Question Random PC Restarts (BSOD Errors) & Certain games crashing when streaming on Discord! (Detailed Thread)
Question Random PC Restarts (BSOD Errors) & Certain games crashing when streaming on Discord! (Detailed Thread)
Hi there guys, I've got a bit of a mystery for other tech wizards and witches here. I've been trying to crank this problem myself for 2 weeks now and its driving me to that point where I may have to consider what's seeming inevitable - wiping my Windows entirely which I do not want to do. What a great way to start 3 days off from work haha...
Ok so I'm going to break this down in sections that will detail the following because this is a very extensive issue:
I will list my PC specifications and the age of each part which I believe are relevant to this problem.
I will explain the issue and any other symptoms that I believe are related.
Each section will have images uploaded to my Google Drive for you all to see in more detail. Please just follow the guidance, I've taken the time to neatly organise this for you.
I will then conclude by listing solutions I have already attempted to spare everyone the time of posting some of the more simple solutions that are commonly seen on the net.
And a quick thank you for taking the time to help me ❤️!
1. PC Specifications
System was purchased in January 2024 and built custom from the ground-up.
Only the Graphics Card, M.2 NVMe SSD's, and my External Hard Drive came from my older system as I did not need to replace these.
Everything else besides what's listed in the 2nd bullet point is completely brand new and less than 6 months old.
MOTHERBOARD:
MSI Intel MPG Z790 EDGE WIFI PCIe 5.0 DDR5 ATX
CPU:
Intel 24-Core i9 14900KF Raptor Lake Refresh (with the ThermalGrizzly custom backplate installed)
CPU COOLER:
Arctic Liquid Freezer II 360 All-In-One Liquid CPU Cooler for Intel/AMD
MEMORY:
Corsair Vengeance RGB Black 32GB 6000MHz DDR5
(2x16GB)
GRAPHICS CARD:
ASUS GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 12GB OC TUF GAMING Ampere
POWER SUPPLY UNIT:
Seasonic PRIME TX 850 Watt Full Modular 80+ Titanium
SYSTEM:
Windows 11 Home - Latest update as of 18/05/2024 // 05/18/2024
2. The Mystery!
Around 2 weeks ago I started experiencing an unusual issue that began while playing Phasmophobia on Steam, which if any of you are gamers and are familiar, is no where near what you might consider a 'demanding' game to run, especially on a system as powerful as this.
I loaded into a game to start a ghost hunt and immediately my system rebooted itself, no warning, no crash, no error, just Windows completely rebooting as if somebody had pushed a restart button on my case. I was recommended to download BlueScreenView (forgot this tool even existed as I hadn't had to use it for years). Sadly I didn't do this until it happened a few more times, so the first PC reboot I managed to catch was on 8th May, but as I said this has been happening for around 2 weeks so it began somewhere around 4th May.
❗
I want to iterate that this issue has
never
to this day given me a clear BLUESCREEN OF DEATH. It manifests in the form of a total PC-wide restart with no error or warning until I load up BlueScreenView to see the dump log. I would not have known these crashes were BlueScreen related if my friend hadn't told me to consider downloading BlueScreenView to see for myself. ❗
Shortly after Phasmaphobia's crash, it later started occurring on Helldivers II and World of WarCraft at least once.
It has only occurred on certain games that I have played, it so far hasn't happened on the following:
VALORANT (Thank God...)
League of Legends
Final Fantasy FFXIV
Hearthstone
BlueScreenView Crash Logs (Text File)
- For those who just want to skip to the end, this file has every single BSOD log that's occurred between 8th-17th May being the most recent one. Further down the thread I'm now going to explain how each one happened.
BSOD #1 (8th-12th May) each having the same file error.
- These were triggered while doing any of the followering:
Loading into a Helldivers II mission from the loading screen animation when you deploy.
Playing World of WarCraft, not doing anything in particular that may have tripped it.
Phasmaphobia, as noted earlier, this happened when spawning into a new game just after the loading screen.
After doing extensive research and asking a few friends who were tech-savvy, they all recommended the same in their findings:
"Check this isn't hardware related and run a memory test."
I do not believe this is hardware related at all after days of investigating this, however to satisfy the opinion I ran a Windows Diagnostic Memory Test just last night before writing this thread.
Memory Test Result #1
- It gave me two results, I assume this is for each individual memory stick.
Memory Test Result #2
No errors as you can see, and to further add, the test also reported that all my hard drives were healthy with no action needed:
Disk #1 Result
Disk #2 Result
Disk #3 Result
Disk #4 Result
Disk #5 Result
After being satisfied that this likely isn't hardware related, I began looking into software related issues and was attempting just about anything short of reformatting my Windows entirely, which I still haven't done yet. My friends had also told me to consider my PSU however I don't believe this is the case because the PSU would probably be causing this issue in
any
game that I attempted to play.
