Crash to Desktop (black screen)

vassonlyub17_ESO · May 2014

Hello,

I know that there are many others threads like this but i can't stand it anymore. My game randomly crashes 10 times/hour or so, already tried everything i saw on this forum and other forums too, even my O.S I reinstalled.

I can play any other game on Ultra without a single fps drop or erros/crash like BF4 or Arma 3, it seems there are no explanation why the game crashes, just a message from windows some times saying that the display driver stoped and recovered and some times the game still on and i can walk and perform actions but the screen is black or frozen.

My pc spec:
P8z77-M with i5 2500K
8gb Ram Corsair
Gigabyte Geforce GTX 780 windforce
Kingstom HyperX ssd 240gb + Secondary Samsung 400gb 7200rpm HD
Corsair cs750M power suply.

I guess ill be leaving the game for now until nvidia or zeni fix this, i brought 5 friends to play the game (even bought the key for some of them) but I really wont invite any other friend from now on.

RastSekyd · May 2014

I can think of three potential reasons this could happen:

1) Outdated drivers. Not likely, but it's possible.

2) Power Saver settings. Make sure your PC's power settings are set to max performance rather than power saver, or this could kick in and cause this to happen.

3) CPU/GPU temperatures. This is the big one. Nvidia offers their own Nvidia System Tools, which is available on their site(and I believe included with their drivers, but I'm not sure). Check your temps and make sure you have adequate cooling. Keep in mind your room's ambient temperature can have an effect on your PC's temperature if you're using stock cooling(heatsinks and fans). If you haven't done so in a while, turn off and unplug your PC, pop open the case and get rid of any dust. Pay special attention to the intake/outtake fans and vents and your graphic card's fan.

From my own experience, ESO is a lot more demanding than the system requirements suggest and it can heat up the CPU/GPU fairly fast, while I can run Skyrim on high without taxing the system much. Constant crashing is also a potential sign of overheating or a malfunctioning GPU. There's no guarantee that this is the problem, but you should look into it.

vassonlyub17_ESO · May 2014

Allow me to detail my pc spec:
Asus P8Z77-M with Intel i5 2500k @ 4.5Ghz with CoolerMaster seidon 120M Liquid colling.
8GB Corsair vengence @‌ 1600mhz
Gigabyte Geforce GTX 780 windforce (3 coolers) with individual suply cable for each conector from power suply
Kingstom HyperX ssd 240gb with only O.S + drivers and ESO
Corsair CS750M 750w Modular.

every single power save mode is off in the bios and windows, all high performance modes are turned on, due the processor overclock (don't tell me to test the game without the OC... I already did for days.)

i was using 337.50 nvidia beta driver and i rolled back to all recomended drivers and still crashed, now im using the 337.81 beta driver and still crashes.

as you can see my pc is build for cooling, the highest heat on my processor is 54ºC (or 129.20ºF) @ full load and the vga dont even reach 40ºC. As you can see my pc is just fine and i dont have any problems with any other game...

I have 50+ games on steam and 5 on origin and none of them crashes so i belive its not my hardware.

Artemiisia · May 2014

heard after some used ccleaner to remove junk from the pc, it helped them lots overall, not just the game

ccleaner

have used it for the last 10 years myself, and luving how smooth my pc is running with it

vassonlyub17_ESO · May 2014

vassonlyub17_ESO wrote: »

even my O.S I reinstalled.

As you can see, there nothing to clean.. the system is fresh installed with full format.

RastSekyd · May 2014

I've dug through the net and found a potential solution. I'm not sure if this will work for you, but if you aren't already go to the Nvidia Control Panel and select “Prefer Max performance” instead of “Adaptive”.

If you're already using that or it doesn't apply(I'm an AMD user myself, so I don't know) than I'm not sure what the issue is. You've got a more than capable machine and adequate cooling. My only other suggestion would be to set all the settings to low and see if it continues to crash. If it doesn't, slowly up the settings until you find whatever setting seems to be causing it.

vassonlyub17_ESO · May 2014

I already optimized the drive to max performance aswell and didn't work, I really like ESO but I don't want to adapt all my hardware and put the game on low settings so the game won't crash, i prefer play other games or stop playing it instead.

Thanks for the suport anyway guys!

TheBull · May 2014

I love the game. That being said it is by far the most unstable mmorpg I've ever played. It's right up there with Mortal Online a few years back.

I'm coming from Age of Wushu were of the course of 14-15 months I crashed no more than 4-5 times, if that. I will crash that many times in a 5 hours of Cyrodiil play session.

Planetside 2 used to crash almost as bad as ESO, but they got that fixed up pretty good. I do think Zen will be able to get ESO in shape too. I just hope they understand that even though we keep logging in the stability issue are completely unacceptable.

i7 yada yada...

ZOS_HugoP · May 2014

Greetings @vassonlyub17_ESO,

Could you please provide us a Game Consultant?

vassonlyub17_ESO · May 2014

Sure, here we go.

ZOS_HugoP · May 2014

Greetings @vassonlyub17_ESO‌

Make sure that overclocking is turned off for CPU, Graphics Card, and RAM. If you have any hardware that came factory overclocked then return the clock speed to the default setting. Please refer to the manufacturer for the default clock speed.

If you are unfamiliar with PC maintenance, or believe that your warranty may become void for any reason, then please have a trained professional take a look at your PC so that they can complete the following steps.

