[SOLVED] [ModernWarfare.exe] blue screens with [win32kfull.sys] at random ?

[t0rxe]

Hi. I've got a very stable Windows 10 machine (ie it doesn't crash when doing other tasks and I leave it on for weeks at a time without issues). However, when playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare it will randomly crash after playing for a few hours or even worse, lockup and blue screen my system with win32kfull.sys as the problematic area.

Some information about my system:

• MSI MPG Z590 CARBON EK X.
• ASUS NVIDIA RTX 3070 (water cooled).
• 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-11900KF @ 3.50GHz (water cooled).
• 64.0 GB of CORSAIR 3200 MHz memory (XMP profile enabled in my BIOS).
• Samsung NVME M.2 2 TB SSD.
• 850 Watt CORSAIR AX Titanium Power Supply.
  
  
• Windows 10 Pro.
• 21H2.
• 19044.1645.
• Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.4170.0.

I am running the latest NVIDIA drivers and my BIOS is up to date. My Windows paging file is also 10 GB (was 5 GB but I doubled it to see if it would help the BSOD which it didn't (no surprises there) so I'll be putting it back down to 5 GB).

I have ran memtest86 and it found no errors. As I said, I leave my system on for weeks at a time and it is extremely stable.

I can play other games fine and they don't crash. For example, I play Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and it never causes a BSOD and that game is much more computational intensive than Call of Duty.

My GPU temperature never reaches over 45 degrees Celsius. I maintain a steady 180 FPS with no artefacts occurring and I am not overclocking my GPU or CPU.

I have the full dump logs which I have attached. Any assistance in debugging what is causing the exact root cause would be nice to know and why I am posting this.
I tried using WinDbg to find the cause, but I'm not a Windows diagnostics expert. The best I could find was it was trigged by a PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA.

Windows Crash Report

Please don't tell me to:

• Run a memory scan
• Perform a Windows Update
• Scan my system for outdated drivers using stupid bloatware and adware 3rd party tools
• Run a chkdsk
• Execute system image verification
• Do a system restore
• Perform a malware scan

Everything in these departments is fine. All I am asking is for a professional debugger on these forums who knows their stuff when it comes to Windows to trace where the problem is being triggered. Not being rude but I'm not here for low-level kiddie script tech support advice which is all I found when running Google search after Google search. Even on the Microsoft forums all you read from their tech support is to check for malware and and do a system restore

Thanks.

 

[johnbl]

download and run Autoruns for Windows - Windows Sysinternals | Microsoft Docs
look in the list of drivers and delete your two copies of NTIOLIB_64.sys
then reboot and see if you still have problems.
(one copy from 2018, the second copy from 2021)

 

[t0rxe]

Could not see any such driver as NTIOLIB_64.sys
The closest I could find was two by MSI (which are for my motherboard LED's) called NTIOLIB_X64.sys

If I manually open the directory where the other SYS files reside, then we can infact see they are used by MSI's program.

You reckon I should disable the two in the first image from Autoruns? Did you see in my crash dump that this particular file driver was triggering it??

I should also mention that in Modern Warfare, my SteelSeries USB mouse will sometimes stop responding.
Windows will not chime the USB disconnect sound. It will just stop responding until I re-plug it, so it very well could be a driver related memory conflict which triggers because Modern Warfare might be accessing the address space that the MSI/Mystic Light program was using. Wouldn't surprise me if the MSI code was horribly written.

 

[johnbl]

Hi. I've got a very stable Windows 10 machine (ie it doesn't crash when doing other tasks and I leave it on for weeks at a time without issues). However, when playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare it will randomly crash after playing for a few hours or even worse, lockup and blue screen my system with win32kfull.sys as the problematic area.

Some information about my system:

• MSI MPG Z590 CARBON EK X.
• ASUS NVIDIA RTX 3070 (water cooled).
• 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-11900KF @ 3.50GHz (water cooled).
• 64.0 GB of CORSAIR 3200 MHz memory (XMP profile enabled in my BIOS).
• Samsung NVME M.2 2 TB SSD.
• 850 Watt CORSAIR AX Titanium Power Supply.
  
