BF3 Freezes and Requires Hard Boot

[DerStig]

Alright, I have had it, I give up. I have been working with PCs for maybe 20 years now. Its also my job (software architect), and I have seen so many weird hardware/software issues in my life, but this is really beyond me.

Problem : BF3 freezes with a looping sound and either gives a black screen which you can CTRL + ALT + DEL and go to task manager and kill bf3.exe or simply requires a hard boot (this is the case %90 of the time, I don't always get lucky)

System Specs:

CPU : Q6600 OC@3.6 Ghz - CPU runs cool under 60C, have been using thermalright ultra extreme 120 with arctic silver 5 for several years now. I can run Prime95, stress test, for hours without any issues.
RAM : Crucial Ballistix 4 GB DDR2 800 Mhz 4-4-4-12
Motherboard : ABIT IP-35 Pro
PSU : PC Power & Cooling 750W, 825W Peak
GPU : EVGA GTX 280
HDD : Velociraptor 300 GB
Monitor : Samsung 26"
Case : Antec 1200
Sound Card : HTO Striker 7.1

Attempted Resolutions :

1) Uninstalled/Reinstalled PunkBuster
2) Uninstalled/Reinstalled BF3 and all patches
3) Uninstalled/Reinstalled video card driver
4) Uninstalled/Reinstalled sound card driver
5) Disabled onboard audio completely
6) Turned off HIFI sound in game
7) Turned off all video settings including AA and AF with post in game
8) Changed RAM timings between 4-4-4-12 and 5-5-5-15 by adjusting the frequency between 800 and 1000
9) Completely turned off all overclocking in CPU
10) Maxed out the GTX 280's fan (though the temperatures never even exceeded 70C with 30% fan - used riva tuner to verify this)

Funny thing is, I was getting these crashes since day 1, but they were so rare, maybe once a week, that I wasn't really concerned. As of 2 days ago, I can no longer play BF3 anymore. And I have done absolutely nothing in my computer to trigger this. I don't game much, in fact this is the only game I have installed in my PC. Apart from some picture and video editing and checking e-mails, I don't use my PC.

Interesting thing is, this happens far faster and frequently in some servers which leads me to believe this has something to do with punk buster's screen shot functionality. In some servers, I can play for some time before it happening whereas in others, it's almost instaneous. The Violent Industries servers are my favorites and unfortunately it happens in their servers after a few seconds of spawning. I have maintained lots of PB integrated game servers in the past and I know how PB works. With right settings, punk buster screenshots will be taken after the first time you spawn, I think this is exactly what's happening. I have opened up a ticket with even balance this morning as well.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[bombebomb]

Re: BF3 Freezes and Requires Hard Boot

Happened to me today, I just ctrl alt dlt and played my other game lol.

[CptainCrunch]

Re: BF3 Freezes and Requires Hard Boot

Can you give a dxdiag?

What software are you running at the same time as Battlefield?

What is your BIOS number you are running? Abits site has it up to 17.

When Battlefield freezes up, do you hear any sounds?

[DerStig]

Re: BF3 Freezes and Requires Hard Boot

Can you give a dxdiag?

What software are you running at the same time as Battlefield?

What is your BIOS number you are running? Abits site has it up to 17.

When Battlefield freezes up, do you hear any sounds?

I am not running any other software, just Avast and Origin. My BIOS version is 17, I have double checked it with the ABIT flash menu software. When the game freezes up, most of the time I hear looping sound (either the game sound looping like a gunshot, or drrrrr, or some static noise)

I have attached the DxDiag output here, 1 file didn't fit, had to break it up into 2.

[DerStig]

Re: BF3 Freezes and Requires Hard Boot

When I tried to join a server now, this also happened:

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=160277

This had happened before, but only 2 or 3 times, I thought it was irrelevant and didn't mention it.

[CptainCrunch]

Re: BF3 Freezes and Requires Hard Boot

A number of people have had issues with Avast while running. When you run the game, you might want to try it disabled and see how it works.

