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Hulk'O'Saurus

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Posts posted by Hulk'O'Saurus

  1. 9 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

    We've run you through all the troubleshooting steps, unfortunately, so there's nothing to really "give a go" to.  Thing is, if it were my machine, I'd have a bunch of different computers to swap out parts with. I'd swap the GPU and PSU at the very least of it and another machine and see if the issues continue or switch to the other machine or neither. If you can't do that, though, I can't really think of anything else to recommend to try.

    For which I am thankful, by the way, because as I know next to nothing about pc stuff that whole thing has been a learning experience, if thoroughly unpleasant. 

  2. I apologise for resurrecting an old thread, but I've got an update on the issue, if anyone's interested. 

    First, MSI didn't charge me for service whatsoever. They restored the factory settings on the machine(something I wasn't able to do) and it is running a lot more stable now. They've also performed a few tests of their own but couldn't find any problems whatsoever. They even sent me screenshots.

    I've been monitoring the thing for over two weeks now, and while it's running much more stable, it has still produced some bsods(after some considerable up-time). Their frequency has diminished.

    I have disabled Windows updates and haven't updated any drivers or anything.

    Is anyone still interested in giving this a go :( ?   

  3. 15 minutes ago, Gorgon said:

    What card is it ?

    I mean the Vbios, It's the GFX Bios, since we are leaning towards driver incompatibility or maybe slightly wrong detection.  Overclockers use custom ones for tweaks they can't do anywhere else, which might mean there is one available. 

    It could absolutely destroy the card though. 

    I see. It's an GTX 1080 SLI.

    I see what you mean there, but in order to make anything happen concerning this I need to read on the subject further. Everything I've ever done to resolve the issue has been due to people's comments, and I have researched quite a number of things during last week. As I literally filed the fault description now - basically making another service request to MSI - there might not be enough time to further delve into this. I could include it as a suggestion to MSI, though. I believe this time they will look harder into it. 

    Other than that, the only overclocked component is the cpu - does that change things?

  4. On 12/8/2019 at 10:19 PM, Gorgon said:

    BIOS update and The GFX card's firmware.

    Windows might think the card is something other than it is. Fiddling with the cards firmware could brick it, so very last resort.  

    Thanks for tuning in.

    BIOS update was one of the first things I did way back when. Didn't work. 

    How would the gpu's firmware change things, though? I don't think there's anything on MSI's side that could be considered gpu firmware, though. The only thing I can relate to is the Dragon Centre, but that one only shows temps and clocks when it comes to the gpus. 

    In any case, I am making another request to them literally today. 

  5. 2 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

    You can turn off automatic graphics driver updates in windows, it's just obfuscated. If I don't windows happily installs some ancient Catalyst driver over the top of my shiny new Adrenaline drivers which completely breaks pretty much everything since it doesn't bother uninstalling the Adrenaline drivers first. I doubt that's your problem though and not just because your card is nVidia instead but I'll dig out how to do it later since I don't have time now.

    Thanks, man. Appreciated. 

    I think that if everything hardware-wise was fine, a brand new Windows install should have fixed these gremlins. As it is I think I am just going to compile all of this into a failure report and ship it over for another inspection. 

    Don't bother. 

  6. On 12/5/2019 at 5:28 PM, Bartimaeus said:

    GSmartControl is what I'd suggest to read the SMART data of drives.

    In general, it usually works best to install drivers specific to your motherboard (or in this case, laptop model i.e. from MSI). The GPU drivers are the exception to that rule, since it's usually better to use the latest from Nvidia/AMD, but maybe try MSI's latest driver if they have one for the time eing.

    I tried GSmartControl today. The HDD - non-system drive, doesn't return any errors. The SSD - system OS drive cannot be read. It shows that it's SMART is enabled and supported but GSmartControl keeps ''unknown'' for it's basic health check. 

