[BF3] Crashes to desktop and moody internet.

[Faenskap]

Hey all In advance, sorry for this lengthy post, but I've got a few issues I need help with.

First, I enjoy playing BF3, and my favourite map is Operation Métro Conquest 64. However, I'm having a very hard time playing Métro, as my graphics card driver crashes when launching/ready to play it.

I'm using ADI Radeon HD 6870, which is the only compluter part I know the name of: / The issue has been like this for a while, a couple of months ++, I'd say.
Some servers won't let me play despite trying several times, whereas with others, I get in at once. Truth be told, I haven't played much besides Métro, but I've never experienced this problem when loading other maps.

I've tried:
1. restarting the computer
2. checking for new drivers
3. unchecking "Launch when ready" (Game manager)
4. checking my installation of the game using the repair tool, which didn't find anything
5. reinstalling the game (I got an SSD for Christmas, yay!)
6. disabelling anti-aliasing and V-sync (as suggested by these people , "Problem 3")
7. and I'm also fairly certain uninstalling and reinstalling the current driver has been tried

My bf also tried going back to the 11.11 driver (from 11.12, which is the current and what I've got) but that screwed up the colours, as it all went purple and black. Wtf?

Essentially, what's happening, is that I join a Métro server. I can either have "Go to game when ready" from the Game manager checked (game opens up when fully ready to play) or not. Clicking the BF3 icon very early when I'm not ready or when I am, doesn't matter, but I usually go the game when it's still loading. Normally, when the game is loading, you get a little blue square down at the right corner, which doesn't appear in some cases, meaning the game will crash. Then the lower half of my screen goes into black and white like a TV without signal for like a second then crashes to desktop. After that, Game manager is still saying "loading level" and I have to hit task manager and canel the game from there.

Métro, plz

And now over to my current problem, which is far worse. You also get a bit of recent lifestory, so brace yourselves!
I lived with my bf and while there, I never experienced internet trouble, apart from a very random DC now and then. In November I moved back to my mum and stepdad (8 hours journey) in order to find a job (still unemployed QQ). They live in a two-storey house (two appartements). Upon my arrival, I was staying on the 2nd floor. My dad recently moved out from there, so there was internet for me. I'm using a stationary PC which doesn't have built-in shit for wireless internet, so my bf gave me an USB stick so I could play wireless. Anyway, while living on the 2nd floor and was connected to the 2nd floor router/modem/whatever is the correct word with an ethernet cable, I started to notice an increase of higher latency, lag spikes and also when joining a round of BF3, finish it and starting next round, disconnection, with Game manager saying "Your connection to the game has timed out". Always.

After a couple of weeks however, I moved downstairs to my mum and stepdad because it was creepy living alone upstairs*. Here, there is too great a distance for an ethernet cable, so I'm on wireless. Both the appartements have broadband, but it feels like I'm playing on mobile broadband, as it is always so bloody unstable. I'm playing WoW the most, and I'm getting lag spikes which last anywhere from 10 secs to over a minute. The chat, say Trade, is updating even though I'm standing and trying to cast a spell during the lag spike. It can be like this for some minutes, then it's back to normal before I yet again get these loooong lag spikes. I'm using Quartz, and the latency it shows changes drastically with each spell I cast; say one spell is 138 ms, the next 540 and the thrid 231.

Now you're probably wondering if I restarted the router/modem/magical little box of internet, and I have indeed, but the problem persists. WoW is the easiest game to play. Swtor? I log on, run into invisible walls and once my latency rose from 300ms to 300 000 within minutes. With BF3 (Métro or not) I get to play 3 secs before getting kicked.

I've been using Speedtest and Pingtest. With Speedtest, "IP address no.2" is the router upstairs, and no.1 is downstairs. I've only used pingtest for the internet downstairs.



My boyfriend suggested I call our Internet provider Telenor, but how am I going to describe the problem? "Yeah, I get lag spikes when playing games online"? And how will they deal with this problem?

