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Anyone else getting BSOD's? Memory leak?

movros99movros99 Member UncommonPosts: 125
in Elder Scrolls Online

Hello all,

I was wondering if anybody else was getting BSOD's while playing ESO.  I have had two so far this week and only during gameplay.  Would a memory leak cause this?

Thanks,

Uncle Mo

Comments

  • MikeJezZMikeJezZ Member UncommonPosts: 1,268

    are you using raptr?

     

    I got a BSOD yesterday when trying to run the client, I ran this program (WhoCrashed - a golden tool that can tell you what caused the crash)

     

    I could see that having the raptr client running in the background caused ESO to go BSOD.

     

    Try WhoCrashed.

  • yaminsuxyaminsux Member UncommonPosts: 973
    Originally posted by movros99

    Hello all,

    I was wondering if anybody else was getting BSOD's while playing ESO.  I have had two so far this week and only during gameplay.  Would a memory leak cause this?

    Thanks,

    Uncle Mo

    In most cases, BSODs are caused by outdated drivers. Try updating them, particularly graphics and audio. Run and see if it sill BSOD-ing.

    Next kill all programs in system tray, run ESO, see if anything happens.

    If it still persistant get BlueScreenView (google it), AFAIK it's free. Use it, see what the actual message are. People can help you better if they know what to look for.

    For me, running ESO without any problems so far.

  • movros99movros99 Member UncommonPosts: 125

    I will try all those suggestions at once.

    Cheers!

  • Yoda_CloneYoda_Clone Member Posts: 219
    Originally posted by movros99

    Hello all,

    I was wondering if anybody else was getting BSOD's while playing ESO.  I have had two so far this week and only during gameplay.  Would a memory leak cause this?

    Thanks,

    Uncle Mo

    I've had several crashes of the game (8 total since Sunday) and two have been hard crashes.

    ESO doesn't have a "memory leak" per se.  It has severe memory fragmentation.  That is apparent from the degradation in performance of ESO over time if you play for more than a couple of hours.  Have you noticed the gradual on-set of freezes as you play, especially in crowded areas (with lots of other players) like major towns or PvP hot spots?  Have you watched the game gradually turn into a PowerPoint slide show in towns and PvP hot spots?  Yet, when you first log in, performance is just fine.

    In a lot of software development efforts with amateur coding teams, there is no memory management built into the code.  Software development teams that are overstressed on their budgets tend to not have those very senior and experienced engineers (we're expensive) that are needed to preclude these types of problems.  In MMORPG development, especially for a game like ESO, you have tons of money going to voice-overs and too little going for engineering expertise, so the need for memory management usually isn't even recognized.

    In layman's terms, in a nutshell, when software dynamically allocates memory and then releases it, over time available memory becomes less and less.  In a MMORPG, memory is constantly being allocated/released whenever a player moves around in order to acommodate the arrival/departure of other players, other graphic objects, other sounds, other effects, etc. into a player's area of interest; that is, that area around a player that you are allowed to perceive in a game.  Within the code, you have blocks of memory represented as structures, classes, arrays, etc. (depending on coding language) that usually include pointers to other blocks of memory.

    The use of multiple pointers to blocks of memory is intended to allow effiicient allocation of memory (if a definition of some object isn't needed, the memory isn't allocated and the pointer is set to NULL), but it also offers some coding "traps"; for instance, each subordinate block of memory that is pointed to by another block of memory must be individually released; releasing the top level block of memory does not automatically release the subordinate block of memory.  This sort of mistake is common and is a major contributor to what are termed "memory leaks"; the unreleased subordinate block of memory sin't tracked by the program or the OS until the program exits.

    Even if coding is otherwise perfect, allocated memory that is released back to the operating system doesn't immediately become available for reallocation.  The blocks of used memory that have been released from an executing program are usually different sizes and the blocks of new memory being requested are unlikely to be the same sizes.  Because of that, memory must be coalesced into contiguous chunks;this is accomplished by a background low-priority OS process called "garbage collection".

    Garbage collection can't keep up with programs like ESO, so eventually the program's performance degrades as the code asks the OS for memory and has to wait until chunks of memory of the appropriate size can be put together.

    Sound (not music, but simple waveforms for crashes, bangs, and the like) are one of the most notorious fragmenters of memory.

    The memory fragmentation problem is worsened by that wonderful piece of crap called MS Windows.  Windows is very dependent on the use of virtual memory; essentially, that is use of the hard drive storage as a substitute for RAM.  On the one hand, it does this well; on the other hand, it screws up pointers to blocks of memory all the time.  Windows uses what is known as a Virtual Address Table as an intermediary between pointers to RAM in the code and physical locations of virtual memory on hard drives.  Without going into a lot of detail, sometimes it gets screwed up.  That tends to cause memory overflow problems and other issues, often resulting in hard crashes.

