random freeze and complete lockup (PC)

Is there anybody out there who has an idea or hint for me?

This seems to be an install problem that showing up a bit late, it that the case then this is a Microsoft C++ bug so the quick fix is to uninstall your C++ files. If you see 2 instances of Microsoft C++, uninstall both of them; and don’t worry, they are easy to reinstall. There are also a couple workarounds online if you don’t want to uninstall them. Doing this is also a quick crash fixsolution for Battlefield 3.

If not this working i recommend you to check your hardrive, motherboard or graphics card, maybe some of that could be the problem. Report back it the problem still showing up after this.

Good luck! // XSV Entertainment Service. (Clan)

So as you said I fixed the C++ Runtime, not only for Battlefield but for each and every game that brings one with it.

Long story short: I almost praised you as the guy who finally solved that nasty problem after 2 hours of nice gaming, without crashes. But then after 3 hours and a map change, the screen went black again and the system completely froze.

So I checked my windows again using "sfc scannow" (no errors), checked the harddrives using "chkdsk /r /f" and benchmarked everything. I also recorded the voltages coming from the PSU (no errors, everything seems to be ok).

Could this be a driver related problem? I mean I read some pretty nasty things about AMD and the HD7000 card series drivers, where the screen went black and the system locked up while the gpu was switching states (idle to full power and full power to idle).

I may need to check the C++ Runtime, that comes with the AMD CCC, maybe that one's corrupted too (just guessing, because fixing runtimes seems to help).

Thank you for your help. At least I had 3 hours of nice gameplay instead of only 20-30 minutes.

It's always nice to achieve some "quick wins" on the way to solving the whole thing. :-)

Hi again!

Yes check all those things. One problem more could be if you playing with a disc the disc could have some scratchs on it, it not then there is something with the C++ files. If ethier of this works i can recommend you to conntact EA support via battlelog: https://getsatisfaction.com/login?company=battlefield3 or just log into battlelog then chose Live Chat Support / EA.

Hope this will help. 

Would it be possible to post a dxdiag? I have a feeling that we're looking at either an issue with the processor or the graphics card, but not 100% sure on that. Alternatively, we may just need to do a repair install on BF3 and all add-ons. Of course, a manual uninstall may be required as well. If you're able to attach a dxdiag, that'd help a lot though.

-MattyLight ATX

hey guys,

thanks for your quick replies.

@ n1t3mar3xsv: I repairedd C++ runtime for everything now. I installed everything from Origin, no DVDs where used or harmed during this process.

@atxmattylight: I only reinstalled the game completely (after manually cleaning the harddisk and origin cash) yesterday.

I played again today and guess what, it locked up after 30 minutes.

So now I am going to play around (or test if you will) with the Display Response settings (TDR-settings), maybe that helps.

The requestd dxdiag can be found by clicking this link (the post would exceed the maximum allowed 20.000 characters).

Again thank you for helping me out on that issue.

Regards Sumpfman

This sounds a little crazy, but have you tried backdating your drivers for your graphics card to the one before 07/28/2012? That's the first thing I can think of is maybe bad drivers from AMD (kind of unlikely, but possible). The only other thing I can think of is maybe setting it to run in affinity and dropping down a few cores.

-MattyLight ATX

Nothing sounds crazy, when it comes to this random blackscreen things.

Yesterday for example I changed the windows power management settings to never ever enable powersaving on pcie (as the card does it by itself) because I ran over that hint whilst testing with TDR .

After that I played for 2 hours without any crash.

I will have to test that some more because I ran out of time yesterday.

The thing with affinity and limiting the process to one core already helped me out on Prototype 2 and other games but just with game freezes not with the blackscreen lockups - unfortunately.

It is not unlikely to be a problem with AMD drivers because many people at the Sapphire and AMD forums are reporting blackscreen lockups whilst playing different games. But nothing seemed to help. I tried the last 3 versions (12.8, 12.7, 12.7beta and 12.6) and none of them helped to fix the problem.

Maybe I should go down some more to version 12.4. or just wait for the 12.9 to be released, which is expected to happen within the next week.

I asume you found nothing wrong in my dxdiag?

Regards,

Sumpfman

Hey sumpfman, I just read through the dxdiag again and I still don't see anything that catches my eye other than maybe trying affinity (although ultimately, BF3 should be fine on an 8 core). Have we mades sure all drivers are up to date, not just for the graphics card? I'm gonna look around some and see if I can find any other reasons this may be happening.

The only other thing I can think of is following this:

Backup the save data:

1. Click the Start button and select Documents
2. Right-click the Battlefield 3 folder and select Cut
3. Right-click on your desktop and select Paste
4. To restore your Battlefield 3 save games and settings, move this folder back into the Documents folder

 
Delete the game files (in the default location):

1. Click the Start button and select Computer
2. Select the C: drive folder
3. Select the Program Files folder
   Note: On 64bit systems, select the Program Files (x86) folder
4. Select the Origin Games folder
5. Right-click the Battlefield 3 folder and select Delete

 
(Warning: Changes to the registry can cause your computer to operate improperly, so please follow these instructions exactly as they are written.)
 
Backing up the registry:
Perform the steps listed below to back-up the registry so that should something go wrong, you can restore your system back to a working state:

1. Click the Start button (Windows button on Windows Vista) on the Windows Taskbar.
2. Click Run.
3. Type regedit into the available text field, and click OK.
4. Select File, then Export
5. Select All under Export Range.
6. Type backup into the File name field, and click Save.

 
Delete the registry keys:

1. Expand the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE folder
2. Expand the SOFTWARE folder
   Note: On 64bit systems, first expand the Wow6432Node folder, then continue
3. Expand the EA GAMES folder
4. Right-click the Battlefield 3 folder and select Delete
5. Collapse the EA GAMES folder
6. Expand the Electronic Arts folder
7. Right-click the Battlefield 3 folder and select Delete
8. Collapse the Electronic Arts folder
9. Right-click the ESN Launcher folder and select Delete
   Note: This folder may have a version number (such as 0.79.0) after the name or there may be multiple folders with the same name
10. Right-click the ESN Sonar folder and select Delete
    Note: This folder may have a version number (such as 0.79.0) after the name or there may be multiple folders with the same name
11. Expand the Microsoft folder
12. Expand the Windows folder
13. Expand the CurrentVersion folder
14. Expand the Uninstall folder
15. Right-click the {76285C16-411A-488A-BCE3-C83CB933D8CF} folder and select delete
16. Collapse the Microsoft folder

 
Delete the uninstall files:

1. Click the Start button and select Computer
2. Select the C: drive folder
3. Select the Program Files folder
4. Select Tools, then Folder Options, then View, then select "Show hidden files and folders"; you may need to press the Alt key to make the Tools option appear
5. Select the InstallShield Installation Information folder
6. Right-click the {76285C16-411A-488A-BCE3-C83CB933D8CF} folder and select delete

-MattyLight ATX

deleted, nothing for n00beris to plagiarise