Error occurs exclusively during gameplay, no crash dump generated
Error occurs exclusively during gameplay, no crash dump generated
Hey there. I've been facing some problems with my system lately. Earlier this week, there was a power cut and a nearby transformer failed during a storm. My setup has always had a surge protector, but I started having issues when I couldn't play any games anymore. I kept seeing a blue screen labeled WHEA Uncorrectible. Before that, the secondary drive wouldn't let me access it—after a few minutes of booting, I couldn't reach the root folder. I thought the drive was dead. It's a WD SN750 I've owned since around 2018. I replaced it with an Intel 670p, which is just for games and not critical. I also installed Solidigm software and updated the firmware. Now I can access files again, so I ran some games and they worked. Still, I get blue screens after a short time in-game, but no crashes. I tried a clean install of Windows 11, but the same error appears for a minute or two during games. No data loss. I took the old drive out and reinstalled Windows 10, but the problem returned. I updated the Intel driver, changed the NIC settings, and disabled the Intel NIC and Thunderbolt. The issue disappeared, and I could finally play games. So I reinstalled the original drive, ran a fresh Windows 10 install, and tried using Ninite again—still got the same blue screen. I even sent the drive back for replacement, thinking it might have failed during the outage. After replacing it, it worked fine for a few days. Today, after about five minutes of gaming, the same error pops up, but this time the screen flashes briefly before going black. I haven't seen any data loss yet. I ran CPU, GPU, and memory tests without issues. The drives show no errors in Chkdsk, and SMART reports are normal. I'm left wondering if it's the motherboard or CPU that's causing trouble. My Ryzen 5900x was undervolted with a -30 offset, had 2x16GB of RAM (32GB total), used ADATA S70, a 1TB WD SN750, and an Intel 670p 2TB. I also installed Crucial 2x16GB RAM and Gigabyte components. BIOS is F16a/F16b, Corsair RM750w. At this point, I'm thinking about getting a new board or CPU, but I'd rather not spend much money right now. I can't get any dumps because they always fail. Perf Mon doesn't show a report after over 20 minutes of waiting.
Can you retrieve Bluescreenview? It records which files triggered the crash. WHEA Uncorrectable typically points to a hardware problem.
WHEA refers to problems with the CPU or a PCIe device. When BSOD crashes appear without dump files, the NVMe drive is likely the culprit since it uses PCIe. To verify, follow these steps: Add a registry field for displaying extra BSOD information. If unsure about registry changes, skip this part. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\CrashControl, right-click the empty space, choose New → DWORD value with the name "DisplayParameters". Set its value to 1 (hex or decimal). After saving, reboot to apply. When BSOD occurs again, you should see these extra numbers in the top left corner. If the top line reads "Arg1: 0x0000000000000010", it indicates an NVMe drive. Keep in mind it can't distinguish between the drive, board, or slot—especially since SSDs are more common. If the result differs from that string, capture the BSOD screen image.
I observed the issue didn't appear clearly in the initial message. To clarify, when I refer to NVMe, I mean the specific component being targeted. It might also relate to the motherboard or port. However, a faulty SSD tends to be more frequent.
I see, it seems the issue likely relates to the board, similar to both Gen 3 and Gen 4 drives, but the Gen 3 model failed faster since I didn’t need to run a game before it crashed. I already sent an RMA for the Gen 4 drive and hope they can replace it if needed. I reached out to Gigabyte about the motherboard but haven’t received a reply yet. The error kept appearing again, so I adjusted the game’s graphics settings today instead of letting it crash with my usual configuration yesterday.
It’s worth mentioning this occurs no matter which storage device runs the game. Switching between NVMe and a SATA SSD might help, as I could move the boot drive to the secondary slot.
If the issue persists, consider updating the BIOS of the motherboard and the firmware of the SSD. Should it still fail, a defective SSD is likely the primary cause, though the board could also be involved. A faulty SSD is much more frequent.