DasmX86Dll.dll Not Found Issue

[Chaavik]

I haven't found a thread on the site addressing the "DasmX86Dll.dll Not Found" issue and googled this particular oddity with several links pointing to a discussion about this problem related to Spore. There isn't a discussion on this problem relating to Sims 3.

The reason I posted here was because of the discussions across the board about the technical aspects of the games and whatnot. Hopefully, I can find an answer to fix this problem specifically with Sims 3.

Also, I have Spore installed and do not have mods for it. I haven't played Spore in almost a year, but I wasn't going to uninstall because of the limited installation number slapped onto Spore.

Earlier today, I was playing Sims 3 and testing a mod I made to speed up novel writing. The game crashed to the desktop. I glanced into the Sims 3 folder to open the error log to see what was going on just before the crash. I noticed something interesting:

[Instruction data]
00575b56 => DasmX86Dll.dll not found.

This particular oddity was shown just below the stack data pointing to a missing file.

I googled this issue and found a few links:

Google Results

EA and Spore

DasmX86Dll.dll Discussio on Twitter


It seems that this issue was an example of EA's sloppy job removing certain pieces of code from the game to clean it up before the game went into production. I understood that these pieces of code weren't supposed to be left in the game file(s), and that some form of disassembler was used. I could be wrong, but that was what I read from several links on Google.

I am wondering WHY the game was attempting to search for this particular file. I am wondering how this issue can be fixed for Sims 3. So far, I downloaded and placed this file in the Windows\System32 folder for XP.


I do want to know what the game was doing and how this can be addressed. Many thanks in advance for the help you guys could provide and hope no others has to go through this like I did.

[Zii]

The DLL is only for testing/debug purposes. The game functions fine without it and it is unrelated to the cause of your crashes. See: http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/17060.page On the first page of your Google results, no less.

[J. M. Pescado]

The cause of the crashing, if it appears purely random and you know the mod itself isn't particularly bad, is due to gremlins. We have no idea why it does that, and have resorted to voodoo in an attempt to make it stop. Rearrange files arbitrarily, delete the *cache.package files in your TS3 userdirectory, and try clearing out \Windows\prefetch. Also, chanting, rattles, and rebooting your computer may all have an effect.

[Chaavik]

All right, I'll try that, Pescado. Mind if I ask what clearing the \Windows\prefetch exactly does?

I sorted the mods alphabetically in the Mods folder by creator name. For example: Pescado-awesome, HP-somemodshemade

This is the only way I can remember who made these mods and check back on the appropriate sites for new updates.

[witch]

Weirdly, I don't appear to have a Windows\Prefetch.



Would that have any connection to the fact i rarely crash?

[Chaavik]

I'm curious if you have XP Home or XP Professional? Mine is XP Pro and it does contain a \Windows\prefetch folder.

[witch]

XP Pro.

My laptop has that folder.

I have turned a lot of services off on this machine but none I thought that should affect this.

[Chaavik]

That's very strange. I am trying out Pescado's suggestion to clear out the \Windows\prefetch folder to see if that helps.

I think EA did a sloppy job cleaning up the game code before it went into production. Not everybody runs a disassembler at home. What I don't understand is why did this issue get carried over to TS3 about a year after Spore?

[Zii]

Why waste time removing that code when leaving it in causes no problems? If they had removed it, that's time lost that could have gone towards fixing bugs. TS3 and Spore use the same debugging tool. That's all. It's a non-issue. Look for something else to blame.

[Chaavik]

Look for something else to do. You contributed nothing to the discussion.

Why waste our time to fix the bugs stupid EA unwittingly put into games as Spore and TS3? We should not be doing any tech stuff to fix what THEY unwittingly did.

Unfortunately, you're the one who hasn't experienced this problem, Zii. Go.. Shoo shoo.. Go play in the traffic.

[Zii]

There's not much to discuss, your one guess at the cause turned out to be wrong. Of course I'm thinking that since the solution was on an EA forum, you don't believe a word of it.
Good luck on solving your crashing problem.  

[Chaavik]

Where's your proof? Prove yourself by going to EA and finding THAT EA thread stating there is a solution for this issue with TS3 albeit Spore, and THEN post your proof. I don't go near where the sheeple go and baa/baawl over everything related to EA games.

