TS12 Surveyor Crash

[steamboateng]

In the past few day I have been experiencing shutdowns in Surveyor, where Windows closes the program due to a fault.
This is a new situation, I've been running TS12 for years without too much trouble. OS is WIN7-64, with a I7 CPU and a NVidia GTX 570 GPU.
The fault info is as follows:
Fault module name- nvd3dum.dll
Version- 9.18.13.1106
Exception Code- c 0000005
Exception offset- 0068b8d7

This is a video card forced shutdown.
The fault is intemittent; some times running Surveyor for hours without a problem.
Anyone got any ideas?

 

[JCitron]

Hi Mike,

A video card shutdown is usually caused by a driver problem, or a hardware problem (hopefully not). In the case of TS12 a bad asset can cause this. Try switching to Open/GL and/or Directx and see and see if that solves your problem. If you want more information on the specific error, go to the Event Viewer.

The fastest way to get to the EV is to right-click on Computer (My Computer in XP), and choose Manage from the contextual menu. Once there choose Application log and look for a red !. Clicking on that item will open a window in the lower portion. Highlight the text, press CTRL+C to copy. (Choosing copy does not copy what you want), and then paste into Google or Bing and search. You'll see numerous references which you can then investigate. You can also find other information in there as well such as system information updates, and or perhaps other problems you've been unaware of but need attention.

John

 

[steamboateng]

I think I found the issue; I had about 20 Auran 'speed trees' v.3.2 open in Surveyor within a 20 m square.........as a result the gpu got hit with about half a gig of graphics to manage in that small area. GPU was probably temporarily overloaded and shut down the program.
I have since upgraded NVidia drivers, and dumped the Auran trees. No issues yet, but I'm watching.....
I have WIN7-64 Home; followed your directions but can't find the 'application log'. I'd like to know specifically the issue which caused the dump, for future reference.
Thanks for the reply
Mike

 

[JCitron]

I think I found the issue; I had about 20 Auran 'speed trees' v.3.2 open in Surveyor within a 20 m square.........as a result the gpu got hit with about half a gig of graphics to manage in that small area. GPU was probably temporarily overloaded and shut down the program.
I have since upgraded NVidia drivers, and dumped the Auran trees. No issues yet, but I'm watching.....
I have WIN7-64 Home; followed your directions but can't find the 'application log'. I'd like to know specifically the issue which caused the dump, for future reference.
Thanks for the reply
Mike

The Speed Trees may not be the issue but at least you've got it fixed. This definitely sounds like something is corrupt more than anything.

There is no "log" in the sense of a .log file. Right-click on Computer. Choose Manage. Look on right side for Event Viewer. Choose Windows Logs (I forgot this step). Choose Application. You'll see a bunch of stuff ranging from messages - blue !, warnings - yellow !, and red ! for errors.

Home or other versions shouldn't be a problem. The alternative path is to go to Admin Tools on the control panel if you need to. This is the same whether you are running XP, Vista, Win 7 or even Win 8.x.

John

 

[steamboateng]

error c 0000005 is a memory access violation. 3rd party software not properly addressing access to memory can cause this. Remember the Creative Sound card issue. Could it be this?
But it's sooooo erratic, apparently synched with high memory usage.............a ton of Auran's 'Speed Trees'!

 

[JCitron]

This could very well have something to do with the SB thing as that does tend to eat up the resources and kill the machine. I'd remove that for starters. The C00000005 error is a memory violation as I've researched in the past myself. A badly textured asset, or even a faulty script could cause this. Speed Trees? Surely if something is corrupted. There are a couple of pine trees that don't show up. I can't remember which ones though as I haven't used them for years, but the SB thing is a good culprit to nail first. Besides, it's outside the program and easier to hit with a stick.

Loading a ton of Speed Trees can cause hiccups, as we've seen in the past, and if your machine is already 'edged-out' by the SB thing, this can cause a dump to the desktop. In the old Win 98 days, you would've had a GPF or that awful blue-screen error where you had to press space bar then prayed the system would come back. XP, and up, which are based on Windows NT usually don't crash completely unless there are other more serious problems such as the ones I had recently with flaky memory DIMMs.

John

 

[steamboateng]

Well, the speed tree thing was really an accident. The trees weren't showing up in Surveyor for some reason. I kept adding them to see if any showed up. Nope! So, I saved and shut down Trainz.
Restarted this a.m. and KABOOM! I got speed trees up the ying yang, popping up all over! Trainz dumped almost immediately to the desktop; but it shut down via error in the NVidia 570 GTX gpu.; the fault module read out as nvd3dum.dll; an NVidia .dll!
Is the c 0000005 error on the system ram or the NVidea ram?

 

[BobCass]

I too have somewhat of the same problem..If I dump my Ram it seems to help..I do this particularly if Surveyor is stuttering a little too much..also it is a good idea to switch from Direct X vs Open GL once in awhile..

 

[JCitron]

Well, the speed tree thing was really an accident. The trees weren't showing up in Surveyor for some reason. I kept adding them to see if any showed up. Nope! So, I saved and shut down Trainz.
Restarted this a.m. and KABOOM! I got speed trees up the ying yang, popping up all over! Trainz dumped almost immediately to the desktop; but it shut down via error in the NVidia 570 GTX gpu.; the fault module read out as nvd3dum.dll; an NVidia .dll!
Is the c 0000005 error on the system ram or the NVidea ram?

C000005 is a memory location that refers to your video card. It's in the C000 - C7FF address space. How do I remember this? It goes back to my old job as a hardware technician when I had to test video circuits on early PCs and later set jumpers on video cards GASP!!!

Anyway, yes, this is a pool of your system memory, but I doubt it's a RAM fault. If you want to be sure, though, use memtest86 to run the test. You can throw the special executable on a thumbdrive or burn an ISO to a CD/DVD and let it run from there.

The problem you saw with things disappearing is caused by older assets and Speed Trees. When the program senses a load, it will stop drawing objects. This causes blank baseboards with only textures and missing trees, buildings, and other objects. The older assets that cause this are usually the older flip board aka billboard type trees, some splines, and many older buildings. When this occurs, which isn't too often for me anymore, I exit from Surveyor and come back in and remove more recently added content. It usually is something dating back to the old pre-TRS2004 era or thereabouts that time period. If it happens again, I'll exit the program completely, reboot, and start again.

John

 

[clam1952]

Definitely at least three types of speedTree that can cause issues, check jetlog.txt they should show up as having shader errors or failing to load branches and similar stuff, kuid's are shown. If you have 500 of that tree on the route you get 500 errors, should be enough to upset many PC's

 

[steamboateng]

Well, I guess we got to the bottom of that particular issue. Thanks much for your help, John. I owe you a favor now.....next time you need your ship fixed, give me a call!