Question Genshin Impact causing BSOD after updating hardware

[nor120]

Hi all,

The title is slightly misleading, however, it is the only common factor I can place for this issue. Three weeks ago, I upgraded my motherboard, my processor, and my memory. No problems were faced immediately, until two weeks ago, when Genshin Impact released update 4.5. From then on, my computer would BSOD whenever I would attempt to start up the game.

At first I was able to kind of work around the issue by adding the Genshin Impact folder to the exclusion list for windows defender, since it appeared that the only possible issue could be that the antivirus software was interfering with the game. This did not fix the problem completely, but for about a week I could log on with about a 20% success rate. The other times my system would still crash.

I ran numerous tests and could not find a problem. Memory checks and disk checks came back without any problems. Drivers and windows is all up to date. I even updated my BIOS, but nothing effected the issue. After running driver verifier, I was again able to access the game, but with a higher success rate, but only on the first run. If the game closed for any reason, attempting to run it again would crash the computer. Driver verifier gave no hint as to the issue at hand.

After becoming sufficiently confused and frustrated, I decided to just reset windows in hopes that a fresh start might do the trick. This did not help, and in fact I now have a 0% success rate when logging in. I've poured over the .dmp files, but unfortunately I'm not familiar enough with reading and analyzing those files to do anything with them.

The anticheat is clearly the issue based on what the .dmp files are describing, and I have faced crashing in other games with anticheat software (specifically Helldivers 2), but nothing to the extent of causing BSOD errors, as what happens with Genshin Impact. So I'm, thinking there is a new driver that was installed on my system when I upgraded the hardware that is interferring with anticheat software. The memory integrity option under core isolation is already off, which apparently had caused other users similar issues in the past.

I'm at a complete loss, and am hoping there is someone out there better equipped to analyze the problem. Here are my specs (I can provide more in depth specs if required):

Motherboard: Asus Z790 pro wifi
Processor: Intel i9-14900k
Memory: 2x32 Corsair Vengance DDR5 6400 MHz
Operating system: Windows 11
Graphics Card: RTX 3080
Power Supply: 850W Gold
Storage: 1TB m.2 (contains Operating System) + 4TB m.2 (contains games and programs)

Here is a link to the .dmp files:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/s5ak...t-SLE1f0?rlkey=1ilc53f7i8q4en6s3vh00uenx&dl=0

There are 3 different .dmp files from the same interaction - just booting up the game. The KMODE exception is most common, and it points to an issue with the antivirus, but when I disable the antivirus I get a PAGE_FAULT error. The third error is a hardware error that was randomly triggered, but might be a clue to the underlying problem.

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Power Supply: 850W Gold
850W is the advertised wattage of the unit, while Gold is the advertised 80+ efficiency rating. What is the make and model of your PSU and it's age?

Three weeks ago, I upgraded my motherboard, my processor, and my memory
What did you upgrade from? Did you reinstall your OS after the platform migration(after recreating the installer from scratch)? If not, that's where you start.

 

[nor120]

Here is the full model of the PSU: EVGA 850 GT Supernova
It is 2 years old.

I upgraded from:
Motherboard: ASUS Prime Z390-A
Processor: i7 9700k
Memory: 2X16 GB Ballistix DDR4 3200 MHz

After the upgrade, I made no changes to the OS, and it was working fine with the exception of this issue. I did a reset of the OS during my debugging process, but did not install from scratch, since I wanted to keep my data and files. It sounds like you're suggesting a clean wipe of the OS then? I'll go ahead and do that first.

 

[nor120]

A clean install does seem to be the solution, but unfortunately, there appears to be a bit more behind the scenes here. I ended up needing to do 2 clean installs, since the first install ended in failure.

After my first clean install, I booted up the game straight away, since I had it stored on my second ssd. The game loaded and worked as intended. After about 15 minutes of re-installing other resources back on to my PC, the game crashed with another BSOD. I booted up the computer afterward and successfully logged in again, but it only lasted about 5 minutes with no other user interaction before crashing with another BSOD error.

This is when I had to do a second fresh install, and I kept close track of everything that was installed, in comparison to the previous attempt. The main difference ended up being not installing ASUS Armoury Crate. The second install I manually went to the ASUS website and downloaded/installed only the LAN and WIFI drivers, since those are basic requirements for usage. The only other driver I installed was the latest nvidia driver for my GPU. After that, I cautiously installed all of my other apps while also observing and restarting my computer every so often to ensure stability.

My computer and games are currently stable. All I can determine is that the ASUS Armoury Crate is responsible for this fiasco, but I have no idea why. I have uploaded the two .dmp files that were generated durring my first clean install in case there are any interested parties that want to debug the root cause here. They are accessible with the dropbox link I provided in my main post.

Thanks Lutfij for the recommendation. I'll be marking this as resolved.

 

[nor120]

Nevermind. Problem persists, although it seems to be not as critical as before. Issue first occurred after several hours of stability. I've uploaded the new .dmp file to the dropbox link under the folder clean_reset_2.