Windows 7 BSOD while gaming - PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

[Starayo]

Hello.

I built this PC a few months ago and it's been, for the most part, running pretty flawlessly. However, when running one game in particular, FFXIV (being an MMO on max settings, probably one of the most intensive things to run on my system), I have occasionally gotten BSODs. I've had about three in the last two days, many more than I have usually, which has prompted me to properly investigate the issue.

I've suspected the graphics card may be faulty, as I occasionally get artifacting while on stock clock speeds and sub-65 degree temperatures, but had held off on RMAing the card as other people had reported issues with this card that improved with new drivers. My artifacting has indeed improved, but is still present, and I get texture corruption in-game as well as a patch on my other monitor that looks as if it has been sectioned into squares, with some of them swapped and flickering. I'm fairly certain that the card is to blame for this, but the issues do not present on anything else - stress tests and benchmarks run flawlessly for hours. FFXIV is also one of the only games installed on my SSD, though, so perhaps that is an issue.

I believe all the BSODs so far have been "PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA". The first I recorded referenced dxgkrnl.sys but the dump file is strangely missing, the others are present in the attached file.

Anyway, I'm looking to see if faulty hardware is indeed to blame (and if so, if there are any clear indicators as to what) or if these BSODs could be related to something else.

Everything should be present in the attached file. Let me know if anything else is needed.

 

[kemical]

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*                                                                            *
*                        Bugcheck Analysis                                    *
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Use !analyze -v to get detailed debugging information.

BugCheck 24, {1904fb, fffff8800bf05528, fffff8800bf04d80, fffff88000db8700}

Probably caused by : fltmgr.sys ( fltmgr!FltpReleaseStreamListCtrl+0 )

Followup: MachineOwner

Hi,

it's not absolutely clear as to what is causing the bsod but I do have a couple of clues..

Please update your Direct X files:
Link Removed

Your keyboard driver is ancient please update:
http://www.logitech.com/en-us/support

Please perform a chkdsk by right clicking on Computer, then properties, Tools and finally error checking. Please make sure both boxes are ticked for fixing sectors and errors.

Please test your RAM. Although relatively new it's still entirely possible to purchase RAM containing a faulty stick. Use memtest as it's the industry standard:
http://www.memtest.org/

Please update all drivers to latest versions. You can use your motherboards website as a guide:
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4153#bios

 

[Starayo]

DirectX installer said newer or equivalent version was installed.

The logitech driver (for my G13 gamepad) is the latest version of the software/driver on the site from august this year. Can't find a newer one on there. My Das Keyboard has no driver.

Ran a chkdsk right after I posted this thread. Uncertain if it found/fixed anything in particular as I was reading, but it ran completely.

Have gone through and made sure each of the drivers are installed and the latest provided for my board revision (1.1).

Will run memtest before I go to sleep and leave it on overnight.

Edit: I have also updated the SSD firmware after discovering an update.

 

[kemical]

Thats great. Please post back with results or with any new dmp files.

 

[Starayo]

Left it running for 8 hours, no errors.

 

[kemical]

Have you had any new bsod's? If so please post dmp files.

 

[Starayo]

None have happened yet today. They happen at random while I play, I've had them as quickly as when the game is booting up and as late as after most of a day. Haven't been playing much today but I should be tomorrow, will report back as soon as any happen.

 

[kemical]

Ok, thank you..

 

[Starayo]

Well... The good news is I haven't had any more BSODs.

The bad news is I've had several... black screens of death? Screens go black, computer completely stops responding, last fraction of audio repeats infinitely. No BSOD, just black until I manually restart. This also happened after an extended session of crusader kings II the other day which is a significantly less stressful game.

Does that give any hints as to the malfunctioning part?



Oh dear, it just happened again as I was halfway through typing this, the second time in ten minutes. Thankfully it saved what I had written.

I definitely need to RMA something...

 

[kemical]

Hmm it sounds like a graphics issue.Try this.. Download the app found here:
Link Removed

Use it to remove your gpu drivers.I can't remember which graphics card you have but both AMD and Nvidia have recently updated their drivers (links can be found via our software update section). Try the latest driver releases.

It might also be worth checking the event viewer and seeing if anything is being reporting in connection with the black screen.

 

[Starayo]

I have an AMD HD7970, latest drivers already on there. I will try and do a clean reinstall of them when I am next at my computer though.

