[SOLVED] Dark Souls: Remastered causing blue screen

[egderic]

Hello,


I've been playing Dark Souls: Remastered on my Razer Blade Stealth 13 ( processor: i7-1165G7, graphics card: GTX1650TiMax-Q, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD)

At some point recently I started getting this problem where the controller would just disconnect: i.e, the game stops getting inputs from the controller. Keyboard and mouse still work, but not the controller.
Using an X-Box One Controller: It doesn't matter if it's plugged in or wireless, it still eventually happens, let's say: If I play for an hour, there's a 30% chance that this will happen near the end of that hour.

When this happens, I exit the game and start it up again. The controller still isn't recognized.

So I reboot the computer and start the game again: Controller works again until the next incident.

I was using this workaround for a while, until recently, this started happening:

When I rebooted, the computer would go to a blue screen death without having finished the reboot. It would then have some kind of recovery screen where it counts up a percentage of recovery, reboots, then
fails again. It repeats this cycle until it successfully starts windows again.

I'm wondering what's going on with my computer. I don't know for sure if Dark Souls is to blame, but I'd like to find out what's going on in any case.
Does anyone have any ideas?

 

[johnbl]

usb just hides the driver when you unplug the device. you have to go into windows control panel device manager find the menu option to show hidden devices then you can look at the list and uninstall the driver. for usb devices the driver can mess up the whole usb subsystem even after the device is unpluged.
(since the driver is still active but just hidden from the user interface)

Most often the real problem is that the usb driver for the device does not respond to a wake request. Windows will put the usb port to sleep to save power. if you know what port you have connected, you can go into device manager and right mouse click on the usb port and find the power management tab. then unclick the setting that lets windows power down the port to save power.
For some devices you have to look at the HID human interface device list and find the device and look for the power management tab there or it will continue to go to sleep even after you tell the usb port not to sleep.

You would have to do this for each port that you connect the device to. if these ports are connected to a usb hub you have to tell the system not to power down the hub.

also, usb installs a driver for each port that the device gets plugged into. You can get different versions of the driver installed on each port. It can get messy and hard to figure out since the driver gets hidden when the device is removed. (driver still runs when hidden)

to actually debug this type of problem you would have to change the memory dump to kernel memory dump then after the next bugcheck you would have to provide the large memory.dmp file.
kernel dumps have the debug info and internal logs for the USB subsystem. the kernel dumps can be read and debugged with the window debugger windbg.exe

also, just another issue, the EU enacted laws to save power, these laws required the PC to use sleep. Some motherboard have settings in bios to put your USB ports to sleep after some timeout.
(just in case your ports sleep after you told them not to)
I worked on a pc that had a EU bios setting, and that is what it did.

 

[Ralston18]

PSU: make, model, wattage, age, condition (original, new, refurbished, used)?

History of heavy gaming use?

Take a look in Reliability History and Event Viewer. Either one or both may be capturing some related error information regarding the disconnects.

Increasing numbers of varying errors make the PSU suspect.

Take a careful look and post accordingly.

 

[egderic]

PSU: make, model, wattage, age, condition (original, new, refurbished, used)?

It's a laptop. Everything was new when I got it, which was sometime around March/April 2021.

History of heavy gaming use?

Not really. When I do use it for games, I put it on a cooling pad with that has a fan.

In reliability Monitor I see "Windows stopped working" and "Shut Down unexpectedly." around dates where I think I was playing Dark Souls.

