(32-bit OS Users) Work Around for constant crashing after 5-30 minutes of play

More or less tried everything, but I made a last ditch effort focusing on what I thought was the issue and combining a few tips made my client stable for the first time ever! Played about 4 houres and logged off. The client then only crashed when I Exited the game. Fine by me considering I have had max 20mins before random CTD since beta.


FYI My system:
Win Vista SP2, 32bits.
I7-920 stock speed.
GTX480 now upgraded mid Beta to a GTX680
6gigs of ram in tripple channel (Limited by 32bit OS of course)



What I did:


(A) Increase the amount of ram a program can use in a 32bit OS. Default is max 2gigs.
I tried to set it to 2500 first, but that didnt work. Later I set it to 3072.

How:
(1) Start_Run_CMD. In Dos C:\> bcdedit /set IncreaseUserVA 3072
(2) You will get a confirmation message. Must be done in Admin. Reboot.
(3) You can type bcdedit to check the info list that its been added.
(R) Enter C:\> bcdedit /deletevalue increaseuserva and reboot to go back to normal.




(B) I increased the Windows *Page file to twice as much. In my case 10000 Mb --Edited by Veratu.
*(Virtual memory storage on your hard drive the PC uses if it runs out of normal hardware ram)


How:
(1) Right Click My Computer_Properties_Advanced system settings_Advance_Performance_Settings_Advance.
(2) Under Virtual Memory press Change. New window.
(3) Untick Automatic at the top. Press custom value and enter your wanted value in both boxes. Now press SET.
(R) To undo changes just set it to automatic again. When you increase the page file you dont need a reboot, but if you decrease it from its current size, which Windows will tell you what is on that screen. Then you must reboot.

Note: Make sure you have enough storage for the new page file. Your hard disk should have about 20% free space not used for anything eve included the new HUGE page file. Dont know if this is just as important on SSD, but its important if you have a 7200rpm hard disk.





(C) I use a nVidia card so I got the Beta 310.61 drivers that have some optimizations for PS2.


How:
(1) Go to nVidia HERE. Press "Find" under Legacy/Beta. Plot in your 3d card info and select the correct Beta. Drivers must be newer than the ones you have. Which they currently are, but who knows when someone searches for this stuff. Download, install and reboot. Even if it seems that you dont need to, you do.



Now start up the game and see if it worked for you as well. ...and thats all you have to do to get PS2 running stable in a 32bit OS

Yh bro it worked, could play for an hour today with no issues. Cheers for the fix.

By the way mate, might be worth giving this Fix to one of the SoE team like Veratu, they could get this info our more widespread and at least a lot of people will have a fix for there crashing problems for now.

Fixed to avoid confusion. Cant edit main post anymore...
I can also confirm that my above setup is still stable ingame.

Since morning of 26-11-2012 (GMT / UTC) I have been crashing Blue Screen Of Death!

1. PAGE_FILE_IN_NON_PAGE_FILE_AREA.
2. dxxgsmsmsms1.something
3. IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

I assume you follow the instructions and made sure you didnt put the page file larger than you had free space on the hd?
Try rebooting in safe mode, press F8 during boot up, and undo the changes you made. See (R)

How much ram do you have? Less than 4 gigs?

A few things:
1. You posted this "issue" you had strait after I posted my update that my system was stable.
2. Your error message are one of the most common ones one get if one google "blue screen of death"
3. You take the time to put the lines in blue just like my sig link to this page. As if you clicked it to get here and pointing it out...
4. I can not find a good reason for why the tricks I propose would give you those errors unless you have a kernl program that by default uses more ram then you then have assigned and is needed for boot which is unlikely from the start.
5. If I had that issue because I followed something someone else proposed. I would have checked the forum again so that the OP might have had tips in regards to fixing it, which you have not.


In short, I think you are trolling and that you didnt really have any IRQL_NOT_LESS in blue etc.
You just trying to scare people into not trying something that might improve their gaming experience!

I have never seen this game use over 1400 MB.

