F1 2012 – Technical Assistance

[Tweak589]

EDIT, UPDATE (9/24/12):
I originally posted this as a Steam issue, but now I have narrowed it down to a driver incompatability issue and/or it must be a setting that F1 2012 doesn't like. I have experience crashes many times while ONLY playing F1 2010 and now F1 2012. The display driver crashes and Windows 7 does an automatic recovery so that I go back to desktop. I have done some research on this issue and it seems it can be a lot of things. But it still doesn't explain why the Codemasters F1 series games are crashing like this. Currently my system can play Battlefield 3, Borderlands 2, Crysis, etc all on Ultra High settings, no problem. F1 2012 plays fine and looks great! But it crashes no matter what quality settings I play at. A real bummer. Read down to my second post to see more information.

OLD Post:
I cannot play F1 2012 for more than 5-15 mins due to the game trying to constantly auto-update via Steam. I do not have any issues with the game itself, runs flawlessly. It seems Steam is trying to update / install the game and it shuts down the game during play. Very frustrating.

When the game crashes it is very quick and abrupt. Sometimes I do not get an error at all and I see in my Games Library list that F1 2012 updates for a brief moment (% kb/s for a few seconds). Other times I get the error that "Servers are too busy to handle your request, Error: 44". I have tried to disable the automatic updates to this game, launch the game, and when the game is running, the automatic updates settings gets reset to automatic updates. I can never turn off the updating of the game. How can I turn this off?

I read some forum threads and found that deleting local content and re-downloading / installing the game would fix it. I tried this, and it still does not fix my issue. Game keeps shutting down and the Steam Error occurs.

Standard non-overclocked system:

OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate

CPU: Intel Core i7-3770K @ 3.5ghz
GPU: GeForce GTX 680 @ 4gb

RAM: 32gb

HD: 1TB Velociraptor

AUDIO: Realtek HD onboard

Runs all other games fine. I have contacted steam with the message above and they seem to not have a good solution for this. I have tried to search all over the internet to figure out what is wrong but there is no good solution. I have reinstalled via Steam countless times, and this still happens. The game quits abruptly while I am in the middle of P1 in Australia of my Career and I cannot get passed it due to the crashing.

If you guys have any insight how-to completely clean all my saved game data I don't mind starting fresh. Is it possible some kind of save game is corrupt?

[Strach]

I'm having precisely the same issue - no matter whether I'm playing career or Quick Race (have tested Aus and Monza), the game just closes down immediately before I've completed a lap (usually around the Lesmos at Monza and the chicane at Albert Park). Steam will then briefly say it's updating/installing.

I've tried playing with my wireless card disabled, have unticked the Steam Community option in game properties as well as the auto-update one's you have tried and no progress. I had no issues with F1 2011 running at quite high specs on my machine.

Is anyone else experiencing this? Any ideas how to solve it?

[Tweak589]

This is actually nothing to do with Steam (I think) and everything to do with some form of hardware driver incompatibility. I will see if I can rename the subject to this thread. If you're having my same issue, it is probably your graphics driver failing for some unexplained reason. Here is what I sent to Codemasters Support, and so far there has been no helpful responses:

---

Letter to Codemasters Support:
Hello,

I am in need of help to try and get my game working because it is crashing for no apparent reason that I can figure out.

I have been a player of F1 2010 for a while and I recently purchased F1 2012. I also am running a new machine (DxDiag attached) which is completely capable of running the latest generation games. I can run all other games just fine, it's just these F1 games never seem to like something on my system, and I'd like to know what to try to fix this. Basically while I am playing F1 2012 (and F1 2010) on my new machine the game will run fine, look fine, and run as expected. But then at random moments, sometimes 5 minutes, sometimes 15 minutes, the game will just crash immediately to desktop with no real errors whatsoever. I have checked my system's Event Logs and it says that the "nvlddmkm" driver file has stopped responding. With regards to this, I have searched all over the web to find nothing really conclusive. A lot of people have this problem. But why only in the F1 games I am playing? Something is not right.

I have tried to reinstall drivers, do a clean install of drivers, reinstall of other prerequisite software... nothing works. My system is not running hot, it's always at a cool 30-42C, never higher when playing. The display driver always continues to crash ONLY when playing this F1 game. Please help. I hope you have some form of solutions available for this...

Please get me in touch with someone that is very knowledgeable with this issue, and/or knows of a solution. I have done a whole lot of tweaks and made many attempts to try and fix this but I still cannot seem to get this working. I really really want to play this game successfully, I was really looking forward to this game.

---

---

More letters to Codemasters Support (after told to clean drivers):

Hello,

I have done clean driver installs several times. Even tried several older drivers and still no luck. I installed Driver Fusion (formerly DriverSweeper) and did a clean install once again just now. Played the game for about 10 minutes and then it crashed to desktop with the same issue:

"Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered"

I really don't know what this is. Temperatures are all running excellent on my machine, nothing having any hiccups but these F1 games, and I don't know why. I would be curious what Codemasters' certification / CQC team found on a system similar to this, and which Nvidia drivers it was tested on. It would at least help me rule out a few factors here.

---

My DxDiag: http://www.qfpost.com/file/d?g=KreNuNzeT
Memory Dump Files: http://www.qfpost.com/file/d?g=fU4FNYtTV

[Aktiff]

Wow, EXACTLY the same issue, same spot (Albert park, practice, qualification and race as well). Sent email to Codemasters support, will see what their answer will be. 

Specs:

Win 7 Home Premium 64 bit

680 gtx 

INTEL Core i7-2600K

PSU CORSAIR TX850M 

Disk OCZ Agility 3 Series 120GB 

CORSAIR 16GB KIT DDR3 1333MHz CL9 XMS3 

ASROCK Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen3 motherboard

---

Update

I have rolled back NVIDIA drivers from 306.23 to beta 306.2, game crashed only once since. Still better than multiple crashes during gameplay. I´m suspecting drivers compatibility to be the problem.

[Freako95]

I am having the same problem. I tried reinstalling drivers and other versions for my GTX 660 TI.  When I play on my motherboard the crashes dissappear. Anyone found a fix already?

[Tweak589]

As a follow up to this issue, I found that what was causing my crashes was VSYNC. Turn VSYNC on and it should fix it. It also fixed my laggy force feedback which I later learned was a bug in F1 2011 as well. Kind of silly that VSYNC has so much effect on everything else. I've never seen a game that relies so heavily on that setting.

However, I am beginning to think my GTX680 is faulty too. Nevertheless, VSYNC helped me and now I can complete full races without a hitch.

[edwarde]

I believe there is an issue with Nvida drvier and Codemaster code. I recently purchased a new Pc machine X51 ailienware with GTX 660 video card. It crashes in the first 3 to 5 mins playing F1 2012 & Dirt 3. Sometimes it recovers from video driver failure other times it the screen goes to blocks and completely black and hangs up. couple times it corrupted my OS and i had to restore to past date to get working again. I cant believe that F1 does not test there software with popular video cards in win 8 and win 7 environment,

[Tweak589]

FYYI,

I fixed my issue with a complete overhaul to all my drivers, firmware, etc. The issue (I believe) was my motherboard firmware because the changelist for the firmware I applied read "Improved GTX 680 stability". Of course this doesn't apply to your machine, but after sniffing around and trying many drivers and updates, it all came down to the hardware's software having some issues.

Though, it's pretty bad that this game didn't run out of the box, as any of my other games would. There was likely: An incompatability with F12012 and/or It has some very tight graphics/CPU requirements and/or Is a very unstable game by nature.