Game Crashes While Playing

[Bubble_Damage]

After a long time of not playing UT3 much, I've returned to find that my game now crashes frequently while playing. Sometimes I will join a server and make it through a few matches before a crash, while other times the game crashes only minutes after joining. This happens online, but I believe I remember it happening in an offline game as well.

When it crashes, it slows down drastically for about a second, then the screen goes black and the Windows crash window appears. I wanted to see if anyone knew what could be causing this before I went and re-installed/deleted My Games.

Thanks for any help!

Bubble

[geronaho]

nvidia?

bububububububububb

[Bubble_Damage]

Geroneronuboheroneronaho! I've got an ATI Radeon HD 4800 series.

[«MechikTåj»]

What does your Launch.log file say after a crash? (Scroll to the bottom.)

My Documents\My Games\Unreal Tournament 3\UTGame\Logs

[Bubble_Damage]

Thanks for the advice.

I am not overclocking my processor. As for the logs, there was no clear error message I could find anywhere in them after a crash. I tried searching the file for "fail" and "error", and the only things of interest I could find were a few errors related to voice (as in speaking to teammates).

I'll try re-installing, and if that doesn't work, I'll try a new My Games folder.

[Random54]

Re-installing almost never helps. Deleting the contents of your Config folder can. Path is generally something like \Documents\My Games\Unreal Tournament 3\UTGame\Config

[Bubble_Damage]

Right, it will be annoying trying to figure out which INI is causing the problem though, and then re-tweaking it once I've deleted it. But I guess it's necessary.

[{DvT}JonahHex]

I'm not up to speed on ATI vid cards, but with my nVidia cards when I start experiencing crashes in UT3 but everything else works fine, I start thinking in terms of overheating. Usually this means taking out my vid cards, removing the covers over the fans and heatsinks on the cards and cleaning the accumulated dust that has collected in the heatsink fins.

[oldkawman1]

Make sure you have the latest video driver installed. I have 11.3 catalyst right now, that reduced crashes to almost none now. May only 1-2 times since that came out. I run HD6870 cards in crossfire.

You can try deleting your cache. That has worked for me a couple times. I had to delete a certain custom character that was causing crashes offline once as well. Hard to get rid of those things.

If you suspect overheating, open your case and stick a fan blowing on it. You can also have a video card or another component going bad. Check all your fans and heat sinks. I have 3 large 120mm fans with filters as air supply and for exhaust, 2 fans, an 80mm rear case fan and the 140mm power supply fan.

[bclagge]

The complete opposite is also possible. If you had working video drivers in the past and upgraded during the period you weren't playing, you should try reinstalling the old drivers. The latest and greatest is not always the best and new drivers often create problems with one application or another.

Cleaning and checking your fans is never a bad idea, but don't just open your case and put a desk fan facing it unless you have to. There are tools you can use to see if you're overheating. CoreTemp to monitor your CPU temperature and ATITool to monitor your GPU temperature whether it's an ATI or NVidia card.

[Bubble_Damage]

I deleted my entire old My Games folder (and backed it up of course), which seemed to do the trick. I'm not exactly sure where the problem was, because I tried deleting cache, some custom content, etc. first. But I can play UT3 without crashing now, so thanks a lot for all the advice!