Emulator

Could you narrow down the revision that broke it by bisecting to the build that caused it?

Running Paper Mario TTYD with 4.0-3334 works fine for me in both D3D11 and OpenGL. I am using a laptop with an Intel Core B940 processor with an integrated Intel HD Graphics + Window 7 Home Professional. Granted OpenGL only runs the first time and white screens (still running btw) with MSAA errors if I exit the game and launch again; but IIRC that is related to my crappy Intel HD Graphics integrated's driver and is not Dolphin's fault.

Current version at the time of writing is 4.0 3382 and I am getting the exact same experience described above. In short, not getting a freeze with either D3D11 or OpenGL directly after the press start screen. I am able to get in game with no problems. Maybe a Windows 8 issue?

It freezes even back from dolphin-master-4.0-3116-x64

I know it freezes since if you tried to get rid of it Dolphin stops responding and you're forced to use task manager to get rid of it.

I tried not pressing any buttons, and it eventually freezes as well.

I'm unable to reproduce, and the build you bisected to doesn't make sense. Please try again.

Jesse, do you get any kind of error messages when the game freezes? If you do not, can you check if you disabled panic handlers by going to config and checking interface? If the box labeled "Use Panic Handlers" is not checked, check it and launch the game to see if that displays an error message.

The box labeled "Use Panic Handlers" seems to be checked, but it just doesn't seem to show any error message at all. :o

Sorry about the lack of response, but it seems Dolphin freezes at me even as far as dolphin-master-4.0-1388-x86, so this might take a while. Also a search on the forums indicated this also happened for some users:

https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-gc-paper-mario-the-thousand-year-door?page=15&highlight=paper+mario

last 2 posts here. I'm not sure if those users are active to ask, but I'm not the only one it seems.

If you're having the same problem as them, then your laptop is using your onboard card and you're running into the Intel HD problem with the shader cache. Set your laptop's settings into prefer maximum performance in battery and graphics settings.

Not to derail the thread or anything, but my laptop only has the onboard Intel HD Graphics and will always have the issue with shader cache. No preference to high performance will change that. The reason why I didn't want to report this was because it was written in the Dolphin article for graphic card driver hall of shame as having issues with MSAA. But because my issue only seems to happen the SECOND to n'th time I launch a game in OpenGL, I found it rather odd. But that should more be a discussion on the forums then here. If JMC's comment was aimed at Jesse, I apologize for de-railing the thread.

It was aimed at Jesse, but I understand your frustration. The Shader Cache issue is the problem with that; the shader cache is generated on first run and then fails to load/crashes for some reason.