BSOD after Total War Rome II install

mastman · 12 Sep 2013

My son installed this newly bought game on his laptop. He leaves for college in 2 days and it has significant problems. He says that he actually played the game for a bit, left the laptop in standby mode for a few hours, and came back to the BSOD. This is not a new machine (he is going to be a junior) and has never had big problems like this so far.

From the digging I have done the problem looks to be related to the graphics card or driver. The only way I can boot successfully is to disable the Radeon card. The display is then all screwed up of course.

I have disabled the on-board graphics and Radeon card and deleted the driver multiple times. I have installed the latest and prior driver packages from HP with no luck. The AMD card management tool does not recognize that the graphics card is present either (see attached screenshot).

I have tried to do a system restore too, but there was only one available from before the game installation and it made no difference to the outcome.

I hope i covered the basic info that is needed to start down the evaluation path, but let know if i missed anything. I plan to take this to work with me for the next two days so that I can try to keep plugging away at it.

Thanks, mastman

Arc · 12 Sep 2013

It started with bluttooth failure during sleep.

Code:

BugCheck 1000009F, {4, 258, fffffa8005b18660, fffff80000b9c3d0}

*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for btwampfl.sys
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for btwampfl.sys
Implicit thread is now fffffa80`05b18660
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for win32k.sys
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for win32k.sys
Probably caused by : btwampfl.sys ( btwampfl+30a2a )

Followup: MachineOwner
---------

0: kd> !analyze -v
*******************************************************************************
*                                                                             *
*                        Bugcheck Analysis                                    *
*                                                                             *
*******************************************************************************

DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE (9f)
A driver has failed to complete a power IRP within a specific time (usually 10 minutes).
Arguments:
Arg1: 0000000000000004, The power transition timed out waiting to synchronize with the Pnp
    subsystem.
Arg2: 0000000000000258, Timeout in seconds.
Arg3: fffffa8005b18660, The thread currently holding on to the Pnp lock.
Arg4: fffff80000b9c3d0, nt!TRIAGE_9F_PNP on Win7

The driver is Broadcom Bluetooth USB AMP Filter for Windows Vista. Obviously outdated.

Code:

fffff880`0401f000 fffff880`042a8000   btwampfl T (no symbols)           
    Loaded symbol image file: btwampfl.sys
    Image path: \SystemRoot\system32\drivers\btwampfl.sys
    Image name: btwampfl.sys
    Timestamp:        Tue Jul 13 07:11:18 2010 (4C3BC43E)
    CheckSum:         0005B643
    ImageSize:        00289000
    Translations:     0000.04b0 0000.04e4 0409.04b0 0409.04e4

This BSOD caused the other issue. Which is more serious.

You have switchable graphics. Mobile Intel(R) HD Graphics and Radeon (TM) HD 6770M. The mechanism is, usually the integrated graphics works. When needed, it switches to the dedicated GPU. Now, that BSOD caused the dedicated GPU malfunctioning.

Code:

BugCheck 116, {fffffa800c47b4e0, fffff88007a07b78, 0, 2}

Unable to load image \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\atikmpag.sys, Win32 error 0n2
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for atikmpag.sys
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for atikmpag.sys
Probably caused by : atikmpag.sys ( atikmpag+7b78 )

Followup: MachineOwner
---------

Obviously, the GPU driver is too old, too.

Code:

fffff880`07a00000 fffff880`07a51000   atikmpag T (no symbols)           
    Loaded symbol image file: atikmpag.sys
    Image path: \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\atikmpag.sys
    Image name: atikmpag.sys
    Timestamp:        Sat Oct 01 06:58:45 2011 (4E866CCD)
    CheckSum:         0004E022
    ImageSize:        00051000
    Translations:     0000.04b0 0000.04e4 0409.04b0 0409.04e4

So what appears that it is a multiple issue. Many a things needs to be fixed there. Even the laptop is an old one.

So, the best option there, I think, you disable the integrated Intel HD graphics (as the switchable graphics is always problematic). Disable Bluetooth too (it seems that you dont use it). Then go for a Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 .... follow it step by step.

Hopefully your computer will work as good as you can expect.