Hulk'O'Saurus

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.

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 :( ?

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?

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.

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.

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.

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. 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.

Yeah, I will do that tomorrow

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.

Thanks for the tip!

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

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.

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.

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.

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?