Re: Streaming Apex breaks Discord

Hi, I am terribly sorry for not getting back to you sooner, I was busy with uni and had not had much time to try this out. 

I got to the step where it tells me to disable the programs listed; do I disable only what is in the startup menu? I have actually already had them all disabled for a while now. What else can I try?

Yeah I just tried it again. Got in a Discord call with my friend to test it out, opened Apex and as soon as I full screened the game my entire PC crashed without even starting a stream.

Should I do the MSInfo report? @EA_Kent 

Hey @seulesss, 

An MSINFO has some personal info about your PC that we don't really want to be publicly visible, so we won't ask you to share one here on Answers HQ. 

A DxDiag might be helpful, though. Would you mind sharing one when you have the chance? You can find more info on how to pull one up over at the EA Help website. Once you have the text file please attach it to this thread. Thanks! 

Here it is.

@seulesss 

Thank you!

Looking through the diagnostics it seems like some Windows processes might be crashing. When you've got a chance could you try running the Windows System File Checker to see if that makes any difference? You can find more info on how to run the tool at the Microsoft Support website. 

Let me know if you're still having the same issues after that. Thanks! 

It seems that I can now stream to Discord without issue; however, the game still crashes on it's own at random, most of the time right after matchmaking is complete and about to enter the game. Is there anything I can try to maybe fix that issue?

Never mind, I spoke too soon; my entire PC crashed again and I had to manually shut it down. I am at a complete loss as to what could be wrong with it.

@seulesss 

What does your hardware usage look like leading up to the crashes? Are you seeing anything weird there? 

I'm not quite sure how to check what it was like leading up to the crash but I can provide what it normally looks like during gameplay of Apex Legends.

I took a look at the Reliability History as well and noticed a lot of "Windows was not properly shut down", "Windows stopped working", and "Shut down unexpectedly". Looking at the technical details of the stuff that would allow me to look was either "The previous system shutdown at __:__:__ AM/PM on ‎__/__‎/‎____ was unexpected." or "The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x0000009c (0x0000000080000001, 0xfffff80558035b30, 0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000)" with various different codes. Not sure if that will give any sort of idea

@seulesss 

Thanks! I appreciate the update. 

The unexpected shutdown errors may be more of a symptom than the cause. When your PC shuts down unexpectedly Windows will have a log entry for it, but it might not give us much insight on the actual cause.

There was something else I was curious about. Have you checked to see if there are any updates available for your BIOS? I've spoken with a few people recently who mentioned that installing a more recent BIOS update. If you're able to give that a shot please let me know if it makes a difference. Thanks! 

I have updated the BIOS, it should be the most recent update now. Had a little bit of trouble afterwards (graphics card would not display and motherboard had a white VGA light) but I managed to get it working again; I will update you if I experience any PC crashes while playing Apex again. Thank you very much for your help so far @EA_Kent 

@seulesss 

Thank you for following up! Don't hesitate to give me a shout here if anything changes. 

Surprisingly enough nothing has gone bad until now. Pretty similar to before where Apex will crash my entire PC during matches. Each time it comes up with "Stop Code: PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA" which from what I understand has something to do with system memory. I replaced my RAM a couple months ago due to my previous RAM failing (that's a whole other story but essentially startup took an hour; replaced my RAM and it still took an hour, only fix I could do was changing my OS to Windows 11) so i'm not sure if it's linked to that issue I experienced but until this season everything was working properly on Windows 11.

The only things I have tried are updating my BIOS like you suggested before as well as manually updating all my drivers in Device Manager (though they were all up to date), and the only thing I see in Event Viewer is the bug check error. I have tried going and looking at the file dumps for the error but I must be blind because I cannot find it.

If you would like me to try and specify on anything in case I didn't explain well then I will try my best.

Hey @seulesss, 

I'm sorry to hear you're running into problems again. 

Did you ever make any changes to your page file settings in Windows? 

I have not actually, I just looked at it and Windows automatically set it to 7,680 MB. I had to Google what that was and it said was it should be a minimum of 1.5x my RAM, which is 32 GB; however, my PC originally came with 16 GB but I upgraded to 32 GB around the time of the 3060ti launch... Is it true that the allocated space should be at least 1.5x that of my RAM? If so then Windows automatically set it incorrectly. 

@seulesss 

1.5 times physical memory is the recommendation I often see. Some people like to set it even higher, up to 3 or 4 times physical memory. Larger page files will mean more work for your SSD/HDD, so Windows may automatically set a smaller page file by default. 

If you're comfortable with it you can try setting it higher to see if that helps with stability, but keep in mind you would be doing that at your own risk. The main reason I asked is because I do sometimes see issues like this when the page file settings have been changed, so I was curious if they were at the default. 

Also, you haven't run a memory test since you installed your new RAM, that might also be a good idea just to make sure there aren't any issues. Windows has a built-in memory diagnostic tool which you can find by searching "Windows Memory Diagnostic" in your search menu. There are also a number of third party tools you can run to test your memory as well. 

Let me know how it goes if you're able to give that a shot. Thanks again! 

I set the minimum to 1.5x and the max to 2x, my boot SSD doesn't have much space left so I didn't want to go overboard with it.

And you are correct, I forgot about that tool despite using it while I was trying to troubleshoot my old RAM. I just let it run, it took about an hour to complete and everything appeared to be okay; however, it said the same thing for my old RAM even though it would not work correctly on my PC... relating to this topic, I actually threw my old RAM in my friends PC and his RAM in mine, and both PC's worked completely normal so I thought I needed new RAM. I go out for new RAM, chuck it in my PC and the issue came back right away; despite the fact that BOTH my new RAM and old RAM work in my friends PC. Would that maybe give a clue to an underlying issue in my PC? I never managed to fix/find the exact issue since upgrading to Windows 11 solved my issue of sitting on a blank desktop for 30 minutes before things started to load (I did change the CMOS battery as someone else suggested but it did nothing).

But since I have changed page file settings so hopefully I can play without issue; but I will let you know if the issue persists. Thank you very much for all the help you've provided so far!

@seulesss 

Thank you for following up and letting me know!

Have you been able to play much since changing your Page File settings? Still seeing any issues? 

Yes actually, it seemed fine for the first few days but now I am getting three different errors whenever I play. The first one is the same as before, where my entire PC crashes and I have to manually restart it, second one is 0x887A0006 - DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_HUNG (this is the most frequent one), and the third is "CreateTexture2D Failed to create texture _rt_updateddepth#0#11 with HRESULT 0x887a0005" (least frequent error).

From what i've noticed, the DXGI error happens a lot when I have Discord open on my other monitor when I'm in a call. When I have it minimized it seems to have less chance of happening, however the other errors will occur instead. A friend of mine said something about there being a problem with my physical motherboard (based on my RAM only working on Windows 11), but I don't have another motherboard to test that out, and I do not know how to diagnose that myself.

@seulesss 

It's definitely interesting that it seems to happen more if the Discord window is visible. I'm curious if disabling Hardware Acceleration in Discord might make a difference. 

If you go to the Advanced tab under your Discord settings you should see an option there to enable or disable Hardware Acceleration. Try disabling it and see if you notice any difference. 

I've turned it off, I will let you know if it makes a difference!

Another thing I have read is Apex crashes more often if your GPU is overclocked? I had it overclocked through GeForce and reset it to factory in case that is true.