When I played in TBC it was downstairs with the very same internet, but I don't think I had lag spikes then. I guess I wouldn't have noticed anyway, playing an enh shaman on Compaq Presario V6000 and being an utter noob.

I have Leatrix, but I'm under impression that it helps for constant high latency and not spikes.
I'm using Spotify, but that shouldn't affect the latency so much, or? I still get terrible lag spikes without it.

*It feels like you are being constantly watched by something on the 2nd floor, and while being downstairs you can hear something walking about even though there aren't any humans there. My dad heard "someone" walking in the kitchen. I'd also let my computer be on while I was sleeping. Normally, it'd go hibernating after 30 mins (it always did while living with my bf) but it didn't upstairs and I didn't have anything running in the background. So yeah, I moved down, freaked out. Having my bedroom beneath the kitchen doesn't really help though

Anyway, these are my problems. As you have probably guessed, I'm retarded when it comes to IT. And again, sorry for this wall of text.

[chaud]

Run pingplotter for a while to see where the packet loss or latency is on your network. Post the image of the results / make sure you aren't getting any packet loss or ping spikes to your router.

[Deleted]

Well, you mentioned leatrix - I would try and change that back (or uninstall or whatever you want to call it - it's just a registry setting). What leatrix does is change the way Windows sends packets to a destination. If I remember correctly, per Default, Windows "bundles" packets - instead of sending each one individually, Windows waits until it has a certain amount and sends them simulaneously. Leatrix changes this setting so that Windows sends each packet individually. Seeing as Windows then no longer has to wait to send, the round trip delay is shorter and your ping decreases.

While that most likely isn't the problem, you are facing network issues, and that might be the best place to check. (And it just takes a click and reboot to change...)

Another thing to look at is your connection. Wireless can be a big pain in the @** sometimes. While playing at a friends, my comp would lose connection every time he turned on his tv (which made a very high pitched, hardly audible noise), which apparantly messed up with the signal. Also things like microwaves, washing machines, and neighboring WLANS are known to cause problems. Maybe you can check to see what's running at the time you have problems. You can try to combat this by changing the WLAN channel, etc. Also I had similar problems until I set up a MAC filter on the network (computers have to be specifically allowed access to the network via their MAC adress), but I'm guessing I just had nosey neighbors. What happens if you move your computer? Walls etc. can also cause a bunch of problems.

About Battlefield:
While not having the same problems (I only really get a very occasional crash to desktop). I noticed my crashes to be far less when playing on high instead of ultra (yeah, not really the nicest "solution" but worth a try. TBH I couldn't notice alllll that much of a difference. )

Secondly, many users reported stuff like greyscreens and crashes while using overclocked video cards (most reports were from ATI users AFAIK). This has been "fixed" from what I read in the patch notes, but I would still give it a try if the changing quality thing doesn't work.

You should check your drivers (again ) as many problems can be caused and solved at that level. Try and remove everything, do a reboot, and install the latest WHQL version (unless you find the version that ea recommends).

Good luck!

/wave

[Deleted]

It's a fact that wireless connections have lag-spikes. I have experience by myself, using a 24/10 Mb/s connection via WiFi for raiding. Even with full connection levels I had small spikes that lasted 3-15 seconds.

About BF3;

- Turn motion blur off
- Take your HD 6870 to factory clocks, but increase voltage by 30 mV.

[chaud]

It's a fact that wireless connections have lag-spikes. I have experience by myself, using a 24/10 Mb/s connection via WiFi for raiding. Even with full connection levels I had small spikes that lasted 3-15 seconds.

Ran it for an hour or so, highest spike was a whole 8ms extra. If you have that kind of problem, it isn't the fault of wireless unless you have a very poor signal.

[Sephiracle]

First step in diagnosing network problems is remove the router/hub/switch and connect directly to the modem.

Let us know if it changes, improves, worsens.

