BSOD playing Dark Souls, error 0x00000124

[Solus]

Oh gee. Never mind the "might take a while" part, I forgot I had the power to cause BSoDs with a single button press. (Certain graphical effects, as I mentioned. I seem to recall swearing being part of the ToS here so I'll keep my thoughts on the matter to myself.)

So, yeah, with only avast and Steam running, it still crashes. I have the Steam folder added to avast's exceptions but I don't know whether it can still interfere; seems kind of unlikely though.

 

[axe0]

Please uninstall Avast while troubleshooting
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/343783-avast-uninstall-completely.html

 

[Solus]

First, an odd observation: Under the same circumstances as the last BSoD, but with RadeonPro set to underclock my GPU and restrict the game to four out of six cores, it doesn't crash or cause a blue screen when using aforementioned magical crash button. (Not sure which of these parameters actually matters, if any; should probably test. Not feeling that adventurous for now.)

With these settings I've played maybe 3-5 hours without any issues since yesterday but I don't quite trust the situation yet. I'm confused and skeptical.

 

[axe0]

How is it when you don't under/overclock and keep the cores at 4?

 

[Solus]

Huh. No crash. Does that tell you something?

Apparently the game is a poor port, but I figured even a poor port shouldn't cause a BSoD. From what I know it doesn't have any particular issues with more than four cores.
I wouldn't depend on this result just yet, either. It's fickle. :|

 

[axe0]

My guess is that more then 4 or maybe 5? cores isn't supported.

 

[Solus]

Seems that would be well-known, then. I do believe people are playing this on six-core CPUs and better, too. Maybe it's just my CPU being a jerk about it; maybe it was a fluke and I'll get my crashes back soon. I haven't really played with only four cores, just tried the one thing.

... Actually, it's just that I'd feel rather silly if this turns out to be the solution since it's so simple. Besides, I'd have been wasting your time.
I'll just play some more and see.


Edit: Well it crashed, this time it wasn't a BSoD though, the AMD display driver threw a fit - which wouldn't be an issue to discuss in this sub-forum, I presume.

 

[axe0]

It isn't something to discuss with me, that is certain. I know nothing about crashing drivers without BSOD's.

 

[Solus]

With the GPU underclocked again I can play 2 hours straight. Probably too early to call this an actual solution and I don't know what sort of obscure problem would be solved by underclocking and core-limiting. What nonsense is this.

 

[axe0]

You have re-installed CCC, what driver versions have you tried so far and what is the current driver?

 

[Solus]

15.200.1062.1004 WHQL, Catalyst 15.7.1 is the current, uninstalled with DDU and re-installed. I haven't tried any others, actually, as consensus seems to be that drivers should be up to date. The idea of breaking something that isn't yet broken by reverting back to an older version isn't too appealing either.

 

[axe0]

An up to date driver doesn't always have to mean it fixes the problem.
It does appear frequently that installing an older version of the drivers solves the problem.

 

[Solus]

Heh, no, it obviously doesn't fix this particular problem. I'm aware that reverting can solve issues. For now though, as long as it appears to be working with settings that (afaik) shouldn't cause any other problems, I'd rather not fiddle further. Of course that's bound to come back to bite me sooner or later.

Although I'm guessing that without trying a different driver, there's no way of telling whether the current one is responsible, is there.

 

[axe0]

Without trying, there is no way to be sure.

 

[Solus]

No, I thought not.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still kinda curious what the actual issue is/was and I appreciate all the troubleshooting help which at least seems to have shown that my system is mostly healthy. As long as it works with this setup, though, and nothing else goes wrong, I'm hesitant to change anything more.

 

[axe0]

I understand ya, I wouldn't try it either.

 

[Solus]

There's a reason I never marked this topic as solved ... because I'm a pessimist, and it's not.

Since my last post I've had "only" three BSoDs, as opposed to multiple per day, so I feel like limiting the cores and downclocking the GPU has done something, at least - just not enough. What occurs more often now (but not constantly) is my screen going black due to "amdkmap" being restored for some ludicrous reason, which in turn causes the game to be unresponsive so that I have to restart it.
Once again, both these errors are seemingly random; sometimes a certain effect may cause a crash or outright BSoD, other times it may not. The only thing that has caused it for sure was a certain cutscene which included a distortion effect. It would probably help narrowing down the problem if I knew what actually happens with my hardware when that occurred.

In the meantime, I have tried downclocking the GPU some more since those first attempts seem to have helped a bit. Honestly though, I don't know if going down too far can actually cause more harm than good.
Besides that, I've uninstalled the Catalyst Control Center (leaving only the display driver) as that seems to cause problems for some people even when it's not running but that also hasn't helped.

So, I'm dreading this, but considering that there appears to be some correlation between the display driver and the crashes/BSoDs, is this the point where I do have to start reverting back to older drivers to see if that helps? From what I gather, however, this game in particular seems to rely on CPU more than GPU but that's just a side note.
Or maybe try that Crimson Edition thing AMD has put up now, though I don't quite understand whether that's an actual driver update or just an update/change for CCC.
If/when I do that ... where do I stop? How far back would I go before a driver issue could be ruled out?

On another note, I've also found reports of my MoBo and CPU not always agreeing with each other, but I'm guessing that wouldn't explain the display driver crashes. (Otoh, stranger things have happened. I certainly understand now why some people prefer consoles for gaming.) Besides that, temperature readings on AMD/FX CPUs aren't correct sometimes - however, if it were a heat issue, I presume I wouldn't be able to run Prime95 without any trouble.

A sane person might just shelve the game and move on at this point. But a sane person might also not ramble as much.

 

[axe0]

What is the activity you have done the most in the past few weeks that were around the time of the crashes?

 

[Solus]

It only happens when I play Dark Souls. Granted, I haven't been doing much else lately, other than using the Internet. I've played some Witcher 2 (which definitely stresses my GPU a lot more than DS, at least) and Dishonored but not for long - no issues there though. Other than that, full screen 1080p videos don't cause any trouble either.
Nothing else, only this troll of a game. Which is why I'm confused; surely, if I were dealing with a hardware issue, more things would go wrong?

After all the trouble-shooting I've done according to your instructions, axe, and some things I've tried from random Google searches, you'd think my system was fine, yet Dark Souls manages to wreck it. Hence my suggestion that I should give up but this just bothers me way too much.


Edit: Spoke too soon. Happens in Dark Souls II as well, only just bought that and couldn't even get to the tutorial. brb bashing head into wall.

 

[axe0]

In this post of you, you said you have removed Daemon tools but there is an entry item of Daemon tools in the pictures you uploaded. Is Daemon tools still there?