    Hope that wasn't too complicated or confusing; I tried to write it a a layman's level.

    Relative to the guy blaming the problems on drivers: BS.

    EDIT: Typos.  Can't type this early in the morning.

  • movros99movros99 Member UncommonPosts: 125

    Interesting read Yoda. 

    Would you suggest a client restart every couple of hours or perhaps a system reboot?  I will check my drivers in the mean time.

    Thanks

  • Overfiend138Overfiend138 Member UncommonPosts: 55

    restarting your client every few hours is not a valid solution and, Yoda, calling out someone else's valid theory with no proof of your own save for big words isn't cool. post some counters or errors regarding this please as, if you are not blowing smoke, i would be interested to see them. 

    fun fact: all BSOD's are not alike, you will get codes when it occurs that give hints as to whats occurring (which could be memory, could be drivers, etc) as stated above. Try to write these down and it will at least point you in the right direction via google :)

  • Yoda_CloneYoda_Clone Member Posts: 219
    Originally posted by movros99

    Interesting read Yoda. 

    Would you suggest a client restart every couple of hours or perhaps a system reboot?  I will check my drivers in the mean time.

    Thanks

    System reboot isn't necessary.  However, when you exit a program, all memory used by that program is freed; even memory that was "leaked".  A client restart will help to a point, but memory fragmentation will re-occur.

    I suggest tracking performance.  Using a clock on the side, not your start time and how long it takes for performance to degrade.  Track that separately for open, unpopulated areas and heavily populated areas like towns or PvP hot spots.  Use those times as guidelines only; there will be a lot of variability in tracked times due to changes in player loading.

  • DilligDillig Member UncommonPosts: 123
    Originally posted by Yoda_Clone
    Originally posted by movros99

    Hello all,

    I was wondering if anybody else was getting BSOD's while playing ESO.  I have had two so far this week and only during gameplay.  Would a memory leak cause this?

    Thanks,

    Uncle Mo

    I've had several crashes of the game (8 total since Sunday) and two have been hard crashes.

    ESO doesn't have a "memory leak" per se.  It has severe memory fragmentation.  That is apparent from the degradation in performance of ESO over time if you play for more than a couple of hours.  Have you noticed the gradual on-set of freezes as you play, especially in crowded areas (with lots of other players) like major towns or PvP hot spots?  Have you watched the game gradually turn into a PowerPoint slide show in towns and PvP hot spots?  Yet, when you first log in, performance is just fine.

    In a lot of software development efforts with amateur coding teams, there is no memory management built into the code.  Software development teams that are overstressed on their budgets tend to not have those very senior and experienced engineers (we're expensive) that are needed to preclude these types of problems.  In MMORPG development, especially for a game like ESO, you have tons of money going to voice-overs and too little going for engineering expertise, so the need for memory management usually isn't even recognized.

    In layman's terms, in a nutshell, when software dynamically allocates memory and then releases it, over time available memory becomes less and less.  In a MMORPG, memory is constantly being allocated/released whenever a player moves around in order to acommodate the arrival/departure of other players, other graphic objects, other sounds, other effects, etc. into a player's area of interest; that is, that area around a player that you are allowed to perceive in a game.  Within the code, you have blocks of memory represented as structures, classes, arrays, etc. (depending on coding language) that usually include pointers to other blocks of memory.

    The use of multiple pointers to blocks of memory is intended to allow effiicient allocation of memory (if a definition of some object isn't needed, the memory isn't allocated and the pointer is set to NULL), but it also offers some coding "traps"; for instance, each subordinate block of memory that is pointed to by another block of memory must be individually released; releasing the top level block of memory does not automatically release the subordinate block of memory.  This sort of mistake is common and is a major contributor to what are termed "memory leaks"; the unreleased subordinate block of memory sin't tracked by the program or the OS until the program exits.

    Even if coding is otherwise perfect, allocated memory that is released back to the operating system doesn't immediately become available for reallocation.  The blocks of used memory that have been released from an executing program are usually different sizes and the blocks of new memory being requested are unlikely to be the same sizes.  Because of that, memory must be coalesced into contiguous chunks;this is accomplished by a background low-priority OS process called "garbage collection".

    Garbage collection can't keep up with programs like ESO, so eventually the program's performance degrades as the code asks the OS for memory and has to wait until chunks of memory of the appropriate size can be put together.

    Sound (not music, but simple waveforms for crashes, bangs, and the like) are one of the most notorious fragmenters of memory.

