Crashes Post 1.1.X Simple Question for the affected ones

[AlamoVampire]

Ok, I just checked something after the umpteenth time of 1.1.X deciding to crash on me. Thanks to @KasperVld and his suggestion about the asteroid day mod not being remotely up to date I pulled it and deleted any craft with the mods camera attached. After that, i still crashed out. I am not programmer at all, but, I saw something peculiar when I looked at the initial thingy that popped up at the crash. it said ntdll.dll was the source of that crash. I googled it, and found something odd, people made mention of microsofts Onedrive being a source of inexplicable CTDs in various programs. This got me wondering, and sure enough on my computer was Microsofts Onedrive. I have YET to test this theory on my own machine, but, my question, and I request any moderator that comes across this, to first, please leave this thread here, and should this bear fruit, please sticky it, as I may have tripped over the cause to our instability, but, back to my question, this applies to ALL AFFECTED PLAYERS:

Do YOU have Microsoft Onedrive on YOUR machine? Does removing this program from YOUR machine stabilize KSP?

Please, all affected players who are willing to experiment with this theory, I ask you to post your findings here and perhaps we may have collectively found the root cause. The reason I am posting this thread here in KSP Discussion is to get this theory out to as many people as fast as possible. I also bring this up, because in a private conversation with @KasperVld he made mention that there was an indication of another program causing interference with the game based on a crash log of mine, well, given that other people have mentioned elsewhere on the interwebs that Onedrive was causing problems for them, it is a theory that should be tested here, and folks, I say we test the bejeebers out of this! SO, with that, if you are willing to experiment, post your results below. I will post my results either in a few minutes, hours or this weekend based on if I crash out now that Onedrive is removed from my machine. Happy experimenting!

 

EDIT/UPDATE: Well... Still stumped as yet another crash has just hit me. same fault module ntdll.dll... guess I was wrong? I still ask that we look into this, as something peculiar is going on for sure.

Other Worth Note Items:
I run from steam, but via a shortcut, also, steam validated ALL files as correct. Secondly, I just ran a checkdisk and IT verified all files as not being corrupt or otherwise in error, same with all the other things it checked. So, at the least, if my understanding is valid, my machine is operating as expected...

Edited May 4, 2016 by AlamoVampire

[Curveball Anders]

"NTDLL.DLL exports the Windows Native API. The Native API is the interface used by user-mode components of the operating system that must run without support from Win32 or other API subsystems."

Basicly it's a core part of windows and crashes in it happens when calling programs do something stupid.

Your idea about OneDrive was a valid guess.

In the current situation where the game crashes over and over again for some users while not at all for others despite running more less exactly the same environment it more or less has to be some external (external to KSP that is) software component that doesn't play nice with KSP (or that KSP doesn't play nice with).

I'd bet a beer that it will be some installed service/helper that plugs into the memory or otherwise monitors system calls.

It might very well be that the issue actually is in KSP or Unity but until the issue is tracked down it's impossible to locate and fix.

[J.Random]

2 hours ago, AlamoVampire said:

Do YOU have Microsoft Onedrive on YOUR machine? Does removing this program from YOUR machine stabilize KSP?

No. And removing it is not an option (as in, impossible) in later Windows releases.

[Tr1gg3r]

Erm, dunno if itll help, but no harm mentioning i spose, but i had a ntldll crash and after bit of research, i hada look in MSCONFIG to see how many programs have crept into startup etc and there were loads, so i uncheckd a load of surplus crap progs and ive not had any MAJOR probs as yet. Fingers crossed.

may help ppl with borderline specs maybe or those with lots ctd's.

my spec btw -

Laptop clevo

i5 4800m

gt 750m

2x4gb ram

win7 64k

anythings worth a go eh. Gd luck

Edited May 4, 2016 by Tr1gg3r
Warning - MSCONFIG is powerful, only change things if u know what ur doing, or things could get ALOT worse :)

[Curveball Anders]

C(rud) Cleaner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCleaner is a useful tool to find, list and possibly deactivate stuff that might cause issues.

It's a little bit more user friendly than msconfig, but note that it can be as dangerous if not handled with care.