    I also formatted OS drive and installed another, hopefully cleaner, version of Windows. That one went BSOD within 5 minutes of work. I went into Diagnostic and uninstalled both video adapter and 3d controller drivers. Now it worked. This is when I finally noticed something. The system is SLI and I think all of this time most of these BSODs have been happening when Windows tries to recognise and configure something about the SLI. The new installation of Windows, as it always does, detects first one of the GPUs, then the second one and you can notice that through Device Manager. That installation of Windows encountered some form of a problem when it trying to setup the second GPU. Windows also installs newer version of gpu drivers than the ones on MSI website(at least as far the laptop model is concerned) and that is non-negotiable with Windows. Even if you uninstall them, it will just repeat the setup automatically. Instead I updated GPU drivers to latest with Nvidia Experience and then installed a bunch of other drivers and MSI firmware on top of that. Restarting in between each new install. It's working without any issue so far. 

    EDIT: Ok, it actually has frozen when I went to do groceries. 

    EDIT 2: It crashed/froze a few times more including on startup. It also refused to load Ubuntu from flash twice.

  7. 18 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

    If it continues to run fine, then at that point, it might be wise to look at the SMART data for your hard drive (although I would've expected a chkdsk to have been performed by Windows at some point automatically if the drive were dying). Most likely, though, it sounds like a Windows update or driver issue.

    I used Command Prompt to check the SMART and it didn't return any errors. Is there another application that does this better?

    I've also been installing drivers today. 

    Windows itself is stable but I encountered a strange error. 

    Spoiler

    u549thJ.jpg

    I was installing basic drivers - some from the manufacturers' websites, some from MSI's. In between every install I'd also restart to see if it will work. 

    MSI's Dragon Centre is a decent app that can control cpu clocks and fan speed, as well as provide info on temps and a few other things. It has some additional features in the forms of apps, one of which can control blue light levels. I like that one a lot. But after I installed it - MSI True Colour, as it's called, the aforementioned error started appearing. Of course I uninstalled the app and rested again, this time with no error. The error appeared again when I got to sound drivers - Realtek High Definition Audio and Nahamic. The error appeared between installations of both, after which I uninstalled both drivers, and also Nvidia's Audio driver, as well. I installed GeForce Experience and updated gpu drivers, but that didn't fix the issue. The error is still there although the code it gives slightly changes.  

    EDIT: I started uninstalling Nvidia display drivers under Normal Startup. Whenever the latest version would uninstall, there'd be an older Nvidia Display Driver installed after that. This thing repeated basically until I went into Diagnostic startup and uninstalled everything Nvidia related. Without reverting to Normal Startup Windows gives an error upon loading connected with Windows update functions being disabled. I am guessing that it wants to automatically install some form of Nvidia display driver. The error given on restart is gone. If I am reading the issue correctly - for I very well may not, Nvidia drivers are having some form of a problem with some of the laptop's drivers and firmware. 

  8. 1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

    If it continues to run fine, then at that point, it might be wise to look at the SMART data for your hard drive (although I would've expected a chkdsk to have been performed by Windows at some point automatically if the drive were dying). Most likely, though, it sounds like a Windows update or driver issue.

    Yeah, I will do that tomorrow :)

  9. 22 hours ago, pmp10 said:

    From the remaining components it's still possible to check if it's the hard drive. 
    If you have one of these windows-compatible USBs try running win10 directly from that.
    Preferably without HDD connected so it can't try to write swap files.

    Small update. 

    This advise was next on the list of things to do. I did get one about reinstalling the ''latest DirecX redistributable'' before that.

    Being bad with PC specifics I went online and looked what the ''latest redistributable'' might be but couldn't find anything I could go by. I started the new Windows installation(the one I installed from USB on top of the old one) under Diagnostic Startup and uninstalled the Video Adapter driver via Device Manager. I installed DirectX 11 after that and put it under Normal Startup. DxDiag still shows DirectX 12 is installed, but Windows has ran for a few hours now without issue. I've disabled updates for now.  

