PC WAS Crashing when Loading Makuri Islands

General Discussion
1

“Was” crashing… fixed it.

TLDR: There wasn’t enough disk space; Had only 4.6GB free on drive. Now have 12GB free.

Long explanation:

There are many posts about this, going back a couple of years. My main reference is:
PC crashes when loading Makuri [November 2022] [1.31]

I knew my problem wasn’t a “weak” PC, slow, or low-end graphics. Nor a RAM problem. And after uninstalling Zwift two times, including removal of all the program folders and data folders, Zwift still crashed when trying to load Makuri. Watopia worked fine.

Finally, I looked at my hard disk space, and had only 4.6GB free out of 128GB SSD.

Another puzzler to this: Makuri loaded just fine, up until a recent Windows 10 Update. But for security and other reasons, we NEED those WIndows 10 updates. Who to blame?

If you run DiskCleanup, you will see that Windows Updates leave a LOT of garbage behind, and that’s why you may think your latest Windows Update is the problem. But in reality, your latest Windows Update just consumed the last little bit of disk space you need for loading Makuri. Also, if you have not run Disk Defragmenter, run that as well to free up space.

Why Makuri needs WAY more free disk space than Watopia? I don’t know. It has amazing graphics and scenery, and the artists should get a prize (or a raise) for doing such a great job.

After I ran DiskCleanup, I had about 9GB free disk space. I also uninstalled TurboTax (LOL), and some other unnecessary programs. And I moved ALL 5GB of my Pictures to my D: drive (1TB), and there’s a way to tell Windows “yo my photos are on D now”.

Good luck to you all in trying to remedy your “Makuri Islands crashes Zwift” issues. In my case, it was lack of free disk space.

Below are my PC’s specs, as well as the Log file messages from the crash.
It’s great to be riding in Makuri again.
-Dave

Zwift:
Launcher version 1.1.9
Program version 1.43.3

PC specs: Dell G7 7590 Gaming Laptop
NVIDIA(R) GeForce RTX 2060 6GB GDDR6
Windows 10 Home (64bit) English
SSD: 128GB M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive
Hard Drive: 1TB 5400 rpm 2.5" SATA
9th Generation Intel Core i5-9300H (8MB Cache, up to 4.1 GHz, 4 cores)
8GB RAM DDR4 2666MHz(4Gx2)
ALL the latest Windows updates and drivers

A portion of the log file indicates the following:

[11:43:55] DEBUG LEVEL: Open assets/haptic/fittech_haptic.wad in file 0xa3b1ade0
[11:43:55] Loading WAD file ‘assets/haptic/fittech_haptic.wad’ with file.
[11:43:55] DEBUG LEVEL: Close file 0xa3b1ade0
[11:43:55] ERROR: Sky::Load(): Japan not found
[11:43:56] ERROR: Sky::Load(): Japan not found
[11:43:56] ERROR: Sky::Load(): France not found
[11:43:56] ERROR: Sky::Load(): France not found
[11:43:56] ERROR: Sky::Load(): France not found
[11:43:56] ERROR: Sky::Load(): Scotland not found

and after a few thousand lines of messages:

[11:46:45] Found previous mesh slot for data/Environment/Animals/HermitCrab/HermitCrab.gde
[11:46:45] Found previous mesh slot for data/Environment/Animals/Pelican/Pelican.gde
[11:46:50] [WARN] UDP connection timeout (1 so far), reconnection attempt 1
[11:46:50] [INFO] Connecting to UDP server…
[11:46:50] GFX_Internal_LoadTextureFromTGAFile: FAILED MEMORY ALLOCATION of size 1159023. Aborting.
[11:46:50] ASSERT: “c runtime invalid parameter”, file=D:\git\zwift-game-client\Projects\ZwiftApp\CODE\CrashReporting\Impl\CrashReportingImpl-Sentry.h, line=170
[11:46:50] ERROR: ZwiftApp Crashed
[11:46:50] ERROR: ZwiftApp Crashed

2

For the public record; it is generally speaking dangerous to fill up an SSD beyond 80%, it can cripple the functionality, or worse, actually kill of its lifespan (and I know a thing about SSD lifespan as I still have a 60GB SSD now 14 years old that is still functional, and it certainly shouldn’t be.)

This day and age SSDs are much more robust in terms of life, but… as a rule of thumb, do not fill it beyond that 80%, 90% is even starting to push it. Beyond that… you absolutely will run into problems left and right.

And don’t use the defragmenter on an SSD, (by default it should TRIM it), but that isn’t necessary either; Windows does that in the background on the fly 99% of the time unless you disabled it for unknown reasons.

Chances are what happened is Zwift filled up your lack of RAM, looking for more memory allocation, and then went to virtual memory, which Windows probably condensed down to … next to nothing due to your lack of storage, and that is what caused the crashing.

3

I have a 10 year old system with 256GB SSD, and it’s still working fine despite half it’s life with 10% free.

None the less, the Windows 10 G7 gaming computer (my wife’s): it would have been nice if Zwift had put a message in the log file “yo free up some disk space” or something like that. It should be easy for Zwift HQ to test a nearly full disk system, and come up with appropriate responses for either the screen or the log file. After all, it’s 2023, and simply crashing out to the desktop is kind of 1980’s-ish. (full disclosure: 40 years of PC-based software development and consulting)

4

Heh, or so we’d all wish.
It’s actually completely standard these days.

I also don’t think too many people would approve of things like Zwift or other games, apps, etc. pointing out that you’re low on storage space when you actively run the program.

If you thought the software industry was improving, oh how wrong you’d be.

The lack of regression testing from all directions of software, video games, etc. should be evidence we aren’t going forwards.

Some automated crash logger assuming it can catch the executable would however be… more than nothing; which I’d agree there.

As for low free storage SSDs goes; I’m not sure what kind of effect it has on more modern equipment; 15 years ago it was in the realm of detrimental; now I’m not… entirely sure. It might just be performance issues at worst really; all I know is, it might be an old wives tale by now, but it certainly wasn’t always.

5

LOL - all so true - so true…
My problem is I’ve spend the greater part of my career in medical diagnostic software (which must have FDA approval and follow a written and detailed development process), and also in water process control, which ditto - must work 24/7 no exceptions.
The few years I worked in consumer electronics and digital TV… oh man… I was an outcast for even suggesting such rigorous software process :wink:

Zwift is amazing that it works so well for 100,000 users and 50,000 simultaneous riders across multiple worlds. When my rear derailure broke years ago while riding outside - I had to call for a ride. If Zwift hiccups while indoors - it’s easy to just start over.

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