Games Crash to Desktop after a certain Date

[Iseltius]

I got a new PC in early december 2016 and games ran without problems (FIFA17, Dead Space and Batman games, all of them). Since 15 Jan 2017 my games started crashing randomly. It first started with GTAV which would give me a 'GTAV stopped working' type of message. I can't debug it (it freezes when I do that and I have to logout, restart or shut down). I then tried FIFA17 and it randomly crashed to desktop during matches without giving an error message, same for Watch Dogs 2 and The Witcher 2. The problem doesn't seem tied to any particular launcher since I ran the games in:

Steam - GTAV and The Witcher 2
Origin - FIFA17
Uplay - Watch Dogs 2

I tried many fixes from forums, tomshardware and rockstar support, but nothing seems to work. I'm out of ideas and I don't know what to do anymore. Here is a list of what I tried (mostly centered around GTAV):
- Run games as administrator where possible
- Run games in windowed mode
- Replace d3d9.dll files in system32 and syswow64
- Copying d3d9.dll in GTAV's folder
- Run games without my keyboard or other 3rd party devices
- Drivers up to date
- Uninstalling Windows Updates and Security Updates around 15 Jan
- Uninstalling Visual Studio 2010 Shell & Prerequisites Updates around 15 Jan
- Run a system file check (it found corrupted files and fixed them, but it didn't seem to affect the crashing at all)
- Disable my monitor speakers in device manager
- Disable Hyperthreading
- Running a memtest for 13-14 hrs, no errors found
- Disabling all non-windows services/programs
- Verify steam cache, fix game in Origin
- Disable sound acceleration
- Reinstalling the game (GTAV)

An installation/update around 15 Jan seems unlikely to be culprit since I disabled/removed all of them (that I could find) and it still crashed. Maybe somekind of hardware failure?

My Specs:
Processor (CPU): Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Processor i7-6700k (4.0GHz) 8MB Cache
Motherboard: ASUS® MAXIMUS VIII HERO: RoG
Memory (RAM): 32GB HyperX FURY DDR4 2133MHz (4 x 8GB)
Graphics Card: 8GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1070
Hard Disk: 1TB Samsung 850 EVO 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
Power Supply: CORSAIR 850W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Sound Card: ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking: TP-Link AC 1750 Wireless Dual Band PCI Express Adapter (Model No. Archer T8E)
OS : Windows 10 Home 64 Bit

Here is my 'Windows Error Reporting Section' from msinfo for 14 Jan onwards (I played Dead Space 3 on that day with no crashes):

http://

I've placed a link to pastebin instead of just pasting the contents here because it exceeds the 65 000 character limit.

 

[Iseltius]

Update: I ran a furmark test and I had no issues. It was steady at 70C. Then I ran a Heaven benchmark and encountered no problems there. I used OCCT for a CPU test and an error was encountered after 1m 32secs. It doesn't say what the error is but it mentioned CPU #0...

I've looked online and some people say not to trust OCCT results. Thoughts?

 

[hang-the-9]

Try a new Windows setup to rule out any software issues. Past that, you did quite a lot of things aside from actually swapping out the hardware, try one one RAM stick at a time, try different RAM slots, test your video card in another system and another card in yours.

 

[Iseltius]

I noticed something about the crashes. It seems only the newer games crash: The Witcher 2 only crashed once (which mistakenly led me to believe it too was affected, likely unrelated to whatever problem I have). I've clocked over 11 hrs since then and I experienced no crashes. I tried Divinity Original Sin and it didn't crash at all. It looks like it is actually a software problem rather than hardware. I've run many other hardware tests I've found no problems.

Try a new Windows setup to rule out any software issues. Past that, you did quite a lot of things aside from actually swapping out the hardware, try one one RAM stick at a time, try different RAM slots, test your video card in another system and another card in yours.

Sadly, I don't have another pc lying around so I can't swap components and see if they work. My RAM is fine, I ran memtest on it.

Meanwhile, I've rolled-back my Nvidia driver to a previous version. Newer games still crash. Could all this be a directX problem? And by directX I mean the more recent versions like 12 (which I have). I already reinstalled older versions. Anything else that could cause this kind of issue?

 

[hang-the-9]

I noticed something about the crashes. It seems only the newer games crash: The Witcher 2 only crashed once (which mistakenly led me to believe it too was affected, likely unrelated to whatever problem I have). I've clocked over 11 hrs since then and I experienced no crashes. I tried Divinity Original Sin and it didn't crash at all. It looks like it is actually a software problem rather than hardware. I've run many other hardware tests I've found no problems.

