Crashing a lot...very frustrating

Oh I forgot...all of these crashes, for me at least, just started during PoP.
I probably crashed prior, but it was so infrequent that I didn't pay attention to it.

Please see my message in "launch problems direct x" topic nearby.
The game probably needs more resources since PoP.

I've seen the thread already. Try the out and install the DirectX package in this thread if you like. I had exactly this error message and it's now fixed.

I had to stop my little investigation concerning 'zone crash' and memory leak/memory management mishandle. There is nothing special to do on the users side. EQ2 rans on its limit as far as the memory management is concerned when the so called mem leak appears. Seems sometimes to use more virtual memory as it is allowed, maybe due to memory leak or mismanagement. In my case above 4GB and then a crash without failure feedback follows. I saw Win10 dynamically raises virtual memory from 2.3 up to 4GB. But the boarder line is 4GB. It works good that way. If i tune this boarder line up it wouldn't fix the EQ2 problem, only delay the time til it crashes. I don't know how far the problem has been resolved by the EQ2 teams in the past. It is possible on developers side to raise the virtual memory usage up to 4-5GB, that needs some code rewrite and more modern compiling. That gives a 10-20% headroom. But the main problem isn't solved.
Since we can use 64bit pcs, i hope so, most of the users with medium graphic settings can be happy without zone crashes. But if you turn up the visual quality than after a while when zoning, boom.

Nevertheless, i would recommend not to tweak your Windows. Don't use memory tools who say they speed and clean things up. Because they doesn't nail the EQ2 problem in either way.
Use a 64bit Windows 8.1 better Win 10. At least 4GB of RAM. Dual Core CPU and a dedicated graphics card of at least lower mid range e.g. NVidia 1050. EQ2 make use of excessive shaders that hurt cheap low end cards and your eyes because of the low fps.
And if your game crash, lower graphic settings. Try to lower texture resolutions at first, to avoid the 4GB outofmemory 'zoning' crash. Merry christmas

win 7 is fine, 8/8.1 is a terrible sys hog.

we've been running the game between 3 systems,
2x mid-high range raedon gpu's with 1gb mem
2x 8-16gb ram(one desktop has more)
2x win 7(gaming desktops)
win10(surface pro)
all their have proper direct x
fresh installs on one of the desktops and the surface pro

guess what? the mem leak still piles up after multiple zonings. some issues a player cannot fix and are on their end... like the looking for the G drive, which is also a known issue.

The G:\ drive is a virtual space the game uses to manage its own file. Don't care about it.
Windows 8.1 & 10 has a much better memory management than the older Wins. Win10 does a good job out of the box in terms of compatibility. There might be other factors that can disturb.
Yes, to say it in other words, the crash problem itself don't depend mukch on the computers or the variety of the PCs. Only using a 32bit Windows should be strong avoided.

I can reproduce an out of memory crash while staying in Qeynos district and have the in game Daybreak market place window open, the memory and virtual memory fills up then. Stay there, do nothing, click here and there through the market place items. Takes 20-60 min until it quits with different error messages, also DirectX failure which doesn't fit, and is a bit misleading in case of an out of memory. Don't know what's up with the different failure messages. Zoning is exact the thing to speed up crashes. Don't matter which zones.

The game uses several thread workers to clear up unnecessary things to free up memory. The main CPU load of EQ2 is only about freeing up things. I call this unefficient. This high load brings every CPU core to 100% load, no matter what machine. It can cause stutterings, more over time, before the game will crash you'll notice these stutterings. In case of a mem leak ... i call the procedure EQ2 unloads stuff in memory uneffcient and not effective enough over time.

so you finally changed your mind on that?

I used to have that error crash a lot and the only it has worked me for so far is to cripple my graphics settings to the lowest possible settings for PQs.

In profit UI, a simple click on performance does it and then you can ramp it back up once you are out.

I have not had a single error since I have done that. It seems to be a memory leak on client side.

No, no. Let me quickly summarize it again.

If EQ2 crash nearly every hour and there is the G:\.......DirectX9RenderDevice failure message then it is worth to install the DirectX package i mentioned some earlier HERE. This one: DirectX Redist v9.29.74
This can add some (older) files, which can EQ2 handle better. I used Win10 with this and it is a huge improvement.

