Ren'py Games Crashing Without Fail or Error Log Lenovo Laptop

[einzzweidrei]

Hello,
I apologize for the similar nature of this help request to others, but I have looked through those threads and others and none of the suggestions therein have helped. Every Renpy game I play crashes randomly with the spinning blue wheel of doom. There is no pattern to when the crashes occur, they sometimes occur immediately, other times after thirty minutes. No error log appears in any of the games I have played so I have no idea what is causing all of the crashes. I have followed suggestions on other threads and launched games in admin mode, disabled controller/gamepad options, changed the renders, updated my graphics drivers twice, but nothing stops the crashes.
I am using a Lenovo legion 5 laptop with an Intel i9-14900HX core, 32 Ram, and about 500GB of unused storage. I can look up more information should that be helpful. Thank you for any assistance.

 

[peterppp]

could be cpu related. 13900 has problems with renpy. someone said 14900 too
https://f95zone.to/threads/all-renpy-games-either-crashing-or-fail-to-launch.169143/post-11387231

 

[Winterfire]

Some devs are dumdum, so make sure it's not the actual game(s) being an issue. Especially since some take thirty minutes to crash, I can already picture the dev doing: show image show image show image show image show image (...) without ever hiding it. Ren'Py is very accessible, and the chance of encountering even multiple games that do unholy things is high.

Assuming it's not the CPU as peterpp said, make sure your HDD/SSD is not failing or being stressed too much, you can run a game and monitor the disk % with task manager.

 

[einzzweidrei]

Unfortunately, it is literally every single game, so I assume it is something with my computer rather than with the games. I have been running every game with task manager up to check the disk % and it never goes anywhere near 100%. I've tried to install the Intel voltage controller thing to see if I could underclock my CPU if that was a problem but all the options were greyed out. I have tried to reset the BIOS but I'm not great with tech so still stumbling around with that. I think if that fails I'll probably have to return the CPU or something but sadly I need the computer for work so I'm a bit stuck

 

[anne O'nymous]

[...] Every Renpy game I play crashes randomly with the spinning blue wheel of doom. There is no pattern to when the crashes occur, they sometimes occur immediately, other times after thirty minutes. No error log appears in any of the games I have played [...]

This is something really strange.

As Winterfire said, the fact that it can tale minutes before the game crash point to an error from the dev. But the way Ren'Py is designed make it so it's really exceptional that, once you pressed the "start" button or loaded a save file, Ren'Py will crash without telling you what happened. And among those exceptions, the majority happen when you load a save file.

Therefore, I'm tempted to say that it's not a Ren'Py issue; or at least not directly one.

But in the same time, if you had issues with other software, you would have said it, what exclude a dying RAM. This only leave the CPU, since, like peterppp implied, Python is know to have issues with some Intel CPU when the voltage is too low.
Yet, it's the first time that I hear about that issue happening after minutes of play, so far it always, and only, prevented Ren'Py to works.

 

[Winterfire]

Unfortunately, it is literally every single game, so I assume it is something with my computer rather than with the games. I have been running every game with task manager up to check the disk % and it never goes anywhere near 100%. I've tried to install the Intel voltage controller thing to see if I could underclock my CPU if that was a problem but all the options were greyed out. I have tried to reset the BIOS but I'm not great with tech so still stumbling around with that. I think if that fails I'll probably have to return the CPU or something but sadly I need the computer for work so I'm a bit stuck

I found this on Reddit, which fixed the issue for some people:

1. Use Intel Extreme Tuning Utility. This is for Renpy games. Start it and in the first screen you'll have Performance Core Ratio 55x. Change this to 54x. No more crashes at all.

You might have to update the BIOS, but please do so only if you have an UPS, you wouldn't want your pc to switch off during that process.

 

[einzzweidrei]

I've downloaded Intel Extreme Tuning Utility but unfortunately it wont let me change anything, and my performance core ratio is 56x not 55x though I guess the same idea of lowering it to 54x would still hold though my computer won't let me adjust anything.

 

[einzzweidrei]

Sorry, I forgot to quote you in my reply in the above message

 

[Winterfire]

Some motherboards don't support that, or require a BIOS update

 

[einzzweidrei]

Some motherboards don't support that, or require a BIOS update

I think I will end up just contacting Lenovo tech support because my device still has warranty, and seeing if they will refer me to replace the CPU or something. I just don't think I will be able to do anything about this issue myself. Thank you for your assistance

 

[B92Nick]

I think I will end up just contacting Lenovo tech support because my device still has warranty, and seeing if they will refer me to replace the CPU or something. I just don't think I will be able to do anything about this issue myself. Thank you for your assistance

Open Intel Extreme Tuning.
Go to 'Profiles' and make sure you save the default settings before making any changes.
Go to 'Advanced Tuning' and then agree to the 'Overclocking Disclaimer'.
Scroll down to 'Performance Per-Core Tuning'.
Click on each core twice, apply, and then test it.

 

[einzzweidrei]

Open Intel Extreme Tuning.
Go to 'Profiles' and make sure you save the default settings before making any changes.
Go to 'Advanced Tuning' and then agree to the 'Overclocking Disclaimer'.
Scroll down to 'Performance Per-Core Tuning'.
Click on each core twice, apply, and then test it.
View attachment 4208456

Thank you for the suggestion, unfortunately I am getting the "This platform does not support overclocking" message from Intel Extreme Tuning so I don't think I will be able to make any of the changes.