F1 2012 game crashes to pause menu PC

[mungopark]

hi,
have one problem which makes me mad.
my game crashes to the pause - menu quite often and then it freezes. i have to exit the game with taskmanager and restart in order to be able to play again. has anyone a clue?

 

[Graham Laing]

To be honest, the chances of you getting any real help would be much increased if you were to post your system specs. Also state is you have any mods installed or not.

At least you might get some educated guesswork rather than just pure guesswork

 

[mungopark]

sorry
win 7 64 bit
intel core 2 duo e8600 3.33 ghz
4gb ram
geforce gtx 670

i also uploaded mx dx diag

 

[Graham Laing]

You can verify your game files via Steam, this will replaces a broken, missing, or corrupted files automatically.

Run Steam > Right Click on F1 2012 > Properties > Local Files tab > Verify Integrity of game cache

Have you been running this game for a long time, and it has just started doing this, or is it a new game?

If you have been running the game for a long time, have you installed or updated something recently which may have triggered it, like a new video driver?

Have you tried a new video driver? So many crashes can be caused by video related problems, probably more than anything else.

This is the latest WHQL driver for your card, the one in your dxdiag looks like a March 15 release, the latest appears to be March 25 :-

http://www.nvidia.com/object/win8-win7-winvista-64bit-314.22-whql-driver.html

You could also try toggling VSync on or off and seeing if that makes any difference.

Disable unnecessary background tasks

Disable your virus checker, as it may be scanning your game files as each file is read by the system as the game plays (Active Protection)

Yes ..... it's still all guesswork, maybe someone else will come a up a few suggestions also

 

[mungopark]

thanks!
gotta have a try.

 

[Graham Laing]

Good luck, I hate trying to chase down problems like this.

Luckily it doesn't happen too often.

 

[mungopark]

nothing helps. game freezes.

 

[Dan Hawkins]

One more to try;

Browse on your PC to C:\Users\YOURNAME\Documents\My Games\FormulaOne2012\hardwaresettings

Open the hardware_settings_config.xml file in a decent text editor like Notepad++ - http://notepad-plus-plus.org/

Go to line 7 and change this line :-

<directx forcedx10="false" />

to :-

<directx forcedx10="true" />

 

[Graham Laing]

Have you had the game a long time and been playing it ok over that period?

If you have, then something you may have installed or updated recently may have triggered it. You also did not mention whether you have any mods installed, or is it just the standard game?

For example sometimes the latest video driver helps, but it maybe the other way around, and the latest driver breaks the game. In that case you would roll your system back a previous video driver that you know used to work with your game.

Have a look at this page, you could try one of the older beta drivers, but it may be worth trying the previous WHQL driver, which case is v314.07. A lot depends on what driver version that you had installed before, when you know for sure the game worked OK

http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us

EDIT: I realised that the page I linked to doesn't actually give you the list of drivers that I am seeing now. So you will have to fill the menu details as requested on the page.

GeForce
Geforce 600 Series
Geforece GTX670
Windows 7 x64
English
All

Really you have to think ...... what has changed recently? (if the game worked ok before)

 

[Graham Laing]

It's certainly worth trying what Dan recommended, as it's a known fix for some crash issues, even in previous Codemaster F1 games, if I remember correctly, even though you are using a DX11 card

 

[mungopark]

thanks for trying to help. i will check. in the hardware file i found another strange thing:
<graphics_card update="true">
does anybody know what that means?

 

[Dan Hawkins]

Guessing its to do with checking for your graphics cards recent updates Graham Laing??

 

[Graham Laing]

I don't know what that does.

If I were to guess, I would guess that the game checks whether the graphics card or driver has been changed since the last game boot up.

You might have fitted a card which has different or extended options. Your last card might be capable of 4xAA and 8xAF, and the new one does 8xAA and 16xAF. So the hardware config will need to be updated

 

[mungopark]

ah, i see.

 

[Rob Every]

I have had quite a few STeam error CTD recently

Doesn't shock me though this game is dead int eh water help wise and they gave up sorting the bugs out months ago

 

[mungopark]

yeah, codemasters....
i think that a lot depends on the player's pc. mine is old, just the graphics card is a newer one.
played all three f1 titles from the codies.
f1 2010: worked fine, no bugs for me
f1 2011: suffered from autosave desaster, stopped playing career mode
f1 2012: all fine except this strange jump-to-pause-bug

hopefully they will test their next title on several systems before selling it. but i don't think so.

 

[Justin Webley]

Erm... Codies have actually been really good with there updates to this years game with 12 (I think) patches released to fix various bugs.

Its also impossible to test games for the PC market, which 'several systems' do you pick? Off the shelf Dell boxes? Custom builds? Etc. The fact is that the minimum system specs cover a wide range of hardware, some of which can become un-supported by the hard ware makes so driver updates can cause games to fail but as you gfx card is not that old this will not be the case.

Now that you've tried all of the obvious things its time to look a little deeper. What do you have plugged into your PC while playing? Try to remove everything except the keyboard, mouse, monitor and speakers (no controllers). Make sure you have no USB devices plgged in and try the game, I know it won't be easy without a controller but try. If this fixes the problem then its something you've plugged in that is causing the problem. If so try re-plugging everything back in one at a time and test again until the game crashes.

Hope this helps!

 

[mungopark]

thanks, but there is nothing plugged in except the things i need for playing. controller was already removed. but i will go on trying to fix that issue.
by the way: a game which needs 11 or 12 patches is a beta version to me.
this was not the case with f1c, gp3, gp4, rfactor or other racing titles.

 

[mungopark]

one last (and maybe silly) question, then i will stop bothering people in this community:
i use some mods (downloaded from this site). but just skins and cameras, no performance stuff. i will try to play just with original game files and see what happens.

 

[Justin Webley]

thanks, but there is nothing plugged in except the things i need for playing. controller was already removed. but i will go on trying to fix that issue.
by the way: a game which needs 11 or 12 patches is a beta version to me.
this was not the case with f1c, gp3, gp4, rfactor or other racing titles.

I agree with you about the older games but this is codemasters, they will no doubt soon release the date for F1 2013 which will not have been properly tested by there QA department which has been know to be terrible for many many years. I even had a huge debate back in the days of DDO EU being hosted by them about their QA process. My wife is a QA systems specialist and from what shes seen of the software entertainment industries attempts at creating anything like a robust QA solution we will always have beta software releases. The companies cover their backsides by little tiny print in the EULA which tells you the game may be subject to change and that you do not 'own' the software.

Also take into account that 11-12 patches is far better than the 1-2 patches we got while GFWL was in the mix and PC patches had to be passed by M$. It shows at least a willing ness to fix as many of the bugs as possible instead of just cementing over the major ones.

Hope you get your game fixed.