[Milkshake86]

Sephiracle's post is completely correct go raw modem into your pc reboot and see if it persist's. Now I do play BF3 myself and some servers are a bit picky some wont even let high pingers enter/stay. It does not sound like BF3 is actually crashing rather your being disconnected from EA.

[Deleted]

The odd thing is, if it's her connection, why is it only disconnecting from Metro 64? I would see the video bit more (even though it's still a rough shot) as other textures, and stuff might be loaded. You shouldn't get higher pings / packet loss when loading a map. In addition, having a striped screen that closes after a while DOES indicate issues with either the video card or drivers.

If you really want to see if its the network or not, get wireshark and do a TCP dump - you should be seeing RST packets or something (it's a bit overwhelming if you don't know what you're doing, so you might not want to try that out). The easier version is to watch the properties of your network connection - if your connection fails, you will more often than not, be sending packets and receiving much much less. If you add two pings on the command line (start -> run -> "ping google.com -t" and another cmd for "ping *ip of router/AP* -t), you will see a) if your internal ping spikes or you have packet loss (ergo it's a WLAN issue) or external on spikes to google (which would be an indication that your WAN is frying, only worthwhile if your internal network still works ofc. Better yet would be a ping to the battlefield server you want to join provided they allow ICMP...)

And one last thing about the position to the access point. Can you just test moving the computer into LoS of the AP and starting a Metro64? You don't have to play, just see if it works The nicer test would be to get a long LAN cable and plug into the router directly...

[Faenskap]

Pak52b, I checked my settings on BF3 and everything is already on normal : /

I'm not sure whether I've got something overclocked, but if I do, I won't be messing around with BIOS to find it out. My bf will visit me in a couple of weeks' time, so I'll leave that to him. I also uninstalled and reinstalled the latest graphics card driver.

I ran Pingplotter earlier:


And yeah, my computer is quite far away from the router. I'm not sure about the length in meters, but the whole apparement is 75m2. Here's a nice drawing of the house. The red lines are doors, and double red lines are the doors that are randomly open/closed (well, not that weird, as people like going to the bathroom in peace.) The designers of this house had a door fetish. I also discovered something pretty interesting!


I played WoW earlier and everything was fine. I log on now and I'm asked to do Madness 10. However, just are we were fighting dw, my mum (fu) had to use the bathroom and closed the doors. What happened? These terrible lagspikes. I'm replaced, but I open the doors and the game is now acting alright again. Hah. Wouldn't have thought of tthat if you didn't tell me

I'll keep an open eye for doors closed = fucked ms.

The first round of Métro worked fine, but it crashed when I tried to play on another server. Meh

[chaud]

That is a pretty awful wireless ping and being so far from the router can't be helping things. Can you run the same thing on a computer that is closer or better yet connected with wires? With that and your ping/speedtest results, looks like your internet and wireless could be spotty. (Both having nothing to do with BF3 crashing most likely)

Run the GPU test in OCCT to see if it is the GPU dying or just BF3/drivers fun.

[Faenskap]

I'll try my mum's piece of shit* laptop tomorrow. It's right by the router. I think it's wireless, but I'll just plug an ethernet cable to it

The game crashing upon launch with Métro happened before I moved, so I doubt it's related.

I downloaded Sapphire TRIXX and put the GPU voltage to 1206 (up from 1188) (bf's suggestion, ofc) and lo and behold! After doing that I was actually able to play Métro on several servers (I think I played on four different ones) and I only got "Crash to desktop" once! I'm just finished with my last round, where I got "Game disconnected: your connection to the server has timed out" which is consistent with playing on this router and the one upstairs: I join a round on one server, and whether they've just started or have 20 tickets left, I get always disconnected one the following round, something I never experienced while living with my bf.

* My stepdad likes to think of himself as really skilled with computers and I'm sure he has wet dreams about anything labelled "Compaq" or "HP". Chaud, I'll try that OCCT thing now