Crashing on Startup
Good afternoon,
I am writing to you to hopefully find a fix for Space Engineers crashing on startup. Dan2D3D on the Steam Forums points everyone to contact you in the event the general community workarounds do not help get the game running.
Exact scenario: I just downloaded and installed the game for the first time today. The game is as vanilla as is possible. I am using -skipintro (a suggestion by Dan). Upon clicking Run in steam, I get a Space Engineers splash screen. The splash screen disappears after a few seconds and the game seems to load (black screen). I get UI after a second or two (I think it's a EULA or something), but the game immediately crashes to desktop without giving me any chance to see/read it. This happens exactly in this fashion each time.
Please find attached my DxDiag and the two most recent logs created in my APPDATA\SpaceEngineers folder.
Here's to hoping this problem can be resolved.
Thank you for your time,
- Tony
I have the same bug
Hello!
Thank you for contacting us. Since this is a bug report, I'm moving your ticket to our support page, where our QA team will take care of you.
Kind Regards
Keen Software House
Hello!
Thank you for contacting us. Since this is a bug report, I'm moving your ticket to our support page, where our QA team will take care of you.
Kind Regards
Keen Software House
Hello, Tony,
thanks for letting us know. We are sorry that you are experiencing issues.
From your log, I can see that you are using two monitors. Is it possible you try to launch the game only with one connected?
There are no other errors/exceptions in log that could point me somewhere, though.
Please try also to rename the Video folder in Steam – steamapps – common – SpaceEngineers – Content. Try to rename it to something like "Video old" "Videos" or simillar.
Also you said that you tried all the workarounds, but I will list it here as well, just to doublecheck with you that you tried all of them. If yes, can you please confirm? If no, it would be good to try them all again.
If nothing would work for you, can you please send me a new log to see if something happened? If the behavior would change, I would love to hear to what stage you are able to get after performing these steps.
If the log would look the same (no error, exceptions etc.), can you also please send me the log generated from Windows Event Viewer?
Thanks in advance.
Kind Regards
Keen Software House: QA Department
Hello, Tony,
thanks for letting us know. We are sorry that you are experiencing issues.
From your log, I can see that you are using two monitors. Is it possible you try to launch the game only with one connected?
There are no other errors/exceptions in log that could point me somewhere, though.
Please try also to rename the Video folder in Steam – steamapps – common – SpaceEngineers – Content. Try to rename it to something like "Video old" "Videos" or simillar.
Also you said that you tried all the workarounds, but I will list it here as well, just to doublecheck with you that you tried all of them. If yes, can you please confirm? If no, it would be good to try them all again.
If nothing would work for you, can you please send me a new log to see if something happened? If the behavior would change, I would love to hear to what stage you are able to get after performing these steps.
If the log would look the same (no error, exceptions etc.), can you also please send me the log generated from Windows Event Viewer?
Thanks in advance.
Kind Regards
Keen Software House: QA Department
Hello Ondrej,
I have gone through your suggestions and tried them in order. See below for the various scenarios. Note that when I start the game, I am doing so the same way as noted in the previous email (with -skipintro, using the steam Play button).
I should note that Windows DID apply an update before I began troubleshooting. I tried the game without changing anything else (to be sure) and there was no change as it crashed to desktop after the text appeared on screen for a second.
From your log, I can see that you are using two monitors. Is it possible you try to launch the game only with one connected?
I unplugged my secondary monitor and removed it using my nvidia control panel, then tried the game as noted above. The result was the same.
I then tried deleting the "ShaderCache2" folder and the SpaceEngineers.cfg to see if resetting these while one monitor was enabled changed anything. This time, instead of crashing immediately to desktop, the screen with the welcome text appeared and stayed on screen for several seconds before crashing to desktop. The sound cuts out almost immediately. I can move the mouse, but the game has otherwise frozen and crashes.
When I returned to my 2-monitor setup, the game did crash to desktop, but after a few more seconds. In fact, it went long enough where I was able to click OK on the welcome text, whereupon I saw text denoting that my graphics capabilities had changed. I did not get to read the text completely, as this is when the game crashed to desktop.
Please try also to rename the Video folder in Steam – steamapps – common – SpaceEngineers – Content. Try to rename it to something like "Video old" "Videos" or simillar.
I should note that the folder in question in my directory is "Videos" by default, not Video, just in case the expectation is otherwise.
Changing the folder name to anything OTHER than "Videos" allows the game to launch and get to the main menu, where it seems to work as expected (minus any background videos). I renamed the folder to both "Videos_Old" (this worked) and "Video" (This also worked). Upon returning the folder name to "Videos", the game crashed within seconds of starting again.
So it appears that something related to rendering the videos in-game is causing the crash. I have included the most recent logs after renaming the video folder to allow the game to launch, if that helps.
I should also note that, in my Event Viewer, there seems to be a correlation between SpaceEngineers crashing due to this video problem, and something in Windows referred to as Perflib, PerfProc, and PerfNet, which seem to give warnings and errors right as SpaceEngineers starts/crashes. See below:
I have attached a .txt file that contains the text data from those errors, copied straight from event viewer. Hopefully this helps nail down the problem.
