Nvidia driver CRASH: Windows 10 DAI

righty ;D though i have zero regrets regarding this laptop, (it has and does serve me well for its age)

i just dont understand, i was able to play DAI flawless on this very laptop back 6 month ago. it is due to recent updates that i had the Nvidia crashes.

which seems to be gone, i hope.

now my dialogue just freezes... and skipping is not an option.

@Urdnot_Talen

Hey, remove any mods you may have, reduce your graphics quality settings and right click and repair the game in Origin.

Try those steps and let us know your results here please and thanks.

Thanks but these problems have nothing to do with the mods im running. And i did try all the solutions i've mentioned before without mods. and tested them with the mods. Nothing changed, same problems.

anyhow, like i said the driver doesn't crash unless im running in windowed fullscreen now. i used Gforce Experience optimal settings and lowered them to performance rather than quality.

However, that opened a NEW problem. Now i will freeze at any time. The game will lag heavily and then a forewarning will be a screen tear where i have about 5 sec before the lag and freeze arrives.

a temporary fix for this is to run the game with the "Real time" priority in Task Manager. 

and yes my laptop can run the game just fine. all of these issues have been from updates to the game and nvidia drivers.

because i ran the very same game on ultra and high just fine with no crashes or freezing a few month's ago. On the very same laptop i use now.

and since i ran windows 8.1 back then i will continue to do so.

i have run countless repairs without the mods and still had these problems. i installed mods to test if they reduced or added to my problems. They changed absolutely nothing.

if you have a permanent solution to the Screen Tearing / Freezing issue then i'd love to hear it.

i find it sad that one of my favorite RPG's is unplayable thanks to "patches"

especially because i purchased the game of the year edition.

i have also tried without certain DLC's but to no avail, still crashed.

iam sorry if i sound "superior" i have no intentions of so. im just... frustrated thats all..

and thank you and everyone else who have taken their time to try and help. i appreciate it.

Do you know which patch caused you to start having problems? I still have copies of patches 9 and 10 if that'll be of any use to you (though if you have Trespasser, you need patch 10 minimum, and it's super buggy without patch 11... And some of your mods might freak out, as well as mod manager).

Hopefully Nvidia will fix their drivers soon and that'll fix at least some of your issues.

And I think we all get how frustrating it is. One downside of PC gaming is that these things can happen and be really frustrating, with so many different possible combinations of hardware and software, it's inevitable. 

well im running with the latest of everything. Both on drivers and game patches. i reinstalled DAI recently (about 2 weeks ago)

i dont remember what patch i ran back when it worked as it is before most of the dlc's were even released.

i will give a full report as soon as possible. i have yet to properly test the solutions Barry suggested. 

Did not even get 10 seconds into the game before it froze. Atleast its not Nvidia driver crashes.

im running cleanly installed new drivers. And un-modded and repaired version of DAI.

my graphics has been lowered all the way to medium and high, whereas normally i'd change to fade-touched and ultra with automatic.

@Urdnot_Talen

I know this is a pain but can you generate another Dxdiag so we can see where you are at?

Thanks yeah, ill generate another one ☹️

current issue(s)

when making a new character my game will freeze just about when you reach out for SPOILER Justinia. Sometimes it gets just a tiny bit further than the hand reaching but it never finishes the cutscene. it just freezes. and the sound will continue to play for about 10 sec before disappearing. i've tried running the game with high-end nvidia processor (nvidia control panel) and i've tried 5 different "optimal" settings on gforce experience.

also tried lowering everything down to medium (everything looked really bad)

and tried automatic. Nothing seems to affect the crash frequency.

i've tried changing DragonAgeInquisition.exe in taskmanager to high priority, hell even realtime. that sadly doesn't work either...

i have also tried running the game with Razer gamebooster. Which did nothing to help the issue.

i just installed the newest Nvidia drivers cleanly. Also updated my Java.

Disabled nvidia Streamer service in services.msc (should give a slight performance boost)

disabled V-sync

Disabled and lowered Multisample antialiasing

Disabled and lowered post-process anti-aliasing

Disabled and lowered Ambient Occlusion

Lowered Shader quality to medium

and i dont believe my laptop uses the integrated card when playing the game, im fairly sure it uses my 880m nvidia chip.

since my framerate is fine. i tried using only my integrated (disabling the 880m in device manager) and it could barely load the game let alone play it.

can't think of anymore i've tried... Oh and i've defragged the game, still crashed. And then repaired the game. And all DLC.

tried without Trespasser DLC still crashed.

i shall attempt to reinstall the game this night.

and then continue to repair the game.

and then i will resume testing for crashes.

NEWS.

running the game in windowed full-screen pauses the freezing issue, HOWEVER i will now return to the Nvidia crash i have taken appropriate photos with my phone with the error messages.

