PA crashing frequently in the menus

PA crashes frequently in the menus, usually when a page is still loading. I don't have problems with my computer. I'm on Win 8.1. It's been doing this for a while. Here's the debugger output.

Could you post a DxDiag.txt as well? (Press <WinKey>+R, type "dxdiag" and press "Save All Information...". Upload the resulting file here).

And does it also crash if you run PA.exe with the --nomods flag?

Here's DxDiag.txt. I will try and crash the program with --nomods and let you know how that goes.

You can also try updating your graphics drivers. They are not horribly old, but still at least half a year. PA likes up to date drivers.

The Intel ones, you can download here:
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/do...HD-Graphics-Driver-for-Windows-7-8-8-1-64-bit

The NVidia ones are available here:
http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/81879/en-us

By the way, if the .exe from the Intel site complains about "Not validated", download the .zip instead and follow these instructions:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/233250/discussions/2/558749190911446231/

Well it just crashed with --nomods. Also, turns out the debug output I posted has nothing to do with the crash. Is there any way I can set up a debugger to give some useful info when it crashes? I will install the drivers next.

No, the debugger just debugs the JavaScript in the UI.

There are other logs in "%LOCALAPPDATA%\Uber Entertainment\Planetary Annihilation\log". On a typical install %LOCALAPPDATA% will be "C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local". If PA crashes, those logs should contain a link to the uploaded crash log, which should tell you were in the code it crashed. This may or may not be helpful of course.

Well its still crashing after the updates. Here are the last few lines of the log from the most recent crash:

[09:47:21.500] INFO client::ClientGame::disableLanLookout
[09:47:22.781] INFO client::ClientGame::resetGameState
[09:47:22.781] INFO Mouse constraint cleared.
[09:47:22.781] INFO ClientInterface constructed
[09:47:22.859] INFO Connect to 174.37.76.43:9000 worked
[09:47:22.172] INFO client::ClientGame::connection_LoginAccepted
[09:47:26.578] INFO client::ClientGame::connection_GameConfig
[09:47:26.594] INFO client::ClientGame::connection_SimCreated
[09:47:26.594] INFO Starting background thread pool with 6 threads
[09:47:37.906] INFO Building planet of radius 1000 detail 2
[09:47:43.547] INFO Building planet of radius 1000 detail 2
[09:47:48.469] INFO 31185 decals generated.
[09:47:52.562] ERROR /pa/terrain/ice/textures/base/ice_tile_material.papa: open failed
[09:47:52.562] ERROR Failed to load texture resource /pa/terrain/ice/textures/base/ice_tile_material.papa
[09:47:52.187] INFO Building planet of radius 1000 detail 2
[09:47:53.828] INFO 29231 decals generated.
[09:47:53.875] INFO Building planet of radius 250 detail 2
[09:47:54.875] INFO 498583 total planet faces.

I don't see any link to an uploaded crash log. What do you think I should do now?

Well, that's annoying. That makes it a lot harder to track down...

Do you have any software from the following list?
http://steamcommunity.com/app/233250/discussions/2/558751813508748383/

Oh, and I took a deeper look at your DxDiag.txt and noticed that you get AppHangB1 errors with PA.exe. Those could be due to corrupted Windows files. Could you try to run the following command?

Code:

sfc /scannow

You will need to run that in admin mode (right click start and pick command prompt admin). It will scan your Windows install and fix any problems it may encounter.

The log is pretty big and not quite sure what I'm looking for. How would I end up with corrupted windows files and how would that be affecting PA? I haven't had issues with any other program.

I don't have any of the software on that list.

Different programs use different dll's, I guess. I'm not sure. Anyway, some of the errors in there seemed to indicate it wants a reboot, but you are right, it's very hard to read...
Anyway, try rebooting and scanning again, then reboot again and see if PA stops crashing. It already did fix a bunch of stuff.

I don't know how those files got corrupted.

If it's a mechanical HDD, it could be indicative of an impending disk failure (they do wear out). I would suggest you make a backup of everything and run a full disk scan including surface scan just in case.

Its a solid state drive. I found a fix for the corruption issue. Apparently its a common thing, but no info on why it happens. The crashes are still occurring.