  
• Windows 10 Pro.
• 21H2.
• 19044.1645.
• Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.4170.0.

I am running the latest NVIDIA drivers and my BIOS is up to date. My Windows paging file is also 10 GB (was 5 GB but I doubled it to see if it would help the BSOD which it didn't (no surprises there) so I'll be putting it back down to 5 GB).

I have ran memtest86 and it found no errors. As I said, I leave my system on for weeks at a time and it is extremely stable.

I can play other games fine and they don't crash. For example, I play Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and it never causes a BSOD and that game is much more computational intensive than Call of Duty.

My GPU temperature never reaches over 45 degrees Celsius. I maintain a steady 180 FPS with no artefacts occurring and I am not overclocking my GPU or CPU.

I have the full dump logs which I have attached. Any assistance in debugging what is causing the exact root cause would be nice to know and why I am posting this.
I tried using WinDbg to find the cause, but I'm not a Windows diagnostics expert. The best I could find was it was trigged by a PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA.

Windows Crash Report

Please don't tell me to:

• Run a memory scan
• Perform a Windows Update
• Scan my system for outdated drivers using stupid bloatware and adware 3rd party tools
• Run a chkdsk
• Execute system image verification
• Do a system restore
• Perform a malware scan

Everything in these departments is fine. All I am asking is for a professional debugger on these forums who knows their stuff when it comes to Windows to trace where the problem is being triggered. Not being rude but I'm not here for low-level kiddie script tech support advice which is all I found when running Google search after Google search. Even on the Microsoft forums all you read from their tech support is to check for malware and and do a system restore

Thanks.

Could not see any such driver as NTIOLIB_64.sys
The closest I could find was two by MSI (which are for my motherboard LED's) called NTIOLIB_X64.sys

If I manually open the directory where the other SYS files reside, then I do see the file you specified.

You reckon I should disable the two in the first image from Autoruns? Did you see in my crash dump that this particular file driver was triggering it??

I should also mention that in Modern Warfare, my SteelSeries USB mouse will sometimes stop responding.
Windows will not chime the USB disconnect sound. It will just stop responding until I re-plug it, so it very well could be a driver related memory conflict which triggers because Modern Warfare might be accessing the address space that the MSI MysticLight was using. Wouldn't surprise me if the MysticLight code was horribly written.

the debugger showed different dates and a load collision. I will check again.

 

[t0rxe]

the debugger showed different dates and a load collision. I will check again.

Okay. I also have an earlier dump as well (with the same error) if you need a second for comparison.

 

[johnbl]

generally, remove any overclock driver:
\C:\Program Files (x86)\MSI Afterburner\RTCore64.sys Thu Jun 18 04:55:42 2020

NTIOLib_X64 \??\C:\Program Files (x86)\MSI\MSI Center\Mystic Light\Lib\NTIOLib_X64.sys Sun Jul 9 19:13:57 2017

NTIOLib_X64_fffff803c15b0000 \??\C:\Program Files (x86)\MSI\MSI Center\Lib\SYS\NTIOLib_X64.sys Thu Aug 5 01:21:28 2021
(indicates a second copy of the driver installed, different date and file path)

this driver tends to have issues also:
\SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\Hamdrv.sys Mon Mar 30 06:28:42 2015
(LogMeIn Hamachi Virtual Miniport )

I guess the internal file name shown in the debugger might be different than the displayed name in the UI.

 

[t0rxe]

I've removed Afterburner (even though it wasn't being used) and I removed Hamachi (though that's mainly a network redirection driver).

So you reckon that NTIOLib_X64.sys is causing it? I'm happy to remove MSI's horrible program, but I'd need a replacement for driving the LED's. I'll have to see if there's a homebrew replacement on GitHub or something that someone programmed

 

[t0rxe]

Okay I have removed MSI's Control Center program and replaced it with OpenRGB. I also removed CORSAIR's iCUE program.