The BSOD crashes continued happening through until 12th May, when I was convinced I'd finally squished the problem by attempting all of the following solutions:
Clean reinstalled my NVIDIA GeForce Experience and GeForce driver 552.22
Downgraded and clean installed the early April 2024 NVIDIA driver 552.12 to see if the most recent driver was the culprit.
Clean Upgraded to the 552.44 driver May 9th, this is what I'm currently running now as I write this thread.
Updated Windows as I discovered my updates were paused for 3-4 weeks.
Changed my system's Power profile in the Control Panel from Ultimate Performance to High Performance and also tested Balanced.
Turned off the XMP Overclock Profile on my Motherboard's BIOS which was hiking my memory up to its 6000MHz speed.
Updated my BIOS
to the latest stable version AMI BIOS7D91vHB2024-04-24
.
Disabled Intel Virtualization Technology and VT-x in my BIOS. I forgot I had this enabled when I was messing around with virtual servers a few months ago.
❗
Ran an SFC /scannow on my Windows Command Prompt and it managed to repair a file or two, assuming this was the end of my
ntoskrnl.exe BSOD error...
❗
❗
Here's where it gets interesting
❗
For a while I was convinced this had stopped the BSOD's as I was problem free for 5 days
(12th May > 17th May on the BSOD logs)
, however a new symptom began to sprout its ugly face, which I am convinced is related to this issue.
So my system wasn't crashing/restarting itself for the timebeing, however I entered a period of crash-haven for pretty much MOST of my games and I couldn't figure why. The following games now experienced total crash-to-desktops at random with no warning and usually one consistent symptom in some of the more heavier titles.
❗
New Symptom
#1❗
My desktop FPS started to weaken when I had YouTube or any video-related software open on my second monitor. Even having my Firefox open on my 2nd screen, my scroll wheel would lag and stutter when I scrolled down pages if I had a game open. The following games were now crashing to the desktop:
Helldivers II
Phasmophobia (though I am convinced this is a developer-related issue, nothing to do with my PC)
Cyberpunk 2077 (this is a hard one as I run a heavily modded game, sometimes it behaves, sometimes it crashes with no warning whatsoever)
Civilization VI (Crashes sometimes when I minimise, but I am also convinced this is a developer-related issue, not my PC)
Star Citizen (I know, this game is prone to crash due to its heavy Alpha state, I added it anyway!)
Horizon: Forbidden West (Steam)
Though it was not happening in all games, with VALORANT, League of Legends, and FFXIV still remaining the three champions unplagued. World of WarCraft also wasn't crashing to the desktop, however I was experiencing FPS drops on the desktop if I had a browser page open while playing it sometimes.
❗
The latest developments...
❗
New Symptom #2❗
I returned to Diablo IV 2 days ago to enjoy the new Season 4 and also playing World of WarCraft's Pandaria Remix on the side. World of WarCraft? good as gold, no issues so far. However the same can't be said for Diablo IV. I was first certain this was a Blizzard related issue (the game developer for those who may not know). However...
THE REVENGE OF THE BSOD!
The latest PC restart (BSOD) which has only occurred while playing Diablo IV so far in the new update. Yes I am aware Blizzard has NVIDIA related issues with the game however this seems to be relevant only to the 4000 RTX series cards that are utilizing the Frame Generation technology in-game. I do not have a 4K card, neither do I use this setting so I consider this unrelated.
This file is part of the new symptom for the BSOD that occurred on 17th May, the latest so far. I immediately knew this was NVIDIA related and it managed to bring potential hardware faults back onto the table of consideration. Here's what I've attempted so far:
Reading a post on reddit suggested going into the System32 folder, locating this file and changing the Security rules to ensure that the USER account had full permissions enabled.
Downclocking my Card's Core boost by -50 MHz using MSI Afterburner.
I have also considered downgrading to a much older NVIDIA driver, however the PC-wide restart has not occurred at all since attempting the above solution, so I will hold off for now unless recommended otherwise.
This did not put a total stop to the issue, as I was now crashing to desktop while playing Diablo IV every 8-20 minutes of playing. So I started investigating even more.
❗
What you are reading beyond this point is the LATEST changes I have made, and perhaps (🤞) by some miracle, I may have managed to end the crashes completely but I want to be on the sure side
❗
I soon clicked on that this crash was now only occurring when I was specifically Streaming the game to my friends in Discord. We always have stream parties you see. I believe once or twice it might have happened outside of Discord as well, but I believe Discord in general could be a core cause for MOST if not ALL of the symptoms in this big issue altogether!
I immediately began testing solution after solution one at a time over the last 48 hours since receiving the most recent BSOD:
Uninstalled BitDefender Anti-Virus/Security and rolled back to using Windows Defender.
Performed the Windows Memory Diagnostic test, results that you see near the top of this post.
Disabled
Discord's Hardware Acceleration
and
Audio Capture Settings
and Developer Mode Hardware Acceleration to be on the extra sure side!
