Endless Shutdowns.

[StevieWolfe]

Okay this needs to be discussed, and hopefully fixed because I am not the only one having this issue. I just picked up my copy today, installed it, and I'm being absolutely plagued with straight to desktop shutdowns. Note that I did not say 'crashes', as that is not what the game is doing. For me and apparently thousands of other people, the PC version of DooM randomly decides to just terminate as a system process at any given time for absolutely no explainable reason.

For example, I will be in game, and it will close out, completely. No matter what is happening on screen I'll go back to Steam (which you are forced to start the game through in the first place), and it will close itself out again and again and again until it seemingly just decides to start for a while until it just decides to shut itself down mid-game once again. Naturally, I checked Windows event logs: nothing. This might be the part where you'd ask me well what did the 'error message' say. Problem is, you don't get one. It just closes the program, there's not even a crash going on apparently. It's just cleanly terminating itself as a system process.

I paid a good amount of money for a solid copy of this game, hopefully someone out there knows what's going on here and how to fix it. I won't be to happy to find out this is a permanent and unfixable bug in the PC version.

[StevieWolfe]

System specs btw, but I don't think it matters at this point. I feel that this is almost certainly an issue on their end, not ours.

i7 6700K 4.00 ghz, amd r7 370, 16g ddr4 ram, win10 os.

[Jello]

I'm not extremely knowledgeable about it, but I would say the AMD card is probably the issue. I know RAGE/idtech 5 had huge problems with AMD cards when it was first released. Doom's engine seems pretty similar to Rage's, so I would say that's probably where the issue is. I think it's more that AMD needs to get it's drivers updated to play nice with Doom, but id needs to work with them as well.

Only suggestion I could give is make sure your drivers are up to date, but you've probably tried that already.

[Chubzdoomer]

The same thing is happening to me, and I have a GTX 970 so it definitely isn't an AMD issue. We aren't alone.. sadly, it's a super widespread problem.

[Quasar]

An illegal operation will not, to my knowledge, be logged in the Windows system event log if the application captures it using SEH or VEH, so it is quite likely in my humble semi-educated opinion that the lack of an error dialogue in this case is meaningless - id Software has just thrown a top-level SEH or VEH handler in there that captures all exceptions and then silently exits the program, giving nobody any clue as to what the actual problem is. I'm sure they like it that way, as there's less information revealed about the game engine's internals to people who would be interested in them.

Like us for example.

[DoomUK]

Welcome to the CTD club. :(

https://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-2016-general/88201-crashes-to-desktop-often/
https://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-2016-general/88298-more-ctd-nonsense/

Look around on Steam and the Bethesda forums and you'll find hundreds of other people reporting the same problem. We await a patch.

[MFG38]

If what TotalBiscuit said in his "WTF Is DOOM?" video is anything to go by, I'd argue the problem is somehow connected to the game running in fullscreen. Try windowed mode and see if that helps. That's all the advice I can give.

[PureSlime]

Yep.

Errorless crashes. Though, I haven't seen if windowed mode changes anything. That's actually a fantastic idea and I feel kinda silly for not trying it yet.

EDIT: Just tried it. Nope. Still consistently crashes on the same levels.

[StevieWolfe]

So I just rock and rolled through about three solid hours of asskickery and general gameplay without a hitch. Stop because its 5:30 AM and I need to go bed, but for the hell of it try and get it to boot up again to see if it was just a one (thousand) time thing...nope. Same shit, all over again.

The inconsistency of this issue is what has my mind a little blown. There's been talk all over the place that the anti-copy protection that was installed with the game is somehow corrupting the games runtime. It's this thing called "Denuvo" and it essentially works by garbaling code and decrypting it on the fly...in an attempt to make games installed with it near impossible for hackers to crack and put up online for free. If this shit is causing the problem then it's easy to see why. It could be so poorly made, it's crashing the game because it can't even decrypt itself properly. Like dividing anything by zero, the computer just gets confused and insta-quits as the nonsense code just runs into inifinity...now I'm not really much of a programmer, I don't even know if that's possible...however after a little preliminary research I've found that other games (only a handful so far) that have shipped with this shit are all experiencing the same issue...

Basically its as if the code this thing runs on just confuses the shit out itself eventually and crashes over and over because it doesn't even know the difference between a legit and not legit copy apparently...

This is why I fucking hate DRM and it was nothing but a terribly stupid idea. Why the FUCK would anyone even need to design a copy protection that works like this, when it's soooo much easier to just use product key validation like most software's been for years and years now. ID, you apparently just made your game so protected, you protected it from the people who actually shoveled over $60 clams just to play the fucking thing. Holy shit.

[PureSlime]

Tbh, the choice of copy protection is probably Bethesda's fault.

I just hope there's a fix soon.

