[BUG] Crash on startup

[nixnixnix 0]

Hi,

I've been really enjoying the game. I'm new to driving sims and really not into the whole do this get that nonsense so I like that I can just dive in and drive somewhere.

Well I was until a day or two back when Dirt Rally started crashing on startup every time. I rebooted; I installed latest driver; I deleted drt.exe and verified game cache to recover a new version of the file. I verified game content; I deleted the entire game from windows explorer and then reinstalled through Steam. Every single time I get exactly the same behaviour which is an immediate crash on startup followed by Steam saying it is going to install the game, getting to 1% and then giving error code 41.

My Spec:
Windows 10
dual Xeon E2687v3
64 GB ECC RAM
MSI 6G Gaming GTX 980 TI
2x 500GB SSD
2x 3TB HDD
Logitech G27 steering wheel and pedals (and H shift but not used)
3 monitors all different resolutions but I game on an Asus 2560x1440.

Please let me know if there is something I can try. I tried replying to your bug thread on Steam but with no response.

Cheers,

Nick

[nixnixnix 0]

OK I had a hunch it was number of logical cores so I did some experimenting. I started out by turning off hyperthreading and limiting each CPU to 4 cores for a total of 8 logical cores and the game works fine. Next I unlimited the CPU core count but left hyperthreading off for a total of 20 cores and the game crashes every time. Next I turned on hyperthreading and limited each CPU to 4 cores again for a total of 16 logical cores and the game works perfectly.

I had a suspicion that some lazy coder at CM had made an assumption about 16 logical cores being "plenty" and it seems I was right. If you want me to test more I can. Just let me know.

What puzzles me about this is that the game has worked flawlessly on this machine for months. This should be an easy bug to find. It is a difference between the current and the previous version.

Think I'll play some more before I go and unhobble my PC, after which I will be unable to play again. You know that the next generation of desktop CPUs is rumoured to have 10 cores (=20 logical cores=too much for your code) right? Why not fix this once and for all now by setting and upper limit of 64 or 128? Ideally make it completely dynamic or allow us to pass in a command line parameter to limit the cores or if you can't allocate resources for more than 16 then limit the game to that even if the PC has more. All sorts of acceptable solutions but "my code wont work on high end hardware" would make me feel pretty crappy as a coder myself.

Hope you can fix this because I love your game.

Nick

[MrJamieLowes 28]

Hmm, interesting.

The code 'theoretically' maxes out at 8 cores, if you have more it just maps to 8. The machine I'm on now has 12. I guess any more than 16 kills the code.

Since I'm not lazy, I'll take a look  ;p

[nixnixnix 0]

LOL - yeah sorry about that. Thanks for looking into this and please let me know if you want me to test anything at my end. I would be happy to run a debug exe and send you the log.

[nixnixnix 0]

Any news on this? Did you manage to reproduce the crash in debug? Do you need me to run something? 

[nixnixnix 0]

Just checking in. Did you manage to recreate this yet? Is this likely to get fixed?

[DanieleBardini 0]

I started out by turning off hyperthreading and limiting each CPU to 4 cores for a total of 8 logical cores and the game works fine. 

Hi, i'm facing the same problem of yours, with my game hanging up on the splash screen and crashing after one second from launching it...I'm on a dual xeon machine, mine processors are 2680V2, but i think it will be the same problem becouse i check the task manager and the process drt.exe is using only the first 32 thread, or 16 core if it is correct... I would really like to know how you manage to set permanently the process affinity for that process, if you could tell me, you will make my day :D.. I'm also facing problem following the method of creating a shortcut on my desktop and telling that to launch the steam app with a certain affinity, the code i use has this formula:

"C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C start /affinity 0xF D :\00__Programmi_Installati\Steam\Steam.exe -applaunch 310560"
(i have to insert a space between the D and the : otherwise it will post a smile instead of the address..)

Do you use a third party application instead of the method i mention above?

Thanking you in advice i wish you a nice day..

Daniele

[nixnixnix 0]

I don't play Dirt Rally just now as I can't be bothered to go into BIOS and hobble my machine. To be clear I found that 16 virtual cores works fine but 20 virtual cores or more crashes. I assumed from this that the limit is most likely 16 virtual cores (i.e. 8 actual cores with hyperthreading or 16 real cores with hyperthreading switched off). So far as I know there is no ability to set affinity in Windows 10.

I have a similar issue with Portal 2 for which I have had to turn off multi-core rendering as well as pass in a command line argument to use only one thread. It is possible that this crash is being caused by Dirt using the same Steam library that Portal2 uses but hey, it's impossible to discuss when CM ignore us for weeks on end.

If you find a way to run the game without going into BIOS please post it here. 

Nick

[DanieleBardini 0]

Firt of all, thanks for the reply! After a lot of searching online inspired by this post i found a program, it's called "Process Lasso" and it allow you to set the affinity of a process in a permanent way (totally reversible). The free version it's very efficient, but, i have to say that this program doesn't solve my problem..I think that it could be related to the fact that the program start acting when he detects the process drt.exe running and automatically set the usage on the selected core..But i think that in the very first moment, when the program starts, it runs on all the available core and after a fraction of time it going to switch on the selected core, if the program detects that there are more core than 16, the program will crash....i will try to use the bios method, but i mean, this is a workstation, i cannot disable my core, i have to render on them -.-"
Anyway thank you very much for your post, hope this will help someone as much as yours have done with me!

[nixnixnix 0]

The BIOS method is simply to disable cores and hyperthreading. You have 40 logical cores like me so disabling HT gets you to 20 but then you still need to drop each CPU down to 8 cores from 10. I agree it is not a good solution.

I encourage anyone else reading this and experiencing this bug to reply to this thread so we get an idea of how many people are affected by this.

Here's hoping the reason they haven't replied recently is because they are busy hunting this down and fixing it :)

[DanieleBardini 0]

Thank you very much, i will try the bios method, and see i it will work...  :)

Do you want to know something funny? I was able to install the 0.8 version of the game, because i don't have it installed (i bought the game like 3 days ago and it was already updated at 0.9)...and it works...i don't have the last car, but at least it is playable... (and it doesn't work on all cores just on 16 + HT, and the strange things is that it doesn't subdivide the workload on 8 core + 8 core, leaving the last 2 unused, it use all the core in the first node, and 6 core +HT of the second node....)

I really hope they will fix this before the 1.0 release...

[nixnixnix 0]

Yes it worked fine on my system up to the November update. We're not alone. I've found at least one other person who has the same setup and gets the same behaviour. I know there are not many of us but if CM think that it's not worth catering to people with high end PCs then why not just limit themselves to consoles. Perhaps they should publish a maximum spec alongside the minimum spec :)

[DanieleBardini 0]

I'm sorry for the late answer, i was not at home in these days ...

LOL that's maximum spec thing would be nice :D...anyway i also post on the steam forum but using the nickname of that old account i have, wich is orsobruno, so the count of us drop back to 2 :(... so sad, unfortunately.