CoX crashing for no apparent reason

Okay, I did a little poking around the last month or so worth of threads plus stickies but didn't find anything similar to my problem. If my search-fu is simply weak, my apologies and I'll gladly take directions to the appropriate thread.

And now for my problem. I just put together a new system (it was high time as my old one was over 7 years old, heh) with the exception of a new HDD since I ran out of cash for the time being. I can run CoX great on near-max settings but after about 45-60mins the game will crash out of the blue with a Windows error stating "City of Heroes has encountered a problem and will be closed" along with the usual "Send/Don't Send" options. Microsoft has no solutions when following through on the "Send" option so now I'm coming here. I've run CoH Helper and I'll post the data here:

---System information gathered by CoH Helper version 0.2.0.2---

DxDiag gathered at May 16, 2010 14:28 (-07:00)
Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.100216-1441)
System Manufacturer: System manufacturer
System Model: System Product Name
BIOS: BIOS Date: 12/30/09 09:47:15 Ver: 08.00.15
Central Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU 530 @ 2.93GHz (4 CPUs)
Memory: 3070MB
.Net Memory Report: 2547MB out of 3069MB available
Page File: 3585MB (1370MB currently in use)
C Drive: (ST340810A) 5531MB out of 38162MB (14%) free
D Drive: (HL-DT-ST RW/DVD GCC-4480B) zero-size drive
E Drive: (PQPCPY 5UZ45YBWDE7O SCSI CdRom Device) zero-size drive
Windows directory location: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DirectX Diag version: 5.03.2600.2180 (32-bit version)

Display Notes: No problems found.

No problems found.
Sound Notes: No problems found.

No problems found.
Input Notes: No problems found.

Monitor: Plug and Play Monitor
Monitor's Max Resolution: 1600,1200
Video Device Name: ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series
Manufacturer / Chip: ATI Technologies Inc. / ATI Radeon Graphics Processor (0x68BE)
Video Memory: 1024.0 MB
Driver Version: 6.14.0010.7070
Driver Date: 4/6/2010 6:45:46 PM
Driver Language: English

Monitor: Plug and Play Monitor
Monitor's Max Resolution: 1600,1200
Video Device Name: ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series
Manufacturer / Chip: ATI Technologies Inc. / ATI Radeon Graphics Processor (0x68BE)
Video Memory: 1024.0 MB
Driver Version: 6.14.0010.7070
Driver Date: 4/6/2010 6:45:46 PM
Driver Language: English

Sound Device Description: Realtek HD Audio output
Driver File: RtkHDAud.sys
Driver Version: 5.10.0000.5973
Driver Date: 11/3/2009 4:39:04 AM

Sound Device Description: ATI HD Audio rear output
Driver File: AtiHdmi.sys
Driver Version: 5.00.40001.0009
Driver Date: 7/20/2007 6:40:10 PM


WMI Information
Motherboard Manufacturer: ASUSTeK Computer INC.
Motherboard Model: (empty)
Motherboard Product: P7H55-M PRO
Motherboard Version: Rev 1.xx
BIOS Manufacturer: American Megatrends Inc.
BIOS Name: BIOS Date: 12/30/09 09:47:15 Ver: 08.00.15
BIOS Version: 123009 - 20091230
BIOS Release: 20091230000000.000000+000


Registry Information for Current User
Resolution: 1024x768
3D Resolution: 1024x768 (Not using renderscale)
Full Screen: Yes
Maximized: No
Screen Position: 0, 0
Refresh Rate: 60Hz
Vertical Sync Enabled: Yes


Physics Quality: High
Maximum Particles: 50000
Max Particle Fill? 10.000
Physics Card Enabled: No


Anti-aliasing: Off
Anisotropic Filtering: 4x
Texture LOD Bias: Smooth
Water Effects: High quality
Bloom: 1.000 (turned on)
Depth of Field Enabled: Yes
Desaturation Effects (Sepia) Enabled: Yes
Shader Detail: High


World Texture Level: Very High
Character Texture Level: Very High
World Detail Level (Vis_Scale): 1.000
Entity Detail Level: 1.000
Shadows Enabled: No
Shadow Mode: Shadow maps
Shadow Map Shader: Low quality
Environmental Reflections: Low quality
Advanced Occlusion Settings: No
Ambient Occlusion: High performance
Occlusion Strength: Slight
Blur: Fast
Ambient Resolution: High performance


Gamma Correction: 1.000
Geometry Buffers (VBOs) Enabled: Yes
Suppression of FX When Camera Close Enabled: No
Close Suppression Range: 3.000
Show Advertisements: Yes

Audio Mode: Performance
3D Audio: Yes
FX Sound Volume: 0.021
Music Sound Volume: 0.000

