Question - Random Client Freezes Since Latest Windows 10 Patch

[Sum1]

Hey all,

Has anyone else been experiencing unexplained client freezes since the latest Windows 10 patch? Over the last week I've been seeing unexplained client instances freezing really without any warning whatsoever. It happened while I was attending, and then when I went afk for a bit I came back to find that only 2 of my 14 clients were NOT frozen (both of those toons were dead). It doesn't result in the usual MQ2 client or EQ client crashes, but rather just freezes and becomes non-responsive. I have to manually close the instances via the Task Manager in order to load them back into the world.

Hoping someone else is seeing this and it's not just me.

Cheers,
Sum1

 

[eqgeek]

I'm having client freezes but only for 10-30seconds. I figured this was because I had too many EQ clients running on my crappy old machine. It started after my update as well.

 

[vivviv]

i have done a complete windows 10 reinstall yesterday, updated with all patches.

Ran 8 toons today without any issue, very happy!

 

[Sum1]

I'm having client freezes but only for 10-30seconds. I figured this was because I had too many EQ clients running on my crappy old machine. It started after my update as well.

Freezes for me would periodically happen if I was installing or running other stuff, but like you said, it would be only a few seconds and it was back up and running. This is completely different. I can't even select the screens anymore, and I can watch the mana and endurance bars on the toons going up as they effectively just stand there in game. Its so weird. I was even wrong about how many instances I had open... I was running two groups (so 12 versus the 14 I mentioned). That shouldn't even begin to tax my system.

 

[eqgeek]

Mine was the same Sum1... Also one of my EQ windows went black for a good 3-4 minutes. Not sure what hall is hoppening... I was just pushing through! I wonder if the video drivers need to be updated again.

 

[jamie75]

i had issues with windows defender scanning the log file. once i excluded the eq log the problem went away

 

[LurkMcGurk]

I havent had this problem recently but I have had a version of this problem in the past (or this one maybe idk).

From what I remember I had to reinstall EQ to fix it - but that's just a guess. It's been awhile since I actually remember having my screens lock up on me. I've also had two different issues with my screens locking up on me, sometimes just doing Ctrl + Alt + Delete and bringing up Task Manager would fix the locked screens other times I would have to close the game out entirely using Task Manager and reload the client to fix it.


For some reason I kind of remember Isboxer being involved in the problem. Maybe hop into their Discord and ask about it if you're using Isboxer while playing/experiencing this problem.

 

[Sum1]

For some reason I kind of remember Isboxer being involved in the problem. Maybe hop into their Discord and ask about it if you're using Isboxer while playing/experiencing this problem.

I considered that it might be ISBoxer. I use that, as well. Any chance you know the discord chat channel off the top of your head?

 

[LurkMcGurk]

I considered that it might be ISBoxer. I use that, as well. Any chance you know the discord chat channel off the top of your head?

https://discordapp.com/invite/JfDQ8qT

if that doesn't work you can get it off the top right of their website: http://isboxer.com

Just click Discord

 

[eqmule]

Check your logs folder in your EverQuest directory. If you have huge logs that will slow you down and can also result in "hangs"

 

[damgaiel]

if there is huge log file what do you do to fix it?

 

[eqmule]

Delete it, or rename it, if you want it to save it.

 

[Sum1]

Check your logs folder in your EverQuest directory. If you have huge logs that will slow you down and can also result in "hangs"

Logs are off. I only turn them on when I'm using MQ2Events.

 

[Sum1]

What's the correlation between logs on and MQ2Events? My logs are off (on most accounts) and my MQ2Events are triggering just fine. If there's something I don't know, I want to learn, damn it!

Crap, now I can't find where I was told/read that. I was having problems with the stein macro (using mq2events) last year, and at some point someone mentioned that for it to work you had to have logs on, but the wiki doesn't mention it.

 

[Cluelessone]

I am not sure it is related or not but since my last Windows 10 patch, my graphics has been very laggy when alt-tabbing between windows. it takes a long to to switch and it no longer shows a screen shot in the alt-tab menu (just black windows).

I am getting some other minor issues like running up to a non agro mob and just standing there after an hour or so. But I am sure the graphics issue is related to the Windows patch and pretty sure it has something to do with directX and graphics. I did a clean reinstall of my graphics drivers which did not help. I have a very high end system and never had these issues before the last patch.

