Stop Error When Playing M:TW 2, Dying Video card?

captaink

I get a lockup and this

Error Message: STOP 0x000000EA THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER (Q293078)

randomly when playing Medieval 2 lately.

I updated my drivers to the most recent ones, blew the dust out of the card (which helped, I can get more time before the error occurs) and opened the case up.

It seems like a heat issue, but it's only with M:TW 2. WoW runs fine, as did L4D and DoW2 recently.

The card if an nvidia geforce 7800 GT.

I played Medieval 2 without problems when I first bought it, so this is something new.

The Rocking M

Microsoft KB article for the error message.

captaink

Yeah that's what Windows pulls up when I restart.

I tried everything up to "replace your video card" which I don't really want to do.

captaink

Well I reformatted and reinstalled windows (I was past due) and that seems to have helped some. No more bluescreens or stop errors.

I do still get some random 5-10s freezes occasionally. Sound keeps playing but the video doesn't seem to update. Got a tiny bit of artifacting at one point too.

captaink

Ahh, it was too good to be really true. Today I tried playing and the freezing cropped up, then some artifacting, then a driver stop error and a hard lock.

Damn.

captaink

And now it's occuring during WoW. What's a good program that can track my GPU heat? And log it or have some way I can monitor it while gaming?

Teth

That's just the faulting driver, doesn't always mean it's the cause.

First, configure your system to generate a memory dump when it crashes. Direct the dump to a partition or drive that's large enough and has enough free space to hold the dump - at least 8 GB just to be safe. Make sure your page file is also 3 GB or larger.

Next download the Windows Debugging tools and install them.

After the system crashes again, find the dump it generates. .DMP file.

Open WinDbg (the debugger), and click File > Symbol File Path

Enter the following: SRV*c:\websymbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols

The above downloads the symbols you need to your local drive. For all OS's, even Vista, I think.

Next click File > Open Crash Dump and select your DMP file.

A basic debug of the dump will appear. After it's done (usually takes about 15 seconds) issue the following command into the debugger: !analyze -v

Google the results, pay attention to the "Image_Name" and "Failure_Bucket_ID". You may find that something else is causing your video drivers to crash, and/or more specific info about your driver failure.

captaink

That is a neat tool, I'll have to remember it.

Here's what it gives:

kd> !analyze -v
*******************************************************************************
*                                                                             *
*                        Bugcheck Analysis                                    *
*                                                                             *
*******************************************************************************

THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER (ea)
The device driver is spinning in an infinite loop, most likely waiting for
hardware to become idle. This usually indicates problem with the hardware
itself or with the device driver programming the hardware incorrectly.
If the kernel debugger is connected and running when watchdog detects a
timeout condition then DbgBreakPoint() will be called instead of KeBugCheckEx()
and detailed message including bugcheck arguments will be printed to the
debugger. This way we can identify an offending thread, set breakpoints in it,
and hit go to return to the spinning code to debug it further. Because
KeBugCheckEx() is not called the .bugcheck directive will not return bugcheck
information in this case. The arguments are already printed out to the kernel
debugger. You can also retrieve them from a global variable via
"dd watchdog!g_WdBugCheckData l5" (use dq on NT64).
On MP machines (OS builds <= 3790) it is possible to hit a timeout when the spinning thread is
interrupted by hardware interrupt and ISR or DPC routine is running at the time
of the bugcheck (this is because the timeout's work item can be delivered and
handled on the second CPU and the same time). If this is the case you will have
to look deeper at the offending thread's stack (e.g. using dds) to determine
spinning code which caused the timeout to occur.
Arguments:
Arg1: 87e2e398, Pointer to a stuck thread object.  Do .thread then kb on it to find
	the hung location.
Arg2: 89863730, Pointer to a DEFERRED_WATCHDOG object.
Arg3: 88832620, Pointer to offending driver name.
Arg4: 00000001, Number of times this error occurred.  If a debugger is attached,
	this error is not always fatal -- see DESCRIPTION below.  On the
	blue screen, this will always equal 1.

Debugging Details:
------------------


FAULTING_THREAD:  87e2e398

DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID:  GRAPHICS_DRIVER_FAULT

CUSTOMER_CRASH_COUNT:  1

BUGCHECK_STR:  0xEA

PROCESS_NAME:  Wow.exe

LAST_CONTROL_TRANSFER:  from bf1d3dbf to bf0bd272

STACK_TEXT:  
WARNING: Stack unwind information not available. Following frames may be wrong.
a8c16b10 bf1d3dbf 31120c00 00000002 00000300 nv4_disp+0xab272
a8c16b14 31120c00 00000002 00000300 00000fa0 nv4_disp+0x1c1dbf
a8c16b18 00000000 00000300 00000fa0 000800cb 0x31120c00


STACK_COMMAND:  .thread 0xffffffff87e2e398 ; kb

FOLLOWUP_IP: 
nv4_disp+ab272
bf0bd272 f390            pause

SYMBOL_STACK_INDEX:  0

SYMBOL_NAME:  nv4_disp+ab272

FOLLOWUP_NAME:  MachineOwner

MODULE_NAME: nv4_disp

IMAGE_NAME:  nv4_disp.dll

DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP:  499c9aa2

FAILURE_BUCKET_ID:  0xEA_IMAGE_nv4_disp.dll_DATE_2009_02_18

BUCKET_ID:  0xEA_IMAGE_nv4_disp.dll_DATE_2009_02_18

Followup: MachineOwner

Googling that gives me other forums recommending that I update my drivers, use Driver Cleaner, etc.


Thing is, I still get this occasionally since I formatted a couple days ago. I have installed only 1 set of video drivers since then. I guess they could have gotten corrupted at some time since, but really?

Is it more likely that the newer Geforce drivers are just not well suited for my old 7800GT?

Teth

Roll back the drivers and test. If that doesn't work, go back to the latest version and try removing all driver/card-related utilities that start (HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Run). Some of those tools/utilities are actually kernel mode drivers that can seriously fuck with your drivers depending upon what you're doing and what else is running.