  10. 2 hours ago, pmp10 said:

    From the remaining components it's still possible to check if it's the hard drive. 
    If you have one of these windows-compatible USBs try running win10 directly from that.
    Preferably without HDD connected so it can't try to write swap files.

    The trouble of removing both the SSD and HDD on this laptop notwithstanding, I will look into it tomorrow 😄

  11. 3 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

    Yeah, not sure. Symptoms are all over the place, so I can't rightly guess as to what it might be or whether the manufacturer will be able to fix it.

    Can't blame you :D. 

    Thanks for trying anyways, man. Appreciate it.

    I am literally piling a report for them, atm. I called them today and I spoke with a different person - I have a 3 months extended warranty only for the changed part, and I told him most of what's going on. He was very, very puzzled. However, they are also looking into software issues, and I will get a discount for transportation. I wish I could reset this thing to factory setting and try that, but alas, nope.  

    EDIT: just finished a fresh Windows install form USB made on the other laptop. It went to BSOD withing 5 minutes of running. 

  12. 5 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

    So the question is, where do you get your numbers from?

    http://www.vgchartz.com/ has some info on F:NV and cursory glance over the wiki and google reveal higher sales number over time than on release. 

    Arcanum actually looks like it's in the same boat... Not that I looked it up in the date sites, but another cursory look over the wiki and google suggest higher numbers over time. 

    It seems that PoE is about 50/50 in this regard. Tyranny has definitely sold less over time than on release...

    Bloodlines is infamous for selling over time.  

     The Baldur's Gates and the Fallouts were looked up at date sites for American and European sales back then, and people were comparing the games' sales on older message boards. I don't think you can get the same information for those as you can for the newer games. The Baldur Gates have sold in the millions over the years. The Fallouts not so great with about 100k for the first 12 months, but continuing to sell over time, as well. 

    For the smaller games you can actually ask yourself over their message boards - with ATOM rpg and Underrail in particular you'll probably get the devs replying, although if you read their dev blogs the information basically is there. Can do the same for the Avernum titles, or any other title in the same boat. 

  13. 7 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

    You wrote: "Role-Playing games for the PC have consistently shown that they accrue success over time rather than being big trendy hits over the week." I asked you to back your claim up. You mention less than five titles. This does not constitute anything resembling proof, not even close. The main point remains that the overwhelming majority of sales takes place right after release, and even though there are anomalies (there tend to be, no matter what the subject), what you say doesn't change it one bit.

    Again, care to back your original claim up somehow?

    Err... toss in the non-Beth Fallouts and with the rest that's more than five... 

    Pretty much most of these types of games follow the same pattern - Avernum series, Shadowrun series, ATOM rpg, Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark(not a crpg per se, but beloved by the crpg fans). Haven't looked at Arcanum, but I'd suspect it's the same. I even think PoE might have sold more over time than on release, to be honest.

    Only Deadfire's creators don't like it enough. 

  14. Started it up under Ubuntu from flashdrive and it has ran for hours, plugged in and without issue. 

    I called MSI, as well. I wanted to try and restore through the factory image, but it wasn't working. Instead they said that because I've shipped the unit recently for inspection I am entitled to a 3 months extended warranty period for free. They have stated somewhere in their documents that they do not handle software problems, although I do not know how the issue would be classified. 

    Opinions?

  15. 2 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

    Can you please back this up somehow? I don't think you are right. As Josh Sawyer himself commented when discussing the poor success of Deadfire, a vast percentage of sales come from the very first days/weeks the game is out. I think the quote is in this very thread (do correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm fairly certain this is precisely what Sawyer said).

    Final Fantasy, BG Series and Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines are just some of the titles that have made more money for their proprietor over their lifetime than their first week of release. Granted - you might say that Troika is no more, but their attention and resources were split in many directions at the time. 

