[2023] Crashing within first couple minutes of starting play

I was able to run that last_save.ck3 for some game years with no problem.

Can you try it on any other machine you might have access to, or this machine but a new Windows user on it?  

Skad said: I'm a bit confused by your suggestion to "try it on any other machine", as I'm not interested in preserving the save, but rather being able to play the game on this machine.

It was purely a diagnostic step to confirm that the issue is confined to your machine.  

So it's something on this problem machine getting in the way, it seems. Can I please get a new dxdiag.txt from both machines.

And on the problem machine, install and run the free utility Speccy. Send its output to a text file and attach that here, thanks.  

I see you have Avast! which has been a problem with our games in the past, if not so much recently. You are confident you added ck3.exe to all its exceptions lists? And prevented it doing realtime scans of the Steam/SteamApps/common/CK3 AND Documents/Paradox Interactive/CK3 folders?

Disable the Discord overlay.

That's all I see in there that's caused problems for us before. Of course the major difference in those two machines is Win10 vs 11 , but we know the game does run on Win 11 in general!  

I'm running out of ideas on this one I'm afraid. Looking at the dxdiag again I see ck3.exe has had two completely unrelated crashes recorded in there, plus some AppHang events. Very unusual if this was a game problem or bug! That would more normally point to a Windows or hardware problem.

My instinct at this point is to suggest a Windows reset and a thorough hardware check; how do you feel about that idea?  

Skad said: WRT a Windows reset, do you see value in wiping other drives,

No, what's on other drives really shouldn't affect this issue.

There are two options - a Windows Reset and a full wipe and re-install. The first is less trouble but also less thorough ... I guesas your choice would depend on your level of experience in such procedures.

As far as hardware goes, swapping out is an option but I was thinking more of CPU and memory checks.  

Well, frankly, I'm not the best person for hardware support, been specialising in software for over 20 years. My colleague @jpd is very experienced in that area, otherwise if you have a trusted computer shop ...


If none of this comes to anything, I will say that we are seeing an issue very like this with Victoria3 - I've just transferred some threads on it to Bug Reports for that game. The commonality is a similar version of our game engine Clausewitz, plus the Jomini framework. However why several people get the issue with Vic3 but only you, or a very small number, with this game I can't see.