Aspire VX 15 [VX5-591G] (i7 7700HQ, GTX 1050 Ti) randomly crashing and BSODs. Seems GPU related.

I've had this laptop for about 5 months no major issues. But now I've been getting random crashes where the laptop will lock up and then BSOD or just lock up until I hold down the power button to force a reset. These random crashes aren't that common when not running games, maybe one BSOD every week, but I've been playing Overwatch recently and now I'm getting a crash every session I play. The picture will freeze but the audio is still going, I have to alt+ctrl+del to get to the task manager and forcekill Overwatch.exe to exit the game. Checking Windows Reliability History reveals all these crashes are caused by a LiveKernelEvent 141 error which means there is an issue with the video drivers or hardware.

I have tried using the latest drivers from NVIDIA as of today, 385.28, also 384.94 and even the outdated supported drivers from Acer's official VX 15 drivers site, 376.54 (released by NVIDIA in 2016) just in case, and there is no difference at all. All cause crashes on Overwatch. I used to be able to play Overwatch on this laptop for hours with no problems, now it crashes randomly in the middle of a game, 10 minutes in or 40 minutes in.

I haven't gotten around to testing other games yet since I started noticing the frequentness of these crashes but since I also have the occasional BSOD just sitting in the desktop I'm guessing my VX 15 is just going bad.

Accepted answers

Sorig

I think I found the culprit to the game crashes and random BSOD's.

I reinstalled Windows 10 on Friday and after rigorous testing and benchmarking had no crashes for 2 days, up until this morning when I installed MS Office 2016. MS Office 2016 installed fine then I launched Overwatch. Blackscreen crash on the very first match. Fired up GTAV and ran the ingame benchmark: blackscreen crash on the first run, ran it again, fatal crash and the computer rebooted on its own. I uninstalled MS Office 2016 and but still got crashes on my games. I had to run DDU to completely remove the Nvidia AND Intel graphics drivers. Then I intalled the latest drivers for nvidia and intel graphics and everything seems to be working fine again.

Apparently MS Office 2016, at least the ClickToRun (C2R) version, destroys some of the Intel graphics drivers files and corrupts who knows what else in Windows. Not only that but the C2R version of MS Office 2016 uses some virtualization technology that can give problems to some CPU's running on certain BIOS, this causes fatal crashes like lockups and BSOD.

TL;DR MS Office 2016 C2R destroys your games, causes instability and crashes.

All comments

IronFly

download this tool, whocrashed:
http://www.resplendence.com/download/whocrashedSetup.exe

before running it, browse to C:\windows\minidump
delete all files apart the first 2-3 files (newest)
then install whocrashed and run it
click on Analyze
report here the result.

Sorig

I don't even have a minudump directory. Minidumps files never got created after a crash or BSOD on this machine even though these are configured. Apparently this is common on SSDs.

IronFly

SSD or not, it must save a minidump.

by the way, next time it will BSOD, can you please take a screenshot or write down the stop error?

Sorig

I have made sure minidumps are enabled again. I will try to take a photo next time I get a BSOD.

EDIT: I just got another LiveKernelEvent 141 crash. This time while playing GTA V. That rules out the possibility of these errors being game specific to Overwatch. No BSOD yet though.

IronFly

can you please post your BIOS version?

windows logo key + r

type

msinfo32

report BIOS DATE/Version string

Sorig

I'm on BIOS version: Insyde Corp. V1.06, 7/7/2017. The latest one available on Acer's drivers site for the Aspire VX5-591G.

IronFly

good, i hope you will never face the issue again or at least have a BSOD with a minidump or it will very hard to narrow the culprit.

Sorig

I keep getting these Live Kernel Event 141 errors.

This last time it also gave me a blackscreen I couldn't recover from. Usually I can get the task manager and kill the .exe of the game that has crashed to recover and get the Windows desktop to show up, but this time no combination of keys like alt+ctrl+del would work. No BSOD, just stuck in a blackscreen while audio was still heard in the background. I waited and let it sit like that hoping just to get it to BSOD so at least I could get a Minidump file, but no BSOD. I had to force shut down by holding down the power button.

Seems like the GPU or a vram module is going bad.

Sorig

Last night I got a BSOD on GTAV. No minidump was created even though minidumps are enabled which is really infuriating. I made sure the pagefile is large enough to hold any minidump files and also made sure there is a minidump directory in the system root. Maybe next time I can finally get a minidump file. Anyways I did take a picture of the BSOD and it said "CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED". No surprise.

I have done everything software wise, reset the battery using the pinhole, ran memtest and passed, loaded bios defaults, tried every graphics driver version available. Only thing left to try is reainstalling Windows which is most likely going to be a huge waste of time only to discover that the issue persists anyway because the GPU is messed up. Not even had this laptop for half a year and already showing signs that it's broken.

Sorig

Got another BSOD on GTA V but this time the error said something different: "VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE" something like that. I also got a minidump file this time. BlueSceenView lists dxgkrnl.sys, dxgmms2.sys and igdkmd64.sys in red. Also says the crash was caused by dxgkrnl.sys

Sorig

I ended reisntalling Windows 10 from scratch. Also installed all and only drivers from the VX15 support page. I had to disable Windows Update in services.msc to prevent Windows from automatically replacing these drivers with newer versions. Played Overwatch and GTA V, also ran GTA V's benchmark multiple times which used to cause a blackscreen or BSOD before. So far no crashes but gonna need more testing.

Sorig

I think I found the culprit to the game crashes and random BSOD's.

I reinstalled Windows 10 on Friday and after rigorous testing and benchmarking had no crashes for 2 days, up until this morning when I installed MS Office 2016. MS Office 2016 installed fine then I launched Overwatch. Blackscreen crash on the very first match. Fired up GTAV and ran the ingame benchmark: blackscreen crash on the first run, ran it again, fatal crash and the computer rebooted on its own. I uninstalled MS Office 2016 and but still got crashes on my games. I had to run DDU to completely remove the Nvidia AND Intel graphics drivers. Then I intalled the latest drivers for nvidia and intel graphics and everything seems to be working fine again.

Apparently MS Office 2016, at least the ClickToRun (C2R) version, destroys some of the Intel graphics drivers files and corrupts who knows what else in Windows. Not only that but the C2R version of MS Office 2016 uses some virtualization technology that can give problems to some CPU's running on certain BIOS, this causes fatal crashes like lockups and BSOD.

TL;DR MS Office 2016 C2R destroys your games, causes instability and crashes.

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