TRS22 Freezing and CTD

R

rjbradley

Member
Just purchased a new system:

I7-13700KF
RTX4080
Windows 11, DX12
32gb memory etc.

Loaded up TRS22 with my route, from my old computer where it ran fine, and have been experiencing frequent freezing and/or crashes to desktop. It finally produced an error message for one of the freezing incidents

Screenshot-2023-11-27-191528.png


Hitting continue produced about a dozen of these error popups before they stopped showing up. Trainz still locked up tight.
Anyone know what it means?
 
May be an issue between DX11 and DX12? The errror says DX11. You told to have installed DX12. Did you try the Directx12 Beta setting in the Trainz settings?
 
I did try the Directx12 Beta. I'd call it more of an alpha. First attempt didn't even get to the opening screen. Second attempt was better, but loading was very slow. It started to load a session, but locked up in the process. TRS19 thus far appears to work OK.
Looks like I will have to stay at TRS19 until DX12 is compatible with the program 🤭. Could be a while...
 
DX11 works fine with TRS22 and Plus. They did say (beta) but I agree it's more like alpha at the current time.
 
So after a little more investigation, it turns out that my old system was also DirectX 12 which kinda takes the focus away from DirectX being the issue. Also have experienced a couple of CTDs with TRS19 as well although not as frequent as TRS22.
Thus far the issues have only occurred with my own route. Running other routes have not resulted in the same behaviour. My route ran without problems on the old system so is the new hardware having an issue with something in my route? How would I start to test that hypothesis? Open to any suggestions.
 
Things are looking up! Driver updates were completed, but no joy. Recalled that there is an extended database repair so gave that a try. First time it CTD'd. Second time it wouldn't run. Third time it did run and completed. Ran it for a 4th time for good measure. No new CTDs so far. Hope it stays that way.
 
That's good to hear. The issue could very well have been a corrupted script causing the CTD. When you ran the EDBR, that flushed the cache/libraries directory and that finally removed the corrupted script.
 
Celebrated too soon. I am still getting the same error as originally posted above with Surveyor locking up. Didn't even do anything other than move from one place to another. Left it for a few minutes and it locked up. Don't know where to go with this now. Help Desk?
 
Try updating to the current NVIDIA drivers that came out on 12-4.

If you haven't done this already, turn off PhysX by unchecking the box under the performance tab. Go to Trainz settings on the Launcher then performance tab. You may need to restart, I can't remember.

I recommend running windowed because you may need to check the logs for something. The issue may not even be graphics related, but I want you to test a few more things prior to checking the logs.

While in Trainz, go to the main menu located under the 3-bars in the upper left corner and go to the video settings.

Change your draw distance to 8000 m.
Scale back the trees to high
Textures to normal, etc.
Lower Post Processing, etc.

Try driving.
 
OK so might be making progress on this. I set all of the performance settings to minimum and was still able to crash the sim. Was also able to crash TRS19 with the same route and session though was harder to do. Haven't been able to crash a different route so seems the problem is restricted to the route. Just ran a session with the route layer turned off an no crashes no matter what I tried or for how long even with all the performance settings at maximum. The route layer does have a lot of different items on it. Was thinking to start transferring them to a visible layer one by one and see what the results are. Kinda tedious, but not sure what else to do. Also won't really tell me whether it is a quality problem or quantity problem. I know other people have located problem assets in their routes. Is there a method to follow to figure out what the offending item(s) is/are?
 
Last edited:
The simple answer is don't do it that way. What you have is a corrupted asset somewhere on the route that's causing a crash. The data corruption is such that the asset passes validation but is internally broken. This can be caused by a bad mesh, script, or even a texture. Long story short, it's a painful one to fix. I had a tree once in a forest of trees that would cause a crash if I looked in that particular direction where the tree was located. I didn't find the problematic maple tree until I was converting the trees to a different version so I could move the route to T: ANE from TS12.

To find your problematic asset, use the process of elimination.

Go into Content Manager.
Select the route, right click and choose view dependencies.
Sort the assets alphabetically A--Z to keep them in a methodical order to know where you've left off.

A new window will open up showing the route dependencies.

Select about 100 assets.
Click on Content.
Click on Disable.

Shutdown completely including Launcher.
Start up again and launch the route. Disregard any missing assets.

Does it crash?

Yes... Select another 100 assets.
Shutdown, restart again and try again.

Does it crash?

Rinse and repeat until the last 100 or so assets are selected.
If nothing crashes at this point, the asset is in this last selection.

