Hi Michael,

I am encountering frequent bluescreens for the past few weeks which i am growing to believe may be related to MoI. I am not entirely sure about this, but i believe to have observed that those always happen while i am working in MoI. Additionally a related effect is that MoI often freezes my system for several seconds on certain operations (i.e. setting a single panel fullscreen, changing a view from right to left etc.). The only thing that works then is the cursor which i still can move around. But apart from that my whole system is completely paralyzed. Sometimes the crashes happen as an instant followup of those lockdowns. The bluescreens mention stuff like "Bad Pool Header", "Page fault in nonpaged area" and so on. Here are the problem solving infos of the last two crashes (if you want me to translate the german parts, drop me a line.):

Produkt
Windows

Problem
Unerwartetes Herunterfahren

Datum
14.03.2009 15:33

Status
Nicht berichtet

Problemsignatur
Problemereignisame: BlueScreen
Betriebsystemversion: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.768.3
Gebietsschema-ID: 1031

Dateien, die zur Beschreibung des Problems beitragen (ggf. nicht mehr verfügbar)
Mini031409-01.dmp
sysdata.xml
Version.txt

Weitere Informationen über das Problem
BCCode: c2
BCP1: 0000000B
BCP2: A1631E70
BCP3: 0A100203
BCP4: A1631E88
OS Version: 6_0_6001
Service Pack: 1_0
Product: 768_1

---------------------------

Produkt
Windows

Problem
Unerwartetes Herunterfahren

Datum
15.03.2009 14:57

Status
Nicht berichtet

Problemsignatur
Problemereignisame: BlueScreen
Betriebsystemversion: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.768.3
Gebietsschema-ID: 1031

Dateien, die zur Beschreibung des Problems beitragen (ggf. nicht mehr verfügbar)
Mini031509-01.dmp
sysdata.xml
Version.txt

Weitere Informationen über das Problem
BCCode: 50
BCP1: C7B33954
BCP2: 00000000
BCP3: 8FCF3ECC
BCP4: 00000000
OS Version: 6_0_6001
Service Pack: 1_0
Product: 768_1


Of course the crashes could be completely unrelated to MoI and rather be cause by the most recent catalyst driver release or something. (By the way, i updated all my drivers and checked my RAM for being faulty already. So its apparantly not caused by that.)
I am using the most recent beta on Windows Vista. I own a Sapphire Ultimate Radeon HD 3850 512MB Graphics Card.

Thanks alot for your help. :)
Sebastian

Hi Sebastian, I have not heard from other users about this problem.

A blue screen is quite difficult for a user-mode program like MoI to trigger itself - the Operating System keeps operations that can cause blue screens to only be accessible by hardware drivers which run at a different level of privilege than a regular program like MoI.

So that is why blue screens are caused nearly all of the time by bugs in drivers. (or in hardware that is faulty)

But you mentioned that you updated your driver, which would have been the first thing that I would have recommended.

Were you seeing this problem both before and after your most recent driver update, or is it something that only started to happen after the driver update?

> Dateien, die zur Beschreibung des Problems
> beitragen (ggf. nicht mehr verfügbar)
> Mini031409-01.dmp
> sysdata.xml
> Version.txt

It looks like a crash dump was created with at least one of your blue screens - this will be the file named "Mini031409-01.dmp" above, and probably it is in your c:\windows\minidump folder. Can you please send that to me at moi@moi3d.com, and I'll take a look and see if I can determine in what code the crash actually happened, it may give some additional clue.

One thing that kind of stands out is that your video card is a special edition one that does not have any fan on it and is instead only passively cooled by a large heat sink.

If you don't have good air flow through your system's case you could be running into a problem with your card overheating. If that is the case, then it would likely only happen when your card was under a load of working with 3D functions like MoI uses.

That's actually what I would be most suspicious of.... Check to see if the fans on your case are clogged up with dust which may need to be vacuumed out, or if you have pushed it too far close back against a wall where it is not getting air flow through it.

Your particular card is going to be more sensitive to low air flow than most.

Also if you have overclocked your card you may need to set it back to a normal clock level. Look in the Catalyst Control Center and see if there is an overclocking control there, if it allows it, you may try actually underclocking it to see if that makes the problem go away as well.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

i had the problem before and after the most recent driver update. Since according to what you wrote the crashes arent very likely to be related to MoI I dont want to steal any more of your time. I think i am going to find some 3d benchmarks to stress my card as hard as i can to see if its related to that and i will examine the other aspects you mentioned. If things will lead back to MoI I might drop you another line in here and send you the crashdump. :)

Thanks alot for your extensive response. :)

Sebastian

Hi Sebastian, no problem!

Definitely take a look to see if you have anything blocking good air flow through your computer though, that is something that I'd be most suspicious about.

Also please feel free to send me that crash dump, it is pretty easy for me to take a quick look at it and maybe get another hint on what might be happening. It is not always possible to get good information from a crash dump but it can often give some clue as to what specifically was going on at the time of the crash.

- Michael

>>>> It is not always possible to get good information from a crash dump but it can often give some clue as to what specifically was going on at the time of the crash.>>>>



Unless your Mark Russinovich, then the crashdump would tell you exactly what happened! :O