Just to check, since you mentioned Razer... you're not actually using any Razer devices with Razer software? That's a known cause of issues with this game. (I know you're probably not, since it hasn't shown up in any of your dxdiags, but doesn't hurt to check).

Yeah, so I'm not finding any new ideas... Your laptop just seems to have an irrational hatred of this game. I was actually hoping the new Nvidia drivers from a couple of days ago (or whenever... my sense of time is out of whack) would fix your issues, guess that didn't happen. ☹️ 

Have you tried taking those error messages to Nvidia support or boards, see if anyone on that side of things has any suggestions? 

Ugh, ill get in contact with the nvidia forums... its just... if im not getting the Nvidia crashing, my game will freeze instead... if i play fullscreen i freeze. if i play windowed fullscreen i get nvidia driver crashes...

i just reinstalled the game and all of its DLC and its the same...

i had nvidia driver crashes similar to these with Just Cause 3. The way i got them fixed was by disabling Avast... i dont even have avast anymore... and i've tried disabling tons of stuff.

EDIT: just found out that the freezing is the same as nvidia driver crash! i tried running it in windowed, and the game froze like it does in fullscreen however i got the "directx error" just like on the photo's i provided... So thankfully its not a new problem... :D

Without reading the whole thread, just wanted to say been there done that.

No one seemed to have answers but over time my crashes have reduced considerably.  The only two things that I did near the end was to tick origins so it wasn't on during play (tick box in origins window) and treat myself to max out my RAM.  May both be red herrings but if you've not tried them...  My game crashes out about one every few days now, rather than every 20 minutes..

The thing here is, i've been able to run dragon age inquisition just fine on high-ultra on the very same laptop im using right now about a year ago. My Laptop can run it just fine (except the crashing...)

so having to upgrade doesn't sound like is necessary. i have however disabled Origin in game. Was actually the first thing i did 🙂

but thanks non-the-less

1 of the errors in your screen shots says direct3d couldnt alocate memory.

I'm not sure but it could be related to videocard memory(maybe someone in the forumcan elaborate on that).

Does your videocard share memory with the system memory?

if so maybe alocate a bit more for your videocard.

You could also try a complete clean reinstall of windows, then install the drivers needed, and then only install dragon age.(dont use system restore from the laptop since this installs a lot of garbage to).

so no other programs then windows, windows drivers and maybe your antvirus, and then install dragon age and see if it works.

The dust, seems to stump us every time. 😛 Didn't occur to me to mention it (there have been a few dust related issues lately) because it was a laptop,  😛

Hope cleaning it out fixes all of your issues. 🙂 

@Urdnot_Talen

Glad you seem to have this sorted out, sorry we did not catch the clogged airflow possibility sooner.

Glad if you are sorted.  It seems there is a multitude of reasons for this. I checked for dust as an early attempt to solve the issue but that didn't help me.  I returned here to say  that I foolishly updated some drivers to their latest versions (NVIDIA being conspicuous) and now I'm experiencing common crashes once again.  Worse is that system restore seems not to work on Win 10 as it always moans that it didn't do anything because it couldn't access a file.  It suggested I turn the AV off and retry but that didn't help.  Said something about advanced restore but I've no idea what that is.  I wish EA and NVIDIA could get together and solve the issue rather than find nothing wrong with their bit. :-(  Either the drivers all have a flaw, or the game is sending it something invalid it isn't coping with.  Time will now tell if the game has become unplayable again.

Hmm ... 50 minutes and a power cycle needed for the crash. :-(  Why did I update the drivers ?  35 minutes... Interesting. I will not yet me change the options.  graphics quality is set to automatic, if I try to change it the screen flickers, it remains at automatic and the selection moves to mesh quality.  Something is controlling this and it isn't me, the only one it should be.  Wonder if it's that NVIDIA Experience thing setting all to "optimal" again ?  Darn it, something has set it to full screen again !  That has never worked properly !  And that refuses to change also.  What is it about things refusing to let one control their own settings/PC ?   All the data login stuff ticked AGAIN.  Seems I can only change things if I make a different screen active and click on the option immediately from there !  Sigh, another long long long period of trying to work out why NVIDIA and DAI don't work well together.

Oh brilliant.  All I now have are 2 corrupted saves !!!!!!!  Switching characters and there is a small improvement.  All have the latest two saves shown as corrupted but the rest are there.  Yes I can confirm that for the game I've been playing recently the latest game that is not marked 'corrupt save' is some way back.  Why did I update the drivers ?  Why is this game the only thing that has issues with them ?  Makes one want to give up.  I need a cheat patch that lets me be invulnerable until I've walked through to where I already have reached.  This is going to be SOOOOO tedious.  And it affects all 5 characters.  Has to be due to the crash.