Dayz Crashing computer

[michaelfraz 0]

I bought Arma II OA for my friend so that he could be able to play Dayz with me. He is able to play for maybe 5-10 minutes before his computer crashes and reboots itself without warning. His specs are absolutely fine for the game (he tested it on the canyourunthis website) and he is able to play all other games on high settings (such as wow,borderlands,and aion for example) with his computer. We have tried to brainstorm ourselves but we haven't made any progress. Has anyone ran into this issue or can anyone help?

[Hockeyguy 107]

Is his computer over heating? Thats the only thing I can think of.

[michaelfraz 0]

Not that we are aware of. He monitored it (he has dual monitors) and kept an eye on it until his game crashed. His gpu and cpu were just fine, not in any type of harm of overheating. I know Dayz/Arma II pulls a lot to play but its just not really making sense at all on why it would be forcefully restarting his computer( or you could say BSOD then rolled into a forced restart). I tried looking all around for help regarding this but couldn't find anything and i really dont want $25 bucks to go down the drain for nothing :-/.

[h3retic 224]

Maybe its the PSU (power supply unit)

is it only arma that does that though?

Edited May 21, 2013 by h3retic

[michaelfraz 0]

Sorry just saw your message on here H3retic. Its definitely not his psu because if I remember correctly he has a 850w one.

Yeah its only Arma that is causing this to happen to his computer. He is able to play honestly any other game you can think of without an issue. I told him to try and uninstall everything arma related completely and reinstall everything again because maybe perhaps he had a file get deleted by something (who knows with software these days). We checked his cpu and gpu to make sure nothing was overheating, and made sure that his stuff wasnt OC'd either. We even tried putting him on a single monitor and it still crashed on him. Not really sure where to go from here besides just a fresh reinstall since I can't find any info pertaining to this situation.

Basically he can load the game, then after 5-10 minutes of running around it just crashes his entire computer. We thought that maybe skype may of had something to do with it, so we tried talking through dolby but that wasnt it either, so we dont think there is a software conflicting with it either. It is just a really odd issue.

[dublea 11]

When you say crashes, do you get a BSOD or does the system turn off like it lost power? What exactly happens?

[michaelfraz 0]

There is no BSOD and it doesn't turn off like it lost power. I will describe basically what happens.

He starts off loading Dayz through DayzCommander and it loads just fine. He runs around in the game for anywhere between 5 to 10 minutes and then the game freezes. A few short seconds into the freeze the computer restarts itself automatically. So in short, once he is in the game for 5-10 minutes the game freezes and it forcefully restarts his computer. Like i was saying before, this is the only game that does it to him and we have no idea why. Perhaps a bad file? I don't think its a hardware issue as well. I told him today when he gets home from work to reinstall the game completely to see if that will fix anything.

If anyone has any ideas or knowledge on why this is happening though let me know because its quite annoying that he isnt able to play.

[dublea 11]

Ok, you are probably getting a BSOD but the reboot is happening so fast you are not seeing it. To verify this we need to disabel automatic restart on system failure. Click the start menu, Right-click on Computer, and select Properties. If this is Vista or above, click on Advanced System Settings in the menu on the left. Under Startup and Recovery, there is a Settings button, click that. Under System Failure, uncheck the Automatically Restart. Hit OK and apply to all windows. Get him to play and see if it stops on a BSOD when the system fails.

Edited May 21, 2013 by dublea

[h3retic 224]

what are his pc specs,

it may be an issue with sli or crossfire (if he has multiple gpu)

if running amd cpu, it may be a bios poo poo, update bios

Edited May 21, 2013 by h3retic

[dublea 11]

what are his pc specs,

it may be an issue with sli or crossfire (if he has multiple gpu)

if running amd cpu, it may be a bios poo poo, update bios

I agree. It would still cause the BSOD, and some happen so fast people don't see them. To pin-point it, we can look at the error it created. I find it can be easier to get the info from the BSOD msg than having someone look through their Event Viewer. Either would work though. We just need to find out what is being logged, if anything, as the point of failure. I always disable that feature for machines I build due to how fast newer systems reboot after dumping the info.

So, I would suggest he do both, provide system specs and disable the auto restart w/ testing to see if he gets a BSOD.

[michaelfraz 0]

Dublea and h3retic,

I will have him try that out. Hopefully we can try to pinpoint the issue from the BSOD msg.

I will also have him log his system specs and post them on here so you can view that.

My only hope is that a BSOD does pop up for him so that we are able to log something with it. It will be probably 3 hours or so from now on when we can test this considering he is at work at the moment, so if you can check back in around 3 hours from now and hopefully I will have some info for you regarding on what you asked for.

Thank you so much by the way!

[h3retic 224]

in dayz commander settings

set additional launch parameter

-winxp

this enables crossfire/sli and i also believe it forces arma 2 to run in directx9 .

[dublea 11]

in dayz commander settings

set additional launch parameter

-winxp

this enables crossfire/sli and i also believe it forces arma 2 to run in directx9 .

To my knowledge, the only way to enable SLI is to make sure you have the correct drivers/patch such as the EVGA SLI Patch. But, even when it is working, it only offers minor load ballancing as Arma 2 / OA is not optimized for SLI/CF. '-winxp' enforces DX9 and compatibility with older GPU drivers. That's about as much as that command does. I've only seen one other who suggested it, but when I tried it I never saw a noticable difference as compaired to DX10 while having SLI enabled. I later found this list of commands and what they actually do

[h3retic 224]

To my knowledge, the only way to enable SLI is to make sure you have the correct drivers/patch such as the EVGA SLI Patch. But, even when it is working, it only offers minor load ballancing as Arma 2 / OA is not optimized for SLI/CF. '-winxp' enforces DX9 and compatibility with older GPU drivers. That's about as much as that command does. I've only seen one other who suggested it, but when I tried it I never saw a noticable difference as compaired to DX10 while having SLI enabled. I later found this list of commands and what they actually do

my bad, meant -winxp "enables" (as in makes better use of) sli and crossfirex specifically for arma 2

and yes, my info comes from that wiki site as well.

although the use of -winxp is rather antiquated by now. its done the trick long ago, when arma didnt like double gpus and their drivers much

Edited May 21, 2013 by h3retic

[dublea 11]

When you drop to DX9 from DX10, it doesn't use the same versions of shadders, AA, etc. You will always gain an FPS increase from doing it. Minor SLI load balancing is still there when not forcing it into DX9. I only gained about 3-5fps from doing it.

Edited May 21, 2013 by dublea