Constant DirectX11 and Windows crashes while playing FFXIV

[RexItaliae]

No, like with any bug, they normally only affect a small subset of users.

There are so many variables that could specifically affect the game, other software installed, driver conflicts, windows updates... you’ll probably get better targeted help on their forums where they know the specific triggers.

From @ubuysa thorough troubleshooting, there doesn’t appear to be anything wrong with the system.

I see. Unfortunately their technical support is rubbish as they never say what to do to fix it, hence why I'm writing here where far better acknowledged people can help. I believe Ubuysa's extremely kind troubleshooting hasn't finished yet though, please correct me if I'm wrong. The fact that I've tried 8 different drivers and I haven't installed anything at all on this pc apart from the game (and well, ddu and now the GPU benchmark) is a bit suspicious. Now I'm running the benchmark again and I'll try to keep an eye on it. When all of you lovely people will give up on me, I'll ring PCS: I'm just trying to do everything I can before spending my time in a queue with them.

And thank you all again

 

[ubuysa]

I'm far from an expert on Unigine and I've never run it myself. Others who have can best advise on how to make it stress your GPU.

Assuming just running it is enough to stress the GPU, and since there seem to be no errors - and in particular no BSOD - suggests quite strongly that there is nothing at fault with your GPU.

Perhaps others on here more familiar with benchmarking and stress testing could suggest other tools that could be used to validate your hardware. That would be the route I'd go down, I think you need to convince yourself that the hardware is robust (or highlight which bit is flaky). If the hardware is robust and you've clean installed Windows and all the correct drivers (as you have) then all that's left is the game.

At this stage I still don't believe it's possible to eliminate the game itself and the way it interacts with your specific hardware as the cause of your issues.

 

[SpyderTracks]

You could try running a fire strike benchmark, you can get a free evaluation copy from Steam.

That stresses both cpu and gpu for typical game loads.

 

[RexItaliae]

I ran the Unigine Heaven benchmark again, and although it didn't crash (I had to manually stop it after an hour), the log does contain a line that throws an error:

"Direct3D11 error: device removed"

This happened 25 minutes after starting running it. No other errors occurred. Does this indicate something useful? I shall try to get the demo of a fire strike benchmark as well.

 

[jamiephillips909]

You need to navigate to your Windows Desktop and there right-click in the FFXIV shortcut. Then in the menu that opens, click on the option Properties

1. In this window, you need to navigate to the Target box, and there add the following code to the end of the line: -dx9
2. Click on Apply to save the changes and then close the Properties window
3. Now you can try to launch the game to verify if the problem has been fixed

have you tried forcing the application to run of direct x 9 instead of 11 ? i have read it has sorted the issue for a number of players may be worth a try ?

 

[ubuysa]

I ran the Unigine Heaven benchmark again, and although it didn't crash (I had to manually stop it after an hour), the log does contain a line that throws an error:

"Direct3D11 error: device removed"

This happened 25 minutes after starting running it. No other errors occurred. Does this indicate something useful? I shall try to get the demo of a fire strike benchmark as well.

If it doesn't BSOD then in my book it's OK, because the game does BSOD.

I'm hopeful that @jamiephillips909 is on the right track, what he's saying sounds very positive I think.

 

[jamiephillips909]

you could also try running the game with debug mode enabled this has apparantly also sorted the issue for users another thing to try aslong as your card isnt a refrence model you can enable debug mode

Beginning with driver version 355.82, Nvidia has added a new feature called "Debug Mode", which will downclock any factory overclocked graphics card to Nvidia reference clock speeds. This is a great feature to help determine problems with the card, or for games that are sensitive to overclocked video cards. just to explain what it is

that game is apparently sensitive to overlocked cards ( factory overclocked not user ) or clock speeds higher then NVidias reference model

 

[jamiephillips909]

let us know how you get on then back to drawing board if it dosent work

 

[RexItaliae]

I did try once to run the game in dx9 (there's an actual option on the game launcher) but it refused to start that way. Now I just tried and it allowed me. The game seems slightly laggyish at times but it might be a coincidence.

