Hi,

I am using Visual Studio 2013 Express on Windows 10 to develop my game. Recently, I've ran into a problem concerning Direct3D: When I start my game, it crashes as soon as it starts rendering the first frame with different error messages stating that there was an access violation reading/writing/executing at different locations. However, when I compile the game on Windows 7, it runs on both Windows 7 and 10 without this error. When I try to run the game compiled on Windows 10 on Windows 7, it crashes, too. It does not crash in Debug build, only in Release build. I once "fixed" the problem by outputting the device context using OutputDebugString(). Some changes to the code in unrelated locations seem to "cause" this error.

I already tried re-installing Visual Studio and updating my graphics driver, but that didn't help.

Can I re-install the Direct3D SDK somehow? Or is there maybe another solution?

Edit: SOLVED (see post #15)

It does not crash in Debug build, only in Release build.

Without further information, this sounds like a memory-access related error, likely due to an uninitialized variable which doesn't show up in debug because memory is preinitialized there. Try a tool for detecting such errors like Microsofts application verifier (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=20028), while creating debug symbols for your release build (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fsk896zz.aspx). This should optimally lead you to the exact point of failure.

Additional things to do: Turn on the directx debug layer + break on error/corruption, see if this leads you to the source of the crash. Static code analysis tools can also help (http://cppcheck.sourceforge.net/).

If this doesn't help, it might be something else, it just sounds like something along those lines.

It is almost never a Visual Studio bug. Even if it only crashes with one version of the compiler, the issue is usually that you are relying on undefined behaviour which can differ from one compiler to the next.

Suggestions:

• Check that all your variables are being initialised properly, and never assume they start at some correct value if you didn't do it explicitly
• Test your debug build with all the runtime diagnostics you can; often the problem exists in debug mode too, but it just doesn't present itself unless you look for it
• Try creating an 'optimised debug' build; you may be able to find out more about the crash this way, although the call stack may not be 100% accurate.
• Try using #pragma optimize("", off) around various functions - if the crash goes away, it's likely that the error lies in that part of the code

In this case, all variables were initialized. It crashes when I clear a depth buffer. When I debug the graphics, I get the warning that the depth buffer is read-only, which does not make sense because it was created to be read- and writable. I initialize the graphics in the main thread. After initialization, I create a render thread that then uses those variables. This should not be undefined behavior, though.

Additionally, I don't see how this could possibly lead to an access violation by execution, meaning the PC register is somehow invalid. The device and device context cannot be corrupted at this point since the device is thread-safe and I protect the device context by a mutex each time I use it.

I turned off optimization to test it and sometimes the error did occur without optimization, sometimes not.

This problem first occurred when I changed some unrelated code.

Could be a (graphics) driver update.

Enable DirectX debug mode (e.g. set the flags on creation). Any warnings/errors showing up there, when you run your game?

As I already said, I already updated the graphics driver and the debug mode only shows a weird error message stating that the depth buffer is read-only, but nothing helpful. :(