    Underrail is one modern example of an extremely small cRPG - the base game was drawn in MS Paint by one man, that has garnered fan support for 3 years into a financially successful Expansion, only to have the devs announce another unexpected - even for the devs - expansion, precisely because they were so successful. 

    The whole idea of an RPG HAVING to be successful on it's first week is, in my opinion, destructive, because these games thrive off community just as much as they do from sales. But community = sales over time, and you do not suddenly build community, you foster that - gently, slowly, methodically.

    As much as Josh and Obsidian want to be Cash McGoldnuggetngton, they're not. If they want to be, they have to make a different product. Ones that won't interest you or the rest of the people posting in this thread.

    To cut all the ramblings out - they're trying to serve the contents of a Michelin medium fillet mignon with the speed of a minute steak down at the bistro. Ain't no body who can do that. Not even Elon ''Broken Glass'' Musk. 

    Now, I am not particularly attached to this opinion, but I just want to make an observation from reading this thread that maybe people are defending Obsidian a bit too much. Reminds me in part of the latest CDPR thing where people are saying that CD will never have microtransactions in their mp games, while CDPR have already put lootboxes in their 2018 mp game. 

    • Like 2
  16. I believe the fault lies with Obsidian. 

    Role-Playing games for the PC have consistently shown that they accrue success over time rather than being big trendy hits over the week. That has only somewhat been disproven by DOS2, which, by itself, is not actually that good of a role-playing game, but rather relies more heavily on it's presentation, which for a cRPG is awesome. I would never want anything more in terms of graphics or sound design in a role-playing than what DOS2 did... but gameplay is a different story. In addition, DOS2 did not have any competition when it released and people were damn hungry for a cRPG at the time. 

    Putting that aside, I also compare how smaller modern cRPGs have evolved over time and look at Deadfire... and I think Obsidian have lost vision for that game. The atmosphere and tone of the first Pillars was more consistent. Gameplay was not so grindy and slow. Ultimate Achievement felt like an adventure rather than chore-work. 

    I think Obsidian have gone through a lot of changes since F:NV, and Deadfire got treated as a CoD release rather than a continuation of a cRPG - ''If we put these features in the game it should work.'' The first time I saw that Outer World commercial after 76 released, I knew that the mentality that has created Fallout 1 has shifted. 

    • Like 2
  17. Slight update. 

    It has ran for about 4 hours now under Diagnostic Startup. Slight caveat - I can't set sleep off under this setup and it goes to sleep every now and again. I don't know if that's significant in any way but it hasn't given any blue screens.  

    I was about to make a Windows usb image when I ran into some write protect issues with my 125 gb pen drive. Ordered a new one for tomorrow. 

    • Like 1
  18. 42 minutes ago, pmp10 said:

    Honestly I'd say if it can be reproduced in safe mode then it should be covered by warranty.
    If you are really up for a trip down the rabbit-hole you can troubleshoot further with driver verifier but it will get messier with every step forward. 

    The thing is almost 3 years old and out of warranty 😄 

    Anyways...

    It is running under Diagnostic Startup atm, and that driver verifier is a thing I'll check out. 

  19. 22 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

    Does your "reset" Windows 10 come with drivers pre-installed? If so, start uninstalling them one by one between safe and not safe mode boots until the system stops freezing outside of safe mode, :).

    Yes it does. Usually it only needs Nvidia Experience and it's good to go. 

    I will need to do some browsing... x)

    EDIT: Jebus... scratch that, as I was literally about to hit the Win + R button the thing BSOD again while in safe mode... IRQL error. Plugged in.

  20. Just now, Bartimaeus said:

    @Hulk'O'Saurus Before doing what I said in the previous post, it occurs to me that we haven't even tried as basic of a thing as putting the system into safe mode. Please do that and test stability before anything else.

    I actually literally put it in safe mode about half an hour ago, plugged in. 

    Have the bluescreenviewer on and it has been running without issue. 

