As the title says - I've been playing all day yesterday, on the same version (v2.06c), with multiple game starts. No crashes, no BSODs, everything was fine. Then I exited to desktop, put my PC in standby and went to bed.

Now I basically got up, woke up the PC, started NMS, aaand BSOD.
Repeatedly.

I already found that the game corrupts itself when that happens:
At least 2 files, in \No Man's Sky\Binaries\SETTINGS ...
- TKGAMESETTINGS.MXML
- TKGRAPHICSSETTINGS.MXML

... are corrupted after the BSOD. I got them backed up so I replaced them, but it still BSOD'd after I did. So there is more damage elsewhere, or it just quit working for whatever other weird reason.

I just don't get it.
My GPU drivers have been updated ever since the 14th when NMS demanded I do that. It ran fine just yesterday. Mere hours ago. No changes or updates between then and now, PC didn't reboot either since it worked.

How do you mess things up so bad that it causes freaking BSODs left and right... why doesn't it just CTD?! Did Hello Games not know how to implement try-catches, or is this on NVIDIA...?

*Update:
I did a verify, and it still BSODs.

I tried to uninstall, and that completed without actually removing anything. So after waiting 10 minutes I manually launched the uninstaller exe, which threw an error, "corrupted". Well, no shit. So I manually deleted the game folder. I'm downloading and installing fresh now. But something tells me that yesterday was a fracture in reality, when it never should have worked to begin with, but it did anyways. And now it won't work ever again for some reason.

Whelp guess that's it for me then, no patches this weekend...

Okay, so. Fresh reinstall did indeed fix it.
How that happened however, I'd like to know.

Check the hard drive for any problems. Don't let the same situation arise again with other games or programs.

Why does everyone immediately jump onto the "OMFG your harddrive is dying" bandwagon* if something is not immediately explainable...? My harddrives are fine... do you know just how slim of a chance the harddrive failing is, compared to the buggy mess of a game we're talking about being at fault?

And not just one harddrive, nope, it's two by now. Because a friend of mine confirmed, his game is acting up in a similar way. He played yesterday, went to sleep, first thing today was his game not working anymore. Except that, instead of BSODing like mine, his runs at an ultra low internal resolution, with 0.5 FPS and jagged, pixelated edges (see attached) when it ran fine just a few hours before. And he is unable to get it to run again. And his fresh download will take 5h to complete.

From what it sounds like, that could be the exact same thing that happened to my game, except my GPU BSOD'd instead. This is two separate PCs of different configs running this version of NMS, with a "magical" malfunction overnight with no changes to the systems. Whatever it is, something did happen overnight and it really shouldn't have.

To me, this looks like an issue with the game, or maybe drivers, though I'm clueless as to how. But not with my, or his, hardware.


*A computer at work that was behaving weird had everyone scream "harddrive!" as well, despite it being fine. Is that a new trend nowadays...?

What a surprise, guess what happened today, once again?
Went to sleep yesterday, standby. Woke it up today, launching, BSOD.
With the game now on my other drive, an NVME, when it was on the SSD before.
Just because of sanity check purposes.

So, what's the diagnosis? Do I need to throw my PC in the trash and get a new one...? /s


Now... I'll try doing that... if I have to re-install NMS every day now, I'm just gonna pack my things and leave for another 3 years...


*Update:
After bracing for impact after hitting "Play", I was surprised that, indeed, it did work.

1) No Man's Sky\GAMEDATA\SHADERCACHE\ was already empty, as this is a new install.
2) deleted all .dds files in %AppData%\Hellogames\NMS\Defaultuser\Cache\
3) deleted No Man's Sky\Binaries\Settings\ folder

A BSOD is generally caused by a hardware or driver issue. Yes, the game is pretty unstable but it seems you have bigger problems.

:) Glad it worked - I expect a lot of people would benefit from doing the same.

Yep, as expected. New day, v2.06E, same issue. Oh yes, I absolutely do, makes perfect sense. That's why deleting the SETTINGS files is needed to make just this one particular, buggy game run perfectly fine again like it did yesterday across multiple game launches. That's the very well known and common "settings from yesterday won't work today anymore" GPU driver issue, I guess.
What do you expect me to do? I can only install what NVIDIA hands me...




So, the setting files seem to become "invalid", and probably not because of the date change, as I played past midnight and restarted the game once, I think - but after quitting the game, and using hibernation, these setting files need to be deleted and redone, or else the game causes a BSOD.

Restoring a backup of the (confirmed working) settings from yesterday results in a BSOD again. So they're not being corrupted, or something. The setting files are 1:1 exactly the same they were yesterday. The other directories have been cleared. So, I guess this may only be related to the setting files that have a best-before date... what a "feature".

Well they`re poppin` patches like crazy- One today! So maybe they`ll fix your issue soon.

Good news, everyone! Knock on wood.
As of v2.06F, the BSOD didn't occur right now. Every update, I launched the game and crossed my fingers, it BSOD'd every time. Not today, it didn't! IDK if it's a lucky fluke, or if I can actually shelve my .BAT file to automate the clean-up process before starting the game.

Did everything like I did the last few days - played until late, hibernated system, woke it up today, and after the update to F, it just launched. Noice.

*Update, 10 Min later:
Hold on, it updated again to G. Crossing fingers for tomorrow...

Good stuff.

Yeah it worked all fine until today, with v2.09.3_52112 it once again BSODs now. It BSOD's every time I try to tab back into the game when I tabbed out... updated to driver v436.15, no change. Sigh...

Hey, so this is me just following up on a hunch, but what's your CPU?