    The memory fragmentation problem is worsened by that wonderful piece of crap called MS Windows.  Windows is very dependent on the use of virtual memory; essentially, that is use of the hard drive storage as a substitute for RAM.  On the one hand, it does this well; on the other hand, it screws up pointers to blocks of memory all the time.  Windows uses what is known as a Virtual Address Table as an intermediary between pointers to RAM in the code and physical locations of virtual memory on hard drives.  Without going into a lot of detail, sometimes it gets screwed up.  That tends to cause memory overflow problems and other issues, often resulting in hard crashes.

    Hope that wasn't too complicated or confusing; I tried to write it a a layman's level.

    Relative to the guy blaming the problems on drivers: BS.

    EDIT: Typos.  Can't type this early in the morning.

    Hmm I played for 15 hours on release day and had 2 crashes early on. I didn't notice any performance issues. Gonna have to call BS on this post.

     

     

     

  • Overfiend138Overfiend138 Member UncommonPosts: 55
    Originally posted by Dillig
    Originally posted by Yoda_Clone
    Originally posted by movros99

    Hello all,

    I was wondering if anybody else was getting BSOD's while playing ESO.  I have had two so far this week and only during gameplay.  Would a memory leak cause this?

    Thanks,

    Uncle Mo

    I've had several crashes of the game (8 total since Sunday) and two have been hard crashes.

    ESO doesn't have a "memory leak" per se.  It has severe memory fragmentation.  That is apparent from the degradation in performance of ESO over time if you play for more than a couple of hours.  Have you noticed the gradual on-set of freezes as you play, especially in crowded areas (with lots of other players) like major towns or PvP hot spots?  Have you watched the game gradually turn into a PowerPoint slide show in towns and PvP hot spots?  Yet, when you first log in, performance is just fine.

    In a lot of software development efforts with amateur coding teams, there is no memory management built into the code.  Software development teams that are overstressed on their budgets tend to not have those very senior and experienced engineers (we're expensive) that are needed to preclude these types of problems.  In MMORPG development, especially for a game like ESO, you have tons of money going to voice-overs and too little going for engineering expertise, so the need for memory management usually isn't even recognized.

    In layman's terms, in a nutshell, when software dynamically allocates memory and then releases it, over time available memory becomes less and less.  In a MMORPG, memory is constantly being allocated/released whenever a player moves around in order to acommodate the arrival/departure of other players, other graphic objects, other sounds, other effects, etc. into a player's area of interest; that is, that area around a player that you are allowed to perceive in a game.  Within the code, you have blocks of memory represented as structures, classes, arrays, etc. (depending on coding language) that usually include pointers to other blocks of memory.

    The use of multiple pointers to blocks of memory is intended to allow effiicient allocation of memory (if a definition of some object isn't needed, the memory isn't allocated and the pointer is set to NULL), but it also offers some coding "traps"; for instance, each subordinate block of memory that is pointed to by another block of memory must be individually released; releasing the top level block of memory does not automatically release the subordinate block of memory.  This sort of mistake is common and is a major contributor to what are termed "memory leaks"; the unreleased subordinate block of memory sin't tracked by the program or the OS until the program exits.

    Even if coding is otherwise perfect, allocated memory that is released back to the operating system doesn't immediately become available for reallocation.  The blocks of used memory that have been released from an executing program are usually different sizes and the blocks of new memory being requested are unlikely to be the same sizes.  Because of that, memory must be coalesced into contiguous chunks;this is accomplished by a background low-priority OS process called "garbage collection".

    Garbage collection can't keep up with programs like ESO, so eventually the program's performance degrades as the code asks the OS for memory and has to wait until chunks of memory of the appropriate size can be put together.

    Sound (not music, but simple waveforms for crashes, bangs, and the like) are one of the most notorious fragmenters of memory.

    The memory fragmentation problem is worsened by that wonderful piece of crap called MS Windows.  Windows is very dependent on the use of virtual memory; essentially, that is use of the hard drive storage as a substitute for RAM.  On the one hand, it does this well; on the other hand, it screws up pointers to blocks of memory all the time.  Windows uses what is known as a Virtual Address Table as an intermediary between pointers to RAM in the code and physical locations of virtual memory on hard drives.  Without going into a lot of detail, sometimes it gets screwed up.  That tends to cause memory overflow problems and other issues, often resulting in hard crashes.

    Hope that wasn't too complicated or confusing; I tried to write it a a layman's level.

    Relative to the guy blaming the problems on drivers: BS.

    EDIT: Typos.  Can't type this early in the morning.

    Hmm I played for 15 hours on release day and had 2 crashes early on. I didn't notice any performance issues. Gonna have to call BS on this post.

     

     

     

    agreed. 

  • GeezerGamerGeezerGamer Member EpicPosts: 8,857
    Originally posted by movros99

    Hello all,

    I was wondering if anybody else was getting BSOD's while playing ESO.  I have had two so far this week and only during gameplay.  Would a memory leak cause this?

