BSOD 4 times since .86 came out

[Robbi]

Yer, the shaders do react weirdly on certain machines. Usually a clean install fixes, but sometimes not

[bkandor]

After thinking that tranmitting in Ventrillo during a map load was somehow causign blue screens, it happened last night without tranmitting occuring.

Map loading was Muttrah - I'm going to start tracking which map is loading.

[PepsiMachine]

I'm thinking that sound card overloads are causing my problem. Before the community event, we were all spamming Mumble and whatnot and I remember thinking "Oh man, please don't blue screen...."

It did. Sure enough, crashdump analysis led to ctoss2k.sys being the driver at fault. So for now, I'll put up with the occasional BSoD, but I am curious about what changed in .86.

Map loading was Muttrah - I'm going to start tracking which map is loading.

My first few BSoDs were on Muttrah, I also remember Archer, Kashan, and Ramiel. It seems to be the larger maps that are causing this

[Nikolai[NL]]

Did alot of tweaking with tips I have found on various nvidia related forums but the problem still occurs. I must add that I didnt have a BSOD after nearly 2 hours of playing but Im 100% certain that its the suppression effect that causes my issues. When I get suppressed its my screen starting flickering and I get horizontal bars over my screen, pressing esc to go in and out of the menu solves it. Any idea how I can change the settings so my computer can cope with the suppression effect?

[Robbi]

What refresh rate are you running on that monitor?

[Nikolai[NL]]

I'm not at home atm but I think it runs @ 60 thats the lowest option when I run on 1280x1024

Also Im 100% sure it only happens while I am playing PR, I played Call of Juarez for 2 hours this weekend without even the smallest problem.

[Mastatschief]

same here, i got win7 64bit when pr .86 came out and i get the bsod (PAGE FAULT IN NON-PAGED AREA) once a week while playing PR.
my system is pretty new and i never had a bsod before with XP.
usually this error is some kind of hardware error, i checked ram and harddrives but they are ok.
sry, didnt see that this thread had more than one side...

btw i have a ati 4850 and i am using a xtreme music soundcard

[Twisted Helix]

'Non Paged Area' means the core system memory area. You are quite correct, it signifies a serious hardware mismatch or error. Usual culprit is RAM, but it could also be the processor caches. I would check the running temperature of your CPU and make sure that your RAM speeds are matched to your CPU in the BIOS.

It can also be because of peripherals. Thing to do is remove all boards apart from your video card, and try and reproduce the error. Then add peripherals back in board by board and repeat.

If its an intermittent error that occurs randomly there is a high likely hood of it being to do with heat (or possibly an underrated power supply).

[PepsiMachine]

Blue screened again, but this time, as I was exiting PR. I was connected to a server running Kashan. Error message:

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (d1)
An attempt was made to access a pageable (or completely invalid) address at an
interrupt request level (IRQL) that is too high. This is usually
caused by drivers using improper addresses.
If kernel debugger is available get stack backtrace.
Arguments:
Arg1: 0000000000002020, memory referenced
Arg2: 0000000000000007, IRQL
Arg3: 0000000000000000, value 0 = read operation, 1 = write operation
Arg4: fffffa60034a76a8, address which referenced memory

Debugging Details:
------------------


READ_ADDRESS: GetPointerFromAddress: unable to read from fffff80002484080
0000000000002020
CURRENT_IRQL: 7

FAULTING_IP:
ctoss2k+66a8
fffffa60`034a76a8 ?? ???

CUSTOMER_CRASH_COUNT: 1

DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID: VISTA_DRIVER_FAULT

BUGCHECK_STR: 0xD1

PROCESS_NAME: explorer.exe

TRAP_FRAME: fffffa600cd3e990 -- (.trap 0xfffffa600cd3e990)

NOTE: The trap frame does not contain all registers.
Some register values may be zeroed or incorrect.
(snip)
ctoss2k+0x66a8:
fffffa60`034a76a8 ?? ???
Resetting default scope

LAST_CONTROL_TRANSFER: from fffff800022b71ee to fffff800022b7450

STACK_TEXT:
(snip)
STACK_COMMAND: kb

FOLLOWUP_IP:
ctoss2k+66a8
fffffa60`034a76a8 ?? ???

SYMBOL_STACK_INDEX: 3

SYMBOL_NAME: ctoss2k+66a8

FOLLOWUP_NAME: MachineOwner

MODULE_NAME: ctoss2k

IMAGE_NAME: ctoss2k.sys

DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP: 499d28d9

FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: X64_0xD1_ctoss2k+66a8

BUCKET_ID: X64_0xD1_ctoss2k+66a8

Followup: MachineOwner

I get that it's the Creative drivers that are doing this, but what about PR .86 makes it crash where .85 didn't?

[Twisted Helix]

Get the latest Creative Drivers. There was a well known bug with Creative X-Fi and vista which has only been sorted in about may or june. Creative + Vista has not been a match made in heaven I am afraid

As for why 0.86 makes it fall over ... hmm ... dunno why that would be , as this is not anything to do with any software other than your low level drivers.

The trace that you post is caused by the drivers attempting to access an improper address on too high an IRQ.

[strickt]

Get the latest Creative Drivers. There was a well known bug with Creative X-Fi and vista which has only been sorted in about may or june. Creative + Vista has not been a match made in heaven I am afraid

As for why 0.86 makes it fall over ... hmm ... dunno why that would be , as this is not anything to do with any software other than your low level drivers.

