So sometimes Empires crashes, as it tends to. But sometimes, I get these really weird crashes. First, Empires gets really laggy for about five seconds Then, it crashes. Then all my other programs that aren't part of the OS lock up, like Steam and Firefox. If I try and restart any of these programs, Steam looks like a bunch of black boxes and whatever page Firefox was open on gets screwed up Foobar2000 doesn't lock up, until I play a song. At which case the frequency meter maxes out all frequency and it plays random high-pitched tones for random lengths of time, and locks up too. Finally, the only way to fix it that I've found is a total restart. After that, everything is fine. Until it happens again. The only other game I've had this happen with is Planetside 2, but only back in beta. Any ideas on how to stop these special crashes, or what might be causing them in the first place? Oh and it doesn't give any crashdump either.
w00kies shitty HelpDesk #104 First thought: maybe either RAM is fucked up or is getting fucked up by leaking memory areas. Cleaning your PC is always a good first attempt. Check for RAM usage while playing, check for virussians (use malwarebytes + MSE even if you already have a good scanner ). check for S.M.A.R.T. errors, check your windows logs for uncommon errors, post system specs and a SW-report, so people can actually help you. check if w00kie has more for you to check. My empires only crashes ~ once per year.
could it happen that you have an incredibly small swap space? Choose doubled amount of ram as fixed swap space just for testing. Also check if your C: drive has less than 200mb free space