Your video drivers are the version before the latest beta drivers. You might want to upgrade those as you have a DX10 card and it fixes these items:

Includes several bug fixes and performance improvements for Battlefield 3.
Fixes cases of irregular performance (stuttering) primarily seen on DirectX 10 GPUs. The fix improves the performance of both DX10 and DX11 GPUs.
Fixes shadow map corruption seen with DirectX 10 GPUs.
Fixes cases of black corruption lines/triangles with DirectX 10 GPUs.
Fixes black screen during playback using Windows Media Center.

I THINK your audio drivers are out of date. Its hard to tell on HTOs website, but you might double check that. They state on the website that the disc did not have Windows 7 drivers and to download the correct ones and they show a 5.12.008, whereas you are running 5.12.001.008. Thats why its hard to tell.

Also, it looks like you might have onboard sound? It looks like it is on and running. You might disable it just because it can conflict with your HTO setup. You would probably have to do that in the BIOS, IF thats an option.

Normally I dont recommend this part, but since you have experience, your chipset drivers may also be out of date. Again, hard to tell in the diags, and Intel's site no longer makes it easy to be sure, but a lot of their drivers are marked for this year. If you used Abits site, they are 3 years behind, which most mobo sites are when it comes to that stuff.

So anyway, there are some things to look at and I dont know if I would worry about the chipset, but it is important, but could be hazardous to your system if done wrong.

[DerStig]

Re: BF3 Freezes and Requires Hard Boot

A number of people have had issues with Avast while running. When you run the game, you might want to try it disabled and see how it works.

Your video drivers are the version before the latest beta drivers. You might want to upgrade those as you have a DX10 card and it fixes these items:

Includes several bug fixes and performance improvements for Battlefield 3.
Fixes cases of irregular performance (stuttering) primarily seen on DirectX 10 GPUs. The fix improves the performance of both DX10 and DX11 GPUs.
Fixes shadow map corruption seen with DirectX 10 GPUs.
Fixes cases of black corruption lines/triangles with DirectX 10 GPUs.
Fixes black screen during playback using Windows Media Center.

I THINK your audio drivers are out of date. Its hard to tell on HTOs website, but you might double check that. They state on the website that the disc did not have Windows 7 drivers and to download the correct ones and they show a 5.12.008, whereas you are running 5.12.001.008. Thats why its hard to tell.

Also, it looks like you might have onboard sound? It looks like it is on and running. You might disable it just because it can conflict with your HTO setup. You would probably have to do that in the BIOS, IF thats an option.

Normally I dont recommend this part, but since you have experience, your chipset drivers may also be out of date. Again, hard to tell in the diags, and Intel's site no longer makes it easy to be sure, but a lot of their drivers are marked for this year. If you used Abits site, they are 3 years behind, which most mobo sites are when it comes to that stuff.

So anyway, there are some things to look at and I dont know if I would worry about the chipset, but it is important, but could be hazardous to your system if done wrong.

I actually became quite impatient and went to my local bestbuy to grab a EVGA GTX 560 superclocked. The reason was as follows, I started playing around with the CUDA settings and Physx settings (if you read the thread I linked to from nvidia forums about display drivers timing out etc, that was the suggestion to fix the problem - to set GPU as the Physx engine source), my screen started producing even more artifacts, to the point, as I booted my PC, I saw yellow dots all over my screen, some of the fonts on the bios screen (the white text on black screen) became blue and green. So I immediately thought it was my video card that was going bad. Furthermore, when I tried to run the evga OC scanner tool, it just froze my computer completely. Now I don't know if this was all coincidence or if it was the combination bad drivers being used on a bad card, but to me there was something wrong with the video card.

That being said, you touched a very nice point about the BETA drivers, being the idiot that I am, I completely forgot about the BETA drivers, I HAD installed them, but then nvidia update downloaded the 10/15/11 drivers on top of them, so I never went back to the BETA drivers.