Event log just shows an "event 41-63 kernel-power" event. If all the ones in the log are from this issue (which they probably are, it has been happening since I built the computer, just not so often and I thought it was the card overheating, so I installed better fans in the case and it has kept it much cooler...) then I've had 17 in all since building it at the end of august..

I've looked up this issue with this particular card... Was a thread mentioning VRAM overheating with the design of one card, but not my model, and running heaven benchmark and GPU-Z without my fans turned up high it did seem to heat up a lot more than the GPU, but drops to a more respectable temp with my case fans and higher card fan settings on, which they always are when I'm gaming. Still, the last two happened... within five minutes of each other, according to the event log. They stopped after I left it off for a few minutes before trying again. In my experience that tends to be a heat issue, but it could just be confirmation bias...

Both issues, the black screen and the corruption, could also be caused by a faulty PSU, but I'm not sure how to test for that, and the only other PSU I have is quite old and potentially damaged... It would be so much easier to diagnose if I could replicate the crashes, but they happen at random.

Since my issues seem to have moved away from BSODs I may look at taking this issue somewhere else when I get back home tomorrow night. I can possibly do more testing on the weekend.

 

[kemical]

My old 5870 used to do it at times and I never really found a solution nor the actual reason why the screen would suddenly go black with a weird buzz coming from the speakers. The closest I got was it was something to do with the driver but that's about it. If you google the issue you'll see that many people have had the same issue with various solutions either working or not.
I could control mine a little more when the VRAM was slightly underclocked but it would still do it on the odd occasion. I did wonder about the PSU myself and although mine had plenty of grunt to cover what was needed it was getting old and as you know they do lose efficiency. Since that time I upgraded to a GTX 680 and haven't had the problem appear again so I'm guessing the PSU was ok all along..

 

[Starayo]

Well, another BSOD happened as I was about to leave a dungeon in FFXIV. Saw a purple square appear on other monitor right before it went blue - like the squares of "pixellated" corruption I'll get. Trust me to get a BSOD the only time I'm not having GPU-Z log everything to a file so I can see if it's correlated with temperatures...

.dmp file attached.

 

[kemical]

*******************************************************************************
*                                                                            *
*                        Bugcheck Analysis                                    *
*                                                                            *
*******************************************************************************

Use !analyze -v to get detailed debugging information.

BugCheck 3B, {c0000005, fffff8800f85ffec, fffff88012ad0fa0, 0}

Probably caused by : dxgkrnl.sys ( dxgkrnl!DXGDEVICE::Lock+18c )

Followup: MachineOwner

RTCore64.sys Tue Sep 06 13:24:50 2011: Relates to Rivatuner/EVGA Precision/MSIAfterburner known bsod issues with win 7 please remove.

Try removing the above and see how you go. Post back with any further dmp files..

 

[Starayo]

Hmm. I had installed that I'm fairly sure after the problems started happening, to tweak the fan speed curve so it wouldn't let the GPU get so hot, but I'll remove it anyway.

 

[kemical]

What temps are you seeing? Plus have you considered speedfan? I use it to monitor and keep my fan speeds as i want them.
http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php
If your using win 7( I can't remember right at this minute) pop the exe into the start up folder and it'll start with windows.

 

[Starayo]

I had speedfan installed but it doesn't seem to want to work for modifying fan speeds (at least for case fans - I had to get a fan controller for that). I didn't bother setting up the GPU fan speed with it because the afterburner had such an easy interface for changing the speed curve. I'll look into that now.

I had it going because under load the stock settings tend to hover straight up around 80-90 degrees and never increase the fan speed significantly until it's already overheating and artifacting horribly, and even then not enough. I try to keep it under 80 since much higher than that and it'll start artifacting.

Looking at the GPU-Z log I'm seeing the temperatures look fairly normal, there are a few ridiculous spikes in the VRAM temp but since they work out to about 2x the previous temp and only for a second I'm thinking they're glitches, though there are some unrelated spikes in the current that don't add up... I don't know enough about this.

 

[kemical]

I don't know enough about this.

You and me both...

 

[Starayo]

If I could ever reproduce the event causing the BSODs or black screens... Diagnosing unreproducable issues...

If it DOES have something to do with heat (I really suspect it's at least somewhat related since they seemed to happen less once I had the fans running smoothly) then maybe leaving it at stock fan and stress testing could work...