[wibou7]

9 hours ago, AlamoVampire said:

 

Do YOU have Microsoft Onedrive on YOUR machine? Does removing this program from YOUR machine stabilize KSP?

 

KSP crashes on me since the update.... under Linux.  So forget Microsoft Onedrive, it is totally unrelated.

[Curveball Anders]

29 minutes ago, wibou7 said:

KSP crashes on me since the update.... under Linux.  So forget Microsoft Onedrive, it is totally unrelated.

Ah, but the Linux crashes are probably not related, at least not directly, to the windoze crashes.

[Renegrade]

No Onedrive here, but I don't get frequent CTDs either.  They do happen, but are very rare (like, once every hundred hours on average).  Usually involving staging, loading a ship to launchpad, and once in the editor.

One thing I'd check for anybody with frequent CTDs is the typical system upkeep stuff like drivers.   Video, sound, and input being particularly suspicious for game issues.  One caveat though: a more "up to date" driver isn't necessarily better.  The Big Two video guys tend to crap out drivers that get worse with every version.  I'm running nVidia drivers 358.50 - the current is 365.10, but some of the drivers after 358.50 are bad enough to cause hardware failure.   Also, back when the 320-series drivers were released, I got frequent SYSTEM reboots until I rolled back to 314.  The issue was resolved sometime after the 320s (long before 358.50).

It's thusly important to do a little research when dealing with drivers these days.. you don't want one with a bad reputation, especially if it's causing trouble for Unity-based games.

[Glaran K'erman]

Ya know, I thought KSP was only teaching me rocket science. But with all these bugs, I get to learn computer science too!

[wibou7]

1 hour ago, Curveball Anders said:

Ah, but the Linux crashes are probably not related, at least not directly, to the windoze crashes.

Maybe, maybe not.

KSP was perfectly stable for me pre-1.1. On 1.1.2, it crashes about once every hour or so.
So as a programmer, I'd consider instability sources were introduced between 1.0 and 1.1.2... The code is multi-plaform compatible, so the instability may very well be the same on all platform.

[Curveball Anders]

Just now, wibou7 said:

Maybe, maybe not.

KSP was perfectly stable for me pre-1.1. On 1.1.2, it crashes about once every hour or so.
So as a programmer, I'd consider instability sources were introduced between 1.0 and 1.1.2... The code is multi-plaform compatible, so the instability may very well be the same on all platform.

Indeed it might be.

The problem is that it's not a very obvious issue since it only happens for some (many as you are) users and it doesn't seem to be related to any specific action in the game.

So if it can be traced to interaction between KSP/Unity and some other software on one platform then it's possible to find out what's happening on other platforms.

[AlamoVampire]

8 hours ago, Curveball Anders said:

 

9 hours ago, wibou7 said:

KSP crashes on me since the update.... under Linux.  So forget Microsoft Onedrive, it is totally unrelated.

dismissing the idea outright on 1 data point is not good science.

Edited May 5, 2016 by AlamoVampire

[LameLefty]

By contrast, KSP 1.1 has been very stable for me on my Mac since the first public betas through 1.1.2 ...  I've had exactly two crashes in what ... five weeks now? Both of those were mod-related.

[AlamoVampire]

my question is, does ANYONE know what NTDLL.DLL is at all? where to find it? is it important? can it be deleted?

[Curveball Anders]

1 minute ago, AlamoVampire said:

my question is, does ANYONE know what NTDLL.DLL is at all? where to find it? is it important? can it be deleted?

I answered in my first post.

"NTDLL.DLL exports the Windows Native API. The Native API is the interface used by user-mode components of the operating system that must run without support from Win32 or other API subsystems."

It's a very vital part of the operative system.

If you delete it (if its even possible) your system will be dead and you'll have to reinstall.

 

[AlamoVampire]

@Curveball Anders so you did at that! sorry to be blind on this.  between a grading scare in my college classes, final exams, car issues and KSP being rather mean in its crashing, ive gone and melted my brain some, so, naturally being melted and over stressed, i missed your clarification earlier . Well, glad to know that its a must have file, but sad that im still no closer to knowing whats going on

Also, did a little more reading on this oddity, others are saying NAM (ForceWare Network Access Manager) is possible as a source of issue. I wonder if all affected are using nVidia? Cuz I am, as is the person who, for them on other programs confirmed NAM (ForceWare Network Access Manager) was his root cause...