I will further check to make sure they are completely removed (since programs like these usually leave hidden trash behind) and then I'll restart and see if the BSOD issue is resolved. If it is not, then it might be from SteelSeries or it's due to my XMP profile and memory corruption is happening but it might be extremely rare (which is why Modern Warfare takes a few hours until it crashes).

 

[johnbl]

I expect msi just added the control for the lights to their old driver which also does overclocking. If the system seems stable you can add the current version of the driver back to the system. You just do not want to have any overclocking drivers installed until you figure out the problem. Just because removing the overclock drivers is the first thing you check for for these problems.

 

[t0rxe]

Okay just an update. The game crashed again (it always happens after a match has finished and it shows the game result board) but it wasn't the game itself that crashed. Windows seems to have killed the process because it ran out of virtual memory. I have no idea how that is possible as I have 64 GB of RAM and a 10 GB paging file. There might be a memory leak which actually did use all the memory because I had the game running from 8 AM to 5 PM (a solid 9 hours) but I didn't have task manager open to monitor the state of the memory.

The event viewer says:
Resource-Exhaustion-Detector | 2004 | Resource Exhaustion Diagnosis Events.
Events related to exhaustion of system commit limit (virtual memory).
Windows successfully diagnosed a low virtual memory condition.
The following programs consumed the most virtual memory:
ModernWarfare.exe (4180) consumed 61124243456 bytes
sqlservr.exe (6032) consumed 706777088 bytes
and SWVisualize.BoostService.exe (5916) consumed 453988352 bytes.

No blue screen yet luckily after doing all the stuff I said above which is good.

So it doesn't matter if I didn't have task manager open or not. It says Modern Warfare consumed 61.12 GB of memory. That is INSANE. They have a nasty memory leak it seems.

 

[Colif]

Dr Watson RADAR - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Watson_(debugger)

Should have page file set to auto so it can grow and it would take longer to get same error. restricting it to 10gb means windows has no choice once you run out of both it and ram. Windows won't kill the process then either. Most times with that much ram it won't use page file. Windows won't make it massive. It won't take all 64gb. I have 32gb of ram myself and page file is set to auto, but its only 5gb in size since I have never used it.

PC was running out of space to actually run windows in.
MW took 61gb
sqlserver appears to be 7gb?
SQVisualise is about 4gb?
so windows had about 2gb to run in for itself? its good but it can only shrink so far and its mostly running off page file at this stage. If the game kept asking for commits, windows can only shrink so much.

Something taking commitments and not returning them once completing task, but asking for more.
Most of the time memory leaks are drivers but if you get all the ram back just by closing program, its not drivers.

i can find game causing a VRAM memory leak but i have my doubt that is cause (link)

 

[t0rxe]

Well yeah, if I increase my paging file then it will fix it for a few more hours until Modern Warfare consumes all the available memory. It's not a solution though as the game should only be consuming a maximum of 8 GB at any given time. Activision just needs to get better programmers

And yes, when the game closes it restores all available memory to both pools.

 

[Colif]

all the posts about using lots of memory in MW are from people with 8gb of ram... not exactly the same.

is it related to Warzone as it has a memory leak too - link
MW eats as much as you give it - link
again - link
Seems only answer is stop playing game and let it give ram back. Might need to restart PC to release memory.

 

[t0rxe]

I'm not playing Warzone. I'm playing the infected game mode. I noticed that the game started at 8 GB and has since climbed to 12 GB (and it keeps growing) so it's a memory leak due to bad programming on the game developers behalf.

Anyway the solution is like you said. Just restart the game after a few hours and monitor your memory usage. I have 64 GB so it can run longer than others as some users only have 12 GB of available memory

I'll re-post here if my system blue screens though because that was the main issue as memory leaks are nothing serious. Windows did the right thing and killed the program without crashing the operating system when it consumed all available memory.

 

[Colif]

memory leaks that stop as soon as game ends are not problems at all, just nuisances.

 

[t0rxe]

Just a small update. I've had the game (Modern Warfare) crash twice now in the same fashion as before, but no blue screens
I think you were right about the MSI drivers causing it