The trace that you post is caused by the drivers attempting to access an improper address on too high an IRQ.

No those didn't fix it, I reformatted my whole computer and installed all brand spanking new drivers for everything and it still happened, Only way I've seen to get rid of the problem is to disable my sound card and run on board sound (which sounds like shit) so I've stopped playing for now and just check this thread every day to see if there has been a fix found.

[bkandor]

Get the latest Creative Drivers. There was a well known bug with Creative X-Fi and vista which has only been sorted in about may or june. Creative + Vista has not been a match made in heaven I am afraid

As for why 0.86 makes it fall over ... hmm ... dunno why that would be , as this is not anything to do with any software other than your low level drivers.

The trace that you post is caused by the drivers attempting to access an improper address on too high an IRQ.

It is strange because 2142 and/or bf2 have never caused any similiar problem here. I tried the 'PAX' version drivers but it made no difference. So, now I'm using the latest vista64 titanium driver - but I don't remember it's release date.

[Nikolai[NL]]

got the dreaded BSOD again last night, again referring to nv4_disp.dll
Flashed my bios to the most recent version, lets see if that makes a difference, I read somewhere that it could help.

[Nikolai[NL]]

another update, I updated my mobo drivers and found a tweaked card driver and its seems to be working. I havent been able to try it in battle but Ive made some choppers explode on a training server and that didnt cause any problems so far. Ill post what I did if it is really fixed.

*edit*
problem is not solved

[Nikolai[NL]]

well still no solution found, I did find a million other people that get the same BSOD on other games and with them its also mostly limited to one game.
For PR I have narrowed it down to the suppression effect, is there something I can do with my ingame settings that might help? or maybe bios settings? In bios I have now loaded optimal settings but that didnt make a difference.
I would be a shame to throw away on otherwise perfectly good GTS 8600 superclocked and get another card just to be able to play PR without problems.

things Ive found out / tried so far:
- my PSU is 550w which should be enough for my card
- my RAM is good, tested it with memtest
- no harddisk errors, checked that too
- no BF2/PR installation faults since Ive re-installed it all but that didnt help
- clocking down my videocard a bit does not make a difference
- deleting hardware profile for the and re-installing with fresh drivers does not help
- found a program that should fix the infinite loop (thats what the error is called), but that does not work
- flashed my bios to the most recent version
- updated mobo drivers
- tried the latest videocard drivers, tried older card drivers and even tried tweaked card drivers

Slowly getting nuts here, anybody else got a brilliant idea on what I can do or can check?

[Twisted Helix]

Have you tried checking how hot your Video card gets and if the fan is clear of dust ? Also make sure that its not got the airflow around it restricted.

I have a problem with my 8800GT , which is not BSOD, instead it just reboots my machine. Its virtually always because its getting too hot, and when it starts to occur frequently if I take a look at it , sure enough the fan is all clogged up with dust.

[Nikolai[NL]]

yup, I opened the case and cleaned out all the dust. The card gets to about 65 degrees celcius if I remeber correctly and that should be good.
Ill do it again when I get home tonight, never can be too sure.

I also found the program/tool called Prime95 which I might try to run. I googled some more and found 2 quite old driver that some people claim to be working properly so I might try and go back to those.

Another person states that increasing the voltage of the RAM in the bios by 0.05 volt solved his problem, might also look into that.

Could it be that the shaders in PR push my system harder than Crysis or Far Cry 2? I find that hard to believe.

[Twisted Helix]

Try running the game with your case open, and see what happens. Sometimes these issues can arise because of airflow (or lack of it) in your case.

Although to be honest a GT8600 should be fine ... I have one in my other machine and its even fanless. However the latest cards generate so much heat that you really need these PCI fans in the slot below or above them. I would say that 65 degrees was a little on the high side to be honest though ... my temps are down around 35 degrees when I have the case and fans all clean ... and it gets up to about 55 - 60 when they start getting clogged.

Have you looked to see if you have any IRQ conflicts ? As that is the usual cause of BSODs ... as I say overheating usually just switches your machine off like it does with mine ... not even a polite BSOD message

It might be you have some device conflicting on an IRQ channel with your vid card. Common culprits of this are a Sound Card or a Network card that might be in an adjacent PCI/PCIe slot. Its all a bit complicated though I am afraid because it literally differs from motherboard to motherboard, you have to find out the details of how yours organizes the PCI bussing.

Regards it being the shaders ... AFAIK the shaders haven't been changed at all between this version and the last, so it would be a bit weird if they suddenly started causing problems.

[Nikolai[NL]]

thx, Ill try the open-case method as well

I have an onboard sound and network card so those cant cause the conflicts.

[thebusdriver]

whoopsie, here we go
just had a BSOD while playing (page fault in nonpaged area, this is a RAM issue incase u dont know)

specs:
qx9770
gtx280 sli
xfi fatal1ty
4gb ddr3 @ 1600mhz
win7 x64
latest drivers, latest everything, no overclock

i can play crysis for 10 hours straight w/o a single issue and this never happened before, so it must be something u changed in 0.86 .. period

//edit: for example, i noticed that 0.86 does use its own executable where 0.85 was the shortcut thing w/ bf2.exe