Fatal Error upon Zoning into Tranquil Sea

This fatal error is caused by the client trying to create terrain textures but not being able to do so because of unavailable system resources. This game used to run fine on 1 or 2GB RAM systems, but I think I understand the extent of the problem.

It is pretty clear what has happened here. September 23rd optimisation patch upped memory usage of the client to improve graphical performance in general.

Problem is, it seems to have negatively affected users who have a low amount of RAM / Virtual Memory which is why we are seeing a lot of C0000005 exception errors where the client is trying to read/write to memory which it does not have access to. This has made more prominent with the introduction of these huge new zones which probably require massive amounts of memory to run efficiently. If the client cant get those resources it will either crash with an error, or just shut down completely.

Of course, the more memory you have available, the less likely you are to see these crashes.

In any event outofmemory.txt files are always generated in any of these instances.

I should also add that the advice given by SoE on their support pages is completely useless, upping virtual memory / paging file AND reducing texture resolutions do nothing to remedy this situation. It still crashes with out of memory errors.

Well ive done my bit trying to trace the problem, and provided a few clues for any devs who may be looking. Every clue points to memory usage, and thats for SoE to fix.

Being one having the problem, I appreciate your efforts DAig and others trying to offer up tidbits of help since no one else will. I run 64bit, have 4G ram and my virt mem meets what they've suggested as I watch it while running eq2....it just tanks when adding character to a new zone while running pure minimums. The dummy fix for me is to upgrade my vid card then ram but honestly, my system isn't that poor and this shouldn't have to be the fix. This had red flags all through beta and is a shame it's still a problem after going live. Very disappointing.

I wish it were as simple as just adding more RAM - but that isn't the case. I run with 32GB of RAM and I have the problem - so it isn't a quantity of memory issue. For me it happens pretty much every time I zone from the Commonlands Guild Hall to Tranquil Sea. It simply locks up during this process, the hard drive is churning away and eventually it crashes. If I look in TaskMgr during the lock up period the Everquest2.exe process is using just shy of 4GB of memory.

So I suspect that there is a memory leak going on as the more time I spend in the guild hall - even if I do nothing else - the more likely the problem is to present with a crash. Just running around without ever leaving that zone is enough to cause the crash. I can be in other zones without an issue.. in fact, I have only crashed either zoning (every time to Tranquil Sea from guild hall) or running around the guild hall. I'm fine in instances, overland zones (once I get there),etc.

SOE really needs to take the time to track this down. For me it didn't start with the optimization patch, it started with the expac patch.

The problem is user mode virtual address space, the Everquest2.exe is trying to use more than it actually has access to.

In 32-bit Windows, the total available virtual address space is 2^32 bytes (4 gigabytes). Usually the lower 2 gigabytes are used for user space, and the upper 2 gigabytes are used for system space.

It would appear that (on my 3GB, 32 bit Vista Machine anyway) this 2GB of user virtual address space is no longer sufficient for the client to operate normally .. which is unusual for a 32 bit application.

How do I know this? I used the BCDEdit command to allocate a further 512MB of user address space to the system. Once I did this I was able to zone to Tranquil Sea many times with no problems. I could fly around Phantom Sea without randomly crashing too. It also stopped my random outofmemory related crashes.

I probably wouldn't recommend this workaround for systems with less than 3GB as it could lead to system instability. Also use this workaround at your own risk, I accept no responsibility for any damage you cause to your boot files / OS.

To try this workaround for Windows Vista and above ...

1. Run Command Prompt (Run as Admin or you will get Access is Denied message)

2. Type: bcdedit /set IncreaseUserVA 2560
To confirm the change has been made you can type bcdedit againand you should see your increaseuserVA entry.

3. Reboot your PC.

This should solve your Zoning to Tranquil Sea related crashes, or if your client is shutting down randomly due to memory.

It solved mine. (System Specs: 3GB RAM, Windows Vista 32 Bit, 512MB ATI 4670 HD ULTIMATE, Core 2 Duo 1.86ghz)

If you find this workaround does not fix your problem you can revert the changes with:

bcdedit /deletevalue IncreaseUserVA

This is only a workaround, it is not a fix. It is up to SoE to fix this issue as it was caused by recent changes to the game, not changes to peoples PCs.