(this did NOT stop the crashes)
Updated my Motherboard's BIOS to the latest
Beta version 7D91vHC1(Beta version)
(I was desperate...)
❗
This is when I was able to run the game with a stream AND a YouTube video playing for 2+ whole hours without a single crash or issue. This was also just before retreating to bed while the Memory Test performed overnight (results at the top of the thread).
❗
This is as far as I've come so far, I am convinced Discord has a MAJOR problem that they need to address. As stated at the beginning of the post, I would post a summary of all solutions I have attempted, and so here it is:
TL;DR - What have I attempted so far? (These aren't all in order, too much to remember sorry!)
Clean reinstalled my NVIDIA GeForce Experience and GeForce driver 552.22.
Downgraded and clean installed the early April 2024 NVIDIA driver 552.12.
Clean Upgraded to the 552.44 driver
(Currently running this now)
Updated Windows thoroughly.
Changed my system's Power profile in the Control Panel from Ultimate Performance to High Performance and also tested Balanced.
Turned off the XMP Overclock Profile on my Motherboard's BIOS which was hiking my memory up to its 6000MHz speed.
Downclocking my Card's Core boost by -50 MHz using MSI Afterburner.
Updated my BIOS
to the latest stable version AMI BIOS7D91vHB2024-04-24
.
Disabled Intel Virtualization Technology and VT-x in my BIOS.
Ran an SFC /scannow on my Windows Command Prompt and it managed to repair a file or two,
assuming this was the end of my
ntoskrnl.exe BSOD error.
Uninstalled BitDefender Anti-Virus/Security and rolled back to using Windows Defender.
Performed the Windows Memory Diagnostic test.
Disabled
Discord's Hardware Acceleration
and
Audio Capture Settings
and Developer Mode Hardware Acceleration.
(This did NOT stop the crashes!)
Updated my Motherboard's BIOS to the latest
Beta version 7D91vHC1(Beta version)
This reddit fix for the
nvlddmkm.sys
file (bottom of the page)
Monitored all my system temperatures across a range of low/high demanding games while also streaming on Discord. My temperatures are beautifully stable to the best of my knowledge, including my GPU/CPU/Memory usage % on task manager.
For the time being the issue is yet to reproduce itself on both the crashing or the BSOD side. I am still considering the following options, please let me know if you have any other considerations:
Disabling my Motherboard's default overclocks - I read somewhere that this could be a potential fix as the i9 CPU's and their boards turned on clocking profiles by default. I actually am looking into how to do this as I assumed the XMP profile for my memory was enough before.
Uninstalling my Realtek Driver - Not something I want to do at all but a clue revealed on Reddit that this could be potentially related to the audio from Discord when streaming games. Several people have confirmed that if they're running ASUS ROG boards, uninstalling some of the pre-installed software has helped quell their issue. I can't find this reddit post for the life of me, but it keyed to some of the 'Sonic' titled software ASUS loads onto their boards. Obviously my motherboard is MSI but I did a check for any extra software anyways.
FINAL RESORT:
Reformatting my Windows and reinstalling everything on every drive, fresh.
If you got this far past my rambling? THANK YOU! So much for considering my issue, I hope I can get some reassuring opinions. For the time being the issue has yet to reproduce itself, but I am yet unsure if that's related to the Beta BIOS I've currently got installed. I find it unlikely, I'm not convinced this problem has seen its end just yet.
I will keep this post updated with any new developments below this line!
Review the "Application" log in Event Viewer and "Administrative Events" near the crash times. It seems possible the issue might involve your GPU or its drivers (nvlddmkm.sys). Please share your latest crash dumps from C:\Windows\Minidump and C:\Windows\MEMORY.DMP if available, along with a cloud storage link such as OneDrive, Google Drive, or Dropbox.
Thanks for the suggestion! I'll be looking into this shortly after my work shift finishes in two hours. If I manage to complete it then, I'll get back to you soon. Appreciate the help!
Hi CC!
I checked my Event Viewer carefully and tried to match the crash times with my chats on Discord, but unfortunately nothing really stands out in both the Application and Administrative Events.
I went the extra distance and searched for the most recent BSOD recorded in the previous screenshots from 17/05/2024 at 17:44:21. Here’s what it shows.
Event Viewer BSOD Crash Log #1
Event Viewer BSOD Crash Log #2
I also shared my crash dumps with you via a private message on Tom'sHardware. Let me know if you need anything else.
After almost 48 hours, there are no more crashes on Diablo, whether streaming or not. I think it might be related to a software issue—possibly a drive fault. Since it’s not causing problems now, I’ll leave it alone. The last action was installing a Beta BIOS, which might have fixed it. Let me know if you see anything in your crash dumps searches. I’m keen to find out if I missed something. I’ll keep monitoring this post.
Recent updates have been successful with no crashes reported. The problem seems fixed. I plan to install the newest NVIDIA driver by late May, specifically for Hellblade II. If any issues arise, I’ll maintain a log of changes to identify causes. A solid approach!