Fade to black (crashes every twenty minutes or so)

sagesourceb16_ESO · April 2017

Okay, this started to happen about ten days ago. I would be playing along merrily and then my E prompt to pick something up would go dead. Hit it all you want, nothing happens. My summons (I'm a Level 50 CP 622 sorcerer) stop moving with me and hover in place, and I can't dismount or mount. I can still move freely, but after a few seconds more, I'm kicked to the sign-in screen. If I try to sign in again quickly, I will sometimes be told that I'm already signed in.

Sign in again, twenty minutes to half an hour later, the same thing happens. Regularly.

There have been some odd variations, though. Once I hit a massive slowdown when fighting a Frost Atronach. It went on for ages with him moving a bit, me moving a bit, and then I crashed out. I started up again, fully expecting to find my character dead, but somehow she killed the atronach (which had 72% of health the last time I saw it). So she must have continued delivering blows but somehow these weren't being fed through to the animation.

If the bug hit while I was in the building tool, when I tried to place something, I would click but nothing would happen; the thing I was trying to place remained stuck to my cursor. If I clicked again, I would be told that a building operation was in progress and please wait. Then I would crash.

I've checked all the usual things, reduced the graphics quality, and so on. Nothing has affected the frequency of the crash.

This is very not fun. Suggestions?

Shadowshire · April 2017

@sagesourceb16_ESO

First, you need to disclose the platform on which you play the game, and the megaserver to which you connect.

Second, from your description of the events, there could be a problem with your LAN router, the ISP network, the Internet, or the Betheda.net gateway server. I had similar problems a couple of years ago which I eventually discovered were caused by a malfunctioning router recently acquired by Level 3 from an ISP in Colorado which had gone out of business.

So, (1) re-post your report in the Customer Support Section, and add the platform and megaserver that you use to play, and (2) send an e-mail asking them to give you the IP address of a Bethesda.net server which you can use to test whether there is a technical problem with the Internet -- tell them about your post on the Customer Support section too.

Two utility programs are installed on every computer that has a Windows operating system. One is pathping.exe and the other is tracert.exe. Open the Command Prompt with Administrator privileges, then enter the name of the utility program followed by /? to display the list of parameters which you can use with that program. One choice is to just follow the name of the program with a blank space and then enter the IP address which Customer Support has given you. If you discover a problem, then run it again and redirect the output of the program to a .txt file.

Note: Although I haven't looked, there are probably instructions on using these utilities in the Tech Support Knowledge Base, and what to do if you discover a problem with them. ZOS cannot do anything about your ISP's network, or the Internet backbone, only if there's a problem with the Bethesda.net gateway. If the problem isn't theirs, then contact your ISP tech support.

sagesourceb16_ESO · April 2017

Thank you for your reply.

I think I can leave the matter where it is, since on going down a list of things to check if your ping increased to unacceptable levels, I got in touch with my ISP and found that my cable modem had been mis-set... heaven knows how, I didn't tamper with it.... but when that was corrected, the problem disappeared.

Thanks again

Shadowshire · April 2017

sagesourceb16_ESO wrote: »

Thank you for your reply.

I think I can leave the matter where it is, since on going down a list of things to check if your ping increased to unacceptable levels, I got in touch with my ISP and found that my cable modem had been mis-set... heaven knows how, I didn't tamper with it.... but when that was corrected, the problem disappeared.

Thanks again

You're welcome.