi,

 

Over the last few weeks I've managed to reduce the amount of hair in my head considerably.

 

First there were ongoing blue screens - not purely related to running SB, as indicated here:

 

 

I replaced the suspect NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 with a MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Ventus 2X OCV1 8G LHR.

 

As a result, no blue screens for approx a week.

 

Until yesterday, the machine's performance was now "sluggish" with the result being that:

 

SB launched on its own would take 5-10mins to get beyond the "pretty" splash screen (TOW about to impact on T series vehicles, Leopard 2 family out for a drive, etc.) then another 5-10mins at the "credits" screen (where the various add ons are advertised and then finally the menu screen. Joining / hosting multi player was unworkable.

 

TeamSpeak and SB Pro PE when run concurrently results in alternating "Not Responding" messages (depending on which was in the foreground).

 

Now we have escalated to a new level of frustration.

 

Launching SB resulting in the usual Windows revolving blue circle and then nothing.

 

Prior to launching PC into low orbit I'm wondering if the following provide any pointers:

 

Non "Server" executable:

 

CrashLog_2023-03-19_09-51-23.txtDebugLog.txtCrashLog_2023-03-19_09-51-52.txtSBProPE64cm.exe.21512.dmp

 

Server executable:

 

CrashLog_2023-03-19_10-09-30.txtCrashLog_2023-03-19_10-09-55.txtDebugLog.txtSBProPEServer64CM.exe.1348.dmp

 

Things I have done:

1. Installed Nvidia drivers for the new card, sourced from the Nvidia web site.
2. Installed Nvidia control panel from the Microsloth Apps store - because of course it doesn't come with the card and you can't download it from Nvidia.
3. Reinstalled Citrix Workstation software (that is de-installed it and then installed it) as it was reporting an error.

4. Run DISM /online /cleanup-image /restore as Admin.

5. SFC /scannow as Admin.

6. Malwarebytes reports no issues.

7. F-Secure SAFE reports no problems.

 

Things I have not done:

 

Downloaded any "wonder" scan / fix utilities from the Internet.

 

Edited Saturday at 11:44 PM by Gibsonm
Added what I've done / not done.

[Lumituisku]

You don't have other heavy ish programs / games on your PC do you? If you do those work at all? Is this solely Steelbeast matter? I really suspect that something is not good on your PC... I'm a novice but based on stories i have heard and couple of times i had troubles of my own I would guess that something going on with motherboard / CPU...  I hope you will get it solved. Dont give up yet! 

[Gibsonm]

2 minutes ago, Lumituisku said:

You don't have other heavy ish programs / games on your PC do you? If you do those work at all? Is this solely Steelbeast matter? I really suspect that something is not good on your PC... I'm a novice but based on stories i have heard and couple of times i had troubles of my own I would guess that something going on with motherboard / CPU...  I hope you will get it solved. Dont give up yet! 

 

Nothing that runs concurrently.

 

MS Office - sometimes run concurrently.

Adobe Acrobat - sometimes run concurrently.

Teamspeak - usually run concurrently.

Synology (NAS) sync software that does run concurrently.

Backup software - usually run when I'm asleep.

Various Combat Mission titles, never run at the same time as SB.

 

No video capture software.

No FPS type games.

 

[Lumituisku]

Umm just a thought as i am going to sleep... It occurred to me that your new craphic card might take more power. And if your power supply is weak / breaking it might be causing all kinds of weird problems.  It's bit like with forest machines... If electric power in cables are low funny things start to happen and things get slow. 

[Sean]

I would make sure your power supply has enough headroom to run your video card.  600W is the recommended supply, I would look for a 800W to have plenty of head room.  If you are running a super high end CPU with a high TDP, you might need even higher.   

[Gibsonm]

1 minute ago, Sean said:

I would make sure your power supply has enough headroom to run your video card.  600W is the recommended supply, I would look for a 800W to have plenty of head room.  If you are running a super high end CPU with a high TDP, you might need even higher.   

 

Its a 750W power supply.

 

The CPU is an i5 so I wouldn't put it in the Cray class.

[Gibsonm]

Update:

 

After a bit of diagnostics by @Falcon and I, we discovered that at least part of the problem was the unsupported (Caveat Emptor - no blame on eSim) "d3d9.dll" advertised here:

 

 

As a way to improve frame rates.

 

Having removed that at least now things have "improved".

 

Improved = launches, gets to the pretty screen and then "not responding" for 12 minutes (when I gave up and quit). But at least not crashing outright.

 

The search goes on.

 

Edited Sunday at 02:40 AM by Gibsonm

[Arch]

This ain't no GPU issue. When were your system drive and motherboard installed first?

[Gibsonm]

 

39 minutes ago, Arch said:

This ain't no GPU issue.

 

Dare I ask, what its it then?

 

39 minutes ago, Arch said:

When were your system drive and motherboard installed first?

