Random BSODs and programs (mainly games) crashes

[checkpoint]

Hi everyone!

I've been experiencing "random" app (mostly games) crashes and BSODs on my computer for a quite some time now. Recently I finally decided to troubleshoot these issues. Find below some basic info:

PC specs:
OS Name: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro
Version: 10.0.22621 Build 22621
System Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
System Model: B450 AORUS ELITE
System Type: x64-based PC
System SKU: Default string
Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 3600X 6-Core Processor, 3801 Mhz, 6 Core(s), 12 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date: American Megatrends International, LLC. F65a, 09.02.2023
SMBIOS Version: 3.3
Embedded Controller Version: 255.255
BIOS Mode: UEFI
Installed Physical Memory (RAM): 16.0 GB
Power supply: Seasonic Core GC-650 650 Watts

What's actually happening:
I'm experiencing, seemingly random, app crashes when I'm playing different games. There are some games that do not crash at all, or just rarely. Then there are some games that crash every time (sometimes after an hour, sometimes after few minutes). These are app crashes that'll get me to desktop.
Then there are, also seemingly random, BSODs. These are sometimes happening during gaming as well, but quite often they're happening also when the PC is idle - I leave the PC with some browsers etc. open and leave, when I come back, the PC is restarted and in the logs/events I can see that there was a BSOD.

What I tried so far:
- Clean install of Windows - I installed only very little software to keep things minimal and lower the chance that it might be an issue caused by some specific SW/driver. However, the crashes/BSODs started almost right away.
- Reinstall all drivers from the Motherboard manufacturer (right after the Win reinstall)
- Installed latest BIOS drivers
- Reinstalled NVIDIA drivers - tried to follow the 'clean installation' with NVCleanstall to only install necessary driver components.
- Tried to do the sfc /scannow - no issues found.
- Tried to do the chkdsk scans for both of my drives - no issues found
- Tried to do the Memtest86 test - ran it for 15 hours, 7 passes, 0 errors
- Tried to reinstall Microsoft C++ Redistributables
- Ran Windows Deffender and Malwarebytes scans, nothing there

Please find also attached a zip archive with most recent BSOD minidumps, some error exports from Event Viewer and msinfo and dxdiag exports.

Hope this helps to locate the issue. Every help is much appreciated!

 

[PeterOz]

Can you Download and run and then post. https://www.ccleaner.com/speccy/download
To publish a Speccy profile to the Web:​

In Speccy, click File, and then click Publish Snapshot.​

In the Publish Snapshot dialog box, click Yes to enable Speccy to proceed.

Speccy publishes the profile and displays a second Publish Snapshot dialog box. You can open the URL in your default browser, copy it to the clipboard, or close the dialog box.

The last part of each URL is randomized, so only people you provide with the URL will be able to find your profile.

The information given in Speccy cannot be used by anyone to hack your system

 

[PeterOz]

Also are you running Virtual Machines?

 

[checkpoint]

Hi PeterOz, thanks taking the time to help.
Find the results from Speccy here: http://speccy.piriform.com/results/jXQBoO2l0lFWhI1bKNjQE7C

Yes, from time to time I need to run some VMs, I'm using VMWare Workstation Player for that, that's probably why you see some VMWare stuff and why virtualization is enabled on my PC. Let me also add however that I was experiencing the mentioned crashes and BSODs before I enabled virtualization and started using VMs.

 

[phillpower2]

CPU issues are flagged up in the crash dmps but they are not 100% for sure the cause of your problems and the below most likely is;

Partition 1
Partition ID: Disk #1, Partition #1
Disk Letter: C:
File System: NTFS
Volume Serial Number: 8A2B99A8
Size: 232 GB
Used Space: 214 GB (92%)
Free Space: 17,3 GB (8%)

For Windows to be able to run efficiently and to be able to update you need to have between 20 and 25% of the partition or drive available on a HDD and an SSD between 10 and 15% as free storage space at all times, if you don`t you risk Windows becoming corrupt or not being able to update which puts you at risk of malware attack.

