PC will perform a hard restart, hard freeze, and BSOD without showing any screen.
PC will perform a hard restart, hard freeze, and BSOD without showing any screen.
Hello, I've been experiencing issues with my PC since Diablo 4 was released around June of last year. The problems began after I moved my computer to a housesit for a family member. Initially, playing Diablo 4 would cause frequent hard restarts, with screens going black and the PC restarting repeatedly. Sometimes a BSOD appeared behind the black screen, which I could later see in the Event Viewer.
Around the end of last year, my system blue-screened multiple times in one day, and the following day it only booted into recovery mode. I had to use system restore to recover some files before wiping the drive. Even after a full Windows reinstall, the issue persisted. It usually occurs while playing games and seems to happen randomly. There have been periods where everything worked perfectly for a month, only to become unusable for a few days afterward.
Here are my current specifications:
CPU: Ryzen 9 5900x
Cooler: Dark Rock Pro 4
GPU: Gigabyte 2060 Super
Motherboard: Gigabyte X570S Aorus Master
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 8GB x4
Power Supply: Corsair RM850x
Storage: Samsung 980 Pro M.2 1TB & 2TB
I've tried stress testing the CPU and GPU, and temperatures remained normal. I scanned for corrupted files, ran memtest86, updated chipset drivers, video drivers via DDU, installed a new surge protector, and during testing, the issue didn't recur. However, after today's tests, it has caused BSODs, hard freezes, and black screen restarts. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
I ran the whocrashed. Since I reset my pc last fall it only has 4 dump files it could find. I've crashed more then that but most of the time the dump file creation fails on the crash. I'm thinking about updating my bios since I have a pretty old version and seeing if that fixes anything. Here's the analyzed minidumps, some of them are weird.
Crash dump file:
C:\Windows\Minidump\111023-14265-01.dmp (Minidump)
Bugcheck code:
0xD1(0xFFFFF8021B5CD694, 0x2, 0x8, 0xFFFFF8021B5CD694)
Bugcheck name:
DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
Driver or module in which error occurred:
vgk.sys
(
Unloaded_vgk.sys+0x2D694
)
Description:
Vanguard kernel-mode driver
Product:
Vanguard Driver
Company:
Riot Games, Inc.
Bug check description:
This indicates that a kernel-mode driver attempted to access pageable memory at a process IRQL that was too high.
Analysis:
This is a typical software problem. Most likely this is caused by a bug in a driver. A third party driver was identified as the probable root cause of this system error.
It is suggested you look for an update for the following driver:
vgk.sys (Vanguard kernel-mode driver, Riot Games, Inc.).
Google query:
vgk Riot Games, Inc. DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUA
L
This one happened a while ago and I just uninstalled vanguard off my pc and all was well.
Crash dump file:
C:\Windows\Minidump\100423-11250-01.dmp (Minidump)
Bugcheck code:
0x5(0xFFFFA886AF93C080, 0xFFFFA886BC89B0C0, 0x1, 0x0)
Bugcheck name:
INVALID_PROCESS_ATTACH_ATTEMPT
Bug check description:
This generally indicates that the thread was attached to a process in a situation where that is not allowed. For example, this bug check could occur if KeAttachProcess was called when the thread was already attached to a process (which is illegal), or if the thread returned from certain function calls in an attached state (which is invalid).
Analysis:
This is a typical software problem. Most likely this is caused by a bug in a driver.
Crash dump file:
C:\Windows\Minidump\031624-11515-01.dmp (Minidump)
Bugcheck code:
0x7F(0x8, 0xFFFF9E01267D1E70, 0xFFFFFE07766B9018, 0xFFFFF8052BC0D451)
Bugcheck name:
UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP
Bug check description:
This bug check indicates that the Intel based CPU generated a trap and the kernel failed to catch this trap.
Analysis:
Double Fault indicates that an exception occurs during a call to the handler for a prior exception. Most often this is caused by a software problem (kernel stack overflow), which means that there is a driver consuming too much stack space or there are too many drivers attached in the same stack. This is likely a software problem, but it may also be caused by faulty hardware.
Read this article on
thermal issues
This one is strange to me since I have an AMD cpu not an intel cpu.
This is the black screen restart that happened last night. The actual blue screen information said something about "IP_MISALIGNED_AuthenticAMD.sys"
I tried doing some research into it but whocrashed didn't give me too much information on which drivers to research besides the vanguard one which I already had deleted. So I'm a little lost on where to go from here. Later today I probably will run the BIOS update unless I can figure out how to narrow things down more. My current BIOS version is F2 and the newest is F6. Thank you for your help and showing me this tool. Hopefully I can get this PC stable.
I have the issue to recreate on Dark and Darker. It matched the problem from last night exactly. The screen freezes for half a second then goes black, the PC remains on (likely doing BSOD), and then it restarts. It also froze heavily about 30 minutes after rebooting while only using the browser and Discord, so I had to force restart it.
Certainly, the issue is either a hardware fault or an incompatibility, and the new firmware might resolve it.
Changed the BIOS, played for a few hours without problems, but then experienced a hard freeze. Unclear what to do next.
Updating the BIOS seems to have improved the black screens. However, the PC still freezes and experiences BSODs. Currently, I'm testing it with just my second monitor (1080p, 60Hz) and it appears stable so far. I plan to conduct a more detailed test.