 

The motherboard is probably 4-5 years old: Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd. Z270X-Gaming K5 (U3E1)

 

CPU is a Intel Core i5 6600K @ 3.50GHz    77 ∞C Skylake 14nm Technology

 

The System Drive (by which I guess you mean the boot volume) is a Samsung SSD 980 PRO 2TB. This is less than 6 months old (its a RMA replacement for an earlier one that failed).

 

Edited Sunday at 03:21 AM by Gibsonm

[Arch]

2 minutes ago, Gibsonm said:

 

 

Dare I ask, what its it then?

 

 

The motherboard is probably 4-5 years old: Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd. Z270X-Gaming K5 (U3E1)

 

CPU is a Intel Core i5 6600K @ 3.50GHz    77 ∞C Skylake 14nm Technology

 

The System Drive (by which I guess you mean the boot volume) is a Samsung 1863GB Samsung SSD 980 PRO 2TB. This is less than 6 months old (its a RMA replacement for an earlier one that failed).

 

Random bluescreens and extremely long loading times sounds like either a system drive/boot volume or motherboard issue to me. Hell, perhaps RAM, but those usually just work or don't work. I would not advise to just start swapping out parts before troubleshooting, but it might be worth a RAM swap at least.

 

Samsung SSD that failed? You must just be unlucky with parts. Here's to seeing if my 1TB 980 Pro holds on. 😅

[Gibsonm]

The random blue screens have now gone (as detailed earlier).

 

4 hours ago, Gibsonm said:

I replaced the suspect NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 with a MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Ventus 2X OCV1 8G LHR.

 

As a result, no blue screens for approx a week.

 

I'm afraid I'm not a PC shop with multiple mortherboards, spare RAM, etc. lying around.

 

18 minutes ago, Arch said:

I would not advise to just start swapping out parts before troubleshooting, but it might be worth a RAM swap at least.

 

  Well I have been troubleshooting the OS:

 

4 hours ago, Gibsonm said:

4. Run DISM /online /cleanup-image /restore as Admin.

5. SFC /scannow as Admin.

6. Malwarebytes reports no issues.

7. F-Secure SAFE reports no problems.

 

Also isn't that contradictory?

 

Edited Sunday at 03:25 AM by Gibsonm

[Arch]

4 minutes ago, Gibsonm said:

The random blue screens have now gone (as detailed earlier).

 

 

I'm afraid I'm not a PC shop with multiple mortherboards, spare RAM, etc. lying around.

 

 

Also isn't that contradictory?

If it only happens with SB then I would check if you are actually just leaking memory.

 

It is, but a RAM swap doesn't require unplugging any physical connectors nor flashing anything etc. So if you were to start swapping hardware (if you were a PC shop :P) then I'd start there.

[Gibsonm]

4 minutes ago, Arch said:

If it only happens with SB then I would check if you are actually just leaking memory.

 

If that referred to the Blue screens then no they didn't.

 

And they have certainly stopped since the new graphics card went in - unsure if that is just coincidence or a solution as yet.

 

Edited Sunday at 03:28 AM by Gibsonm

[Volcano]

Now I am not sure this is what is your problem is, but I updated my NVidia drivers just this past week and after I did that, several other games I play would not load. I didn't bother to see if it affected Steel Beasts at the time, because I immediately went back to the previous version drivers and then everything worked again.

 

I wonder could it be the same issue here with the latest NVidia drivers? There seems to be a lot of complaining on the Internet about it, so lots of people are having this problem with certain cards.

 

Here is what I did, which you could try it (unless you fixed it already):

 

I went here...

https://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us#

 

...and searched for my exact card and downloaded a driver from a month ago where everything worked. Maybe its worth a try? But of course the BSOD is a bit worrying.

[Major duck]

Unimstall sb and delete all sb/esim folders except your documents folder and map folder 

Start regedit and delete search and delete all esim/Steelbeasts entries

 

Download the installer and run the installer again and see if that fixed it

That has worked for a few people on other patches 

But there is some risks to it as you mess around with the registry

MD
 

[Gibsonm]

23 minutes ago, Major duck said:

Unimstall sb and delete all sb/esim folders except your documents folder and map folder 

Start regedit and delete search and delete all esim/Steelbeasts entries

 

Download the installer and run the installer again and see if that fixed it

That has worked for a few people on other patches 

But there is some risks to it as you mess around with the registry

MD
 

 

Once I removed the suspect and unsupported "d3d9.dll" the SB specific issues stopped (pretty sure I mentioned that).

 

Its now a generic issue (e.g. pretty sure removing SB will impact TS performance, etc.), so that advice doesn't apply here (may well for others reading this at some point in the future).
 

[Volcano]

15 hours ago, Gibsonm said:

 

Once I removed the suspect and unsupported "d3d9.dll" the SB specific issues stopped (pretty sure I mentioned that).
 

