Crash on editor startup

Help!

Suddenly my project crashes on startup. It gets to about 96%. It was fine last night when I shutdown.

I’ve tried dumping all temp/saved stuff + reinstalled the engine. No luck.

The game plays fine as standalone, all levels work fine.

Here is the relevant part of the log (I think):

[2016.09.24-03.33.12:371][ 0]LogWindows:Error: === Critical error: ===
[2016.09.24-03.33.12:371][ 0]LogWindows:Error:
[2016.09.24-03.33.12:371][ 0]LogWindows:Error: Fatal error!
[2016.09.24-03.33.12:371][ 0]LogWindows:Error:
[2016.09.24-03.33.12:371][ 0]LogWindows:Error: Unhandled Exception: EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION reading address 0x00000000
[2016.09.24-03.33.12:371][ 0]LogWindows:Error:
[2016.09.24-03.33.12:371][ 0]LogWindows:Error: UE4Editor-Core.dll
[2016.09.24-03.33.12:371][ 0]LogWindows:Error: UE4Editor-CoreUObject.dll
[2016.09.24-03.33.12:371][ 0]LogWindows:Error: UE4Editor-CoreUObject.dll
[2016.09.24-03.33.12:371][ 0]LogWindows:Error: UE4Editor-UnrealEd.dll
[2016.09.24-03.33.12:371][ 0]LogWindows:Error: UE4Editor-BlueprintGraph.dll
[2016.09.24-03.33.12:371][ 0]LogWindows:Error: UE4Editor-BlueprintGraph.dll
[2016.09.24-03.33.12:371][ 0]LogWindows:Error: UE4Editor-BlueprintGraph.dll
[2016.09.24-03.33.12:371][ 0]LogWindows:Error: UE4Editor-BlueprintGraph.dll
[2016.09.24-03.33.12:371][ 0]LogWindows:Error: UE4Editor-UnrealEd.dll
[2016.09.24-03.33.12:371][ 0]LogWindows:Error: UE4Editor-UnrealEd.dll
[2016.09.24-03.33.12:371][ 0]LogWindows:Error: UE4Editor-CoreUObject.dll
[2016.09.24-03.33.12:371][ 0]LogWindows:Error: UE4Editor-CoreUObject.dll
[2016.09.24-03.33.12:371][ 0]LogWindows:Error: UE4Editor-CoreUObject.dll

Hey Michael,

I have a few questions regarding your crash:

  • Are you getting a crash reporter window? If so please provide your Machine ID and ensure to hit Send & Close on the report.
  • Could you please provide the logs from your project’s Saved->Logs folder after the crash occurs?
  • Just to clarify, you’re able to open a clean project in 4.13 correct?
  • Is this project strictly blueprint or are you using C++ as well?

Yes I got the crash window and I submitted.
Log attached.
Yes I can open a clean project, and my other projects.
Project is blueprint only.

link text

Thanks for submitting the crash window, could you provide your Machine ID from the window so I can look the crash up?

MachineId:

Thank you for providing your Machine ID.

Do you have any plugins enabled, especially third-party plugins?

Yes, I have the LE Extended Standard Library installed to 4.13. They just released an update this morning but it did not solve my crash. I only have it to use the “Set mouse position” node.

Try removing that plugin from the project and seeing if the crash is still occurring.

If it is, in order to investigate the crash further I’ll need to have a look at your project, as it seems to be specific to that particular project.

If you would, please zip it up, upload it to Dropbox or Drive and provide me with a link through PM on the forums: https://forums.unrealengine.com/member.php?160394-Sean-Flint

Hey Sean, Just letting you know I have narrowed down the source of the crash. Something with the BP_GameInstance (derived from GameInstance) is causing the crash. If I remove this from the content folder the editor starts up - then I have a hundred errors because I cast to BP_GameInstance a lot to get variables.

So I opened the editor without the game instance - copied the game instance back over (it appears in the folder) - fixed all the errors - everything looks good - closed the editor - restart - CRASH.

Hey Michael,

Sorry for the delay. I also noted that removing the Game Instance allowed me to open the project. I’d recommend recreating it from scratch in your project and seeing if that resolves the issue. If so, it’s possible that it was related to some sort of corruption within the asset itself.

Let me know how that works

Sean, I actually tried that yesterday. Recreated the game instance (all macros and functions exactly), manually reconnected all references from the old game instance to the new… and it still crashed!

I just don’t get it. There was no problem at all with the game instance before. I had not made any changes to it recently when the crash issue started (I was working on UI stuff at the time). Just one minute it worked, next it didn’t.

Hey Michael,

Sorry for the delay. What I’d recommend at this point is attempting to migrate each piece of your content piece-by-piece into a clean project. If the project beings to crash, you’ll know exactly which asset(s) is/are affecting it. If you have not been able to reproduce the issue in a clean project, this leads me to believe there is potentially a corrupted asset somewhere in your project that is causing the crash to occur.

However, if you are able to get a repro in a clean project, feel free to reopen the thread and I’ll be glad to continue looking into the issue.

Have a great day

Migrating content piece by piece is not a realistic option. Have you ever actually tried to do that on a large complicated project? Due to dependencies, when you migrate one asset over it needs to take everything connected to it as well.

That would be pointless anyway as I know what the problem is, it’s the game instance. I pointed that out 9 days ago. The project opens when the game instance is removed. I recreated the game instance from scratch but it still causes the crash on startup. It worked in 4.12 and 4.3 for a few weeks. It stopped working ALL OF A SUDDEN. I hadn’t made any recent chances to it (I was doing UI stuff at the time, unrelated to game instance).

Look, I really do appreciate the help. But I expected a bit more from Epic support. This is really disappointing.

I uploaded my project in the hope someone there could look into it technically further than I could. But all I get are a few basic suggestions.

I reinstalled 4.12 and have reverted to an old 4.12 version of my project with the loss of several weeks of work.

Due to the fact that the issue seems to lie within your game instance, and there are no other instances of this crash that exist in our database at this time, it leads me to believe that this is not an engine bug.

As a result, we are unable to allocate any additional resources to this at this time, as we do not guarantee support for development questions or issues.

If you do believe it is a bug with the engine, feel free to provide a repro case and I’ll be more than happy to continue to investigate!

Also, ensure that you are using Source Control when working on a large project so you don’t run the risk of losing as much work if you need to revert.