[MiNaM]

I'm on PC and I've played for +10 hours, I'm currently on mission 5 (Argent Energy Tower) with 100% exploration & completion of previews levels and didn't experience any of these reported CTD problems..

I've experienced something else, a non-reported glitch on level 1, a non-reported bug in level 2, a strange hissing sound heard while glory killing and while shooting a Hell Knight (don't know if this is normal or not), and a full system lockup "freeze" for 10 seconds on level 4 (the game resumes so it might be some heavy disk access), never had a CTD, not yet!

Does that happen on a specific level ?

If I where you I'll try the following:

1- Verify the integrity of game cache through steam (it might be a corrupted file)

2- Down clock the GPU/Mem to stock clocks (heavy OC's causes problems in some games)

3- Disable the firewall (the game might be blocked from accessing the internet for activation)

Good luck..

[Edward850]

StevieCybernetik said:

So I just rock and rolled through about three solid hours of asskickery and general gameplay without a hitch. Stop because its 5:30 AM and I need to go bed, but for the hell of it try and get it to boot up again to see if it was just a one (thousand) time thing...nope. Same shit, all over again.

The inconsistency of this issue is what has my mind a little blown. There's been talk all over the place that the anti-copy protection that was installed with the game is somehow corrupting the games runtime. It's this thing called "Denuvo" and it essentially works by garbaling code and decrypting it on the fly...in an attempt to make games installed with it near impossible for hackers to crack and put up online for free. If this shit is causing the problem then it's easy to see why. It could be so poorly made, it's crashing the game because it can't even decrypt itself properly. Like dividing anything by zero, the computer just gets confused and insta-quits as the nonsense code just runs into inifinity...now I'm not really much of a programmer, I don't even know if that's possible...however after a little preliminary research I've found that other games (only a handful so far) that have shipped with this shit are all experiencing the same issue...

Basically its as if the code this thing runs on just confuses the shit out itself eventually and crashes over and over because it doesn't even know the difference between a legit and not legit copy apparently...

This is why I fucking hate DRM and it was nothing but a terribly stupid idea. Why the FUCK would anyone even need to design a copy protection that works like this, when it's soooo much easier to just use product key validation like most software's been for years and years now. ID, you apparently just made your game so protected, you protected it from the people who actually shoveled over $60 clams just to play the fucking thing. Holy shit.

Nope. Not even remotely true. Or even rational. Let's look at some facts:

• Denuvo isn't DRM, it's anti-tamper. It's fairly pointless on its own without something enforcing copy protection.
  
• Denuvo (v2 as this iteration is known as) has been deployed successfully on numerous applications before. V2 started with FIFA16 IIRC.
  
• Constant encryption & decryption is expensive. Denuvo is lightweight, if not actually performance invisible.
  
• Windows handles unhandled exceptions in the userspace. This crash is handled as far as Windows appears to be concerned as it's not intervening, so the execution stack (the runtime) is still intact.
  
• If it really was Denuvo, everybody would have this issue at the same frequency. As that's not happening, then the only thing left is the only variable that changes: hardware. It's thus likely to be a rendering pipeline issue or something strange in paged memory.

Furthermore, if you're not a programmer, explaining something programming related is just plain absurd.

[DoomUK]

MiNaM said:

I'm on PC and I've played for +10 hours, I'm currently on mission 5 (Argent Energy Tower) with 100% exploration & completion of previews levels and didn't experience any of these reported CTD problems..

I don't mean to burst your bubble, but I beat the whole game before I started having CTD problems. It's really weird.

[Lvangundy]

Happened to me on the first encounter with the spider mastermind when it had about 40% health. Wasn't happy. But now I know how to defeat it easily by having done it all over again.

I've had those crashes as well throughout the game, mostly after the midway point. Too many other people complaining and the way it exits points at something in the game code. I sent in a ticket request about it, but got the generic "reboot, update drivers, turn around three times and jump" response. I'm sure they're aware of it.

Specs BTW for fun: C2D E8400 (am I the only one with that old of a proc?) 3GB RAM, GTX 760.

[Vorpal]

Are you trying to capture video/stream? There's known problems with recording video in doom4 on R9 series, maybe others. I get some reliability if I record in windowed mode, but fullscreen/borderless produce single frame videos and tend to CTD.

[ReFracture]

It seems for some people lowering texture page in the advanced settings has helped.

I had it on max (nightmare) and it crashed 4 or 5 times in my playthrough. Lowered to high and it hasn't happened since, though I only have a couple hours of play since changing it. Had the same behavior with some friends. GTX 980Ti here.

[hardcore_gamer]

I thought you were talking about how the game throws too many arenas at you lol.

[scalliano]

No, that would be too many lockdowns :P

[HavoX]

Seeing threads like this one makes me glad I decided to hold back on playing the whole thing...