    Thanks,

    Uncle Mo

    Are you, by chance, playing on a 32 bit operating system?

  • rojoArcueidrojoArcueid Member EpicPosts: 10,722
    i dont get BSOD but my game completely freeze for 2-3 seconds every once in a while. It happened a lot during beta and a good amount of people in chat had the same issue in beta. During early access it stopped happening but after yesterday''s long maintenance it happens again. It's a very strange laggy behavior because i usually dont have lag. When it froze during beta i remember it did a fast forward effect, now it doesnt fast forward but it freezes again usually when trying to render stuff when i move the camera.




  • ReizlaReizla Member RarePosts: 4,092
    Originally posted by rojo6934
    i dont get BSOD but my game completely freeze for 2-3 seconds every once in a while. It happened a lot during beta and a good amount of people in chat had the same issue in beta. During early access it stopped happening but after yesterday''s long maintenance it happens again. It's a very strange laggy behavior because i usually dont have lag.

    Was about to say that as well. Not sure though if that's a memory leak or a generic server problem. When I've had it happen, a couple of other players in /zone were complaining about it as well...

  • superniceguysuperniceguy Member UncommonPosts: 2,278
    Originally posted by Overfiend138
    Originally posted by Dillig
    Originally posted by Yoda_Clone
    Originally posted by movros99

    Hello all,

    I was wondering if anybody else was getting BSOD's while playing ESO.  I have had two so far this week and only during gameplay.  Would a memory leak cause this?

    Thanks,

    Uncle Mo

    I've had several crashes of the game (8 total since Sunday) and two have been hard crashes.

    ESO doesn't have a "memory leak" per se.  It has severe memory fragmentation.  That is apparent from the degradation in performance of ESO over time if you play for more than a couple of hours.  Have you noticed the gradual on-set of freezes as you play, especially in crowded areas (with lots of other players) like major towns or PvP hot spots?  Have you watched the game gradually turn into a PowerPoint slide show in towns and PvP hot spots?  Yet, when you first log in, performance is just fine.

    In a lot of software development efforts with amateur coding teams, there is no memory management built into the code.  Software development teams that are overstressed on their budgets tend to not have those very senior and experienced engineers (we're expensive) that are needed to preclude these types of problems.  In MMORPG development, especially for a game like ESO, you have tons of money going to voice-overs and too little going for engineering expertise, so the need for memory management usually isn't even recognized.

    In layman's terms, in a nutshell, when software dynamically allocates memory and then releases it, over time available memory becomes less and less.  In a MMORPG, memory is constantly being allocated/released whenever a player moves around in order to acommodate the arrival/departure of other players, other graphic objects, other sounds, other effects, etc. into a player's area of interest; that is, that area around a player that you are allowed to perceive in a game.  Within the code, you have blocks of memory represented as structures, classes, arrays, etc. (depending on coding language) that usually include pointers to other blocks of memory.

    The use of multiple pointers to blocks of memory is intended to allow effiicient allocation of memory (if a definition of some object isn't needed, the memory isn't allocated and the pointer is set to NULL), but it also offers some coding "traps"; for instance, each subordinate block of memory that is pointed to by another block of memory must be individually released; releasing the top level block of memory does not automatically release the subordinate block of memory.  This sort of mistake is common and is a major contributor to what are termed "memory leaks"; the unreleased subordinate block of memory sin't tracked by the program or the OS until the program exits.

    Even if coding is otherwise perfect, allocated memory that is released back to the operating system doesn't immediately become available for reallocation.  The blocks of used memory that have been released from an executing program are usually different sizes and the blocks of new memory being requested are unlikely to be the same sizes.  Because of that, memory must be coalesced into contiguous chunks;this is accomplished by a background low-priority OS process called "garbage collection".

    Garbage collection can't keep up with programs like ESO, so eventually the program's performance degrades as the code asks the OS for memory and has to wait until chunks of memory of the appropriate size can be put together.

    Sound (not music, but simple waveforms for crashes, bangs, and the like) are one of the most notorious fragmenters of memory.

    The memory fragmentation problem is worsened by that wonderful piece of crap called MS Windows.  Windows is very dependent on the use of virtual memory; essentially, that is use of the hard drive storage as a substitute for RAM.  On the one hand, it does this well; on the other hand, it screws up pointers to blocks of memory all the time.  Windows uses what is known as a Virtual Address Table as an intermediary between pointers to RAM in the code and physical locations of virtual memory on hard drives.  Without going into a lot of detail, sometimes it gets screwed up.  That tends to cause memory overflow problems and other issues, often resulting in hard crashes.

