CW3: Intermittent crash on load screen

[Lord_Farin]

Tonight, I've experienced intermittent crashes with CW3 -- Windows, x64. Crashes occurred on the loading screen, practically immediately after launch. Randomly, the game would launch fine (and as I'm playing right now, I don't want to try again...).

The reports are attached.

What triggered me to write my own post (besides the error being intermittent, and started occurring only a day after I installed CW3) was that there was an error displayed prior to the "Oops" window. The error window was titled "gc error" or something like that; the text was "GetThreadContext failed".

Hopefully, the information given is helpful in identifying and eliminating the crashes.

(Edit: Replaced RAR by ZIP.)

[Lord_Farin]

Extra information:

Switching to 32bit, running as admin, running in compatibility mode... They all didn't work either.

This randomness is really jarring. I hope that there will be a solution soon. One thing that I note is that the crashes seem to occur only after my pc has been on for some time. E.g. the first launch of the day usually works without problems.

[Grauniad]

That sounds like a graphics card problem. How old is your PC? Have you ever opened it to blow out the dust? Please provide  make/model specifications of both your PC and graphics subsystem.

[teknotiss]

That sounds like a graphics card problem. How old is your PC? Have you ever opened it to blow out the dust? Please provide  make/model specifications of both your PC and graphics subsystem.

i'd agree with G, that sort of behaviour is normally indicative of a fault rather than a software error.
i also agree that the age and amount of dust in your machine are things to look at too.
there are many tech heads in these fora, so one of us at least will be able to offer advice.

ps i got 6 random lock ups over 3 days playing CW3, i knew i needed to replace my graphics card, but had to wait til yesterday to get a new one since that was payday, lucky for me it died after my pay came through and i got a new one that's perfect for my needs for £70 at PC World (never buy a whole PC there, but some components are pretty good value), if the card hadn't needed immediate replacement i could have got the same one for £56 or so online, but hey i got it faster!

[Lord_Farin]

Looking around the internet, I think I've isolated the issue -- it's my AV (ESET Smart Security 6) interfering with the autoupdate feature.
When I either sever my internet connection or suspend my AV's activity, the game doesn't crash. Re-enabling them makes the crash recur quickly.
So I guess I'd like to know now how to disable autoupdate...

Just in case it's still relevant:
My system is just over 2 years old and is a custom build. Full(ish) spec:

Asus ASRock 880G Extreme3
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T
Ati Radeon HD6950 2GB
8GB RAM

Win 7 x64

I have just recently rebuilt it from scratch (and cleaned it) to install a new CPU fan (2 year warranty period was over), so dust is unlikely to be a problem.
Another thing that points away from hardware is that I don't experience crashes with any other game I play regularly or have played regularly over the last months.

[knucracker]

That's an interesting observation...  What were you googling for that led you to  this?

There is no way to turn off the auto-update check, but I will add that so it will be in the first patch. 

[Lord_Farin]

That's an interesting observation...  What were you googling for that led you to  this?

There is no way to turn off the auto-update check, but I will add that so it will be in the first patch. 

I googled for '"gc fatal error" GetThreadContext' (excluding single quotes).

I found this: http://arcengames.com/mantisbt/print_bug_page.php?bug_id=829
which linked me to this: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,7461.0.html

where I found that the issue had occurred for a different game, but with Kaspersky -- and the AutoUpdate feature.

I then added one and one, and:
* Disconnected from the internet and disabled my AV. No crash on launch.
* Re-enabled: crash after a few tries.
* Disabled internet: Launch.
* Enabled internet: Crash.
After which I posted my conclusions.