Need help finding source of crash
Hello everyone! I hope you are all having a great day! I am in a bit of a pickle as I am unsure what is causing my game to crash so often as of late. Just today I had it crash 3 times in a row while ...
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@Starscream195 A prebuilt computer should have a power supply that's technically sufficient for its hardware. You might run into trouble if you overclocked the components, but in that case you'd probably have figured out the system was unstable when testing the overclock. The other possibility is a faulty PSU, but that typically doesn't look like the crashes you're describing.
Your dxdiag shows access violations from Sims 4. These mean that the game tried to access a memory address in an improper way, although none of the crash info would ever tell you what function in-game was the culprit. These kinds of errors can in theory be caused by hardware issues, for example a bad memory module or failing hard drive, but in the absence of any other indicators of hardware problems, and your info doesn't have any, it's much more likely that this problem is confined to Sims 4, and in particular your mods or possibly your custom content.
I understand the crashes are infrequent enough to make testing your mods and cc difficult, but one thing that would make it easier is if you could find at least one crash that was reproducible. To that end, try saving often, I mean extremely often, so there's a good chance the same event that causes a crash once is about to fire at one of your save points, and you can load it over and over to test.
Another potentially useful approach is taking your lastexceptions, if you have any, to the MCCC Discord and asking for help. The server has bots that can read your files and provide a likely culprit, and the support people can take a closer look if necessary. They might be able to tell you that a particular mod is responsible even without the crashes being reproducible.
@puzzlezaddict Would in theory upgrading the RAM solve such an issue? I have been looking into getting more RAM eventually. I don't think I really have any real issues with my PC, the only thing I can really say is certain that some games I own do exhibit frame skips from time to time, but not every game does it.
I plan to comb through my CC and see what's broken as I am sure some of them are. I also haven't had a lastexception happen for quite a long time now, so I don't think there will be much there.
I try to save as often as possible when I play. Though hilariously it's when I haven't saved due to forgetting that it crashes on me. XD
I am unsure what could exactly be causing it as every crash I've had, something different was occurring on screen than the last.
I plan to comb through my CC and see what's broken as I am sure some of them are. I also haven't had a lastexception happen for quite a long time now, so I don't think there will be much there.
I try to save as often as possible when I play. Though hilariously it's when I haven't saved due to forgetting that it crashes on me. XD
I am unsure what could exactly be causing it as every crash I've had, something different was occurring on screen than the last.
@Starscream195 Some power supplies are more reliable then others and some do NOT supply enough power on the +12V for the video card. Others have two +12 rails that only supply so many amps per rail. I have seen power supplies with dual rails hooked up with too big a load on one rail. This could cause the voltage regulators to fail and then heal. I have seen power supplies boost specs for other values to maintain the wattage figure. It could be the cooling fan can't handle the heat when the power supply is under full load. Not all power supplies are created equal. Memory modules can and do go bad. Random and infrequent crashes are hard to diagnose. There are others errors in the dxdiag that does not eliminate a hardware issue.The hardware looks to be good but... Have you checked to see if there are any Windows updates? Maybe running a test program like 3dmark (there is a free version) a few times and see if that runs error free.
@roberta591 My PC is always up to date. There are no new updates for it as of posting this comment. As for the benchmark, I'll post the results.
@Starscream195 The results are good. What I look for is I run the several times to see how the graphics card works. Running it 2 or 3 times shoould should fail IF there is an issue. I would take the mods out and start a new game and see how long you can play and/or if you get a crash.
@Starscream195 With 16 GB RAM in your system, you should have more than enough for Sims 4 and whatever else you're running in the background, that is unless you have some other program that uses significant memory and won't allow itself to be pushed to virtual memory while you're playing. But you could always check the Task Manager for system RAM use, or you could simply not open any other apps while playing.
Still, out of memory crashes typically look different than what's in your dxdiag. (You're getting access violations, and the OOM crashes I've seen have been breakpoint errors.) And if the issue is not how much RAM you have, then adding more won't make any difference. For the record, power supply issues typically don't look anything like this either, whether the supply isn't providing enough power along one of the rails or the system is calling for too much power overall.
- @puzzlezaddict I typically only really have discord open in the background when I play any game. But I will double check in case any other thing is using something.
Could you explain to me a bit more about the access violations that you spotted? What could be causing those? @Starscream195 This is an access violation:
Fault bucket 1696890453237972485, type 4 Event Name: APPCRASH Response: Not available Cab Id: 0 Problem signature: P1: TS4_x64.exe P2: 1.81.72.1030 P3: 6164ed39 P4: TS4_x64.exe P5: 1.81.72.1030 P6: 6164ed39 P7: c0000005 P8: 000000000106eeb7 P9: P10:The c0000005 is Windows for "access violation." It means the program in question tried to access a memory address in way that's not allowed, but that covers a lot of ground. Essentially, it tried to perform a function (read/write/execute) at an address that doesn't support that function; or at an address it's not allowed to access, for example in the protected Windows memory space; or there's a null pointer involved. In some ways, the exact action the program tried to perform doesn't matter—the point is that it tried to do something it should have known wasn't possible or allowed.
That's why the cause is typically a problem with the program itself. In this case, that includes not only Sims 4 but any mods or possibly custom content you've added. If one of these files is improperly coded, it could try to access memory in the wrong way. How exactly that happens is beyond my ability to explain since I don't know anything about coding, but you can imagine how easily this might happen. When the issue is Sims 4 itself, a game repair should address it, although it's occasionally been necessary to uninstall and reinstall. Mods are the much more frequent culprit though.
It's true that a hardware issue could cause an access violation, for example if a memory module or drive is damaged, data could be corrupted or unusable. But in either of those cases, there are typically other symptoms. I'm not saying your system definitely doesn't have a hardware issue, just that in the absence of any other symptoms, mods are still much more likely to be the problem.
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