    Hope that wasn't too complicated or confusing; I tried to write it a a layman's level.

    Relative to the guy blaming the problems on drivers: BS.

    EDIT: Typos.  Can't type this early in the morning.

    Hmm I played for 15 hours on release day and had 2 crashes early on. I didn't notice any performance issues. Gonna have to call BS on this post.

     

     

     

    agreed. 

    I would not call it BS. Each persons PC is different, and even if people have the same PC each PC is not the same after people use it, with varying different things, bogging it down further. I have had PCs get to a point where they can not run games any more, but after reinstalling the OS, the game works again with no problems.

    When I played SWG what he said is true, and I played SWG on several PCs and a laptop. I had less problems on my main PC with the game installed on 2 HDDs in a RAID 0 configuration than another PC running off one HDD. Also when I messed around with Virtual memory, the less it was the more likelihood of crashes.

    Star Trek Online - Best Free MMORPG of 2012

    image

  • carpalcarpal Member UncommonPosts: 99

    Update your vid card (although that can be risky), but if your already having issues...

    I forgot to do this myself, but game runs smooth, so not gonna touch it.

    I was hoping ESO would have a "recommended" video card version with Nvidia and AMD, like most other mature games do.

    I have crashed only twice since playing. 

  • CrazKanukCrazKanuk Member EpicPosts: 6,130
    Originally posted by carpal

    Update your vid card (although that can be risky), but if your already having issues...

    I forgot to do this myself, but game runs smooth, so not gonna touch it.

    I was hoping ESO would have a "recommended" video card version with Nvidia and AMD, like most other mature games do.

    I have crashed only twice since playing. 

    I just had a BSOD the other day which prompted me to update my video card since it turned out I was behind in updates. 

     

    Haven't had an issue since. New games will always break some vid cards, so that's where I'd start. 

     

    Crazkanuk

    ----------------
    Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
    Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
    Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
    Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
    Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
    ----------------

  • bmhimebauchbmhimebauch Member Posts: 1

    I have been having recurring BSODs since the unexpected maintenance a couple of days ago.  I have done extensive troubleshooting including, but not limited to: DxDiags, Memtest86, CHKDSK, WhoCrashed, and Everest for Thermal Monitoring.  I have swapped out my newer GPU for my older 9800, which is still in perfect working order with the same results.  The only other thing that happened right before I started having this issue was windows updates.

    I can literally play any other game without issue though.  I built this computer and I've been updating it gradually piece by piece.  The .DMP files point to ntoskrnl.exe and ntkrnlmp.exe with the error "Critical Object termination".  Other noteworthy symptoms include graphical degradation in game, pixels become blockier, sometimes icons for loot items are not present in loot window, textures disappear, NPCs become a pinkish/purple sometimes just the head other times the whole body.  Following these symptoms is almost always a crash.

    The termination of the program is sometimes followed by a short-lived balloon message that says in a nutshell that I ran out of memory.  The last time it crashed, before the blue screen popped up, the desktop was available for moments and I noticed that the ESO launcher said "install" where the "Play" button was usually.  I clicked it to see what would happen and it said that I did not have enough space available and that I needed 60 GB or more to install the game.  Right after reading this message, the usual blue screen occurred with the same two .exe files as culprits.

    As I said, I haven't had any issues until ESO was installed.  I'm really scratching my head on this one.

  • prowessprowess Member UncommonPosts: 169
    Originally posted by bmhimebauch

    I have been having recurring BSODs since the unexpected maintenance a couple of days ago.  I have done extensive troubleshooting including, but not limited to: DxDiags, Memtest86, CHKDSK, WhoCrashed, and Everest for Thermal Monitoring.  I have swapped out my newer GPU for my older 9800, which is still in perfect working order with the same results.  The only other thing that happened right before I started having this issue was windows updates.

    I can literally play any other game without issue though.  I built this computer and I've been updating it gradually piece by piece.  The .DMP files point to ntoskrnl.exe and ntkrnlmp.exe with the error "Critical Object termination".  Other noteworthy symptoms include graphical degradation in game, pixels become blockier, sometimes icons for loot items are not present in loot window, textures disappear, NPCs become a pinkish/purple sometimes just the head other times the whole body.  Following these symptoms is almost always a crash.

    The termination of the program is sometimes followed by a short-lived balloon message that says in a nutshell that I ran out of memory.  The last time it crashed, before the blue screen popped up, the desktop was available for moments and I noticed that the ESO launcher said "install" where the "Play" button was usually.  I clicked it to see what would happen and it said that I did not have enough space available and that I needed 60 GB or more to install the game.  Right after reading this message, the usual blue screen occurred with the same two .exe files as culprits.

    As I said, I haven't had any issues until ESO was installed.  I'm really scratching my head on this one.