You now need to go into Content Manger and enable them

Highlight the assets.
Go into Content Menu and choose enable.

Exit and return back in.

Open route and test.

Does it crash?

Unhide a few more, and repeat.

If yes, narrow your selection down further by hiding more from the group you just enabled.

Hint: Murphy plays a lot into this method and we can guaranty that the last asset you disable or enable will be the faulty one.

With your faulty asset in hand, right-click and check for updates if any.
If it comes from the DLS, delete it and then download it again.
If you got it from a third-party site. Download it again, or install it again from your CDP file.
 
Well after a month of testing and re-testing, still no solution to the CTD problem. Even built-in routes will crash if played long enough, although the CTD is very random. Sometimes it doesn't happen, but other times it can happen in as little as 30 seconds, though mostly between 5 minutes and 30 minutes. Norton 360 is turned off, Defender is disabled. Have reloaded clean versions 3 times now. Dozens of database repairs, some of which will also CTD. Had one strange incident where the MyTrainz account showed that the product wasn't authorized under my account. Clicked on the button to go to my account and the computer crashed entirely.
Occasionally it doesn't fully crash. The graphics will lock up, but the sim is still running in the background. I can hear trains running past my location.
Can't think of anything else to try. Was planning to take it in to the shop that supplied it to see if there may be a hardware problem with it. I purchased it at the end of November.
TRS 19 and 22 run fine on my old system with WIndows 10 and 1660 GPU.
 
rjbradley said:
Well after a month of testing and re-testing, still no solution to the CTD problem. Even built-in routes will crash if played long enough, although the CTD is very random. Sometimes it doesn't happen, but other times it can happen in as little as 30 seconds, though mostly between 5 minutes and 30 minutes. Norton 360 is turned off, Defender is disabled. Have reloaded clean versions 3 times now. Dozens of database repairs, some of which will also CTD. Had one strange incident where the MyTrainz account showed that the product wasn't authorized under my account. Clicked on the button to go to my account and the computer crashed entirely.
Occasionally it doesn't fully crash. The graphics will lock up, but the sim is still running in the background. I can hear trains running past my location.
Can't think of anything else to try. Was planning to take it in to the shop that supplied it to see if there may be a hardware problem with it. I purchased it at the end of November.
TRS 19 and 22 run fine on my old system with WIndows 10 and 1660 GPU.
Click to expand...
Where did you get the game from? Sometimes where you downloaded or bought the game from can be the root cause of everything.. disabling your windows defender is not the smartest thing to do, as a whole list of things can happen. A virus scan from a professional computer repair place is something you should do once a month or every 3 months as regular maintenance of the pc. Plus windows 10 is now obsolete as the end of service life happened in December 2023.. A upgrade to windows 11 is what is needed. Since you just built the new pc after you do something like that it is best to buy new parts and operating system because using old parts will cause a heap of problems down the road like your having now. Most computer parts last 1 to 3 years for shelf life. As parts fail replace them don't keep using them like you are now.. been in the computer industry for 20 years now and seen problems like this all the time..
 
Game was downloaded from N3V so is fine. PC is completely new from a reputable vendor here and came complete with Windows 11. No mixing of parts. WIndows Defender is disabled because I have Norton 360. Only disabled Norton to test if it was responsible for the CTDs in Trainz. It is not so Norton is enabled.
 
I worked as a hardware technician for a decade before later moving on to MIS and IT before I retired in 2012 and saw a lot of this firsthand. You've gone beyond the software and it's time to look at the hardware. Constant crashes like this are indicative of a hardware problem since you have ruled out OS and antivirus, and the fact that many of us run the program for hours at a time without hard crashes and the usual reinstall hasn't solved the problem unless you downloaded a route or other content that has some corrupted data, then that may be the problem. There is a Michigan area route that will kill the program due to something odd with it. If you haven't downloaded that one, then this isn't the problem and I would focus on the hardware.

Since this is a new machine, have your PC vendor take a look at it - hopefully it's still under warranty.

The issues are numerous but here's some to consider:

* 1) Faulty memory or poorly seated DIMMs.

2) A poorly seated CPU
3) A marginal hard drive/SSD
* 4) Heat due to poor cooling.
5) A faulty or flaky video card.
* 6) An under-powered power supply for the hardware, or one that's marginally okay.

Even with a brand-new system, any of these things are possible.

* Out of this possibilities-list, I'm leaning towards these items with more weight going towards the power supply and maybe the heat. Trainz really pushes the hardware and in particular the video card. If the power supply is inadequate for the system, this can cause crashes when the video card is drawing the most power.

