Andromeda crashing on initial load with 6950 XT, four beeps preceding game start
Hey all,
Got a Radeon 6950 XT reference a week ago and haven't had much luck starting the game since then. I got the Steam version. Last GPU was a 1080 Ti with no similar issues whatsoever.
For, context CPU is a 7950X with 32 gigs of ram. Video of the issue
Weird thing that loses me sleep is those four beeps before the game launches (but fails at doing so miserably). There's also a massive amount of coil whine for as long as the loading screen seems interactive, which ceases right away as the crash happens.
The weirdest thing is that I managed to start it once after a long ordeal involving messing up my windows bootloader and reseating the GPU and my system NVME drive among other things. After I put everything back together and rebuilt my boot partition, I noticed that No Man's Sky was fixed (had another issue with HDR and low fps) so gave Andromeda a shot too. It had the same issue, tried game undervolting from Adrenalin and it loaded right away!
I don't remember for sure, but the initial beeps probably went away too.
Until I had that driver version, it was working perfectly even after removing the undervolt. Two days ago I removed my driver b/c it had terrible VR performance and Andromeda hasn't ran ever since.
Things I've tried so far:
- Two different drivers, 2022.11.2 and 2022.5.1, both clean installs with DDU beforehand
- All the radeon switches that make beeps (chill, boost, antilag)
- Disabling adaptive sync
- Undervolting (auto and manual)
- Undervolting game specifically only
- Underclocking GPU
- Disabling AMD smart access memory
- All the compatibility settings and toggles on that page windows 11 offers
- Enabling / disabling HDR in windows
- Clean boot (disabling all non-microsoft services in msconfig)
- EA app instead of origin
- Clean install of win 11 on another drive with only the bare minimum needed for the game - this gave me "registration error DSOUND.DLL missing" - don't remember exact wording
- Removing / reinstalling chipset drivers
- I'm on latest BIOS so that upgrade is done
- Disabling virtual memory
- Setting virtual memory to a fixed 16 gigs on my boot drive (SSD)
- Disabling hibernation
- Running the game in admin mode
The following two make the coil whine go away - Turning on vsync from the driver
- Capping FPS to 100 via RivaTuner
- Setting system resolution lower (from 3440x1440 to like 720p)
- Trying a cracked game exe file
I'm hoarding the crash dump files that all basically say the same thing:
Process name: MassEffectAndromeda.exe
Exception code: 0xC0000005
Exception information: The thread tried to read from or write to a virtual address for which it does not have the appropriate access.
Here's a recent dump: image1 image2 dump file
Any help is greatly appreciated, I'm approaching my wit's end here.
I'd run your Crash dump through WinDbg to get a few more information.
It is an access violation on trying to execute code in an memory area that is flagged as non execute.
Meaning there should not be any executable code in this area in the first place.
Unfortunately, the address that throws the error is not in a module recorded by the dump or there are corruptions in the dump, so the module in question is not identified.
This could be a Software or Hardware error, but it is not possible to determine which one until you got the second Windows installation to run.
DSOUND.DLL is a Microsoft DirectX DLL.
- Inside the second Windows installation>
- Hit Windows key and X.
- Choose either “PowerShell (Administrator)” or “Command prompt (Administrator),” or "Windows Terminal (Administrator)", whichever option is offered.
- Inside the PowerShell or CMD, enter “DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Checkhealth” without quotes. > ENTER.
- If errors are found, notify us. If no errors were found reaped steps 1 & 2.
- Inside the PowerShell or CMD, enter “DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth” without quotes. > ENTER.
- The system will start validating soon. If it throws an error, please list it here.
- After it reaches 100%, hit Windows key and X again.
- Again, choose “PowerShell (Administrator)” or “Command Prompt (Administrator)”
- Inside the PowerShell or CMD, enter “sfc /scannow” without quotes. >ENTER.
- Post the message you receive at the end of the processes here.
The coil whine just happens because of high FPS in the menu and is not concerning.