    Some critical information is missing here..  I don't think it's going to be a GPU issue since you've tried two different ones..  What's your CPU?  How much memory do you have?  Motherboard?

     

    What I would immediately try, since your BSOD is pointing at services related, is manage your virtual memory (pagefile).  To do this, right click your Computer or My Computer icon, open up Properties.  On that screen you should see Advanced System Settings.  click Settings in the Performance section.  Now the Advanced tab..  Click the Change... button.  uncheck "Automatically manage" at the top.  Select the custom size radial and set it to 2*your RAM.

     

    hope that helps

  • NyghthowlerNyghthowler Member UncommonPosts: 392

    Something I didn't see mentioned is that the memory might be going out.

    I had this problem years ago. Every so often the game would crash and go B.S.O.D. for no set time or reason.

    After days of frustration it turned out one of my sticks of memory had developed a bad address. When the game wrote to that specific address it caused the crash. There are free mem-test programs you can down load to check it.

     

    Good luck.

  • NitthNitth Member UncommonPosts: 3,904

    Originally posted by Yoda_Clone
    ESO doesn't have a "memory leak" per se.  It has severe memory fragmentation.  That is apparent from the degradation in performance of ESO over time if you play for more than a couple of hours.  Have you noticed the gradual on-set of freezes as you play, especially in crowded areas (with lots of other players) like major towns or PvP hot spots?  Have you watched the game gradually turn into a PowerPoint slide show in towns and PvP hot spots?  Yet, when you first log in, performance is just fine.

    In a lot of software development efforts with amateur coding teams, there is no memory management built into the code.  Software development teams that are overstressed on their budgets tend to not have those very senior and experienced engineers (we're expensive) that are needed to preclude these types of problems.  In MMORPG development, especially for a game like ESO, you have tons of money going to voice-overs and too little going for engineering expertise, so the need for memory management usually isn't even recognized.

    In layman's terms, in a nutshell, when software dynamically allocates memory and then releases it, over time available memory becomes less and less.  In a MMORPG, memory is constantly being allocated/released whenever a player moves around in order to acommodate the arrival/departure of other players, other graphic objects, other sounds, other effects, etc. into a player's area of interest; that is, that area around a player that you are allowed to perceive in a game.  Within the code, you have blocks of memory represented as structures, classes, arrays, etc. (depending on coding language) that usually include pointers to other blocks of memory.

    The use of multiple pointers to blocks of memory is intended to allow effiicient allocation of memory (if a definition of some object isn't needed, the memory isn't allocated and the pointer is set to NULL), but it also offers some coding "traps"; for instance, each subordinate block of memory that is pointed to by another block of memory must be individually released; releasing the top level block of memory does not automatically release the subordinate block of memory.  This sort of mistake is common and is a major contributor to what are termed "memory leaks"; the unreleased subordinate block of memory sin't tracked by the program or the OS until the program exits.

    Even if coding is otherwise perfect, allocated memory that is released back to the operating system doesn't immediately become available for reallocation.  The blocks of used memory that have been released from an executing program are usually different sizes and the blocks of new memory being requested are unlikely to be the same sizes.  Because of that, memory must be coalesced into contiguous chunks;this is accomplished by a background low-priority OS process called "garbage collection".

    Garbage collection can't keep up with programs like ESO, so eventually the program's performance degrades as the code asks the OS for memory and has to wait until chunks of memory of the appropriate size can be put together.

    Sound (not music, but simple waveforms for crashes, bangs, and the like) are one of the most notorious fragmenters of memory.

    The memory fragmentation problem is worsened by that wonderful piece of crap called MS Windows.  Windows is very dependent on the use of virtual memory; essentially, that is use of the hard drive storage as a substitute for RAM.  On the one hand, it does this well; on the other hand, it screws up pointers to blocks of memory all the time.  Windows uses what is known as a Virtual Address Table as an intermediary between pointers to RAM in the code and physical locations of virtual memory on hard drives.  Without going into a lot of detail, sometimes it gets screwed up.  That tends to cause memory overflow problems and other issues, often resulting in hard crashes.

    Hope that wasn't too complicated or confusing; I tried to write it a a layman's level.

    Relative to the guy blaming the problems on drivers: BS.

    EDIT: Typos.  Can't type this early in the morning.

    And the short answer is no. A memory leak will not blue screen.
    The program will crash at worst, not a windows blue screen there should be segregation between the software layer - OS layer - and the Hardware

    Only possible exceptions are:
    Null pointer exception - which not not a memory leak.
    Stack overflow.

    Still shouldn't be system fatal.