If your PC was a custom build or built privately please check that the Power supply is adequate for your hardware. For information on the power requirements of your graphics card and power supply output please refer to the relevant manufacturers.
If you have noticed that the PC is overheating (using any available temperature monitoring software on your PC ), or the fans are louder on average that they were, then this might be caused by dust. Note that for cooling to occur airflow from the fans cannot be blocked.
Even if you have the latest drivers for your graphics card re-download and reinstall the latest drivers again.

Next please run a memory test to help rule out faulty RAM as a possible cause of the crashing.

To do a memory test:

Go to http://www.memtest.org/
Click on "Download (Pre-built & ISOs)"
If you want to create a CD or DVD, click on "Download - Pre-Compiled Bootable ISO (.zip)". Make sure that you burn it as a disk image.
If you want to put it on a USB flash drive, click on "Download - Auto-installer for USB key (Win 9x/2k/xp/7)", and then open the file and follow the instruction and select your flash drive when prompted.
Restart your computer with either the CD/DVD or the flash drive connected.
With most systems, you can enter the BIOS by hitting the "Delete" key while the system boots up.
In the Boot Device Priority, select your CD/DVD or your flash drive.
Memtest should now boot.
Once Memtest has completed its scan, note down any errors that occurred. You can stop the scan at any time, but we would advise you run it through at least test number 8.
Please let us know if anything else comes up.

Now you need to boot your computer in selective start-up mode

To put your computer in selective start-up mode, follow these steps:

Click Start, and type msconfig on the search box
Right click on the msconfig.exe program and choose Run as administrator
To place your computer into selective start up:
On the General Tab at the top, click on the Selective startup radio button
Uncheck Load startup items
Click on the Services tab at the top
On the Services tab check the Hide all Microsoft services check box at the bottom
Click the Disable all button at the bottom
Click Apply, then click OK
Restart your computer

After rebooting your PC in selective start-up mode, please repair your game client

Please also make sure to do the following:

Make sure to run both the launcher and the game as a admin and in compatibility mode for Windows XP-SP3 (the game file is located here: C:\Program Files (x86)\Zenimax Online\The Elder Scrolls Online\game\client\ESO.exe):
- Right-click the file and select Properties at the bottom of the list.
- Once the Properties window is open, select the Compatibility tab.
- Select the option to “Run this program in compatibility mode” and from the drop-down menu, select “Windows XP SP3” (it may say Service Pack 3).
- Select the option “Always run this program as an Administrator” For ease of use, right-click the eso.exe file and select “Send To…”
- From the subsequent slide-out menu, select “Desktop (Create Shortcut)”. This will allow you a very easy, quick way of opening a game running in compatibility mode.
Include an exception for the ESO.exe file (located here: C:\Program Files (x86)\Zenimax Online\The Elder Scrolls Online\game\client\) and the launcher to your anti-virus software and your fire-wall.

vassonlyub17_ESO · May 2014

All the steps quoted i already did, as i said before on my post, im not a regular pc user i know exactly what i am facing here, if ZeniMax staff just read the posts they would know that i already did the test for days with all stock clock on my machine and nothing changed also how i keep my temperatures on sight and my cooling setup. tried the compatibility mode as well and 100 other things, please keep in mind that many other users have the EXACT SAME ISSUE with different pc specs, perhaps it's time to start looking for this problem into the game or the Nvidia Driver and not on the user's pc.

about the tests, i did test my memory (memtest) and processor (prime95 and Intel BurnTest) stability and are 100% fine.

Long story short, i ensure you that the problem is not my pc otherwise one of the other 50+ game that I played before would have crashed.

ejortiz11rwb17_ESO · May 2014

I'm having similar crashes as well. Game crashes to desktop randomly. Here are some of my specs:

i7 3930k - no o/c
GTX 670 - no o/c
32GB RAM - no o/c
Windows 7 PRO 64 bits

I was using the 331.82 drivers, but to try to fix the crashes I upgraded to 337.50. The crashes stopped for a couple of days, but recently started again. CPU fan goes into the high 60 C's when playing. I experience few crashes with other games, and play most of them at high or near high settings.

I tried lowering and removing some graphic options in ESO like AO, shadows, sun rays. Crashes continue unfortunately. If any NVIDIA users find the fix, let us know

vassonlyub17_ESO · May 2014

@‌ejortiz11rwb17_ESO

The 331.82 is not a good idea, the driver will drop the fps in many games, tested it myself.

the ZeniMax staff is not intrested if we are able to play or not as long we are paying... take a look in every similar post and you will see alway this same generic answer.

from 0 to 10:

The game is 10
The service is 10
the suport is 2

Seravi · May 2014

I had this problem the first day I started playing for a week. After working with support and many members we found a fix that works for most of us. Black screen issues are tied to NVIDIA cards regardless of the drivers. Here is the thread:

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/64179/black-screen#latest

I had to make the usersettings file read only because every time you log in it reverts back to DX11. Hope this helps! I have played without an issue since I changed to DX9.

vassonlyub17_ESO · May 2014

I already left the game, but thanks for the help!

I have a nice graphics card just to play games in full details, so i wont use Dx9 just because the game wont work with the card.. I just wont play it anymore.

PS* Dx9 will reduce the amount of detail the game have