I'm curious what it means that I'm getting 'AppHangB1' errors with PA.exe. The crashes are occurring when the program hangs and windows pops up a warning that the program isn't responding and asking me whether I want to close the program or wait. Sometimes waiting works out, sometimes it doesn't. So maybe that's why the errors are happening, because windows is killing an unresponsive process?

The killing of PA wouldn't harm your computer. It can't corrupt system files. At worst, it would corrupt the settings for PA, but that's not something sfc would even check.

It's hard to find much info about the AppHangB1 a lot of sites claim to have fixes that are in fact just viruses... All I could really find is the corrupted system files, the broken hard drives and the usual malware and viruses of course.

For SSDs it's rather rare to have disk errors. It won't hurt to run the test though:

• Right-click the hard drive that you want to check, and then click 'Properties'.
• Click the 'Tools' tab, and then, under 'Error-checking', click 'Check Now'. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
• Select 'Scan drive'.

(source)

It does sounds like PA gets stuck on something. Where did you install PA? Is it on C or D drive? Probably the C drive, since you mentioned the SSD. I wonder what would happen if you were to install PA on the other drive instead. For testing, of course.

That's not what I meant. I was just wondering if maybe every time windows kills an unresponsive process it logs an 'AppHangB1' somewhere. It would at least be consistent with the error name.

I actually have PA installed on both drives: the steam install is on one drive, and the Uber launcher install is on the other. The crashes occur either way. I think its unlikely that there's any sort of hard drive issue.

It may be wild speculation, but I think the program hangs when there is some difficulty communicating with the servers. The most common occurrence of a crash is when I'm loading up a lobby, either custom or ranked 1v1. Often, it takes many times longer to load than it should or just never loads at all. If I click anywhere while its in limbo, that's when I get windows telling me that the program is unresponsive.

Ah, I see what you mean. My AppHangB1 theory was just based on what I could find on-line. Killing the process didn't seem part of it, but yeah, maybe. Although PA will still access the C drive always, because settings are stored in the same place as the logs.

How often do you get these crashes by the way? Every other game?

On the subject of communicating: What virus scanner/firewall do you use? Do you still get those crashes if you disable those (for testing)?

Yeah, more or less every other game. I don't have anything in the way of antivirus or firewall, other than what Win 8 comes with. My internet connection is not the greatest though. I have high speed, but due to my geographic location it takes quite a few hops before my connection reaches a major hub. At least I think that's the case.

If it's just the connection to the server that gets dropped, then you should get a reconnect dialogue upon restarting PA. If you go to "Replays" and choose "My Replays", does it also show the games that you got kicked out from? If it does, do you have a lobby ID for those?

When you are using the local server, do you get these same hangs in PA, where PA just sort of gets stuck, too? Or is the problem then "only" that the server.exe crashes?

Oh, and in Steam, can you verify the integrity of the game cache, just to make sure there are no bad files in PA's install? (Probably not, since you also installed with the UberLauncher, but just checking).

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Here are two recent LobbyIDs from my games. Both of the replays end when the coms land, i've never seen that before, and I'm not even in one of them. The one that I'm not in, 1184..., maybe that could just be that I was kicked before I loaded the lobby? The other one is a ranked game though, and I'm pretty sure I remember that one. It was definitely a case of PA hanging and then crashing.

Good point about trying the local server. I had never used the local server before. I was unable to recreate the crash with it. In offline mode, I tried running server.exe and then doing a custom game, and I also tried just doing a custom game. However, I wasn't able to test joining a game, but only creating a game, since of course its only me.

I verified the game files with steam and everything checks out.

Well, that's just weird... Although I think I've heard another person talk about having replays in his/her list that weren't theirs.

By the way, you already automatically use the local server when you play AI Skirmish or Galactic War (unless you deliberately turned the local server off in the settings). No needs to start the server.exe yourself. Do you get hangs when you play those?

How are you connected to the Internet by the way? Wi-Fi or cable? If you are connected with Wi-Fi, could you try connecting directly with an Ethernet cable instead to test if it still hangs?

Blegh, sorry this is being such a hassle for you...