    This is something that is coming from Tom's Hardware:

    I suspect a driver issue. Most common might be the graphics driver.
    Windows has been known to update graphics drivers to less than optimal versions.
    In a gaming laptop you have both integrated and discrete adapters.
    I might try reinstalling the graphics drivers for your laptop directly from asus.
    I note that the driver available seems to be old, released on 8/2016
    Alternately, install the mobile graphics driver directly from nvidia.

    If you can access the desktop, select to run using the integrated adapter.
    That will be the default when running on battery.
    Plugged in, the default will be the discrete adapter.
    Look through your dumps and google any code that looks involved; that might give you a clue as too what is involved.

  21. 15 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

    If it's on its 4th hour and no errors detected, it's good, especially for a system crashing that quickly and consistently. Temperature's probably fine as well.

    I would stick with a copy of Windows, because you want to replicate your current setup but with a different drive to control for any other factors. You can download an installable copy of Windows 10 here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

    Select "create installation media", pick the version of Windows that matches yours, select .iso file or to USB depending on what you want to do, then use WinToUSB to install directly to a flash drive (Microsoft does not normally let you install Windows to flash drives - you have to use software like WinToUSB to do so).

    Actually, I recall now that you said you did a full reinstall of Windows 10 as it is, so you probably only need to follow the WinToUSB thing if you already have install media.

    If this were a desktop, the easiest thing to test would be to swap out the PSU. Stupid laptops.

    Actually, I was always using the in-build reset function of the laptop - it has an image of Windows there somewhere but when it installs it always does with all the firmware on, plus all the updates. In other words that Windows reset option keeps itself updated. When this whole BSOD thing started I looked up a few things online, and apparently there has been a small upsurge with BS all over the net over the latest(then) Windows update. I didn't really think too much of it then, but when the next update rolled out and it didn't fix my issue I shipped it back, ect., ect.

    On the other hand Memtest86 returned 0 errors and was on for more than 6 hours while plugged in. 

     jhnfXL4.jpg

    19 hours ago, pmp10 said:

    Is the BSOD stop code/module consistent at all?
    IRQ errors would seem strange to be power related.
    You can also check if running 'high performance' settings wile on battery or 'power saving' settings while plugged-in will make a difference.
     

    It's WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR the vast majority of the time. 

    I can remember seeing IRQL appearing only once so far. 

    I will check different performance setups today. 

  22. 2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

     

    @Hulk'O'Saurus So wait, the system froze when you tried to enter control panel while on battery power?

    It froze after I entered control panel :). 

    2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

    2. Using temperature-monitoring software to make sure the CPU and GPU temps aren't weird (hwinfo64).

    3. Memtest86 to see if the RAM errors out (though if the power supply is bad and causing power fluctuations or something, it may not necessarily be the RAM's fault that it's erroring out). Random BSOD errors like the ones you're getting is a frequent symptom of bad or malfunctioning RAM. I would probably also test plugged vs. unplugged since you've mentioned the different Windows experience vs. the two is still occurring, even if problems don't totally go away when running unplugged.

    I am running memtest86 literally now - it's on it's 4th hour and nearly done with the 3 check, one more to go. I am doing the test while plugged in, and so far it hasn't shown any problems, and the test has given 0 errors, as well. Could that be important somehow? 

    I also notice that the memtest has a temp check for the CPU which shows stable 55-60 centigrade. 

    2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

    1. Since we suspect a power issue, set the CPU power level in Windows' advanced power plan settings to minimum (5% usually, I think).

    5. Test more with battery power. Are you consistently getting significantly better uptime vs. when using plugged power? Is there any difference in the way you've used the two (i.e. waiting a while for the battery to charge to get a literal cold boot with battery power vs. frequent hot boots with plugged power)?

    That I will. 

    2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

    4. Run an external OS off of an external hard drive or a flash drive. Does it still keep BSODing?

    I've heard of Ubuntu boot from USB. Perhaps a stupid question, but is it free ;)?

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