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DOSBox freezes entire nVidia driver, if ShadowPlay enabled, if not run as administrator

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First post, by Wisq

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  • Motherboard: Asus P9X79 Pro
  • Processor type and speed: Intel Core i7 3930K, 3.2 GHz, turbo 4.5 GHz (OCed from 3.8 GHz)
  • Amount and type of RAM: Corsair Dominator GT 16GB (4x4GB). 4GB RAM disk in use.
  • Video board w/ RAM amount and type: 2x nVidia GTX 690 (4 GPUs total), in SLI. Tested with drivers 344.48 and 344.75 (latest).
  • Sound board: Creative ZxR (w/ daughter board)
  • Operating system: Windows 8.0
  • Game name: Sid Meier's Covert Action, from GoG.com (but error occurs on launch, before interactive DOS batch script, and well before the game begins)
  • Description of problem:
    Upon launch, immediately freezes nVidia drivers. Event Viewer shows multiple "recovered" video errors, but it never truly recovers; it freezes immediately, goes black after ~10-15 seconds, and does not return until reboot. Main system console is unusable beyond this point.

    System remains responsive; I can still SSH or RDP in. I can also issue a shutdown or reboot command remotely, though it takes several minutes to actually shut down. When SSHing in and looking at the process list, DOSBox.exe is still running, but killing it does not resolve the problem.

    (The game itself does not actually launch, because the GoG.com DOSBox config includes a batch script to instruct the player ahead of time, and the error occurs immediately on DOSbox launch, before the "bootup" logo screen is even visible. So the error is definitely not related to anything regarding the game executable itself.)
  • Reproducibility of problem:
    Always, immediately on launch, subject to the following conditions:
    • NOT run as administrator.
    • nVidia ShadowPlay is enabled.
    When run via "run as administrator", or with ShadowPlay disabled, it works fine.
  • Sound mode used: Seems to be configured for SB16 220/7/1/5, GUS disabled, intelligent MPU-401. GoG.com recommends "Roland MT-32 MIDI" setting.
  • Video mode: Tested with surface fullscreen, surface window, OpenGL fullscreen. Screen resolution is 2560x1440. Window resolution set to "original".
  • Version of emulator: DOSBox 0.74 (supplied by GoG.com installer)
  • Steps already attempted to solve the problem:
    In rough order:
    1. Successfully ran as administrator.
    2. Continued to fail despite testing different DOSBox video modes (see above).
    3. Continued to fail after update to most recent nVidia driver.
    4. Successfully ran with ShadowPlay disabled.
    5. Continued to fail with ShadowPlay enabled but Shadow Time disabled.
    6. Skimmed the README, but I'm a DOSBox veteran and am already quite familiar with DOSBox 0.74 and had this problem pretty locked down, so I admittedly didn't read it "cover to cover". I've probably done so at some point in the past, though.

Reply 1 of 3, by truth_deleted

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Seems like a shadowplay problem since it requires administrator permissions to run with dosbox. Did you try another SDL application, such as mednafen? This would test whether SDL is involved in the issue. Did you try running dosbox independently and outside the gog.com setup? Did you try output=ddraw? Did you try output=opengl but copy opengl32.dll from gldirect into your dosbox directory?

A google search shows this is not an atypical problem with shadowplay and other games are affected.

Reply 2 of 3, by Wisq

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Thanks for the extra tests to run. Granted, it takes a while when each "success" (reproducing the error) is a five minute freeze. 😀

Results:

  • Stock DOSBox 0.74, fresh off SourceForge, default configuration: Freezes.
  • mednafen, default configuration: Does not freeze. Successfully ran an old Genesis ROM I had lying around.
  • GoG DOSBox, output=ddraw: Freezes.
  • Stock DOSBox 0.74, output=opengl with gldirect's opengl32.dll: Freezes. However, it recovers a bit more gracefully; when the shutdown happens, I actually get to see the blue Windows "Restarting ..." screen, instead of just an unceremonious reboot from a black screen.

One more result worth noting:

  • Stock DOSBox 0.74, output=opengl with gldirect's opengl32.dll, no ShadowPlay: Crashes. (If fullscreen, crashes to desktop; if windowed, pops up a Windows crash dialog.) Works as soon as I remove the opengl32.dll.

Reply 3 of 3, by truth_deleted

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Some reported that Nvidia driver version 344.11 has solved similar issues. It may be worth a try. Another test is to try an older version of dosbox, such as 0.63. Also, when logged in as administrator with shadowplay active, do the logs show a "service" starting when running dosbox?

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