DAig, this worked for me!!! I ran around the usual trouble zones (including Qeynos and Freeport which were causing me to crash for many months now) and never had a problem. Woohoo! Thanks!

I'm not running a 32-bit operating system, so I'm not sure if the DAig posting even pertains to 64-bit users. Our systems should be able to natively use more memory - though it is a 32-bit app, so hard to say.

Glad to see people are finding things that help them out - just wish SOE was that attentive.

I refuse to let this drop off the main page and into oblivion. It is still happening and the silence from SOE is deafening. It happened to me again last night just flying around Tranquil Sea. Screen locks solid, hard drive churns, the CPU for the Everquest2.exe process shows zero cycles and the memory usage is 3.6+ GB. It has to be something to do with the amount of memory being used as it is always a lot higher than normal when the event occurs.

I have to use Task Manager to manually kill the process or it will sit there for 5 minutes before crashing to desktop without a message of any kind.

If people are still having the problem, please keep posting about it. We need to not just accept this as the new status quo.

That memory Problem is far older than AoM.

People using a 32 bit OS with more that 2 Gig ram installed often ran into the adressviolation crashes.

Me as well while zoning into our T1 GH after I did some serious deco work.

I had 4 gig and win xp 32 bit on a c2d e8400. After upgrading to win 7 64 Bit the crashes were gone completely. Never had this issues again.

After booting up win xp again (still installed onto another disk) and forgetting to reboot to win 7, I had the same crashes again, coudln't log in when char was in our GH, after zoning 2-3 times crashing etc.

To mention, the EQ2 installation folder is the same for both win XP and Win 7, no extra installation.

@Wurm

did you fix your problem?

Else, ever tried not running SLI?

I've got a similar system, Core I5 3570K, Asrock fatal1ty z77 Pro, 8 gig ram, GF 760 (not sli) and have zero problems.
Okok given the usual problems regarding EQ2 freezes when world events are up. Right now Frostfell.

A friend of mine has a C2D E8400, 8 gig Ram, a GF 9600 GT running win 7 64 bit. On Beta he could play well in PS/TS, but right now, for example yesterday, he could play all day long in TS/PS, zoning in dungeons and back, then when our raid started in molten pools, he couldn't zone with us. That started at 8 pm our time. He couldn't log in any level 100 toon and zone to us, all got stuck and thrown back to char select. 2 hours later he could zone fine again. Needles to say, he was quite frustrated. Missing all of the fun.

That happened to him as well last weeks tuesday. He could log in toons that were located in our GH without any problems.
He opened an appeal for that as well.

@Anghammarad

While it may be a similar problem, it isn't the same. I say that for a number of reasons.

1. You say that swapping to Windows 7 64-bit solved the problem for you. I'm running Windows 7 64-bit and have never run any other OS on this machine. The problem happens for me daily.

2. You say your old machine had 2GB of RAM. That amount of RAM to run anything these days would be way too low. I run with 32 GB of RAM in my machine, so it isn't a lack of memory issue.

3. You say you were crashing in a T1 guild hall. I crash in more places than the GH - and most often zoning into Tranquil Sea regardless of the starting point.

4, The 'forever' crashes tended to be drop to desktop, black screen or lockups. The current ones sometimes mirror that but just as often report a DirectX or streaming Texture error.

My machine was built brand new this year with current components and way overbuilt for running EQ2. It did, in fact, run EQ2 flawlessly until the AoM release.

I think it is important that we not muddy the waters by dismissing this as something that has been around for a long time so therefore isn't fixable. Everything points to this being a new error (a lot of new people are having) that shares similarities to the old one.

On a side note - when a 'healthy' instance of Everquest2.Exe is running - it used between 1.4 and 1.8 GB of memory on my system. Zoning tends to flush that and it drops down and slowly builds back up. When I have this problem my process memory is pegged around 3.4 to 3.8 GB and the CPU cycles drop to zero. (When it hard locks without crashing). This stinks of a memory leak or clean-up process not running.

Yes, it does look like this, but why are only some systems affected and not all?