If you can't show us the proof and back up your statement that such a solution exists to address or fix the issue, then you really need to go play in the traffic or lurk moar.

Anyways...

Pescado, I cleared out the \Windows\Prefetch folder and that didn't seem to resolve the issue. The game still crashed, pointing to the missing file.

Seriously, why is the game running a check for this file in this manner if the disassembler tool was taken out or rather this particular piece of code left in?

[J. M. Pescado]

Well, we know that dasmx86.dll is not necessary for the game to function. As far as I can tell, the game just checks for it to determine if it can print out anything more magical, but since it's not present, it just goes on to do its thing. As for the crashing? TOTAL AND UTTER MYSTERY. It's nondeterministic, meaning it will do this on a system that is apparently identical in configuration, and also will behave differently on different runs. Yet there is no REASON it SHOULD be nondeterministic, as there are no random processes that should be involved and the user cannot enter any input to perturb the system. The only explanation I can think of is massive EA stupidity, or deliberate maliciousness, like if ( randompercentage() < 10 ) crash();

[morriganrant]

That's a thought though, about debug. How many people who experienced crashing had debug enabled at the time? I experienced crashing just now, three times in a row at the same time each time. My Insane criminal sim was at home working out, my Musician sim was busking for tips in the Park. Spawn were skilling. Clock rolls around to 1am and crash immediately. I start the game back up at last save, several hours before, about 4pm and play until 1am. Again crash. The only thing that was the same this time around was the busking in the park. I had a later save this time. Load game up, 1 am, crash. Each of those times debug was enabled. On the last load it made it through 1am just fine without a hitch, that time debug was not enabled because I had saved so close to 1am that I didn't think to re-enable it until later.

To EA, it being a non-issue would be true, because you as the user, should not be using debug during normal gameplay anyway.

[Chaavik]

That is a mystery indeed as to what they were doing for the last 3 or so years and delaying the release of Sims 3.  

But I did find out more or less what caused these game crashes. I checked the crashes and issues thread over in your new TS3 sub section and saw that I had the same problem as other people did when the game approached 1 AM and crashed to the desktop. I had the previous version of the awesome mod installed and experienced this crash a few times thinking it had to do with the missing file. Then I removed the previous awesome mod (dated 6-7-09 8:15 AM) and installed the latest version (dated 6-7-09 4:51 PM). The game did crash around 1 AM with the newer version of the awesome mod.

I didn't realize that the issue was related to the fact that the game consistently crashed around 1 AM with this particular mod. And not related to the missing file.

Although I would think EA did a sloppy job cleaning up the dangling functions pointing to what wasn't there.


**EDITED**

By the way, my game version is US if that helps.

[J. M. Pescado]

I have not been able to reproduce the 0100 crash at all, either. What game settings are you playing with that crashes?

[Chaavik]

Game settings as in the awesome config or what?

I checked the file permissions and saw nothing out of the ordinary, cleaned out the prefetch folder and double checked the mods. I have HP's skintones, awesome mod, framework, scripterrorenabler and one small experimental mod I'm working on (related to writing). Nothing else.

**Edited**

Okay, if this has to do with awesomeconfig, I enabled everything including the debug commands. 

[morriganrant]

I have not been able to reproduce the 0100 crash at all, either. What game settings are you playing with that crashes?

What all settings do you want? I actually hadn't experienced crashing at all until just a few hours ago, this could be chalked up to not enough rigorous testing before or just not the right situation. My AwesomeMod is dated 6/7 at 8 something in the morning, nothing is changed from default. I am running Razor version Patched. Game version 1.0.631.00002, or so the launcher tells me. Xp service pack 2. The only other mod I have is the censor blur remover. Everything else is just patterns or EA store crap. Testingcheatsenabled true was enabled in game, nothing else was used except addtrait, editme, force opportunity, and dragging motives. The only thing consistent throughout sessions with crashing was debug being enabled.

Edit: Will now ensure that I have newest new AwesomeWare.
*get's out gris-gris bag for Voodoo Ritual*

[Chaavik]

I also neglected to mention that my game was Retail if that makes any difference.