[xAn]

Same issue here. All settings on ultra. Maybe i should try to reduce some of them. Specs are i5-2500k, 8GB RAM, GTX770 (2GB).

I also have many framedrops, but could be the ultra settings combined with only 2GB VRAM...

[StevieWolfe]

Edward850 said:

Nope. Not even remotely true. Or even rational. Let's look at some facts:

• Denuvo isn't DRM, it's anti-tamper. It's fairly pointless on its own without something enforcing copy protection.
  
• Denuvo (v2 as this iteration is known as) has been deployed successfully on numerous applications before. V2 started with FIFA16 IIRC.
  
• Constant encryption & decryption is expensive. Denuvo is lightweight, if not actually performance invisible.
  
• Windows handles unhandled exceptions in the userspace. This crash is handled as far as Windows appears to be concerned as it's not intervening, so the execution stack (the runtime) is still intact.
  
• If it really was Denuvo, everybody would have this issue at the same frequency. As that's not happening, then the only thing left is the only variable that changes: hardware. It's thus likely to be a rendering pipeline issue or something strange in paged memory.

Furthermore, if you're not a programmer, explaining something programming related is just plain absurd.

Well fuck me then, guess I need to go back to the school of gifted and l33t h@x. Sorry for trying to explain what I thought might be the issue then Mr. Denuvo. It's not like I completely threw everything I could think of at it which could generally remedy a problem like this, and still came back with the same issue, which leaves me with no other choice but to realize it's a problem on THEIR end, not mine. Enjoy because this nukes your points: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/3d6x5k/why_is_denuvo_drm_so_hated/ It is DRM, and it's shite. It also apparently can cause damage to SSD's because of how it functions. You're telling me I don't know what I'm talking about?

[Justince]

r_init: getpostnumberforname: post not found!

Edited August 1, 2017 by Justince

[PureSlime]

Changing settings has had no effect whatsoever on the crashes.

They just seem to happen without warning. No slowdown, no telltale signs of overheating or using too much memory. It's just as if someone quits the game out in the Task Manager.

[Quasar]

StevieCybernetik said:

It is DRM, and it's shite. It also apparently can cause damage to SSD's because of how it functions. You're telling me I don't know what I'm talking about?

He says as he links a thread which does nothing but debunk every single one of his claims...

[victorboris1]

chubz said:

The same thing is happening to me, and I have a GTX 970 so it definitely isn't an AMD issue. We aren't alone.. sadly, it's a super widespread problem.

Are you running Windows 10 Spyware Edition?

[Edward850]

victorboris1 said:

Are you running Windows 10 Spyware Edition?

Well it works fine in Windows 10 Pro, that's for sure. Granted, I'm not sure what you would expect if you grab something called "Spyware Edition".

[tuo]

I had the problem one time during my first playthrough.

At the moment, I have the problem nearly everytime when I play the game for longer than about 30 minutes. On two boxes.

Box 1:
2x Xeon X5650 on an EVGA Classified SR-2, 32 GB Memory, EVGA Titan (non-x)

Box 2:
1x Core i7 6700K (not overclocked at the moment) on a Gigabyte Z170X-Gaming 7-EU, 32 GB Memory, SLI 2x EVGA 980 GT SC

It comes out of nowhere...allthough most of the times while fighting in an arena, but it also happened to me while exploring. I can't find a singular cause on both machines on why it happens. It's just...happening...

Strange stuff :( Hope they fix it.

[Quasar]

Edward850 said:

Well it works fine in Windows 10 Pro, that's for sure. Granted, I'm not sure what you would expect if you grab something called "Spyware Edition".

That would be any edition. I hope you have a hardware firewall between it and the internet so you can watch what's trying to go out.

[MiNaM]

tuo said:

I had the problem one time during my first playthrough.

At the moment, I have the problem nearly everytime when I play the game for longer than about 30 minutes. On two boxes.

Box 1:
2x Xeon X5650 on an EVGA Classified SR-2, 32 GB Memory, EVGA Titan (non-x)

Box 2:
1x Core i7 6700K (not overclocked at the moment) on a Gigabyte Z170X-Gaming 7-EU, 32 GB Memory, SLI 2x EVGA 980 GT SC

It comes out of nowhere...allthough most of the times while fighting in an arena, but it also happened to me while exploring. I can't find a singular cause on both machines on why it happens. It's just...happening...

Strange stuff :( Hope they fix it.

What OS ?

Are all of you guys with this problem using Win 10 ?

It might be OS related, let's gather some info here..

Win7 Ultimate: 14 hours of gameplay and no problems at all..

[DoomUK]

MiNaM said:

let's gather some info here..

Win7 Ultimate. Ran fine for ~15 hours, then started crashing like nobody's business.

There are so many different hardware and software configs being reported on Steam that there doesn't seem to be a common demoninator to any of this, except that Doom crashes without leaving any evidence.