Absolutely maddening issue and I'm lost.

[Terbinator]

I have got a maddening issue that I can't pin down and genuinely lost as to what the issue is. Long post incoming.

System:
5800X
32GB 3600
B550I Pro AX
AX760i
3080Ti
1x WD Blue 550 (OS), 1x WD Black 850 (Games) - both drives showing 100% Health and no SMART issues in WD Dashboard.

Was on Windows 11 insider Omega ring, now on standard Win 11 - complete clean install.

All at stock values aside from XMP.

Background:
Downloaded Cities Skyline Windows 10 edition off GP yesterday and played the game for around 20 minutes before I got a complete surprise CTD. No error, not temp issues, nothing - I just assumed 'a crash' and left it there as it seemed like a crap port anyway.

I next fired up BF2042 (GamePass PC) which I've put in almost 10 hours on until this point and last played a week ago and for some reason was getting all sorts of errors: CTD, Easy Anti-Cheat [EAC] issues and just general problems with the EA launcher, unable to launch anything and getting repair/game running errors (BF2042/EAC splash would appear, then go off. Task manager shows BF2042.exe active but literally nothing going on).

Weirdness:
Now the first thing which I noticed was happening is that for some reason, when BF2042 was crashing it was somehow 'deactivating' my WD 850 it was installed on. The drive is still there in Explorer but wasn't showing in WD's own SSD utility - first the SMART status would say 'unknown' and then when you refresh/rescan for drives the game SSD would vanish, C:\ still there. I couldn't create any new files/folder on the drive even though it was there in Explorer after multiple refreshes and was still showing in Disk Management. System reboot solves this until you launch BF2042 again, and it triggers it like clockwork.

Now:
I have tried other games on my D:\ drive and played them for anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour, included other EAC games (Elden Ring), FH5, Halo Infinte, Cyberpunk, LoL and W3 with no crashes. Also ran a TimeSpy stability run from D:\ which passed fine.

TLR: there reports of people's D:\ drives vanishing after updates on Win11 Insider so I've gone for a completely fresh install of Win11 - the problem with BF2042 remains on the fresh OS with the game on D:\.

Copying/installing BF2042 to my C:\ seemingly fixes the majority of the issues that have cropped up with BF2042 but I am still getting odd EAC and other file errors - with this game specifically. A game repair seems to fix this but once it crashes I need to repair again.

So, all I can think of at this point is GP PC games which have a 3rd account tied to them (EA, Paradox) seems to be causing some sort of issues for me, but funnily enough not for LoL which this week got MS account integration. MS' own games (FH5, Infinite) seemingly run fine on the D:\ drive that has issues with BF2042 as do Steam games on the same drive included those that use EAC.

I'm genuinely lost. There's nothing online that answers my queries (BF2042's still dodgy rep doesn't help), the 'fix' of moving BF2042 to C:\ is a plaster at best for me at the minute.

It could be a hardware issue, but, I've played a ton of LoL this week as well as some intensive stuff with CP2077 and W3 RTX and had zero issues. The problems seem to be with GamePass games which had worked fine up until yesterday for me, or at least a week ago when I played BF2042 last.

Has anyone else got experience with this, or maybe even in the last week w/ BF2042 specifically?

[MrJim]

I can't say I've had exactly the same issues as you, but I do have problems starting BF2042 occasionally. I bought it on the Epic platform, so starting the game fires up the Epic Launcher, then Origin, & finally loads the game. Sometimes I get the small BF2042 splash screen, & then nothing happens (the game fails to load). Starting the game again once or twice more eventually gets me into the game. Once running, B2042 is relatively stable, but I have had the occasional crash back to Windows (I'm running 11 Pro).

It's really hard to say what could be cause your specific problems though. I'm sure you've tried all the obvious things like updating bios, drive firmware (if available), GPU drivers etc... The sad thing is, over year after it's release, I think BF2042 is still a bit flaky on some systems

Edit!

Looking at your system, your PSU is within spec for a 3080Ti, but on the lower side. You don't mention whether your pc is overclocked? It's possible that BF2042 is pushing your GPU hard, perhaps (although admittedly, it's doubtful it would push it any harder than CP2077). Also, I've had some quite hard to diagnose RAM issues in the past. Are you running yours using XMP? You could try running it at stock speed, & maybe try one stick only to see if that makes a difference?

Sorry! Just re-read your post, & see you're at stock values apart from XMP. I really should pay more attention!

[Jonj1611]

I am getting no end of ram issues with XMP on my Ryzen 7 5700G system

[[GSV]Trig]

Anything jumping out in event viewer?

BIOS update, default the BIOS, leave the RAM at stock, see what it does.

[MrJim]

Anything jumping out in event viewer?

BIOS update, default the BIOS, leave the RAM at stock, see what it does.

Just another thought: is the RAM used on the compatibility list for your motherboard? Right from the beginning, Ryzen has been quite picky with RAM configurations. Although things have gotten better with more recent iterations of Ryzen, it can still be an issue for sure.

[Terbinator]

Thanks for the responses.

There's a few things I'm going to try: currently doing an extensive SMART analysis through the WD tool, will then clean format the 850 and see if the issue persists, and last but not least, Memtest over night with and without XMP.

There is a BIOS for my board which is the latest one and a beta BIOS w/ an AGEAS update, but I've always been in the if its not broke don't fix it when it comes to firmware. Althogh I guess something is broke at the minute.

I have considered a H/W issue - my PSU will be 10yo in January (warrior!) and maybe the 850 and/or RAM are faulty, but, they've been in the computer for around 6 months and again no issues until Friday and only with specific games.

The part I can wrap my head around is how BF2042 on the 850 is specifically triggering a faux-drive failure. An issue that is 100% replicated by launching the game and waiting for it crash. Playing other games does not do this (aside from Cities as I mentioned right at the beginning of my post).

Special mention to both EA Launcher and Xbox app which are absolutely pants when it comes to moving game install around and/or backup functionality. Making this entire process insufferable and much longer than it needs to be.

[dannyboy75]

Definitely worth checking your PSU voltages while running different games, if only to rule that out as the culprit - especially given its 10th birthday is imminent!

I was getting similar random CTDs with my system earlier this year, and was tearing out what little hair I have left trying to figure out what was causing it. I've had faulty RAM, mobos and GPUs in the past but I'd ruled out these this time around (as well as my CPU). That only really left my ageing PSU.

Checking idle PSU voltages in the BIOS they all looked OK, but then it dawned on me I should be checking these voltages under load, when running games. Once I did that, I could see the +12V rail was dropping to 11V under load. Replaced the PSU, and no more CTD's.

The thread's here if you want to read: https://forums.hexus.net/help-quick-...nder-load.html

Might not be your issue but definitely worth checking

[ik9000]

Yeah re voltages I had to manually set a few in bios/uefi to stop the machine over volting afew things, particularly on boost. I would have to go into it to find them but it was both ram and a few of the CPU settings where I noticed on build the auto values looked too high (and they were). It's been stable since I did that