[McCrea]

After long consideration, I decided to post; I believe I'm on topic regarding the "common" dasm dll issue, although it certainly seems uncommon at MATY.  I believe there are a fair number of users, like me, who CTD regularly.  But the OP might be describing a recent crash, which may make me rather OT.  If that is the case, please accept my baa.  I'm just a generally competent guinea pig who was also surprised that maty had no dasm thread.  I'm currently playing 24/7 so maybe I can help test any theories, although I don't expect any success.

I've crashed frequently for 2 weeks since the start.  I began using mods only 2 days ago after reinstall -- mods are fine, I crash no more frequently than before.  I've trolled all DasmX86Dll.dll threads I've seen to no avail, and had simply decided to await a real EA fix.  I assume some part of my system just rides a bug.  I consider my system streamlined -- but honestly XP has more cabbage than I can swallow.  XPProSP3 (32b), 3500+ (64b), 2GB RAM, 1GB Radeon x1600.  I do have an odd sound card, the Most Excellent Hercules Game Theatre XP, which is notable that it's not WHQL certified, but the sound device has never proven to be a problem in the past.  Yep, those are my specs, but I'll state clearly, I do not think this problem is about me, I think it is about many.

I switch the graphic options frequently -- in short, they don't seem to matter.  Gameplay options are default with tutor off.  Actually symptom is CTD, usually after long disk access while apparently (un)loading textures.  I don't suspect that's the cause tho, it's just most likely to fart when it's gassy, you know.  I'm sure I've crashed after only 5 minutes or less, and I doubt I've played longer than 90 minutes without a crash.  I believe I can encourage it to crash by not waiting for [it] to catch up.  Every log I bothered to look at has said DasmX86Dll.dll Not Found.  Perhaps that is just a generic message, but nonetheless, that's all I have to go off of.  It is hard to bear, because I feel obligated to do a 1 minute save every few minutes.


2 Days later  (Where to post? Install / Awesome Errors / Here?)

My game has much improved.  Due to much activity, I cannot say much about what I fixed, nor how well fixed it is.  I keep restarting the game, and am still constantly tweaking graphic options -- I don't think I've let it run more than 30 minutes recently.

I do want to concede to and concur with the awesome people who said "DasmX86Dll.dl" doesn't have much to do with the price of fishing books in Strangerton.

I tried many many things that seemed to have no effect.  But then I was noticably better, crashing 60% less.  What I did that finally made things better was throw a hissy fit -- which means I had to reboot, so I switched a few dozen settings on my computer at the same time so I only had to reboot one.  Very bad technique for knowing what the Hell is going on.

Here some of the actions which probably didn't matter at all or very little:

• Reduced windows swapfile to 512MB.
• Set XP to prioritize disk caching as opposed to running programs.
• Enabled ECC, enabled quick boot, removed floppy from boot sequence and flipped a few other BIOS settings.

What probably did have some effect was:

• Iinstalled latest NGO ATI Tray Tools.

I don't advocate which drivers are better; I change with the wind.  I only know ATI Tray Tools had a convient Flip Queue Size which gave me noticable speed in Oblivion.  After Oblivion, I had been running latest stock ATI drivers for last few games. While this did have some bene for me, I know it's not too likely to even help someone with the exact same video card.  

But then, late last night, I cha-borked.  I wanted too see the shiny awesome, but instead I put crazy glue on my contact lenses.  I had to reinstalled Sim3 twice, before I realized that awesomeness was not causing my problem, but rather a single graphics setting.  (ATI Tools should not force shader version (in my case)).  But, 10 hours later (only half of that play-time I'm sure) I have not crashed today.

I only have a couple files different that I know of:  that 632 patch I downloaded had a fixed exe and that TSLHost.dl --l I'm not sure whatsup with that dll, if it was patched or cracked, but I'm not using it today.  I know I wasn't using the fixed exe before; I've been using fixed image.  But I replaced that dll the first time around.  Another guess that has nearly 0% chance to help anyone is that my first few days I did use the launcher all the time, and have only used it to install content while offline this time around.  I am running the same mods I was before, I have the same families and saves as before, plus I'm finally happy to utilize awesomeness, and have all the DLC installed that I know of.  I do, and did, use the frame-rate limiter.

I'd love to help someone, but this post won't do much.  If there's a moral here, I guess it would be:  Never give up until you quit.

[Hallie]

The intereting thing with this is that I am having the same problem and am also using the latest version of ATI graphics cards drivers.