Let me know if there's anything else you need!
- Tony
Hello Ondrej,
I have gone through your suggestions and tried them in order. See below for the various scenarios. Note that when I start the game, I am doing so the same way as noted in the previous email (with -skipintro, using the steam Play button).
I should note that Windows DID apply an update before I began troubleshooting. I tried the game without changing anything else (to be sure) and there was no change as it crashed to desktop after the text appeared on screen for a second.
From your log, I can see that you are using two monitors. Is it possible you try to launch the game only with one connected?
I unplugged my secondary monitor and removed it using my nvidia control panel, then tried the game as noted above. The result was the same.
I then tried deleting the "ShaderCache2" folder and the SpaceEngineers.cfg to see if resetting these while one monitor was enabled changed anything. This time, instead of crashing immediately to desktop, the screen with the welcome text appeared and stayed on screen for several seconds before crashing to desktop. The sound cuts out almost immediately. I can move the mouse, but the game has otherwise frozen and crashes.
When I returned to my 2-monitor setup, the game did crash to desktop, but after a few more seconds. In fact, it went long enough where I was able to click OK on the welcome text, whereupon I saw text denoting that my graphics capabilities had changed. I did not get to read the text completely, as this is when the game crashed to desktop.
Please try also to rename the Video folder in Steam – steamapps – common – SpaceEngineers – Content. Try to rename it to something like "Video old" "Videos" or simillar.
I should note that the folder in question in my directory is "Videos" by default, not Video, just in case the expectation is otherwise.
Changing the folder name to anything OTHER than "Videos" allows the game to launch and get to the main menu, where it seems to work as expected (minus any background videos). I renamed the folder to both "Videos_Old" (this worked) and "Video" (This also worked). Upon returning the folder name to "Videos", the game crashed within seconds of starting again.
So it appears that something related to rendering the videos in-game is causing the crash. I have included the most recent logs after renaming the video folder to allow the game to launch, if that helps.
I should also note that, in my Event Viewer, there seems to be a correlation between SpaceEngineers crashing due to this video problem, and something in Windows referred to as Perflib, PerfProc, and PerfNet, which seem to give warnings and errors right as SpaceEngineers starts/crashes. See below:
I have attached a .txt file that contains the text data from those errors, copied straight from event viewer. Hopefully this helps nail down the problem.
Let me know if there's anything else you need!
- Tony
Hello, Tony,
Thanks for all the provided information and new set of logs.
Still can not find any meaningful error/exception in the game log, however, the errors from the Event viewer are pointing us somewhere.
If you take a close look, there are errors with kernebase.dll file.
The kernelbase.dll crash occurs in a wide range of games and apps in general. The crash isn't typically caused by Space Engineers and may be the result of a system issue.
And since you are mentioning that you did update your Windows just before the game begun to behave, that might indicate that the update is not properly installed.
You can still try this workarounds:
Update your graphic drivers
Reinstall the Visual Studio redistributable: Download the latest version from the official Microsoft website (x86: vc_redist.x86.exe OR x64: vc_redist.x64.exe)
Run as a different user (a corrupt Windows user profile is a common source of this error)
Some players have fixed this issue using these steps as well:
Add -skipintro into the game launch options - you did that
Rename / Delete "\Steam\SteamApps\common\SpaceEngineers\Content\Videos" folder - you did that as well
Delete this directory: \AppData\Roaming\SpaceEngineers\Promo
Please let me know if anything from the list above works.
Kind Regards
Keen Software House: QA Department
Hello, Tony,
Thanks for all the provided information and new set of logs.
Still can not find any meaningful error/exception in the game log, however, the errors from the Event viewer are pointing us somewhere.
If you take a close look, there are errors with kernebase.dll file.
The kernelbase.dll crash occurs in a wide range of games and apps in general. The crash isn't typically caused by Space Engineers and may be the result of a system issue.
And since you are mentioning that you did update your Windows just before the game begun to behave, that might indicate that the update is not properly installed.
You can still try this workarounds:
Update your graphic drivers
Reinstall the Visual Studio redistributable: Download the latest version from the official Microsoft website (x86: vc_redist.x86.exe OR x64: vc_redist.x64.exe)
Run as a different user (a corrupt Windows user profile is a common source of this error)
Some players have fixed this issue using these steps as well:
Add -skipintro into the game launch options - you did that
Rename / Delete "\Steam\SteamApps\common\SpaceEngineers\Content\Videos" folder - you did that as well
Delete this directory: \AppData\Roaming\SpaceEngineers\Promo
Please let me know if anything from the list above works.
Kind Regards
Keen Software House: QA Department
Hello, Engineer!
Because there is no new comment from you, and we are unable to reproduce the issue on our own, I will close this thread now as outdated.
If you or any other player will experience this issue again, please make a new thread and provide all needed info there.
Thank you for understanding.
Kind Regards
Keen Software House: QA Department
Hello, Engineer!
Because there is no new comment from you, and we are unable to reproduce the issue on our own, I will close this thread now as outdated.
If you or any other player will experience this issue again, please make a new thread and provide all needed info there.
Thank you for understanding.
Kind Regards
Keen Software House: QA Department
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