Try a new Windows setup to rule out any software issues. Past that, you did quite a lot of things aside from actually swapping out the hardware, try one one RAM stick at a time, try different RAM slots, test your video card in another system and another card in yours.

Sadly, I don't have another pc lying around so I can't swap components and see if they work. My RAM is fine, I ran memtest on it.

Meanwhile, I've rolled-back my Nvidia driver to a previous version. Newer games still crash. Could all this be a directX problem? And by directX I mean the more recent versions like 12 (which I have). I already reinstalled older versions. Anything else that could cause this kind of issue?

Crashes in games can come from lots of places, without being able to test the card you are probably just going to be working around the real issue. Try a clean Windows setup, all those games work, and work on the latest directX versions, it's not an issue with the programs in general.

 

[Jeff Kaos]

If it were me I'd backup everything and do a clean Windows install.

 

[Iseltius]

I ran 'Reset this PC' for a reinstall of win10 and I still get crashes.

 

[Iseltius]

I tried FIFA 17 agains and I got this error:
http://prntscr.com/e4yt5e

This only happened once (first time after reinstall of windows). Since then it crashed directly to desktop as usual (I installed some cpu chipset updates, no idea if related or coincidence). I tried lower the CPU core clocks below 4 GHz, no improvements except for a screen freeze at 3.6 GHz instead of direct crash to desktop. Looking at my MSinfo, the crashes for FIFA are recorded only sometimes (Exception code: 0xc0000005). Other game crashes are not recorded there at all. It seems that even Witcher 2 is crashing... It seems it too is affected though alot less than other games. Changing settings to minimum doesn't affect the crashing.

I also managed to capture a GTAV crash with an error message (again, it never occured again):

http://prntscr.com/e4yw76

I'm out of ideas.

 

[Iseltius]

I've had my GPU replaced and I'm still experiencing crashes.

 

[zck92]

I have a very very close build to yours and am experiencing crash to desktop without error messages and no event logs at all.
My build is the following:
Motherboard: Asus Z170-P
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB-DDR4 @ 2400Mhz
CPU: Intel Core i7-6700k @ 4.0GHz
GPU: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1070 G1 Gaming - 8GB
Storage: 256GB Kingston SSD + 2.5TB Toshiba HDD

Same graphic drivers aswell.
Ran memtest, benchmarks, reinstalled windows with another .iso... just pure frustration.
I mostly play CSGO, GTA V and some other non-steam games like Doom.

I guess we're kind of together in this!

Thanks in advance.

 

[Iseltius]

So... it crahed even after a full format. I'm starting to think it's Windows 10 itself that is causing this (most recent build and/or updates). In the meantime, since my PC is still covered by the warranty, I'll have it returned and checked next week.

 

[Iseltius]

Ok... It seems both my CPU and RAM were faulty... talk about a combo...

 

[zck92]

Ok... It seems both my CPU and RAM were faulty... talk about a combo...

How did you know??
I almost gave up by this time... it's so frustrating to have absolutely no idea about what's wrong. All apps crash now once in a while, and i've reinstalled Windows 2x now.

What worked for you?

Thanks again!

 

[Iseltius]

Ok... It seems both my CPU and RAM were faulty... talk about a combo...

How did you know??
I almost gave up by this time... it's so frustrating to have absolutely no idea about what's wrong. All apps crash now once in a while, and i've reinstalled Windows 2x now.

What worked for you?

Thanks again!

I sent my pc back to my computer vendor to repair it. They sent me a report stating one of my RAM components (I have 4 pieces, 8GB each) and my CPU were faulty. Not sure how likely it is for 2 parts to malfunction at the same time but it somehow happened. Here's the thing: when I ran memtest on my RAM all night it didn't detect any problems so it seems it can't detect everything that could go wrong with it... or the RAM malfunctioned some time after the test. Dunno which is the case.

So... try out your RAM pieces one by one and see if it fixes it. If you happen to have a waranty, then send your pc back for repairs. If you don't have a warranty and you can't fix it on your own... you need to send it to repairs to a pc workshop or something (whatever they are called). It's definetly a hardware problem.

 

[Iseltius]

zck92: Your main culprits are CPU, RAM or maybe GPU.