Data only storage devices should not be allowed to get any lower than 10% of free storage space of the full capacity of the drive/partition on the drive, this also to avoid data corruption.

Please note that storage devices can physically fail if the amount of free storage space is allowed to drop below the required 10 or 20/25% minimum.

Uninstall as many unused programs, games, videos and music files as you can and get yourself another means of backing up to, post back when you have between 20 and 25% free storage space on the C: drive/partition and we can go from there.

The above needs to be done as a starting point if nothing else.

 

[checkpoint]

Thanks for the note, that's definitely a good point. However, the thing is that me having the C drive (SSD) this full is because I was trying to move the games to this drive to test if the crashes were not caused by having them on the second HDD (it didn't resolve the issue). I have it like this just for a couple of days now - normally I have like 50 % of the SSD disk that runs Windows free. I can move it back and make more space on the C drive, however the crashes and BSODs are happening in both cases.

 

[PeterOz]

You need to take the advise of @phillpower2 on this matter.
So, you do need to free up c again so there is a starting point.
Your power supply is right on the boarder line. You have 650W to drive the GPU and everything else.
The gpu itself needs 650W. https://www.nvidia.com/content/geforce-gtx/GEFORCE_RTX_2070_SUPER_User_Guide.pdf

 

[checkpoint]

Sure, understood.
I did some basic cleanup and have 21 % of free space on C drive, see screenshot attached. I left one huge game there because that's the one we're currently playing online and luckily this one's not giving me any crashes, so I don't want to jinx it by moving it to the secondary HDD (but if you say I should in order to free up more space and to get to the bottom of this issue, I will, of course).

Regarding the PSU, I bought this one under recommendation of the (hopefully a professional) guy in the shop. He claimed that to supply this combination of CPU and GPU, this PSU is enough....

 

[phillpower2]

I concur with Peter, additional drives + the additional screen puts you more in the 750W range.

Also of note, you are using a VPN and over a wireless connection, gaming sucks on one but using the two together is the pits.

People with nothing to hide do not need a VPN.

Gamers use an Ethernet connection for gaming and save the WiFi for emailing customer support etc

Have you had any further BSOD since freeing up the required space.

Any further problems with games since freeing up the required space.

 

[checkpoint]

Yes, unfortunately - after freeing the space, I'm still experiencing the same game crashes as before - these are easily reproducible as I have games that crash every single time. Haven't experienced BSOD yet as I'm unable to reliably reproduce that and they still seem to be random... Will look for them tho...

I'm also still getting some weird error messages in Event Viewer... for example right now - I have the Windows night shift feature that dimms the colors of the display enabled... And out of nowhere, the display flashes and resets to the non-night shift colors (even though the feature stays enabled) - and in the event viewer, I can see Application Error - Desktop Window Manager crashed... I can see couple of these happening during the day. Or I can see that Chrome just crashed out of nowhere earlier today. Or something called MoUserCoreWorker.exe crashed.... I can export these from the Event Viewer if you'd want to have a look... It seems to me, with these random crashes, that it might be that the OS is not functioning properly... But during this year I really reinstalled the OS several times, following various guides for "clean and proper" installation from Microsoft knowledge base, and every time these issues come back...

Ok, I understand the concerns about the PSU - so do you think that that's the safest bet in regards of what HW piece could cause this? I see that you mentioned CPU as a potential cause as well in your first post... I'm asking because I was thinking I would order new pieces of the HW and test it out... If I'd find out that it's not helping, I can return them and get a refund... Or I'll consider it as and upgrade opportunity, but I want to limit the potentialities as much as possible as I don't want to order a completely new PC

Noting the thing about VPN and wireless. I don't agree with the statement that having a VPN means that I need to hide something - for me it's a question of maintaining privacy and/or being able to access geo-restricted content. And of course I'm using it only when browsing, not when playing games online.