Hardware I used fine with EQ2:

Intel Core 2 Duo E4300, E4400, E8400, Core i5 3570k
Ram: 4 gig to 8 gig
GFX Cards: Always GForce 8600GT, 9600GT, 560 GTX, 560 Ti, 760 GTX

Windows XP 32 bit, until I had these CTD issues regarding the Ram issue. And I wasn't to rip out 2 gig of ram just to have EQ2 slugging along.
Windows 7 afterwards. First with 4 gig, later on the new board with 8 gig. On other machines 6 gig or 8 gig. No CTDs due to that memory bug, 32 Bit systems got (remember 2 gig in 32 bit, "everythings fine"; 4 gig in 32 bit (yes I know 3.25) BaM crash).

The drivers are always up to date. I had to do a rollback once due to gfx glitches on some locations. But that was after right ToV was released.

And yes, when there is a memory leak, or garbage collection error in the software, It usually rises up to max CPU usage, then goes down to 0. Usually you can then see another task running wild, the one writing your memory dump.

My healthy instances of EQ2 go up to 2,4 gig ram, and sometimes the same as paged ram. Zoning then takes quite long. But I can still play.

And I never said anywhere my old machine had 2 gig. =P but I mentioned that in this post as well.

So with all these specs I was able to run EQ2 fine.

Wurm has kind of a similar system than I have right now, his CPU is an i7 instead of an i5, I think he has more ram as well (16 gig) and 2 gf 760 in SLI.

What I would try, even if I don't like to strip good system build is, going down to one gf760 for testing. Not that his problems come from SLI issues.

My current System specs can be found in my signature link to sysprofile.

Ok - I mis-read that you were previously running with 2gig - my bad. ;p

In any event - I'm current on drivers as well. I only have one video card on my system, so it isn't a SLI issue for me. I *am* running an i7 processor - but I would hope that isn't part of the issue, as I'm not about to swap out processors for a game.

The amount of RAM mine takes while running is what I'm seeing using the simple TaskMgr and nothing elaborate, but it rarely goes about 1.8gig when running normally for me. I can always tell when it is about to die as: the zone loading screen comes up and gets about half-way through the 'loading' bar, the hard drive is on solid (SSD - not that it matters), CPU spikes to 100 percent then drops to zero and the memory amount shoots up to 3.4 - 3.6 gig being used.

That sounds like it happens while "Cleaning up" the old zones, which happens when you zone, and before the new zone gets loaded.

Can you see on which progress bar EQ freezes?

cleaning up, loading ressources, entering zone etc?

I haven't actually paid enough attention to see which phase it is dying in. I want to say that it happens immediately, but it might be in the loading resources phase. I'll have to pay more attention tonight.

Of course, all of this is moot of SOE refuses to acknowledge the problem as they mostly have for the last 6 pages (and weeks).

*sigh* and still no response or resolution - so glad I bought a CE and a Standard edition - guess I'll stop buying these xpacs in the fiuture and just play with what I have.

Thanks SOE - NOT!!!

I've just started playing a lower level toon because I'm sick to death of crashing in AoM.
I only bother with the craft weekly now, and that's tiresome enough.

Greetings Everyone,

As I stated earlier in the thread, please contact Customer Service if you are still encountering problems. Opening a support ticket will allow a technician to try and assist you in resolving issues based on your individual computer specifications.

Support ticket submitted - hoping for resolution...

I opened a ticket with support a long time ago - their ultimate 'solution' was to run MSCONFIG and stop everything that runs when my computer starts up and play the game that way. Assuming that doing that even fixes the crashes. Clearly that isn't something that is remotely feasible to do nor does it address the issues I (and others) have been pointing out. The Everquest2.exe process starts using more and more memory until it crashes. That isn't something else on my computer doing it, it is the Everquest2 process.

So I was reading this thread from the beginning and I encountered the same issue with the fatal error with streaming. I reinstalled eq2 fully with a full download. i checked my direct x and my min requirements. I also made sure my windows updates installed the updates needed for my computer. Still getting the fatal error. As a last resort, I opened a support ticket and updated it today. The ticket was originally opened on new years eve. Still waiting for someone to respond. I realize it is a holiday weekend. Just a bit frustrating as the game totally runs smooth except that fatal error. Will post back once CS gets in touch with me. Sorry not helpful but thanks for reading.