Question dwm.exe crashes playing Rocket League

xForbiddenOne

Distinguished
Jun 2, 2013
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18,510
Hey everyone, I have a bit of a peculiar problem that I'd like to bounce off of the community here. I've been having intermittent issues with dwm.exe crashing, but only while playing the game known as Rocket League. Not often, but it does happen. This results in a black screen that kind of resembles a GPU driver crash but seems to be unrelated to the GPU. A bit of info beforehand...
1) This problem has actually come through an almost entirely new rebuild. I've changed out my motherboard, CPU, GPU(from AMD to NVidia) and memory just as an upgrade for myself, and still have the issue. Windows 10 was completely reinstalled from scratch after reformatting the drive entirely.

2) As far as I can tell, I'm having no voltage drops on the 12V rail at least according to HWiNFO which leads me to believe this is either software or one of my USB devices causing this.

3) sfc /scannow, DISM commands all come back perfectly fine.

System specs:
Ryzen 7 5800X
AsRock X570 PG Velocita
Asus TUF RTX 3070
32GB 3200MHz Crucial Ballistix
Corsair TX-850W Bronze rated

Previous system specs that also encountered a similar behavior:
Ryzen 5 2600X
AsRock X470 Taichi
PowerColor RX 580 8GB Red devil
16GB G.Skill Ripjaws 2400MHz
Corsair TX-850W Bronze Rated

Here is the error in Event Viewer:
Faulting application name: dwm.exe, version: 10.0.19041.746, time stamp: 0x6be51595
Faulting module name: ism.dll, version: 10.0.19041.804, time stamp: 0x8341ca8b
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x000000000004106d
Faulting process id: 0x2688
Faulting application start time: 0x01d70f90c459f9d3
Faulting application path: C:\Windows\System32\dwm.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\ism.dll
Report Id: 60cc4196-fde1-403b-846f-1ffce0bb837b
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

So, what's next on the troubleshooting agenda? Assuming this is caused by a USB device, what would be the logical step in determining this? My Xbox One X controller, Sound Blaster G6, Blue Yeti microphone, Logitech C615 webcam and my keyboard are really the only devices that I've never tried having unplugged for a bit, but they're also apart of my daily routine.

Thanks for any help and feedback.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
DWM = windows desktop manager sits between applications and GPU, so you sure its not the gpu like it looks like?

have you run DDU and reinstalled GPU drivers?

Could be PSU if its only thing you didn't change in builds.
 

xForbiddenOne

Distinguished
Jun 2, 2013
16
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18,510
DWM = windows desktop manager sits between applications and GPU, so you sure its not the gpu like it looks like?

have you run DDU and reinstalled GPU drivers?

Could be PSU if its only thing you didn't change in builds.
I was worried someone would say PSU, though I would have expected to see a notable voltage drop on the 12V rail using HWiNFO if it was actually my aging PSU.

As for the GPU side of things, it's very very unlikely to be caused by the card itself. This issue first appeared when I was using an RX 580 8GB, since then I've acquired an RTX 3070, which prompted me to not only reinstall Windows, but also reformat my C: drive. Pretty much as clean as it gets when switching out GPUs.

Thanks for the input.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
have a look in reliability manager on the days WDM.exe crashed and see if there is anything like
RR7dsKY.jpg

as that was a fun month.
 

rugupiruvu

Reputable
Apr 4, 2019
73
3
4,535
Hi, are you by any chance using an XBox One Controller to play Rocket League?
For me these dwm.exe crashes started ever since I dumped my XBox360 Controller and upgraded to XBox One, so this might be driver related after all.
The frequent crashes have been persisting through replacing almost every single piece of PC hardware (except the GPU) and setting up a fresh Win10 on another drive.
My GPU is also an Nvidia, Palit manufactured GTX 760.

* EDIT:
I just found another thread, in which the dwm.exe crashes are explained as being related to an Xbox one controller firmware issue.
It's claimed to be patched, and you can update the controller firmware by downloading the Microsoft Store App "Xbox Accessories", and updating via USB C.
If you don't hear from me again, you can assume it's working :)
 
Last edited:
Jun 24, 2021
6
2
10
* EDIT:
I just found another thread, in which the dwm.exe crashes are explained as being related to an Xbox one controller firmware issue.
It's claimed to be patched, and you can update the controller firmware by downloading the Microsoft Store App "Xbox Accessories", and updating via USB C.
If you don't hear from me again, you can assume it's working :)
Hi, i know you said we can assume it's working if you don't write again but i just want to make sure lol: i always use xbox controllers and right now im installing an update on my Series controller following what you said. Did it work for you?

Thank you so much.