Spoiler: Reliability Report

<Event>
<Time>2021-12-10T23:47:04.705</Time>
<Impact>Critical</Impact>
<Source>Windows Explorer</Source>
<Problem>Stopped responding and was closed</Problem>
<State>Report sent</State>
</Event>
<Event>
<Time>2021-12-20T11:49:01.691</Time>
<Impact>Critical</Impact>
<Source>Windows</Source>
<Problem>Hardware error</Problem>
<State>Not reported</State>
</Event>
<Event>
<Time>2021-12-27T13:46:18.066</Time>
<Impact>Critical</Impact>
<Source>Windows</Source>
<Problem>Hardware error</Problem>
<State>Not reported</State>
</Event>
<Event>
<Time>2022-01-15T21:36:40.070</Time>
<Impact>Critical</Impact>
<Source>Windows</Source>
<Problem>Hardware error</Problem>
<State>Not reported</State>
</Event>
<Event>
<Time>2022-01-15T22:07:35.940</Time>
<Impact>Critical</Impact>
<Source>Snes9X</Source>
<Problem>Stopped responding and was closed</Problem>
<State>Not reported</State>
</Event>
<Event>
<Time>2022-01-27T18:48:28.797</Time>
<Impact>Critical</Impact>
<Source>Windows</Source>
<Problem>Hardware error</Problem>
<State>Not reported</State>
</Event>
<Event>
<Time>2022-02-12T00:02:10.246</Time>
<Impact>Critical</Impact>
<Source>Windows</Source>
<Problem>Hardware error</Problem>
<State>Not reported</State>
</Event>
<Event>
<Time>2022-03-08T20:18:08.000</Time>
<Impact>Critical</Impact>
<Source>Windows</Source>
<Problem>Shut down unexpectedly</Problem>
<State>Not reported</State>
</Event>
<Event>
<Time>2022-03-19T00:41:54.363</Time>
<Impact>Critical</Impact>
<Source>Windows</Source>
<Problem>Shut down unexpectedly</Problem>
<State>Not reported</State>
</Event>
<Event>
<Time>2022-03-19T01:06:17.928</Time>
<Impact>Critical</Impact>
<Source>Windows</Source>
<Problem>Shut down unexpectedly</Problem>
<State>Not reported</State>
</Event>
<Event>
<Time>2022-03-20T22:25:38.054</Time>
<Impact>Critical</Impact>
<Source>Windows</Source>
<Problem>Shut down unexpectedly</Problem>
<State>Not reported</State>
</Event>

I'll come back with Event Viewer info and such later.

@johnbl: That's a good point, I'll take a look at the power saving settings for the XInput device. Such a pain in the ass, I have to uncheck that box all the time.

 

[egderic]

OK, I checked event viewer, and I see this in the log for the blue screens that I got:

"The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly."

I also see these errors, possibly unrelated, that always happen anywhere from 10 minutes to 2 hours before this problem:

"Miniport Microsoft Wi-Fi Direct Virtual Adapter #2, {<big guid here>}, had event Fatal error: The miniport has failed a power transition to operational power"

It also happens a lot without a blue screen happening afterwards, so I really don't know if there's a cause and effect.

 

[MEMOFLEX]

Are you connecting the controller directly via Bluetooth or using the USB dongle?

 

[Deleted member 14196]

I'm also thinking PSU issues and/or perhaps overheating, but sounds more PSU related.

 

[Ralston18]

In agreement with the preceding posts.

Whenever I see increasing numbers of errors and varying errors along with shutdowns, bluescreens, etc., the PSU/power becomes an immediate suspect.

Any problems noted with respect to the battery, charger, or charging process?

Do you have another known working battery and charger to test with?

What is, if any, the remaining laptop warranty?

 

[egderic]

When I had these problems, I was using the USB at the time. I've had the Dark Souls disconnect issue with Bluetooth as well, but I can't remember if I had the blue screen issue too.

I always have a USB hub connected, not for use of the USB's, but because there's an HDMI port on it, it allows me to convert USB-C to HDMI. The cooling pad has a two-sided USB connector on it to power the fan, I plug that into the USB hub, and the controller I plug in straight into the laptop.

I haven't noticed any problems with charging or battery life.
Not only do I not have another battery, I will never open this laptop myself.

As for Warranty, I'm not sure how it works, because I kind of got this laptop by accident. Bought a Razer Edge laptop from a friend, and then sent it in for repairs ~2 years later.
I paid them $99 for shipping/analysis, then another $99 to replace the battery, but then it turned out they didn't have any replacement batteries for that model anymore, so they sent me a brand new Razer Edge instead, but a newer model with a better video card. They sent it around 22 March, 2021, estimated to be received on the 29th of March, 2021.

So... maybe I have about 5 days left on my warranty if I have one at all, but I don't know what problem I could even describe to Razer.
"Just play some Dark souls for a while, you'll see..."

My GF and I play "It Takes Two" on it sometimes, and we haven't run into this problem.

 

[MEMOFLEX]

I have a feeling that this is a dark souls issue as I had a similar problem with the remastered version. My controller would lose connection randomly and only a full reset would get it working again. This began to happen approximately 6 weeks ago but it could happen after 10 mins or 2 hours so difficult to recreate the issue. The controller would work fine in every other game without issue.

This was on a desktop with power settings at performance.

There are multiple threads on forums regarding the issue so I do not think it is an isolated issue. I have not tried any of the fixes as Elden ring distracted me but it may be worth a look to see if some of the suggestions help.