Star Wars Battlefront II frequently crashes on startup when Discord is running
Product: Star Wars Battlefront II
Platform:PC
What is your issue related to? General
Summarize your bug Star Wars Battlefront II frequently crashes on startup when Discord is running in the background.
What is your gamertag/PSN ID/EA Account name? kevinshurtz
How often does the bug occur? Often (50% - 99%)
Can you tell us the date (MM/DD/YYYY) that you saw the bug? 08/22/2020
What time did you see the bug? (HH:MM AM/PM) 7:13 PM
In what game mode did the bug occur? Campaign
What is your time zone? CST - GMT - 6:00
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? I'm not sure the best way to replicate this bug, and the "game mode" field I've provided above is misleading; the problem is that the game crashes on startup because of a null pointer exception; a Minidump file is generated each time. Details of the error are provided in the "additional information" section of this form. I seem to experience the bug when I try to open the game while Discord is also open; if this were a bug were experienced by all users, however, I imagine more people would have reported it, so I'm not sure precisely what additional conditions lead to the issue.
What happens when the bug occurs? The game begins to start, but abruptly stops after about 15 seconds. Usually, the splash screen will open, and the circular loading indicator will begin rising in the bottom-right. It usually crashes upon filling about 50%. Upon crashing, the game generates a fresh Minidump file in the CrashDumps folder. I've accrued 40 crash dumps since April (usually from repeated startup attempts when the game begins acting up), but I haven't inspected many of them to determine if they're all caused by the issue with DiscordHook64.dll.
What do you expect to see? I expect the game to make it to the main menu without crashing.
Please select your region North America
AMD or Nvidia Model Number My machine uses Nvidia. Device ID: 10DE 1CBA 226717AA Part Number: 2904 0001
Overview
The crash logs state that the error is an Access Violation exception (c0000005). After launching the starwarsbattlefrontii.exe executable, the game tries to perform a read operation (signified by a 0 for the first exception argument) at address 0 (specified as the second exception argument, typically used to signify NULL). The error is specifically taking place in DiscordHook64.dll, a dynamically linked library used by starwarsbattlefrontii.exe. This leads me to believe that the startup error is connected to the game's integration with Discord.
I'd upload the Minidump file if I could, but this form's file type restrictions suggest that users are not supposed to upload files of this type. I'd be happy to share those crash dumps if they would prove useful.
Background
For a long time, I'd encountered this error behavior sporadically. If I encountered it, it was likely that I wouldn't be able to get the game to start no matter what I tried. After setting the game aside for a few days, I might revisit it, whereupon it would inexplicably start without issue. I'd usually attribute the issue's resolution to a recent update, but repeated re-encounters with the issue suggest this was not the case.
After noticing in the crash logs that the "DiscordHook64" module was responsible for the issue, and after struggling all evening to get the game started, I tried closing Discord and all of its background processes (via the Task Manager). The game began working immediately. I haven't tested this workaround extensively, so I can't confirm that running Discord always causes this issue for me, but it seems to have in this case. I should also note that I experienced this issue regardless of whether the Discord client was open or not; the issue seemed connected to the background processes, of which there were several open.
This explanation also fits with my previous encounters with the issue. It makes sense that if I'd previously closed Discord for an extended period of time, I'd experience long stretches of time without issues starting the game. If I'd restart my computer, or if I'd open a Discord to chat with some friends, Discord would be kept open in the background for an extended period afterward. This would begin a season where I couldn't get the game to start at all.
Crash Log Details
Here is some of the debugging information provided by the Minidump file. Some lines have been excluded if they seemed extraneous, and I've tried to group the information together in a helpful fashion.
A small note on the stack text - The WinDbg tool offers several columns of hex codes to accompany the text. I felt that this was unlikely to benefit anyone reading this, so I've removed it (leaving only the text). I've also slightly stylized the output below in an effort to clarify its contents.
Symbol search path is: srv*
Windows 10 Version 20190 MP (12 procs) Free x64
Product: WinNt, suite: SingleUserTS
Edition build lab: 20190.1000.amd64fre.rs_prerelease.200807-1609
Debug session time: Sat Aug 22 19:00:21.000 2020 (UTC - 5:00)
System Uptime: not available
Process Uptime: 0 days 0:00:15.000
ExceptionAddress: 00007ffcca52a9b1 (DiscordHook64!dummy_debug_proc+0x000000000005cdb0)
ExceptionCode: c0000005 (Access violation)
ExceptionFlags: 00000000
NumberParameters: 2
Parameter[0]: 0000000000000000
Parameter[1]: 0000000000000000
Attempt to read from address 0000000000000000
PROCESS_NAME: starwarsbattlefrontii.exe
READ_ADDRESS: 0000000000000000
ERROR_CODE: (NTSTATUS) 0xc0000005 - The instruction at 0x%p referenced memory at 0x%p. The memory could not be %s.
EXCEPTION_CODE_STR: c0000005
EXCEPTION_PARAMETER1: 0000000000000000
EXCEPTION_PARAMETER2: 0000000000000000
STACK_TEXT:
DiscordHook64!dummy_debug_proc+0x5cdb0
DiscordHook64!dummy_debug_proc+0x6f277
DiscordHook64!dummy_debug_proc+0x6f1fd
DiscordHook64!dummy_debug_proc+0x12b817
DiscordHook64!dummy_debug_proc+0x135731
DiscordHook64!dummy_debug_proc+0xeacc8
DiscordHook64!dummy_debug_proc+0xeafba
DiscordHook64!dummy_debug_proc+0xeae88
DiscordHook64!dummy_debug_proc+0x215fab
BaseThreadInitThunk+0x14
RtlUserThreadStart+0x2b
SYMBOL_NAME: DiscordHook64!dummy_debug_proc+5cdb0
MODULE_NAME: DiscordHook64
IMAGE_NAME: DiscordHook64.dll
STACK_COMMAND: ~64s ; .ecxr ; kb
FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: NULL_POINTER_READ_c0000005_DiscordHook64.dll!dummy_debug_proc
OS_VERSION: 10.0.20190.1000
BUILDLAB_STR: rs_prerelease
OSPLATFORM_TYPE: x64
OSNAME: Windows 10
FAILURE_ID_HASH: {c55d380d-820a-f6a4-8857-8babe6a97256}
Followup: MachineOwner
Now that is incredibly interesting and detailed. I really hope this proves useful to EA/DICE and that it enhances their games in the future. I wouldn't expect them to fix this for this game in the foreseeable future, but considering the nature of this issue maybe this report proves useful for other Frostbite titles.
BTW, as a long time dweller here, it's pretty often the complaints of Discord's Gaming Overlay messing up with this game since the early days and throughout all this time. @kevinshurtz do you have this overlay enabled when this issue happens on your end? Could you check if disabling Discord's Gaming Overlay makes this issue stop happening?
I don't think I've seen this being the cause of the game not launching, bur Discord's Gaming Overlay can cause many different issues, from lacking of control in the menus, to your camera not moving ingame, or it only moving until a certain angle and not past it and some more. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the culprit again.
