ESO.exe has stopped working.

Xogath · June 2015

Suddenly, out of nowhere, ESO has crashed today multiple times, and now refuses to run. The error when I launch the game, from its proper launcher, is as follows:

  Problem Event Name:	        BEX
  Application Name:	        eso.exe
  Application Version:	        1.0.0.1
  Application Timestamp:	55690199
  Fault Module Name:	        StackHash_0a9e
  Fault Module Version:	        0.0.0.0
  Fault Module Timestamp:	00000000
  Exception Offset:	                008302ac
  Exception Code:	                c0000005
  Exception Data:	                00000008
  OS Version:	                        6.1.7601.2.1.0.768.3
  Locale ID:	                        1033
  Additional Information 1:	0a9e
  Additional Information 2:	0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
  Additional Information 3:	0a9e
  Additional Information 4:	0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789

Just started happening today; no idea why. Nothing in my system has changed. I did a quick Google search of this and noticed an older thread about adding ESO.exe to the DEP exclusion list, but when I try doing that I get a warning about the application having to be ran with DEP enabled, thus not letting me add it. I shouldn't have to screw with DEP to play the game anyway, considering I played it without issue most of yesterday.

ZOS_MollyH · June 2015

Hello @Xogath !

At what point is your game crashing? If we can narrow it down a little bit, we may be able to either provide some troubleshooting steps or create a support ticket for one of our agents to reach out to you directly to work with you one on one to help get this resolved!

Soleya · June 2015

Just curious, are you using the shopkeeper add on? That one started crashing my game constantly (pretty much exactly 5 minutes after logging in).

If so, get rid of that mod and switch to master merchants.

Xogath · June 2015

@Slayer9292_ESO I am not. The only two addons I'm using currently are Skyshards and... FTC? I also have Recount installed, but disabled. I actually forgot about that one until just now, and need to uninstall it to see if it's by chance part of the problem. It was out of date to begin with.

@ZOS_MollyH Hi there!

At the time of me posting this thread, the game had crashed twice while just randomly playing it. After this point, I couldn't run it from either the Launcher, or bypassing the launcher and running the executable itself. Every time the process started, it immediately halted with the "BEX HashStack_xxxx" error. I read somewhere on here in a post from long ago that disabling DEP for ESO.exe would fix the BEX errors, but I shouldn't need to do such a thing when the game was running perfectly fine prior to all of this.

That aside, I've actually been having PC issues lately, and haven't played ESO much while attempting to troubleshoot what's going on. ESO crashing could be related to my issues, but it also may not be since apparently a lot of people were having issues after the latest patch or so, myself included.

As for the issue with my PC: Random BSODs while gaming (TF2 & ESO are the only two games to trigger BSODs, if they don't just crash and generate a report in the Event Viewer) have pointed towards everything from memory corruption, video memory corruption, to some unknowns.

What I've done during the past 2.5 weeks to test everything is as follows:

* Clean uninstall/reinstall of nVidia's latest drivers. (Which by the way, someone on the EVGA forums had me downgrade to 347.88 because the latest drivers were causing a lot of people a bunch of problems. This information in particular should be passed around.)
* 10+ hours of memtest86+, with no errors.
* HDD tests using both Western Digital and Seagate's utilities, with no errors.
* Furmark GPU stress test, long enough until the temperature leveled out at 81c, with no artifacting.
* A clean reinstall of Steam, also a flushed configuration.
* A clean install of TF2, since it is much smaller than ESO and not that big a deal for me to download on my shoddy connection.
* Windows update tweaks. There's a KB file currently that will cause the System File Checker (SFC) to generate a report claiming damaged files. This particular KB is safe to uninstall and hide. Microsoft has since updated this KB file, but it does the same thing.

And that's where I stand right now. This is an odd problem, because the crashes were only happening with particular games. I don't like naming games on other games' forums, but ESO, Team Fortress 2, and Modern Warfare 2 are the three games that the BSODs/crashes have occurred with. I can play WoW for hours upon hours with no issues.

Someone on the tech forums I've been posting in about this issue (a now 8-page thread) thinks that perhaps my GPU isn't getting the power it needs from the PSU (power supply), since the crashing and whatnot only occurs within these games. (WoW has always been more CPU-heavy than anything, but the game's latest expansion did come with Engine updates which utilize more GPU resources than before.)

However, I don't know if that's the case or not, since my PSU's voltages are also reporting as fine.

I haven't done much testing since downgrading the video drivers, but as it stands right now... ESO has crashed once (in such a manner that it triggered the in-game error reporter), Team Fortress 2 has not (although I only played it for around 15 minutes... which was usually enough time to crash or trigger a BSOD), and WoW has not after hours on end.

So again, I don't know if the ESO crashes are local to ESO itself, or part of my bigger system issue over the past couple of weeks.

Romo · June 2015

Hmmm...

Any way you can drop another PSU in there to check that? This is easiest check.

Then looks like a CkDsk run might help identify any HDD issues.(make sure you've backed the whole thing up first.)

Another quick (well relatively) check is to open her up and reseat everything GPU, MEM, connection from the power source, etc.

But it does sound like something is on the verge of failure, when it is hit hard by the games.

Tashira · June 2015

Just ahd the same random stop working crash when turning a quest..... very random

Xogath · June 2015

Come to find out, my issue was, apparently, heat.

Not only was the ambient temperature in the room hotter than it needed to be, but my CPU's VCORE was slightly higher than it needed to be for stock clock speeds (Core i7-950 @ 3.06GHz), so I lowered the VCORE to a stable 1.18-1.2v and that dropped core temps down to better levels.

Not sure why my BIOS had it set as high as it was (peaking at 1.3v or so) for stock clock speeds. I've seen people overclock i7950s to 3.5GHz and up with a similar VCORE.

But, pair that with the massive drop in ambient temperature now that the house is cooler, and, well... temps are great, even for crappy air cooling with a stock Intel HSF and Arctic Silver 5.

I've been playing ESO on and off all day without issues, as well as Team Fortress 2 (the other game in question that was crashing/BSODing), and everything is all good.

Needless to say, I feel a bit silly. About a week and a half prior to all of this I actually replaced two case fans and applied that Arctic Silver 5 since I knew it was going to start getting hotter. Guess it crept up on me sooner than expected, heh.