Does EQ2 crash at the end of a playing day, or while often zoning, mostly by using high/max graphic settings then you can only lower your graphic settings. Not to fix this problem, but to delay/prolong the time of the EQ2 crash. There can be various failure messages or no message like a simple quit.
This is in most cases a virtual memory problem, buffer overflow, mem leak, ... EQ2 has with it self. Check your EQ2 game folder for a file called outofmemory.txt, look at the 'change date' when the file was last changed to be sure.

But that's not all. The ingame DayBreak market crash while poke around there (also out of virtual memory, not avoidable), ... i will find some more for you.

If i play with max settings i got at least one crash after 4-6 hours (outofmemory). But it is an improvement, in my case. Hahaha.

And when i mentioned 'out of memory' i mean the Windows virtual memory dedicated for EQ2. Windows 64bit handles it the right way. EQ2 doesn't, so crashes are not avoidable. The real memory size in your computer does not matter, that's the advantage over virtual memory.

Good one, that's what i need.

I don't think that this summary is complete.

I play EQ2 for four years every day a couple of hours and I have had only a few crashes so far. I have never seen message about G: drive. I can say that EQ2 is very stable on my PC. Graphic libraries used by EQ2 seems to be working fine on my PC.
I have a laptop as well (fresh clean Windows 10 installation, well it was fresh about 1 year ago anyway). EQ2 is stable on laptop too although I don't play on laptop very often. It proves that old software is not necessary as long as hardware/windows is up to date.

P.S. I don't expect that DBG is going to modify graphical libraries. Do they even own it and have right to do so?

P.P.S. Yesterday I had a free day and I played like 10 hours switching between Live and FG servers. If there was a memory leak, it didn't affect my PC much. EQ2 was running fine after 10 hours of play time.

Got the error under discussion many times today, very frustrating. Running a high end machine with plenty of memory ... sigh.
Where's the dev's? Have they all moved on?

Well it's like Ihsan said...I slowed the frequency of the crashes way down, but they still happen.
I can usually get thru a PQ now with out a crash.
Gave my comp a little more VM, moved that giant char log out of there, and toned down my settings.
If there was a drop down box I pretty much clicked the second best option.
Unchecked: Reflections, shadows, triple buffer, water & atmosphere, most lighting effects, and a couple other things.
Game plays as smooth as it did before (except PQs...grrrr) just not as many crashes.

On a side note...I play in windowed mode and when I log in my FPS is usually low. I have to Alt+Enter to full screen and then back to windowed mode and when I do this it doubles or triples my FPS almost every time.

If you have high end machine, check your display adapters in Device Manager. If you have build-in display adapter enabled, see if you can disable it in BIOS/UEFI. I think you shouldn't have more than 1 display adapter in there under normal circumstances. Driver for your adapter should be updated to the latest version and it should be Windows 10 64-bit if there's a choice available. Check the site of the display adapter manufacturer.

In case you have two monitors attached to your system try to disable second and see if it helps.
If you have background programs like Torrent, try to disable those temporarily too.
Check the stability of your Internet Connection. Execute "ping 8.8.8.8 -t" from command prompt for 15 minutes and see that you do not have too many missing network packets in the ping report (a couple of missing packets should not be a problem, but if you lost dozens then you have a problem).

I don't think that developers are going to check the setup of your PC/laptop to find out what exactly is wrong. There are many systems out there: old, non-standard, broken, misconfigured, incompatible, corrupted, not-updated and so on.

Ive had the display issue for years with many machines.
It's just something Ive been used to for a long while, its not even an annoyance. Takes 5 seconds and its fixed.

But anyways...
Nope, 1 display adapter.
Driver is updated every 2-3 weeks...latest one installed atm.
Did unplug second monitor...no effect.
Nothing running in background, cept maybe antivirus.
Zero packets loss.

Thanks for the info tho.

Dear diary, my novel for today is :

I missunderstood this line in a hurry.
Yes and no. Their exist various problems. What i want to say is... to say every crash is a mem leak doesn't fit. Mem leak is wide spread and a bad word. Is an out of virtual memory problem, in case of EQ2 where the dedicated virtual memory buffer overflows, a mem leak? There is a problem with EQ2s virtual memory for sure and you are right, it has some kind of this problem. It uses tricks, not fixes.

Some people here say the new PoP needs more resources. Hm, maybe. The cave of Thalumbra near the gates of Maldura is the worth experience i had, it has many lightning and moving stuff. Every expac got a little bigger in its file size but i see that devs endeavor to find a performance balance. Zones are so different that it might you must lower or can even raise your graphic settings.