Another thing that came to mind is the fact that the game is installed in the C drive (like the rest of the OS and applications) but the Documents folder is in the D drive. The game does store some stuff in the subfolder "My games" of the default Windows's My Documents folder, so just in case I moved it back to the C drive. Who knows that maybe the game was having difficulties in handling this stuff?

Finally, my GPU is a zotac which is not factory overclocked, I indeed knew that the game is very sensible to overclocking so I had already checked it.

Thank you so much guys, I'll let you know how it goes. I tried the other benchmarks suggested by Spidertrakcs and it didn't crash.

 

[jamiephillips909]

you could try force running it in direct x 10 if its stable in direct x 9

 

[ubuysa]

I tried the other benchmarks suggested by Spidertrakcs and it didn't crash.

For me, that's pretty strong confirmation that there's nothing wrong with your hardware.

I think you're wise therefore to focus on the game itself and it seems you're in good hands there.

I'll keep watching this thread but I think my role is done here.

 

[jamiephillips909]

For me, that's pretty strong confirmation that there's nothing wrong with your hardware.

I think you're wise therefore to focus on the game itself and it seems you're in good hands there.

I'll keep watching this thread but I think my role is done here.

completely agree its more of a question of getting the game to run stable rather then any hardware fault and this game seems like a monster

 

[RexItaliae]

you could try force running it in direct x 10 if its stable in direct x 9

Is that possible? If not in dx11 the game automatically runs in dx9 (which sadly isn't supported any longer by Square Enix). At least when one restricts himself to using the game's options. To force running it in dx10, would I have to do like you explained earlier by typing - dx10 in the page of the shortcut to the game? Bearing in mind that, unlike in the picture you posted, I haven't got the game on steam.

 

[jamiephillips909]

its not done through steam its done by right clicking the launcher and going to properties

 

[jamiephillips909]

one in properties you can see the target

 

[jamiephillips909]

have you tried running it with sli disabled you dont have a dual card setup so may be handy

 

[jamiephillips909]

and yeah it will be 10 instead of 9 in those instructions

 

[jamiephillips909]

any update ? @RexItaliae

 

[RexItaliae]

Thank you so much for all your help Jamie Sorry if I didn't reply earlier. Playing on directx 9 did seem to be more stable (it wasn't crashing, but it did freeze once), but the quality is just bad, it all feels laggy and the FPS would drop to 20-30 fairly often. Also, I don't have the SLI option, I believe because I only have one GPU. So, since in the official forums I noticed that often the technical support from Square Enix would ask the people with similar crashes whether the crashes would disappear if the game is installed in C: (which is, in my case), and I also noticed, as mentioned here a few days ago, that the game also installs stuff on a subfolder of My Documents, which I actually had on the HDD (volume D), I decided to first try clean installing Windows yet again without changing the position of the My Documents folder. I confess this time I fell into temptation and installed as prompted Armoury Crate (the official utility of my mother board which prompts a pop up as soon as you log into Windows for the first time after installation), as well as the Intel chipset and the Realtek audio drivers it came along with. Apart from this, I only installed the game and the latest driver from Nvidia (actually this time I saved a copy of the installer on a USB stick and I installed it before connecting to the internet the first time, so that Windows Update wouldn't first install a random driver).

Then I tried to see how the game was doing with DX11 again and max specs except that I removed all shadows for all players except me. The crashing didn't stop, but it was much more stable, it would only crash once per session typically. Except for today, that it BSOD. Is there any chance I can bother @ubuysa once again, to have a look at the memory dumps and see if anything new came up, please? This time the error I got is actually different: it's a SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION.

I'm so sorry for being so demanding, but this is really ruining my gaming experience

Memory dump 04/03/2021 – Google Drive

drive.google.com

EDIT: Sadly I got another BSOD, with the same stop code, but this time the blue screen also included "What failed: dxgkml.sys". I added the memory.dmp resulting for this separately at the same link as MEMORY (1).DMP as well as its minidump.

 

[jamiephillips909]

Have you tried running it in borderless window silly question but im ticking off every possible avenue have you also tried using reshade ?