Solved BSOD during Path of Exile before and after GPU driver update.

[Makivante]

I played Path of Exile until about August with zero problems like this, took a break and started up upon official release a week ago. Since then I've been getting BSOD stop errors at random times (although most often when "zoning" between areas).

The only symptom I can report (other than the BSOD) is that the screen turns into a series of horizontal streaks in multiple colors all over the spectrum, which makes me think it might be an overheating issue.

Thank you in advance for any assistance you can offer, and if I need to clarify anything, please let me know.

-Makivante

 

[YoYo155]

Welcome to SF .

The bugchecks appear to be due to a driver issue.

BugCheck 50, {ffffffff85c20000, 0, fffff80003691798, 5}

*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for ctoss2k.sys
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for [COLOR=Blue][U][B]ctoss2k.sys[/B][/U][/COLOR]
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for ha20x2k.sys
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for [COLOR=Blue][U][B]ha20x2k.sys[/B][/U][/COLOR]
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for ctaud2k.sys
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for [COLOR=Blue][U][B]ctaud2k.sys[/B][/U][/COLOR]

Could not read faulting driver name
[COLOR=Red][U][B]Probably caused by : ctoss2k.sys[/B][/U][/COLOR] ( ctoss2k+5cea )

Right off the bat the debugger let's us know he doesn't like the drivers mentioned above.
If we check the a little further we see that the drivers belong to Creative and are being used
by your PCIe sound card.

Name    Creative X-Fi Audio Processor (WDM)
Manufacturer    Creative Technology, Ltd.
Driver    c:\windows\system32\drivers\ctaud2k.sys
Creative OS Services Driver    c:\windows\system32\drivers\ctoss2k.sys

Looking up the time-stamps we see that the drivers are very old!

lmvm ctoss2k
start             end                 module name
fffff880`05753000 fffff880`05784000   ctoss2k  T (no symbols)           
    Loaded symbol image file: ctoss2k.sys
    Image path: \SystemRoot\system32\drivers\ctoss2k.sys
    Image name: ctoss2k.sys
    Timestamp:        [COLOR=Red][B]Wed May 05 20:55:23 2010[/B][/COLOR]

• Driver Reference Table - ctoss2k.sys

lmvm ha20x2k
start             end                 module name
fffff880`06c1f000 fffff880`06da0000   ha20x2k  T (no symbols)           
    Loaded symbol image file: ha20x2k.sys
    Image path: \SystemRoot\system32\drivers\ha20x2k.sys
    Image name: ha20x2k.sys
    Timestamp:        [COLOR=Red][B]Wed May 05 20:57:42 2010[/B][/COLOR]

• Driver Reference Table - ha20x2k.sys

lmvm ctaud2k
start             end                 module name
fffff880`0560a000 fffff880`056b0080   ctaud2k  T (no symbols)           
    Loaded symbol image file: ctaud2k.sys
    Image path: \SystemRoot\system32\drivers\ctaud2k.sys
    Image name: ctaud2k.sys
    Timestamp:        [COLOR=Red][B]Wed May 05 20:58:54 2010[/B][/COLOR]

• Driver Reference Table - ctaud2k.sys

Please update the driver. - Download -





Going through the stack I saw some activity of afd.sys so I was thinking network.
Sure enough L1E62x64.sys is outdated.

lmvm L1E62x64

    Image path: \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\L1E62x64.sys
    Image name: L1E62x64.sys
    Browse all global symbols  functions  data
    Timestamp:        [COLOR=Red][B]Thu Jun 11 09:45:22 2009[/B][/COLOR]

Please update. - Download -


Also your BIOS is outdated, but I would hold off the update for now.
As for the horizontal streaks, that is a hardware issue most commonly the motherboard.

Test for thermals and stability:

• Download Speccy and post a Screenshot of the summary window, one at idle and another while putting load on the PC using Prime95 for the CPU side and Furmark for the GPU.
  • Before running Prime95 make sure to enable Round-off checking (see 1st post under the tutorial).

Testing the RAM:

Test and Diagnose RAM Issues with Memtest86+:

• RAM - Test with Memtest86+

   Tip

• :info: Pay close attention to part 3 of the tutorial "If you have errors"
• :tip: Test the RAM with Memtest86+ for at least 7-10 passes. It may take up to 22 passes to find problems. Make sure to run it once after the system has been on for a few hours and is warm, and then also run it again when the system has been off for a few hours and is cold.

When done with the testing procedure take a picture and upload it here.
Keep us posted.

 

[Makivante]

Thank you, YoYo155!

I started going through the steps you described and replaced the network driver, but the Sound Card is well past "End-of-Life" and I could not find a recent driver for it on the driver repository sites that I looked at. I decided to remove the card and replace it with a USB external sound card.

Since the case was open, I took the complete enclosure apart and gave it a good cleaning. I'm fairly confident at this point that the high temps and screen freeze prior to BSOD was heat related. Diagnostic software is reporting a significant temp drop. PEBKAC ftl.

tl,dr: drivers + overheating causing problems, considered fixed for now, thank you.

One final question: CrystalDisk Info is showing my power on count at 1,234 and power on hours at 37680 for disk one and just under that for disk two (Raid 0) - I'm not even sure I've owned the drives that long...danger zone?

(will mark solved shortly and upvote for help, ty again!)

 

[YoYo155]

Glad to hear .

About the power on hours that value translates into 4.2 years, sounds reasonable?
As for the "danger zone" it depends on what kind of storage solution it is, SSD / HDD,
if it's an HDD the MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) also varies between RAID optimized drives
to the commodity (not to point out any particular brand) "green" drive.
As well as what sort of conditions they device were operating under, anywhere from I/O (reads, writes
to temperature or climate).

You system specs states the WD 150GB Raptor, a short Google reveals that the series
is about six years old, were the drives new when you got them / installed them in the current setup?

 

[Makivante]

Yes, the drives (SSD) were new, but according to CrystalDisk Info they were running between 40-50 C before cleaning. Probably running hot for months.

 

[YoYo155]

I was going on your system specifications (listed below every post), as the drives are in RAID
the kind of storage solution is not listed in the MSinfo32 file, please update the specification to avoid confusion.

How do things fair now a'days?

 

[Makivante]

I apologize for not updating my information before asking for help, YoYo155. That wasn't very respectful of me. Thank you for graciously tracking down the discrepancies. I believe all of the information is current now (taken from Speccy).

After removing the outdated sound card and installing a USB external one, as well as giving the case a good cleaning, I have not experienced any BSODs and my drives/GPU are running significantly cooler.

Thank you for your assistance!

 

[YoYo155]

Thank you for the confirmation .
Now the storage listed in your system spec is not very helpful... I would take a look inside the case
and update the information that way.