Looking at the spore thread here it would appear the advice then was to roll back from the 9.- series to the 8.12 update. Saying there seemed to be an issue with this new set of drivers.

Unfortunately I can no longer get 8.12

I am just wondering if this might be more an ATI issue. Another thing I noticed is this only started happening to me when I had 4 controllable sims in one house, which also happens to be the time they moved out of Maxis houses into downloaded ones.

I remember the old problems that we used to have with Nvadia cards with TS2 and in a way this feels similar. The same kind of thing is happening each time. It is after I have a bigger family, it came up after an age transition and is not going away after that.

Another factor with this is I have had this game since the 5th and this only really happened yesterday. I have played for hours at a time to no ill effect now all of a sudden Save Error Code 13 rears its head and now my game does that all the time and crashes!

I have even reduced the quality of my graphics to no avail.

[Hallie]

Ok so here is something interesting. I managed to start a new family. While my sim is single I am not experiencing these problems. What I may do is stay with this and see if it related the number of sims I am playing or something or if I somehow managed to glitch that initial neighbourhood somehow.

Maybe as well if I save my family and start a new neighbourhood with them. Is it possible to glitch your neighbourhood to that extent? That it causes this kind of a crash?

[McCrea]

What I may do is stay with this and see if it related the number of sims I am playing or something or if I somehow managed to glitch that initial neighbourhood somehow.   Is it possible to glitch your neighbourhood to that extent? That it causes this kind of a crash?

That was my first reaction:  I must have got a bad object somewhere. Easy enough to start a new game in TS3 to find out.  For me, starting new game, reinstalling, etc, helped not at all. I am more likely to crash with more sims, but I do not think more sims cause the crash.  Indeed, I have had 20+ sims running around, which just means maybe I'll crash in 20 minutes instead of 30.  Same as detail level.  I like what I said before: " Actually symptom is CTD, usually after long disk access while apparently (un)loading textures.  I don't suspect that's the cause tho, it's just most likely to fart when it's gassy, you know. "

In short, however, I would speculate that it is NOT "simply" an ATI issue -- if it were, their would be thousands of people complaining, not just a handful.  Still... Switching my drivers did help alot.  I have Radeon x1600 PCIx16 1024.   What are you running, Hallie?

I unfortunately had to switch video drivers again.  That NGO ATI Optimized Driver was give me a BAD_POOL_HEADER once a day (one of the BSODs -- I was very lucky to realize the cause and only after I found an app that made it reproducable).  Fixed that, but back to crashing the game every, oh 30 minutes on average.  *shrug*.  I'll try some other drivers, but I've been a bit busy these days.  My mom and my nephew just moved in with me.  There are boxes everywhere.  If you want me to try any other ideas, just speak and I'll get around to it sometime.

[morriganrant]

The intereting thing with this is that I am having the same problem and am also using the latest version of ATI graphics cards drivers.

Looking at the spore thread here it would appear the advice then was to roll back from the 9.- series to the 8.12 update. Saying there seemed to be an issue with this new set of drivers.

Unfortunately I can no longer get 8.12

Why can you no longer get the 8.12? You just need to look harder. ATI does keep their old drivers up on a page, you just need to read the entire driver page for your card to see the link near the bottom that says previous drivers and software.
For instance, this is for my setup:
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/previous/Pages/radeonaiw_mce.aspx

[midix]

I have a dual experience with ATI Tray Tools. When I had my first video, X300SE based, I could not get latest ATI drivers work right - I got BSOD on each Shut Down or Stand By, although gaming was stable. Only ATI Tray Tools helped get rid of that BSOD.
But when I upgraded to ATI HD3650 - my current video (it even does not have active cooler, just a radiator), ATI Tray Tools gave BSOD on every Hibernate. So I switched back to latest Catalyst. And now my Sims 3 is stable - no crash since 2.june (I played it only for some hours though, but anyway - no real CTDs or BSODs, except those well-known game loading CTDs with awesomemod installed and left xxx.cache). My graphic settings are all on maximal, except resolution. And my PC is not even Dual Core - just P4 with 2GB RAM and XP + SP3.

So really weird, when it works and when not.
Oh, BTW, I have disabled everything related to ATI Hotkey poller and ATI External Event Utility (services, drivers). Maybe that makes the game more stable ?  Mystery.