PCSX2 freezing my whole system with certain games
#1
This isn't a complaint, I'm just looking for information...

PCSX2 has been working fairly well for me. My system is too slow to play some games, but most of the ones that I can play, seem to work fairly well. However I've come across two games that cause my whole system to freeze (sort of).

The two games are The Incredibles and Iron Man. What happens is that they seem to be playing normally, then a short way into the game (different every time), it will just freeze. It doesn't matter if I'm in fullscreen or windowed mode, when this happens, nothing will respond. I can't switch out of fullscreen, I can't close PCSX2 with Alt-F4, I can't change tasks with Alt-Tab and if I'm in windowed mode, there isn't even a mouse pointer, it's like the entire computer is frozen.

However when I hit the power switch to signal a shutdown, Windows closes all the programs, PCSX2 included, and shuts down normally. So it wasn't really frozen, it just wasn't responding to input. Once PCSX2 has been closed, everything goes back to normal, but by then Windows is well on its way to shutting down and I can't stop it.

I normally have the speedhacks turned up to 4-Agressive, which I realize can cause problems in games, I just didn't expect it to cause Windows to freeze. I tried turning it down and played further into the games without them freezing, but since it happens at random, I can't tell if that fixed the problem, or just delayed it. Since I have to shut down and reboot every time it happens, it's a little time-consuming to test all the options.

I'm just wondering if this is a known problem with turning the speedhacks up too high and if it will eventually happen with some of the games that have seemed fine so far.

I'm using PCSX2 1.4.0 on Windows XP Pro, SP3 with 4GB RAM and a 2,4Ghz Core-2-Duo CPU.
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#2
That kinda sounds like you have a problem with your USB ports, it's unlikely PCSX2 will stop windows from working at all, that would be really weird. But how does the game freeze up? does it actually freeze or is it just because it stops responding to your input?
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#3
(03-26-2016, 03:26 AM)refraction Wrote: That kinda sounds like you have a problem with your USB ports, it's unlikely PCSX2 will stop windows from working at all, that would be really weird.   But how does the game freeze up? does it actually freeze or is it just because it stops responding to your input?

It appears I may have been mistaken. The first couple times it happened (the first time in fullscreen, the second in windowed mode), I could have sworn that I tried every key combination to get out of it and nothing worked. However, I've been testing those two games and I can't duplicate that occurrence.

Yes, they both usually still freeze PCSX2 (everything freezes, sound, video, etc, I have to use the Task Manager to kill it off), but they don't lock my system as seemed to happen before. Maybe I just panicked, but I thought I had tried all the normal methods to get around it (Alt-Tab to switch programs, Control-Alt-Delete to bring up the Task Manager, etc).

Anyway, it's hard to test because it's completely random. The first time I played The Incredibles, it froze partway through the first level, but when I was testing it earlier, I made it a decent portion of the way through the second level before I got frustrated and quit. Iron Man froze very early in the game the first time, but the second time I was able to get through a good portion of the training section before it froze. The last time it froze 2-3 minutes into the first part.
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#4
Hmm okay, only thing I can suggest trying is make sure you use something other than xaudio2 in spu2-x and see if the freezing still occurs. Let me know what happens
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#5
(03-27-2016, 12:27 AM)refraction Wrote: Hmm okay, only thing I can suggest trying is make sure you use something other than xaudio2 in spu2-x and see if the freezing still occurs.  Let me know what happens

Unfortunately switching the audio setting doesn't prevent the freezing in Iron Man. Neither does turning the speedhacks setting down to 3-Balanced. Sad
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#6
Just a quick update;

I put the settings back to what I originally had (xaudio2 and speedhacks on 4), which has been working fine for me in other games. Last night Godzilla: Save the Earth froze. The weird part is that it froze on the controller configuration screen. It's never frozen in the game itself. To be fair, I was fiddling around with the settings for a couple minutes. I wanted to invert the Y axis for aiming and the graphical display they use to indicate your choice isn't the most intuitive.
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#7
Can you turn speedhacks off completely (preset 1) and try again, any amount of speed hack can cause freezing, let's rule that out first
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#8
(03-28-2016, 12:42 PM)refraction Wrote: Can you turn speedhacks off completely (preset 1) and try again, any amount of speed hack can cause freezing, let's rule that out first

Unfortunately games still freeze even with speedhacks turned off. Sad

The other night, Godzilla: Save the Earth froze during the actual game, and that's been one of the most stable games for me. I've had it running for a couple hours at a time with no problems.

To be clear, it's not just the game that is freezing, PCSX2 itself is freezing. I can't even close the window, I have to kill the PCSX2 task to get rid of it.
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#9
Games randomly hanging could indeed be a speedhack problem. If the entire system becomes unresponsive, I'd assume a hardware problem as well.
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#10
(03-30-2016, 06:54 PM)rama Wrote: Games randomly hanging could indeed be a speedhack problem. If the entire system becomes unresponsive, I'd assume a hardware problem as well.

I turned the speedhacks all the way off and PCSX2 still froze on some games, although I was mistaken about it freezing my whole system.

Anyway, I think I might have figured out what was doing it, although I haven't had the time to really sit down and test it yet.

Originally, PCSX2 was set to use the SSE2 plugin. After running CPUZ and seeing that my processor also supported SSSE3, I switched to using that plugin. I can't be 100% sure, but I think all the freezes happened after I changed it. I changed it back to SSE2, but I haven't had the time yet to really test it. I did try one game that always froze a couple minutes into the first level (Battlestar Galactica) and it ran longer than it ever had with SSSE3. I would have played longer, but I ended up failing the first level. Smile

It's hard to really diagnose because the freezes happen at random. Iron Man can freeze a couple minutes into the game, or I might be able to play for 30 minutes before it freezes. I've played Godzilla for fairly long periods and only had it freeze once during the game.
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