Iam a little (not even junior) software and database dev and programmer at the moment, currently again in a long lasting learning phase, to build business apps with Java Enterprise frameworks for various OS like Windows, Oracle Unix,... and some Windows C# apps, maybe Azure cloud stuff. But OS in general don't interest me much, i solve business problems. In the past i was a full stack web devoloper and system solution developer with economic background. My main oppinion is positive: all can be fixed. But business mostly leads you in other ways when cost play a role. Therefor i can understand when some apps don't get a better rewrite, it can cost to much. For a single dev often to much work that never ends. To make it new is a better economic way, ... make a new product... like Everquest Next (wrong topic, hrrr). It's all about business, right?

I returned in november to EQ2 and remembered that i used profitUI with performance settings all the time in the past around 2006-2008. Without crashes. It's like playing EQ1 with its square old school graphic. I did that for 2 years. But the game expereance is another when good looking high graphic is activated, it's more immersive.
I used some tricks on a dual core CPU (a kind of AMD 64bit CPU) at that time with Windows XP. I pushed EQ2 on the second CPU core while Windows core threads and other apps like webbrowser and ACT was on CPU core 1. Because EQ2 is a single CPU core but multithreading app. On 32bit Windows the virtual memory for it is approximately 2GB, on 64bit OS it is about 4GB boundary. That don't work anymore that good nowadays. Especially Win 8 & 10 manage it in its own way, which is better for the user in most other cases.

I made it very easy to watch how EQ2 runs under Windows 10. Wanted to sort some EQ2 problems by its behaviour. I simply used process explorer from Mark Russinovich and some of his book knowledge. I don't watched deeper. I maybe wrong with some thematics. I only wanna play that EQ2 thing, not administrate it.

Performance decrease while in window mode appears especially with EQ2. Because EQ2 stresses the CPU (100% load) and GPU so much that there is not much headroom for Windows to draw window environment. A more powerful/higher class CPU with more cache gives more performance. Alternative is full screen mode.
Same with Dual or Tripple Monitor setups. EQ2 steals CPU performance needed to have a fluent multi monitor experience. Sad. Give EQ2 CPU time, it eats it up. There is never enough, like dogs and sausages. It wrote it earlier. It is caused by the processes to free up memory.

DBG own the whole game code, they use various so called frameworks, wrote by their (SOE in the past) own and develop it further also for newer games. They can do all and fix all, so to speak.
DirectX is another topic and is only a interface from the sight of EQ2. EQ2 has to match that interface. No one stated which DirectX version we should use version. DirectX 9c for sure, but which one of this type? Because EQ2 is so old their could be made some changes for necessary things and so called dependencies. If so, these necessary infos has to be on the FAQ on the main website. Are there other dependencies?

I play with 2 PCs. The on with "performance" settings has nearly no EQ2 crashes. The one with "high" graphics settings has mutiple times a day. It don't depend on "modern" PCs much. More power gives more performance and fps, the crashes exists.
But anyways tipps are welcome.

Well I just checked all my Device Drivers and they are all up to date. I have 32GB of RAM on a 64-bit operating system. My tower is an Alienware Area 51 fully blown system (Dueling NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980s) and I"m STILL crashing many MANY times while trying to play No idea what is wrong ... it's saying it's a DirectX error. I have the latest DirectX 12 running and not sure what happens if I install the DirectX 9 version recommended in this thread. Does that replace version 12 for everything?

I've been a paying member of EQII since beta years ago, and very sad that I can't play now. Where's the Dev's supporting the paying customer? Why can't I get any help here? Are they actually forcing me to find another game because EQII just won't run anymore? Do they want their paying customers to leave. I just don't get it ... sigh, so sad.

Any recommendations on another game to play? I don't like 1st person shooters ... would like to find another MMO game LIKE EQII but that doesn't freaking crash EVERY time I try to play. Suggestions?

Look.. NEW EXPENSIVE STUFF DON"T MATTER.
THis was built, and designed for 14 year old machines.
Deal with it.
You can go ahead and spend $14,000,234 on a 32,000 Xeon Matrix system, and EQ2 performance wont change.
Deal with it.

the game won't run without 9c, and yes you can have both.

What I find very interesting is that I didn't have any problem playing until this last release ... so IF it's because I'm not on DirectX 9 ... well, why is it just now a problem?

you answered your own question.

Yes and should you. Only the die hards left now who will continue to play even if the next expac is nothing but one zone with a giant turd in the middle.