Question PC crash during games and game-like tests, but not elsewhere
Question PC crash during games and game-like tests, but not elsewhere
Hello there,
I’m experiencing an issue with my current machine where, without warning, it suddenly restarts. This happened for the first time last week while playing Wasteland 3. At that time, it seemed like the game itself might be causing the problem. I adjusted my in-game settings and did other activities, and the issue stopped.
In the past week, I was away from the PC, so I couldn’t play on it. When I returned today and started playing WoW, the same sudden restart occurred. After a short pause, the game restarted again—possibly three times.
My initial assumption was that my PC was overheating. I cleaned it from dust (which isn’t much since I do this every six months) and repeated the process. For about an hour, nothing happened, and I could play normally. However, later in-game, the PC crashed again. This pattern repeated after each restart and game launch.
I became concerned that there might be a significant hardware issue. To investigate further, I checked the Windows system and application logs. The logs looked clean with no errors detected. The system logs showed an unexpected shutdown at 01:50:03 on 06/09/2020. There was an error related to Event ID 56 from an Application Popup, which might indicate a missing component or a corrupted installation. The system rebooted without a clean shutdown. This could be due to the system failing to respond, crashing, or losing power unexpectedly.
I also ran a memory test, virus scan, and stress tests on CPU and GPU. No problems were found. The GPU and CPU stayed within normal temperature ranges during testing, and no crashes occurred. A stress test on the GPU using UniEngine showed a crash at around 70°C to 75°C, but no hardware or software updates had been installed before the incident.
At this point, I’m unsure what to check next. My suspicion is that the issue might be related to the GPU, power supply unit (PSU), or driver problems. Unfortunately, I don’t have any spare parts to test. I’m looking for something else to investigate. Thank you in advance for your help.
CPU model is Intel Core i7 6700k running at 4.00 ghz.
Mainboard is Gigabyte Z170M-D3H-CF.
GPU features EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Superclocked+ ACX 2.0+.
RAM consists of two 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 modules at 3200MHZ with XMP 2.0 support.
HDD is a Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus with a capacity of 1TB.
Power supply unit is Cougar Gaming Cougar GX Serie, rated at 600W and 80 Plus Gold.
Manufactured in February 2016; RAM and HDD were updated in March 2020.
DxDiag log available at the provided link.
New attempts made:
What I tried:
WhoCrashed: No memory dumps were detected for this crash. I made sure the system could generate dumps.
Driver Verifier Manager:
Standard Settings/Third party driver only: no issues
Standard Settings/All Driver:
This likely stemmed from the following module:
hidclass.sys
(0xFFFFF80DB9462430) Bugcheck code: 0xC9 (0x220, 0xFFFFF80DB9462430, 0xFFFFD28BD880EE10, 0xFFFFD28BD6687CE0)
Error:
DRIVER_VERIFIER_IOMANAGER_VIOLATION
file path: C:\Windows\system32\drivers\hidclass.sys
product:
Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company:
Microsoft Corporation
description: Hid Class Library
Bug check description: This code identifies the crash source for Driver Verifier failures.
It seems like a common software driver issue, not likely due to hardware faults.
The incident occurred within a Microsoft module. Your system setup might be off.
Possibly another driver on your machine is causing this, but it can't be identified yet.
Standard Settings/hidclass.sys only: no issues
I assumed any USB devices were disconnected and used a different keyboard/mouse.
The crash still happened.
Window System File Checker: no issues found
It appears 2D-based games (C&C Remastered) are not contributing to this crash so far.