I had a brand-new machine from a local builder that put the RAM in and had one DIMM that was not seated fully. It was enough to post correctly, but still a poor connection.

I have experienced this issue ages ago with a flaky power supply. The system was okay until I was running Trainz when I would get memory errors and crashes. After lots of troubleshooting and parts replacement, including replacing the RAM, the last thing to go before the motherboard was the power supply and that fixed the problem. Vendors too will put in a power supply that's just enough to meet the minimum specs for the hardware but not enough to run the machine under load. My brother recently experienced that with his PC. He does 3d modeling and graphics design work and ended up replacing the power supply with a larger one to better handle the video card that came with his PC. Since then, he hasn't had any crashes to the desktop or black screens and reboots.

Heat can choke and eventually kill RAM and CPUs, as well as other components including the video card as it causes them to work harder under stress. Usually, a CPU and video card will throttle down, but RAM can get flaky and drop bits especially if it's marginal to begin with. I've seen this both as a hardware tech and with an old PC I had.
 
JCitron said:
I worked as a hardware technician for a decade before later moving on to MIS and IT before I retired in 2012 and saw a lot of this firsthand. You've gone beyond the software and it's time to look at the hardware. Constant crashes like this are indicative of a hardware problem since you have ruled out OS and antivirus, and the fact that many of us run the program for hours at a time without hard crashes and the usual reinstall hasn't solved the problem unless you downloaded a route or other content that has some corrupted data, then that may be the problem. There is a Michigan area route that will kill the program due to something odd with it. If you haven't downloaded that one, then this isn't the problem and I would focus on the hardware.

Since this is a new machine, have your PC vendor take a look at it - hopefully it's still under warranty.

The issues are numerous but here's some to consider:

* 1) Faulty memory or poorly seated DIMMs.

2) A poorly seated CPU
3) A marginal hard drive/SSD
* 4) Heat due to poor cooling.
5) A faulty or flaky video card.
* 6) An under-powered power supply for the hardware, or one that's marginally okay.

Even with a brand-new system, any of these things are possible.

* Out of this possibilities-list, I'm leaning towards these items with more weight going towards the power supply and maybe the heat. Trainz really pushes the hardware and in particular the video card. If the power supply is inadequate for the system, this can cause crashes when the video card is drawing the most power.

I had a brand-new machine from a local builder that put the RAM in and had one DIMM that was not seated fully. It was enough to post correctly, but still a poor connection.

I have experienced this issue ages ago with a flaky power supply. The system was okay until I was running Trainz when I would get memory errors and crashes. After lots of troubleshooting and parts replacement, including replacing the RAM, the last thing to go before the motherboard was the power supply and that fixed the problem. Vendors too will put in a power supply that's just enough to meet the minimum specs for the hardware but not enough to run the machine under load. My brother recently experienced that with his PC. He does 3d modeling and graphics design work and ended up replacing the power supply with a larger one to better handle the video card that came with his PC. Since then, he hasn't had any crashes to the desktop or black screens and reboots.

Heat can choke and eventually kill RAM and CPUs, as well as other components including the video card as it causes them to work harder under stress. Usually, a CPU and video card will throttle down, but RAM can get flaky and drop bits especially if it's marginal to begin with. I've seen this both as a hardware tech and with an old PC I had.
Click to expand...
My Mac freezes quite often during extended route building. It is so easy to forget frequent saving, but sometimes when I restart, it does allow me to keep the changes I thought I had made. I have never had to use Force Quit so often as with my newest version of Trainz.
 
rhban said:
My Mac freezes quite often during extended route building. It is so easy to forget frequent saving, but sometimes when I restart, it does allow me to keep the changes I thought I had made. I have never had to use Force Quit so often as with my newest version of Trainz.
Click to expand...
The newer versions of Trainz are more robust, but I never keep the changes made and go back to my last save because sometimes the route ends up corrupted and everything is lost. I learned that the hard way. I don't know much about the new Mac hardware since I haven't used the platform, but you are probably running out of memory and resources causing the program to crash.
 
Solved. Took the new PC into the shop and they confirmed the CTDs. The tech said that the BIOS was detecting an erroneous memory fault which was causing the issues. They updated the firmware and were able to get rid of the erroneous fault. Subsequent stress tests were fine. Just ran my first successful session without any issues. Thankfully nothing was lost in the process. Now back to route building. Thanks to all for suggestions and advice.
 
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