 

edit: did a look around on my rig, either its really well hidden, or its not on my machine... so, once again, returning to stumped.

Edited May 5, 2016 by AlamoVampire

[BoilingCold]

My post 1.1 crashes were frequent enough that I considered KSP unplayable for me until fixed.

I uninstalled KSP completely, deleting all mods, reinstalled from Steam, reinstalled mods - only mods labelled as 1.1.2 compatible by CKAN and started a new game. Crashes have gone completely for me.

I installed EVE yesterday, despite it not being listed as 1.1.2 compatible yet and promptly started getting crashes again. Uninstalled EVE and it's fine again.

I know this won't help anyone who's getting crashes in unmodded, fresh installs, but if you're running an old modded install try a completely fresh start, it might help.

[AlamoVampire]

@BoilingCold did you kill all saves, crafts and the like or did  you back those up? I may try what you did as my copy is steam as well, but I have some craft I am frankly attached to and do not want to lose them if i can avoid that.

side note: steam did verify all files were correct when i ran that function yesterday <uh tuesday at this point i suppose>

Edited May 5, 2016 by AlamoVampire

[BoilingCold]

Just now, AlamoVampire said:

@BoilingCold did you kill all saves, crafts and the like or did  you back those up?

Complete fresh start, deleted all saves and craft, etc. Scorched earth tactic and it meant I lost some saves and craft files I was quite attached to, but I can play again now and am quite enjoying starting from scratch tbh

[AlamoVampire]

hmm... may need to try that...

[steve_v]

Ntdll.dll appearing in the stack traces means nothing more than "Something bad happened while KSP/Unity was interfacing with the OS." This is not too dissimilar to the crashes on GNU/Linux - here it's glibc saying "I just caught you doing something really dumb, time to die." Both smell like a memory management problem in Unity to me, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's all the same bug.

My stack traces appear to point the finger at mono, or the Unity/mono interface. Others have similar ideas but without help from the Unity devs and/or some source code and debug builds to play with, I'm as stumped as you.

[AlamoVampire]

hey @steve_v can i ask a possible dumb question? can you take "mono" and make it plain english as the only things that popped into my mind: mono sound as in non stereo and monopropellant. hate to sound like a dip but, id like to be on your page  also, as a side note, there was/is a huge debate about garbage cleanup and memory leaks somewhere on this forum, wonder if thats tied in?

[steve_v]

1 minute ago, AlamoVampire said:

can you take "mono" and make it plain english

Mono is the CLI (common language infrastructure) runtime that the C# code in KSP and mods execute within. It implements (most of) the .NET framework, and can run the same code without alteration on multiple platforms - this is why mods are generally OS agnostic. Essentially, it allows you to write code without knowing anything about the OS it's supposed to run on or dealing with low-level stuff like memory management, locking etc. Unity forked the open-source mono project some years ago (and their version is way behind upstream now) to use it as an in-game scripting/programming language. Squads part of KSP all runs in mono.
There's a longer answer over on Unity answers, if you can be arsed reading it (WOT warning).

[Curveball Anders]

12 minutes ago, AlamoVampire said:

hey @steve_v can i ask a possible dumb question? can you take "mono" and make it plain english as the only things that popped into my mind: mono sound as in non stereo and monopropellant. hate to sound like a dip but, id like to be on your page  also, as a side note, there was/is a huge debate about garbage cleanup and memory leaks somewhere on this forum, wonder if thats tied in?

Mono is a multiplatform implementation of the .NET environment.

Basicly allowing developers to use the same (pseudo) code on several different platforms.

Or in simpler terms, it's the glue between Unity and whatever OS you are using.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_%28software%29

 

[AlamoVampire]

that kinda sorta kinda makes sense to me. for my own use, ill look at it like STTNG thru voyagers universal translator of sorts, letting everyone speak lol