Game quits and closes window every time I try to log out to character select screen.

CasgarTheSomnolent · August 2020

The title sums it up. This started yesterday. I would click Log Out on a character but instead of going back to the character select screen, the game would just exit and close the window as if I'd hit Quit. Except there was no timer as there usually is after I hit Quit. After trying this on multiple characters, I noticed that the game seemed to hang after I hit Log Out, then it would briefly flash to what looked like a loading screen, but within a split second, the window would close completely. There is no error message and report form as there normally is when the game crashes randomly.

Troubleshooting steps I've taken:

1) Restart the computer multiple times. No change in behavior.

2) Repair the game from within Game Options in the launcher. This downloaded the entire game again and went through the repair process, but there was no change in behavior afterwards/

3) Uninstalled one and then disabled all add-ons. No change in behavior.

Regarding, #3, add-ons, I thought there might be a coincidental error in Master Merchant since it started giving me an error message every time I'd log in from one of these logout game closures. This is the message it gave.

I deleted all my MM saved variables in Minion. No change. I then uninstalled MM. I no longer got the error for MM, but I started getting similar "unexpected symbol near '<eof>'" errors from other add-ons, specifically Awesome Guild Store and AI Research Grid. I finally disabled (but didn't uninstall) all add-ons. There were no more error messages but the game still closes in the same manner every time I hit Log Out. I have no idea if these two things are related.

As it is now, it's simply an inconvenience to have to boot the game back up every time I log out, but this behavior is clearly not normal, and, thus, I made this thread. Thank you in advance for any help rendered.

The only other thing I've done recently is upgrade the RAM in my laptop. This didn't seem to cause any stability issues from what I could tell, but I thought I'd mention it to be thorough.

MoonlightShadow · August 2020

Wow, that is odd. Normally, I would suggest looking at the addons since some of them write a lot of data to the saved variables which could cause the connection to time out, but even then, you should have the client log-in screen. Instead it sounds like the entire client closes. Like you said, it sounds like something is confusing your attempt to log out of a character as quitting the game.

You already tried everything I would have suggested. You did mention you made changes to your RAM. Any chance it would be easy to undo those changes in case you got a bad set of ram causing the glitch?

CasgarTheSomnolent · August 2020

MoonlightShadow wrote: »

Wow, that is odd. Normally, I would suggest looking at the addons since some of them write a lot of data to the saved variables which could cause the connection to time out, but even then, you should have the client log-in screen. Instead it sounds like the entire client closes. Like you said, it sounds like something is confusing your attempt to log out of a character as quitting the game.

You already tried everything I would have suggested. You did mention you made changes to your RAM. Any chance it would be easy to undo those changes in case you got a bad set of ram causing the glitch?

I might try messing around with the RAM just because I don't know what else to do. My Sager here is almost 5 years old and had 16GB for almost all of that time. Recently, between lots of tabs open in Firefox, ESO open, and other multitasking, Windows started giving me low memory errors, so I bought another 32 GB. Initially, I popped out the original 16 GB that came with the laptop, put in the new 32 GB, and there were no stability issues. Recently (like within the past 3 weeks or so), I finally got around to popping the keyboard out of my laptop, which is where the other empty RAM slots were hiding, so I popped the original RAM into those slots, netting me 48 GB total. I don't really see why that would be causing problems, especially just recently, but I dunno. Short of reinstalling the game completely, I guess that's a step worth taking.

I also might use this chance to document and uninstall my add-ons bit by bit, seeing if I can identify anything different in the behavior with each one that's gone. That's going to be a PITA. I'll report back how any of these things go, but I'm absolutely still open in the meantime to any additional suggestions.

Only other thing I can think of is that recently, I've started opening two windows of ESO simultaneously on the same computer to easily transfer items between my multiple accounts. I do not know if that's caused any problems or not, but, again, being thorough here.

TheImperfect · August 2020

I had the same thing happen exactly a few weeks ago. I tried everything, gave up and put my addons back and resigned myself to living with it. The problem has just mysteriously fixed itself in the last couple of weeks and is now working as normal. I haven't an idea why because I have not changed anything. Hopefully it will fix itself for you too and hopefully will stay fixed.

CasgarTheSomnolent · August 2020

mrsrobot wrote: »

I had the same thing happen exactly a few weeks ago. I tried everything, gave up and put my addons back and resigned myself to living with it. The problem has just mysteriously fixed itself in the last couple of weeks and is now working as normal. I haven't an idea why because I have not changed anything. Hopefully it will fix itself for you too and hopefully will stay fixed.

Hmm. Well, now that I have confirmation that it's happened to someone else, I think I'll just leave it. I've had things mysteriously solve themselves before. My launcher was broken for the longest time, and I had to boot straight to the game executable. Eventually, it just wasn't broken anymore. Will report back if anything changes/fixes itself.

Of course, if any ZOS employees see this and have any ideas for me to try, I'm all ears.

ZOS_Bill · August 2020

@CasgarTheSomnolent

Some other players have encountered this same issue which may be due to a certain mouse driver. You can find more details in the thread below.

Quitting the game brings up a 'ESO has stopped working' window

Tendrielle · April 2022

I have the same problem recently, with random saved variables addon error messages, and logout often quits the game. Any update on the issue?

Techwolf_Lupindo · April 2022

Check and make sure the directory where the save variables for the addons has lots of free storage space. Running out to storage space will truncate save files, making it look like they are corrupted.

ZOS_Bill · April 2022

As this discussion is nearly 2 years old we've decided to close out the thread. If you need help on a similiar issue please feel free to start a new thread in the PC Support forum.