Your problem probably lies in the fact that on a 32bit OS by default it support max 2 GB ram per application (or was it 1?). APB users had a similar problem.

Pagefile of 10 GB is of course a bit ridiculous. You really dont want your game to load in the pagefile .



Anyway there is no reason not to chose to a 64bit os.

This is not an officially supported solution, but I can say this has worked for numerous people and is a great band-aid until the client fixes are available.

Please note that you MUST have 4GB of RAM or more to make this work effectively. Trying to mess with the userva space above the 2GB limits when you don't have the available RAM to support it can lead to other system problems.

Please be careful when tweaking these things.

I'm going to enable this as a sticky post for a while and hope that more players check here before starting their own threads.

"Please note that you MUST have 4GB of RAM or more to make this work effectively."

But I'm confused. This is a fix for 32-bit systems, right? I'm a bit bewildered by the game's minimum specs and what people are discussing here. Because by definition, a 32-bit system can't actually address 4GBs, even if you have 4 plugged in...right?

Also, is there any way to perform this tweak in Windows XP?

how do i know how much page file i have by default? should i just set it to double whatever my default is?

Look at the part on THIS LINK that says, "Windows Server 2003 and earlier:"

The first step fixed my problem. Per another thread I originally tried setting it to 4000, then 2048 but no luck. Saw this and thought I'd give it another try at 3072 and I just played for at least an hour with no crashes. Cheers!

@GaussianGamer -
Aha! Thanks man, you're a star

Yes, please understand what is happening here.

32-bit OS's have a per-process limitation of 2GB by default. This tweak enables you to allow a specific application to exceed that boundary, however you are still limited to the maximum memory that a 32-bit system will allow. (Note the difference in wording, one is system one is individual process).

Setting it to 2048 (Which is MB, ie: 2GB) won't do you any good, because that's the same as not setting it at all, as all 32-bit processes can already access 2048MB (ie: 2GB) of RAM. Right now PlanetSide2 takes MORE than 2GB of individual process RAM to play in most cases.

Setting it to 4000 (MB) also won't solve your problem as you've now set an individual process to go beyond the memory boundary of the entire Operating Systems capability, which isn't possible.

The key here is setting it just below the OS's limit, but still leaving enough RAM for your system to operate safely without going to virtual memory. In this case 3072 (3GB) is the safest number but it still requires 4GB of RAM to accomplish. That gets you to the point where the game can use the memory it needs in a 32-bit OS, but still underneath the maximum level that the OS itself can handle.

In summary, if you have 2GB or 3GB of RAM on a 32-bit OS you're running into memory constraints and you're going to crash currently (we are working to improve this). You need 4GB. Even though the OS won't use all 4GB (It will use 3.3Gb to 3.6Gb depending on your hardware as some motherboard BIOS's will force limit what is available), you still need to be able to give the process/game 3GB of memory and leave the little bit left over for your OS/other applications.

Well, it seems the game doesn't actually like that configuration: after setting the /3GB switch, the launcher decided that my graphics card was no longer adequate (even though it blatantly is). I can only assume the graphics card drivers didn't like being deprived of that RAM...because as soon as I restarted *without* the switch, the launcher is fine again >.<

But just so we're clear here (and I do understand all that, so thank you for the clarification there) - you *are* saying that the ultimate aim is to have Planetside 2 working on 32-bit systems, as long as they have 4GBs *plugged in*?

I mean, I can wait for you guys to do your thing...I just don't want to find out that this has become a "64-bit only" game overnight :S

This is what it sounds like, as of now. I think SOE should update their minimum system specs.

Since I don't have 4GB of RAM, I would have to skip part A.
I can do part B since I have plenty of HDD space.
For part C, the latest beta drivers for my graphics card is from March 1, 2011 so my card is probably outdated.

(Specs in signature)

The only part I can do is part B, I'll see if this works for me.

That's very odd, that shouldn't happen. The launchpad has a set of minimum spec checks sure, but it shouldn't care about your large address space settings. Hrm.