 

[Sum1]

Back to this thread, I added my log directory (which is actually a RAMDISK assigned as drive F: and hardlinked to my EQ directory) to the windows defender exclusions list in the newest update and I noticed quite a bit of Windows performance improvement and a night and day difference in EQ lag. I think jamie75 is on to something.

Yea, but I did that like a year ago, so it's not my issue. It is also only after the latest windows upgrade. I haven't tried running long-term again, so I'm not sure what the status is. I'll have to check back later on.

 

[Sum1]

On discord, someone suggest turning off the new Focus Alert mode. I did, I saw no to marginal results with it. Still worth check the exclusions list again as Microsoft has changed all that crap just for the sake of change without offering benefit.

What's this focus alert bs?

Also, I verified the exclusion list was still functioning today. It's not that (for me).

 

[Cluelessone]

What's this focus alert bs?

Also, I verified the exclusion list was still functioning today. It's not that (for me).

I think he meant "Focus Assist" as I seen it listed in the list of possible bug fixes too, it didn't help me at all.

 

[Maskoi]

I changed my video settings and it fixed it for me.

I also checked advanced lighting.

From a something almar posted https://www.redguides.com/community...associated-lag?p=331308&viewfull=1#post331308 last year.

 

[Sum1]

Hey all,

Still getting random crashes. When I open up the task manager it shows as some instances of EQ being "not responding" and I can't select the screen. The toons appear to stay in game/zone, though, and I never get the MQ/EQ crash pop-up. It's like the clients become unresponsive in every respect. The toons don't react in game anymore, either, so it's not a visual bug where the toons will still run kissassist in the meantime.

This is really flummoxing me. It only started happening after the previous Windows 10 update. I'll go through and try some of the visual shader stuff, but I'm skeptical that's the cause.

Am I really the only one experiencing this? I'm running 14 or 15 instances on a rig with 32 gig of ram, a speedy CPU, and a 1080 GPU. No idea what the hell would be my limiting factor here.

 

[william12]

was happening to me to right after windows patch. It turns out after windows 10 patch my standard sata ahci controller on motherboard would not start as windows 10 installed the wrong drivers. Once i reinstalled the right drivers it started fine and eq stopped freezing no idea why that would matter but it did.

 

[Sum1]

was happening to me to right after windows patch. It turns out after windows 10 patch my standard sata ahci controller on motherboard would not start as windows 10 installed the wrong drivers. Once i reinstalled the right drivers it started fine and eq stopped freezing no idea why that would matter but it did.

How the hell did you figure that out?

 

[william12]

How the hell did you figure that out?

because i thought windows 10 updated my video drivers again. My other PC has powercolor 480 (never buy from powercolor ever) Whenever i update the drivers to the newest ones i get driver failures when using mq2nav so I just keep ones from 2016 installed. When you check device manager it shows you what devices wont start or dont have drivers installed.

 

[Sum1]

because i thought windows 10 updated my video drivers again. My other PC has powercolor 480 (never buy from powercolor ever) Whenever i update the drivers to the newest ones i get driver failures when using mq2nav so I just keep ones from 2016 installed. When you check device manager it shows you what devices wont start or dont have drivers installed.

For william12 -- thank you!

For anyone else who are finding their clients freezing, I HIGHLY recommend taking the actions william12 described. I've been running (*knock on wood*) my box with 15 characters since I went through the device manager and updated as many drivers as I possibly could. A bunch of weird stuff updated drivers that I didn't even realize had drivers, like the CPUs.

In any case, since making those updates I've had my toons running for two days without a single crash. Before, I could only last maybe 6 hours (max).

 

[growingforvets]

Can anyone help with what exactly I need to update or reinstall to get this window freezing to stop?

I see:

1) Reinstalling Windows (does this mean reformatting and reinstalling completely, or reverting back to an older install)
2) Changing graphic settings
3) Turning off and deleting full /log files

Which one works and how exactly do I need to do it?

 

[growingforvets]

@william12 what all did I need to do in order to update all the drivers. Been clicking through each of the program manager items updated automatically from windows and it hasn't fixed it yet.