Ah yes, I saw that, but I guess I didn't understand that it fixed the entire issue (I thought some issues still remained with launching the program).  OK, good that you figured it out. Will mark this as resolved then.

[Gibsonm]

4 hours ago, Volcano said:

Ah yes, I saw that, but I guess I didn't understand that it fixed the entire issue (I thought some issues still remained with launching the program).  OK, good that you figured it out. Will mark this as resolved then.

 

Yes "resolved" as in it at least gets to the initial "pretty" splash screen, as opposed to never getting there.

 

Not "resolved" in terms of playable.

 

Recent test run (post rolling back the Nvidia drivers):

• 5 mins of initial black screen before getting to the "pretty" (Leopard 2 family on a country drive, TOW rapidly approaching T series vehicle, etc.) screen. Pretty screen used to be 1st screen and almost instantaneous.
• 16 mins of the pretty screen whilst waiting for the "credits" screen (the one with the 3rd party logos). Including several offers by Windows to quit the process.
• I gave up at the 22min mark from first clicking on the SB icon.
• Never got to the "credits" screen.

I suspect however that this is a broader, generic Windows issue - Teamspeak for example takes 30+ sec to load, not a SB specific one.

 

Unfortunately it remains very frustrating.

[Ssnake]

Can you start the Windows Task Manager and simply observe what else Windows is doing while Steel Beasts (or other applications) take forever? Maybe there's a background activity that hogs CPU resources (e.g. an infected web browser that does cryptomining while your attention is directed elsewhere - not saying that this is THE explanation, but A possible scenario).

[Gibsonm]

21 hours ago, Ssnake said:

Can you start the Windows Task Manager and simply observe what else Windows is doing while Steel Beasts (or other applications) take forever? Maybe there's a background activity that hogs CPU resources (e.g. an infected web browser that does cryptomining while your attention is directed elsewhere - not saying that this is THE explanation, but A possible scenario).

 

Yes "I" (we really there seems to be a few interested parties now) tried that.

 

The Task Manager graphic pretty much flatlined, unsure if it because SB wasn't requesting resources or if SB had just stalled.

 

[Ssnake]

I don't think that there's any external process hogging system resources. But, to rule it out: The interesting view would be the Details tab. You can right-click the columns to add another category; I usually pick CPU Time which cumulates how much processor time a certain process consumed. Then sort by CPU time (this has the advantage that the process list doesn't re-sort itself like crazy, giving you some time to actually digest what's going on; alternatively, sort by memory consumption, disk utilization, network traffic) to see which processes consume the most resources.

With an i5-6600K CPU, you get four CPU cores. From your diagram, it doesn't seem that any core is at 100% capacity (in that case we'd see a "25%" utilization, not just 6).

 

But, like I wrote, I don't think that this is what's happening. Rather, Steel Beasts (and other applications that show similar behavior) is probably waiting for "something" to happen, and eventually Windows runs into a time-out when that thing doesn't happen.

 

We can get a clue about that by starting SB Pro in debug mode, then looking at the debugLog.txt file to compare the time stamps. This would reveal which steps in the startup process take more than a handful of milliseconds. Maybe start Steel Beasts on your computer as you're about to leave for lunch, then see on return if you got past the splash screen. Exit SB, then check the debugLog file. Once that we know where the time is lost maybe we can figure out what's causing this.

[Arch]

Bit of a stretch, but I bought a SSD just recently which died next day. It took insanely long to POST when it was installed in M2_2, like 2-3 minutes. Maybe something similar is going on? Did you install any other components recently?

[Scrapper_511]

Throwing out some ideas here...

 

There's been some recent problems with Samsung SSDs (or was it NVME?) drives failing prematurely because of Samsung's utility software.

 

Going back to the graphics card, there's a utility called "DDU" which wipes out remnants of previously installed drivers. Highly recommended in some communities when changing GPUs. I know you were having problems even before you changed cards and subsequently discovered DX9 was your culprit, but I thought I'd mention this.

 

Goodluck and I hope your hair grows back, Gibsonm!

[Arch]

1 hour ago, Scrapper_511 said:

Throwing out some ideas here...

 

There's been some recent problems with Samsung SSDs (or was it NVME?) drives failing prematurely because of Samsung's utility software.

 

Going back to the graphics card, there's a utility called "DDU" which wipes out remnants of previously installed drivers. Highly recommended in some communities when changing GPUs. I know you were having problems even before you changed cards and subsequently discovered DX9 was your culprit, but I thought I'd mention this.

 

Goodluck and I hope your hair grows back, Gibsonm!

870 Evo drives (manufactured in 2020 up to early 2021) specifically have some rot after about a year of use, so be advised. I don't think it is an issue with other Samsung SSDs.

 

My shitty SSD in question was a Silicon Power P34A60 2TB. Replaced with Samsung 980 1TB.

Edited 6 hours ago by Arch