Game Crashes After Around 30 Minutes

Palerion · June 2019

System Specs:
GPU: GTX 970
CPU: i5 3570k

Hey guys,

I've had this game for around two weeks now I believe. Literally from the moment I got the game, this issue existed, and crashes would occur. Sometimes there's an error message of "ESO has stopped working" with all the crash reporter details (which really don't help), other times there's no error message at all and the game just closes out. The crashes come without warning. Whether I'm in a graphics/processor-intensive area or not, there doesn't appear to be any real correlation between what is happening on screen and when the crashes occur, and my game doesn't slow down before it crashes.

Here's what I've done so far:
- Repaired game via launcher
- Completely reinstalled game, deleting all residual folders after the uninstall, and running with no addons.
- Completely reset my PC and reinstalled my OS.
- Made sure no windows updates were missing
- Made sure graphics driver was updated
- Tried older graphics drivers
- Reset BIOS settings to default
- Set my Nvidia control panel setting to "High Performance"

Important detail: in my Event Viewer, under the System tab, I get WHEA corrected hardware errors while ESO is running. It looks like this under the General tab:

"A corrected hardware error has occurred.

Reported by component: Processor Core
Error Source: Corrected Machine Check
Error Type: Internal parity error
Processor APIC ID: 6"

Log Name: System
Source: WHEA-Logger
Event ID: 19
Level: Warning
User: LOCAL SERVICE
OpCode: Info

I'm currently trying to run the game on minimum (read: "potato") settings just to see if that will temporarily fix the crashes. But with my system specs, I really shouldn't need to run the game at minimum specs to not randomly crash. The framerate remains quite stable even on ultra-high.

My apologies if the information I have provided is slightly exhaustive/excessive, but I've put lots of effort into finding out what is going wrong up to this point, so I feel that the best way to move forward is to put all of this information out there and see if anyone can provide me with some insight given my findings.

In case any ZEO official folks are wondering, my ticket # is 190621-002956.

I sincerely appreciate any and all help that people are willing to give me here. This has been exhausting, and I'm not sure what else I can do at this point.

Palerion · June 2019

Sorry to immediately respond to my own post, but I've got a little update:

Can confirm, the game just crashed with the graphics set to MINIMUM. This is crazy.

ZOS_Bill · June 2019

@Palerion

From the game consultant you sent in with ticket #190621-002956, it is showing a "RADAR_PRE_LEAK_64" error with the ESO.exe executable. This indicates a potential memory leak as a reason ESO is crashing on your PC. You can try running the Windows Memory Diagnostics tool at start up to check for any errors on your PC.

Palerion · June 2019

@ZOS_BillE

Thank you so much for your response! I actually ran the Intel Processor Diagnostic Tool this morning, receiving no errors, and the Windows Memory Diagnostic as well with no errors. I'm not sure where to go from there.

Iskiab · June 2019

I was having game crash issues about a week or two ago after I updated the video driver.

I’d try using an older driver version to see if it helps, that solved the issue for me. GTX1060.

Palerion · June 2019

@Iskiab

thanks for the suggestion! Unfortunately, I've rolled back to two older drivers and neither of them managed to fix my issue.

Trinity_Is_My_Name · June 2019

You may have a defective CPU. Let's hope not. Here is a page that should get you in the ball park. I think you have done some of what is mentioned here. Good luck!

https://www.dell.com/community/Optiplex-Desktops/WHEA-Logger-Processor-Core-Internal-Parity-Error-on-9020/td-p/5668927

And this: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-issues-windows-out-of-band-update-that-disables-spectre-mitigations/

Palerion · June 2019

@Trinity_Is_My_Name

I've definitely taken a look at those pages. I actually tried to disable the mitigation patches but I'm not sure if I was successful. I crashed earlier with no WHEA errors, so honestly the WHEA errors may not be the issue. What @ZOS_BillE identified in my support ticket is of particular interest to me and does seem like the best lead I've got, some sort of memory leak indicator within the game consultant report. However, having already run a memory diagnostic and a CPU diagnostic on my machine and receiving no errors from those tests, I'm dead in the water at this point regarding ways to move forward. I would certainly get a new CPU if I knew for sure that the issue was my CPU, or new RAM if I knew that was the issue, or even a new motherboard, but I can't be sure at this point. The last thing I want to do is buy a new CPU only to find that the problems still linger and my game still crashes. And even then, since my PC runs all the other games I play just fine, I'd rather not have to purchase additional components purely because one game keeps crashing on me.

ZOS_Bill · June 2019

@Palerion

Your game consultant indicates you have multiple hard drives on your PC.

Have you tried installing ESO on the opposite drive you've normally been installing to?

Testing the game on a different hard drive can help with seeing if the issue is anything hard drive related.