Anyways, the 560 is running great now, been gaming in the VI server for half an hour with no issues.

What do you make out of this?

Oh also, the audio drivers are fine, I have double checked, the chipset drivers are also fine, I had checked them about a month ago or so as part of some RAID software upgrade.

Thanks for your help, really appreciate it.

[Eagle101]

Re: BF3 Freezes and Requires Hard Boot

I had probs with avast as well, disable and runs fine. Also drivers from nvidia are a big deal in BF3 as i recall getting drivers for the beta did an awesome job. And just to add the 560 is a great card for price and performance, you should;d be getting a lot out of the game right now.

[DerStig]

Re: BF3 Freezes and Requires Hard Boot

I had probs with avast as well, disable and runs fine. Also drivers from nvidia are a big deal in BF3 as i recall getting drivers for the beta did an awesome job. And just to add the 560 is a great card for price and performance, you should;d be getting a lot out of the game right now.

I believe you about the Avast but for me I even started getting artifacts in post boot screens so I think my video card was going bad. 560 is amazing, considering how old my PC is (ram, mobo, cpu are nearly 5 yearsold), i can play the game on ULTRA and get 35-45 fps on 1920 x 1200, thats just insane if you ask me! Why would anyone get a $600 card or SLIs? If you used this card with core i7 system and more ram (memory is a problem for me now, after 560, my bf3 started using 1.5-1.7gb ram causing a ton of paging), the end result will be much better than mine.

[LunaTiK TunaLiK]

Re: BF3 Freezes and Requires Hard Boot

I would run an extensive memtest and torture test. BF3 isn't any other game and puts more stress on individual components. Try lowering the heavier settings in the graphical options. It really could be any one of a multitude of things.

If I had to take a guess, your q6600 @ 3.6ghz is the root of your problem. Lower you OC and see if it improves stability.

http://www.tested.com/news/how-to-stress-test-your-hardware-and-keep-your-pc-stable/762/

"Each of the apps we recommend here is best used over long periods of time — a span of hours, or even overnight. Testing your graphics card or CPU for just a few short minutes won't cut it, especially when diagnosing an obscure or load-related issue. Instead of cutting corners, put aside an afternoon or evening and solve your problems the right way. Or better yet, run these overnight!"

[CptainCrunch]

Re: BF3 Freezes and Requires Hard Boot

Im glad you are back up and working Stig and yeah, I think something was going on with your video card. For it to have strange colors in the boot screen, thats a good sign that there was a problem. Thats before any drivers or other software is even loaded and should never have an issue on that screen.

[DerStig]

Re: BF3 Freezes and Requires Hard Boot

I would run an extensive memtest and torture test. BF3 isn't any other game and puts more stress on individual components. Try lowering the heavier settings in the graphical options. It really could be any one of a multitude of things.

If I had to take a guess, your q6600 @ 3.6ghz is the root of your problem. Lower you OC and see if it improves stability.

http://www.tested.com/news/how-to-stress-test-your-hardware-and-keep-your-pc-stable/762/

"Each of the apps we recommend here is best used over long periods of time — a span of hours, or even overnight. Testing your graphics card or CPU for just a few short minutes won't cut it, especially when diagnosing an obscure or load-related issue. Instead of cutting corners, put aside an afternoon or evening and solve your problems the right way. Or better yet, run these overnight!"

Turning off my OC was the first thing I have done, with or without it I ran prime95 for several hours with no effect. I didn't run memtest, but if it were the memory that was the problem, I'd have it with the new 560 as well. Knock on wood, so far so good with the 560.

By the way this video card is awesome!

[DerStig]

Re: BF3 Freezes and Requires Hard Boot

Im glad you are back up and working Stig and yeah, I think something was going on with your video card. For it to have strange colors in the boot screen, thats a good sign that there was a problem. Thats before any drivers or other software is even loaded and should never have an issue on that screen.

Thanks a lot for your help!