Regarding wireless, I'm aware that Ethernet connection is preferred, but can't have that because of how my current appartment is cabled and wired (and it's a rented appartment so I can't really do much about that) - I was trying some powerline extenders to get Ethernet to a room with my PC, but in the end the wireless connection gives me higher speeds and fine stability so far (even though I'm currently using a low-end usb wifi adapter - I'm about to upgrade that to something better as well as it seems that I'll stick to the wireless setup in this appartment - been here about a month now so these things are still settling down).

And btw, thanks for the tips, notes and overall for spending the time on this...

 

[phillpower2]

Yes, unfortunately - after freeing the space, I'm still experiencing the same game crashes as before

Are the games on the same SSD as Windows.

Haven't experienced BSOD yet as I'm unable to reliably reproduce that and they still seem to be random..

Chances are that you will not get any more as long as you keep the required space available on the boot drive.

Points noted about the VPN and wireless connection, I stand by what was said about both but understand that you must do what suits your needs.

People really should stay away from event viewer unless they 100% know what they are doing, Windows throws up errors all the time and the only ones that need immediate action are the ones that are marked as Critical, don't let any other type cause you stress, they should be ignored by the average user.

Will wait on the answer to the above for now.

 

[checkpoint]

Are the games on the same SSD as Windows.

No, after the last post I moved all of them (except for the one) back to the secondary HDD. I'm experiencing the crashes with the same errors regardless of the disk they're on - got the crashes when I was testing having the games on the SSD together with Windows, getting them now when they're on the secondary HDD.

Chances are that you will not get any more as long as you keep the required space available on the boot drive.

Just to note here that I was getting the BSODs when I had the required space available before - me having the C drive this full was just an exception as I was moving the games around to test different scenarios.

People really should stay away from event viewer unless they 100% know what they are doing, Windows throws up errors all the time and the only ones that need immediate action are the ones that are marked as Critical, don't let any other type cause you stress, they should be ignored by the average user.

I'm not really doing anything with the Event Viewer, but there's undeniably some weird stuff going on with the PC and the Event Viewer always records something at the time the stuff is happening (app crashes, display weirdly flashes etc.). These errors in the Event Viewer are often the only record of the behavior, so that's why I'm monitoring it...

 

[phillpower2]

Take the second SSD offline then do the below;

Stress test your GPU with Furmark

Check your FPS etc with SUPERPOSITION

Let us know if you have any repeat of the same behaviour.

 

[checkpoint]

I took the HDD offline and did the tests.
I ran the Furmark stress test without any issues for an hour - no crash or smth like that.
Same for the Superposition - the Benchmark test completed without issues

 

[phillpower2]

The results prove that your hardware is fine and the problem therefore with the internet connection or the games.

Can we have a new Speccy url and a MTB log.

Download MiniToolBox and save the file to the Desktop.

Close the browser and run the tool, check the following options;

List last 10 Event Viewer Errors
List Installed Programs
List Devices (Only Problems)
List Users, Partitions and Memory size

Click on Go.

Post the resulting log in your next reply for us if you will.

 

[checkpoint]

New Speccy url: http://speccy.piriform.com/results/aZilDBIDMfXKZ5ydsdrbrWM

Results from MTB attached.

 

[phillpower2]

Windows and Windows Defender are still causing issues and most likely because of corruption when you nearly ran out of space on the boot drive, this has caused problems with Windows updates and your AV protection Windows Defender, you still do not have enough room on the drive btw, Windows 11 is going to be with us for a while yet so you need the whole of that SSD just for Windows and Windows Defender.

Recommend a clean install of Windows followed by immediately installing the chipset drivers. do not let Windows check for updates until the chipset drivers have been installed, you don`t have onboard video so follow the chipset drivers by the SATA and add on GPU drivers.

 

[checkpoint]

Ok, I'll try that. It will take me some time to get all of it done, so I won't probably reply for a while. Thank you so far!

 

[phillpower2]

No worries, see where you are up to by the weekend, if we don`t hear back from you we will put your thread on hold until you are available.

 

[phillpower2]

Being that the OP visited the forum but did not reply to avoid us having to ask for an update every couple of days we will close this thread until checkpoint has the time available to work towards resolving the issue, PM a member of staff when you are ready and the thread can be reopened.