    Even if coding is otherwise perfect, allocated memory that is released back to the operating system doesn't immediately become available for reallocation. The blocks of used memory that have been released from an executing program are usually different sizes and the blocks of new memory being requested are unlikely to be the same sizes. Because of that, memory must be coalesced into contiguous chunks;this is accomplished by a background low-priority OS process called "garbage collection".
    Garbage collection can't keep up with programs like ESO, so eventually the program's performance degrades as the code asks the OS for memory and has to wait until chunks of memory of the appropriate size can be put together.

    Do you have a info link to this "OS implemented garbage collector"?
    Memory management is this context is the responsibility of the programmer.?

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  • Lord.BachusLord.Bachus Member RarePosts: 9,686

    BSOD are allmost allways hardware or driver related...

     

    Update your drivers, if its still happening after that... you might have a hardware issue... start with running an extensive memmory test after that......   Also if you want more information from us, try and write down the most important part of  the BSOD´s info.

     

    use your settings and set your PC to not reboot after a crash...

    or download this program http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html

    it allows you to see more info on your BSOD..

    Try googling that info, or post a screenshot of it overhere...

    Then we might actually be able to help you with your BSOD

    Because a BSOD can mean anything......

    Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)

  • fyerwallfyerwall Member UncommonPosts: 3,240
    Originally posted by Yoda_Clone
    Originally posted by movros99

    Hello all,

    I was wondering if anybody else was getting BSOD's while playing ESO.  I have had two so far this week and only during gameplay.  Would a memory leak cause this?

    Thanks,

    Uncle Mo

    I've had several crashes of the game (8 total since Sunday) and two have been hard crashes.

    ESO doesn't have a "memory leak" per se.  It has severe memory fragmentation.  That is apparent from the degradation in performance of ESO over time if you play for more than a couple of hours.  Have you noticed the gradual on-set of freezes as you play, especially in crowded areas (with lots of other players) like major towns or PvP hot spots?  Have you watched the game gradually turn into a PowerPoint slide show in towns and PvP hot spots?  Yet, when you first log in, performance is just fine.

    In a lot of software development efforts with amateur coding teams, there is no memory management built into the code.  Software development teams that are overstressed on their budgets tend to not have those very senior and experienced engineers (we're expensive) that are needed to preclude these types of problems.  In MMORPG development, especially for a game like ESO, you have tons of money going to voice-overs and too little going for engineering expertise, so the need for memory management usually isn't even recognized.

    In layman's terms, in a nutshell, when software dynamically allocates memory and then releases it, over time available memory becomes less and less.  In a MMORPG, memory is constantly being allocated/released whenever a player moves around in order to acommodate the arrival/departure of other players, other graphic objects, other sounds, other effects, etc. into a player's area of interest; that is, that area around a player that you are allowed to perceive in a game.  Within the code, you have blocks of memory represented as structures, classes, arrays, etc. (depending on coding language) that usually include pointers to other blocks of memory.

    The use of multiple pointers to blocks of memory is intended to allow effiicient allocation of memory (if a definition of some object isn't needed, the memory isn't allocated and the pointer is set to NULL), but it also offers some coding "traps"; for instance, each subordinate block of memory that is pointed to by another block of memory must be individually released; releasing the top level block of memory does not automatically release the subordinate block of memory.  This sort of mistake is common and is a major contributor to what are termed "memory leaks"; the unreleased subordinate block of memory sin't tracked by the program or the OS until the program exits.

    Even if coding is otherwise perfect, allocated memory that is released back to the operating system doesn't immediately become available for reallocation.  The blocks of used memory that have been released from an executing program are usually different sizes and the blocks of new memory being requested are unlikely to be the same sizes.  Because of that, memory must be coalesced into contiguous chunks;this is accomplished by a background low-priority OS process called "garbage collection".

    Garbage collection can't keep up with programs like ESO, so eventually the program's performance degrades as the code asks the OS for memory and has to wait until chunks of memory of the appropriate size can be put together.

    Sound (not music, but simple waveforms for crashes, bangs, and the like) are one of the most notorious fragmenters of memory.

    The memory fragmentation problem is worsened by that wonderful piece of crap called MS Windows.  Windows is very dependent on the use of virtual memory; essentially, that is use of the hard drive storage as a substitute for RAM.  On the one hand, it does this well; on the other hand, it screws up pointers to blocks of memory all the time.  Windows uses what is known as a Virtual Address Table as an intermediary between pointers to RAM in the code and physical locations of virtual memory on hard drives.  Without going into a lot of detail, sometimes it gets screwed up.  That tends to cause memory overflow problems and other issues, often resulting in hard crashes.

    Hope that wasn't too complicated or confusing; I tried to write it a a layman's level.

    Relative to the guy blaming the problems on drivers: BS.

    EDIT: Typos.  Can't type this early in the morning.

