So I've purchased SC during 3.17. I had no major issues and was playable for hours. 3.18 dropped and the gameplay was just horrific with so many in-game issues that it was just unbearable and not fun. So i skipped 3.18. Since 3.19 I tried to come back and play the game. Ever since then the game ran okay until i started getting so many Crash to Desktop (CTD). My game play would be normal, but it would randomly just stop and crash to the desktop and give any error codes. So I started to do some searching and trying to teach myself on how to fix this issue. I even put a support ticket in and pretty much they kind of gave a cold shoulder to me and started to ignore my ticket at this point. I have provided crash logs to them. So their website says in order to play the their game: Windows 8 (64bit), Windows 10 – Anniversary Update (64bit) DirectX 11.1 Graphics Card with 3GB RAM (4GB strongly recommended) Quad Core CPU with AVX instructions (Intel’s Sandy Bridge processor and AMD’s Bulldozer processor or newer) and 16GB+ RAM SSD strongly recommended My Setup: Windows 11 (up to date) GPU - 3080 (up to date drivers) CPU - AMD 5950x RAM - 64gb Memory - m.2 SSD 2tb Nothing on my system is overclocked. Its all at base settings. All my drivers on the motherboard are up to date as well. My memory is barely at 40% capacity. No problems in any other games that I play. Nothing states on their "required to play the game" area does it state that one will have to modify their computer and adjust hardware settings to play their game that could potentially cause catastrophic issues to one's PC itself. Example would be like a game developer telling Sony Playstation users to go into their PS5 and start adjusting a lot of settings just so you can play their game. A game that you had played just fine and no issues prior to their new patches. Which can in term cause problems with the system and all other games that are played with it. This simply would never happen nor fly in that realm let alone Sony supporting such. Anyways, My CTDs happen from either 2minutes of game play to where I believe the longest game play i had was 35minutes. The crashes are not consistent with any one type of one certain action. I have crashed while just riding the tram, looking at the mobiglass, trying to set way points, landing, flying, combat flying/dog fighting, walking/running around, inventory management, or just being idle for a few seconds as I wait for a tram or retrieval of a ship. Their support told me to (in quick summary): - delete user folder and then verify my files and re-launch the game. (No fix) - Use a backdated GPU driver (i did not do this as this could potentially cause issues with others games that I currently play with NO ISSUES) - its my system at fault and they don't have enough data to conclude that its them - I should just make a report on the issue council (which i did) https://issue-council.robertsspaceindustries.com/projects/STAR-CITIZEN/issues/STARC-74840 - They marked the ticket "solved" (which i marked unsolved and left it open) - I keep updating my ticket with my crash logs and other information i've been finding the internet. - Currently up to 42 log reports provided - 3 videos of my gameplay footage provided other "try this" methods i've done trying to fix my CTDs were: -Fix the shader cache in nvidea (no fix) - Checked my pagefile was on (which it is) but technically shouldnt need since i have decent amount of RAM. my pagefile on default(auto) is just over 9K. Also from my understanding and reading through some "try this" methods, i'm above the 8k that is suggested for those who only have 16gb of RAM. I have tried to up this to over 12k still had CTDs (no fix) - Fix the shader cache in nvidea settings, set to 10gb (no fix) - I deleted the shader folder (no fix) - Tried a user.cfg file. Deleted it after more CTDs (no fix) So the error code i keep getting 97% of the time is : EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION(0xC0000005) Someone in the SC/RSI community was able to be nice enough to point me in the right direction and provide me some more "try this" method. @Neeko253 EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION Exception code: 0xc00 : EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION(0xC0000005) EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION_0xC0000005_ ->NOTE: If the mem leak is code, you will NOT get the error every time you play. Will be random. Spectrum Thread: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/3/thread/solved-exception-access-violation-0xc0000005/ https://compfreakstars.blogspot.com/2011/11/0xc0000005-error-every-day-many.html o Overwolf installed? Uninstall. o Run in admin mode = yes o Remove overlays. o Make sure Windows updates are current. o Windows installation may be corrupted or incomplete. ->Request the DISM/FSC procedures to test and fix. Other Causes: Can also be bad code causing improper access to memory. Some think it is XMP (memory clock/timing.) Some think it is overclocked CPUs or CPU cores running at different speeds. Disable eCores. Other software and drivers such as audio, cams, etc. IMPORTANT: SC performs best no faster than 3200 clock on the SYSRAM for most people. Can be up to 3600 non-XMP. DDR 5 4000 or more is problematic. Game Code memory leaks: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/264471 "If the end of the allocation is overwritten, the guard bytes change and PageHeap cause an Access Violation error when the memory is freed. If the application reads or writes past the allocation (including the guard bytes), it incurs an instant Access Violation error." SC appears to mix 32 and 64 bit calls and gets them wrong sometimes. Now i have tried about 80% of the "try this" above. - got rid of overwolf. After i did this i was able to play about 25mins before another CTD and tried again after and had a CTD in under 5mins (no fix) - Run in admin (no fix) - Made sure windows up to date (no fix) - Clean up/fix window files/errors. I did this and found some errors which I have cleaned up/fixed and no longer reports errors. Tested game after, CTD in under 8 mins (no fix) - Remove overlays. I dont use any. (no fix) The only ones i have not done yet, are to go into my system and start adjusting my hardware settings that could potentially cause issue with my system in general. Also I noted above, this was NOT, not a requirement to play their game. I also came across this on one of the community threads in RSI website, from over 4 years ago. I also still see people not only posting on RSI website, but from other community threads that can easily be found by using a quick search that this has been an ongoing issue for even more than that and still to date. "Andrian Nord@ANord October 11th 2019 at 3:39 am It won't be access violation. Access violation happens before doing actual memory access - during virtual address resolution. Situation you describe is "race condition" and reading thread may (or may not - that's whar makes those bugs hard to debug) receive incomplete/inconsistent state with part data new, part old. It may in turn lead to access violation - say if there is a flag and a pointer. Writer allocates the pointer and sets the flag. Reader sees the flag set, but reads old null pointer, but assumes it to be fine, because flag said so - access to null pointer will cause access violation. But this is ultimately programmer error. Unprotected concurrent access to data. Programmer should either ensure the is no concurrent access (data vectorisation) or protect it with synchronization primitive. And no one really expects all cores to be the same speed. You don't control it. You can't even measure it. Games moved away from cpu-clock-dependent logic since 90s. Plus operation system can yield your thread from execution at any moment, so... well, it's just impossible - you can't plan your data access like that. It's just impossible on way too many levels" I apologize if I seem like I'm coming off like an a-hole. It shouldn't matter if some one spent $45 or $5,000, they should expect the game to at least be in playable condition. I do understand this is technically in ALPHA still for the past x-amount of years. I am able to work/play around some of the in-game issue (in 3.17) that arise and help report problems that I run into. But being unable to just play the game is detrimental. No one wants to feel like they wasted money. No one should have to turn themselves into a self-appointed IT and modify their PC to a point where some really bad stuff could happen. Also kind of crappy that one has to sit back, and cant be apart of events in the Star Citizen due to this issue. Also, not being able to just fly and mess around with friends in game sucks too.