Show Advanced Graphics Options: No
Overall Graphics Quality: 0.750
Reverse Mouse Buttons: No
Save Login Username: Yes
Transfer Rate: 237820 bytes/second
Current Game Version: 1800.201003300904.20T5r
Installation Directory: C:\Program Files\City of Heroes

Mod files in the Data directory
.\texture_library\MAPS\city has 1 file
.\texture_library\MAPS\Midnight_Squad has 1 file
.\texture_library\MAPS\Safeguard has 9 files
.\texture_library\MAPS\sewers has 44 files
.\texture_library\MAPS\static has 34 files
.\texture_library\V_MAPS\Outdoor_Missions has 9 files
.\texture_library\V_MAPS\Static has 16 files


Now, I know about the ATI driver issues, but from what I understand, so long as I've installed the latest Cat 10.4 drivers (May 3rd) I should be fine in that regard. If anyone can offer any suggestions, I'd be very appreciative. Oh, and small note, I have no trouble with any other games at all. I can play them all i want for hours and never have a crash. It seems to only happen with CoX. Thanks in advance.


EDIT: I notice it doesn't show my actual GPU model and just the family. I'm running a Sapphire Radeon 5750 HD 1GB.

update your xp to service pack 3. and try to free up some space on your hard drive. you want to have at least 25% of your drive free.

Yeah, the HDD is a possible problem. Sadly, the only drive I've got free to use at the moment is that 40GB. I can free up a couple more GB's, but not much more. Aside from Windows and CoX there isn't much installed on this system since when payday rolls around I'll be picking up the new HDD's for it. I'll clear out what I can, but it won't be much, heh.

As for SP3, I didn't have SP3 prior to this either and never ran into a problem. But, with the newer hardware now it may have become an issue that I should look into.

So, freed up another 7.5GB's of HDD space, installed SP3 as well a bunch of other updates for Windows, adjusted my pagefile size to a max of 500MBs and tweaked a bunch more settings with Windows to lower its use of available resources. Also dropped my settings for CoX down another notch. Still no luck it seems. The game just crashed again after running for about 45 minutes and prior to that it froze during a cut scene on the second to last mission of the Conference of Evil arc redside.

If anyone else has any suggestions, I'm open to just about anything short of tossing the tower out my third floor window, lol.


EDIT: For the record, the memory leak in the game seems to have gotten orders of magnitude worse than it was with my old system. At the time of the last crash the game was using 1.81GB's of RAM, which is pretty bad if you ask me, considering how long the game had been running.

Sounds ridiculously similar to the troubles I've been having, denoted in my own thread on the subject; I notice we have the same family video cards even, not the exact same model (mine's ATI) but close, and for me the game will play for up to an hour, the memory usage will get to around 1.5 gigs and then *phffft*. I've updated drivers all over the place, I've installed SP3, I've done everything but get out the bead rattles and cut the head off a chicken...best I seem to have done is get it to crash around 1.7-1.8 gigs and go a trifle longer time-wise.

Did notice something in 'known issues' for our shared video card series...what version of the Catalyst Control Center are you at? http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/kno...wn_issues.html is saying that Catalyst 10.2 has a problem with 'ultra-mode', 10.4 is better, given I'm on 10.4 and still having the trouble I doubt it's a fix...still, perhaps something to look at.

Yeah, I've done pretty much the same, updating Windows with anything Windows Update has thrown at me since I built the system, and of course updating drivers for everything else. And I did know about the ATI issues prior to picking up the card, but the Cat 10.4 drivers seem to be working fine.

It turns out that it really is just a horrific memory leak problem, and no problem with the GPU. I can play just fine on the "Perfomance" setting, and the RAM usage hovers around 1-1.1GB, climbing a little higher when teamed to around 1.4GBs. But as soon as I turn up the graphics slider to "Recommended" or higher, the memory leak starts getting worse in leaps and bounds. At "Recommended" it climbs at a rate of about 350kb per second, while on full blown Ultra Mode it climbs at a rate of over 1MB per second. And that's just standing still in Atlas Park under the globe, or standing by the ferry in Sharkhead.

I understand that the memory leak could get worse with the higher settings, but climbing at a rate like that? Its no wonder that the game craps out after less than an hour. And thus far, Support hasn't been too helpful, basically having me jump through all the hoops that I've already tried to no avail.

If anyone knows what the worst culprits are at higher settings when it comes to chewing up system RAM, please let me know. Ambient Occlusion? Particle effects? World Detail? Jimmy Hoffa's Briefcase?

The fact that Recommended mode is still causing a memory leak leads me to think that Ultra mode settings are only part of the problem. Recommended does not, to my knowledge, actually set any of the Ultra mode options.

That makes me think the primary culprit is Bloom, followed by Ambient Occlusion, Shadows, and Water Effects.