    Eh, 99.9% of BSODs are hardware related issue (Heat, Memory, Disc Drive, Power, Driver issues, etc). It's not BS.

    OP: Update your drivers and you should be fine.

    And when you do get a BSOD, see what the BCCode number is, google it and you will get a pretty accurate description of what might be causing it. BCCode 116 is normally graphics related, 101 is normally CPU fault related (overclocking, heat...)

    There are 3 types of people in the world.
    1.) Those who make things happen
    2.) Those who watch things happen
    3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"


  • SpottyGekkoSpottyGekko Member EpicPosts: 6,916

    During the Early Access week, I was playing for 12-15 hours a day every day. Never had a BSOD or lock-up, never noticed any "gradual performance degradation" over time. I did experience a few crashes, but in my case these were always during login to a character from the character selection screen.

     

    In the world of PC's, the combination of hardware and software is quite possibly unique on every machine.

    Which motherboard are you using and what BIOS revision is it running ?

    Which graphics card are you using and what BIOS revision is it running ?

    Which version of OS are you using and which patches and service packs have you applied to it ?

    Are all your drivers up-to-date AND stable versions ?

    Which processes are running while you're playing ESO ?

    Blah, blah, blah...

     

    If the game exhibits the same behaviour on ALL PC's, then the problem is clearly in the game code. However, it is very likely that the game may be unstable on certain combinations of hardware and software. That is entirely expected.

     

  • Yoda_CloneYoda_Clone Member Posts: 219
    Originally posted by Nitth

     

    And the short answer is no. A memory leak will not blue screen.
    The program will crash at worst, not a windows blue screen there should be segregation between the software layer - OS layer - and the Hardware

    Only possible exceptions are:
    Null pointer exception - which not not a memory leak.
    Stack overflow.

    Still shouldn't be system fatal.

    Do you have a info link to this "OS implemented garbage collector"?
    Memory management is this context is the responsibility of the programmer.?

    Do I have a link?  Yeah, 40 years of experience...  When Bill Gates was up North of Albuquerque, I was down South in Las Cruces. [If you're reading this, Bill, "Hi!  You're still an asshole."]

    Here, I'll help you out: Try typing "Windows garbage collection" into Google. Here's the first reference that pops up:

    http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee851764(v=vs.110).aspx

    "Null pointer exception" - when it causes a write to what we used to call "zero page memory", yes it will usually cause a fatal error.

    "Stack overflow" - completely different kind of problem.  If you've ever done assembly and machine-level coding, you understand.  Otherwise you don't understand and you're just flapping your gums.  Yes, it can be fatal because overflowing the stack memory buffer will cause a write into protected areas of memory.  But it's got nothing to do with a momory leak.

    Is memory management the responsiblility of the programmer?  Yes, when an application is going to use a lot of memory and allocate/de-allocate faster than a low priority background process can keep up.  It's incedibly sloppy programming to not accommodate the limitations of the machine; the old "solutions" to problems such as buy more memory, buy a faster processor, buy a faster HDD, buy a new graphics card, etc. are irresponsible and ultimately fatal product design decisions.

    Back in the days of Extended and Expanded memory on PC's, guess what?  We had to write code in our programs to make use of it.  Unfortunately, coders have gotten lazy and dependent on software libraries and development tools without knowing what's going on under the hood, all in the interest of rapid code production to minimize production costs.  So, flawed products are produced.

  • OziiusOziius Member UncommonPosts: 1,406

    <blockquote><i>Originally posted by Yoda_Clone</i>
    <br><b><blockquote> <i>Originally posted by movros99</i><br /> <p><b>Interesting read Yoda. </b></p> <p><b>Would you suggest a client restart every couple of hours or perhaps a system reboot?  I will check my drivers in the mean time.</b></p> <p><b>Thanks</b></p></blockquote><p>System reboot isn't necessary.  However, when you exit a program, all memory used by that program is freed; even memory that was "leaked".  A client restart will help to a point, but memory fragmentation will re-occur.</p><p>I suggest tracking performance.  Using a clock on the side, not your start time and how long it takes for performance to degrade.  Track that separately for open, unpopulated areas and heavily populated areas like towns or PvP hot spots.  Use those times as guidelines only; there will be a lot of variability in tracked times due to changes in player loading.</p></b></blockquote>
    <p> </p>

    I've been playing this game since release with absolutely no issues or crashes. Not one. I played last weekend at one point for 5 hours straight... Which is completely out of the norm for me lol. I noted zero degradation in performance. If you're long winded theory was correct, wouldn't all players be having this issue?


    I'll be sure to keep a broom handy for future name drops lol. Like anyone cares you may have known bill Gates rofl. Trust me, he's not reading this forum.

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