Windows 10 Frequent, Semi-random BSODs (Thread stuck in device driver)

[SpaceKitkat]

As the title says, almost* every time I launch a video game (specifically, a minecraft mod), I get a BSOD with the error "THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER".
I'm also getting them more and more frequently just using google chrome, even just now while trying to get minidump log.
Checking the log, there was something about atikmdag.sys, and my problem seems to be very similar to this thread:
However, that thread's main solution was when someone checked the logs, they listed drivers that needed to be removed, and I don't think I have any of the same drivers.

After a bit of googling, a couple "easy" solutions were to update my BIOS and reinstall GPU drivers.
So I uninstalled all of my display drivers, deleted everything AMD, used DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller), restarted into my BIOS, updated my BIOS successfully, installed the new GPU drivers (Radeon Crimson edition software, for an R9 290), and restart my computer.

I've also performed several Windows diagnostics, including a RAM check, disk checks on all of my hard drives, and a "sfc /scannow" via CMD. All have come up with no errors.
I tried to add the minidump W7F log, but it said the file size was too large.. lol (RIP).
I've uploaded it to
but if it needs to be uploaded elsewhere, just let me know.
If any other logs are needed, I'll supply them ASAP. Any help is very much appreciated, as I work from home and this is currently my only available computer!

 

[SpaceKitkat]

I'm about to start the verifier, so I'll get back to you with the results hopefully either today or tomorrow.

I have two sticks of 2x8GB, so should be 32GB total.
It's "G.Skill Ripjaws X Series" - Link Removed


Also, whether or not the verifier finds anything, I think I'm going to reinstall Windows today or tomorrow. Thoughts/concerns?

 

[SpaceKitkat]

Started the verifier. I'm going to assume I can still use my computer as normal while it's doing it's thing.. if not, please let me know!

 

[kemical]

I have two sticks of 2x8GB, so should be 32GB total.

Hmm....Well 2 of those sticks comes to 16GB not 32 unless you mean you have 4 sticks fitted?

 

[kemical]

Started the verifier. I'm going to assume I can still use my computer as normal while it's doing it's thing.

Yup it's fine. If it does bsod it will usually be on start up as that's when the drivers are stressed. If nothing happens after 24hrs please turn it off.

As for your last dump file, same again to be honest Bugcheck EA so the sooner you can test your gpu (by removing it and running from the onboard graphics) the better.

 

[SpaceKitkat]

Hmm....Well 2 of those sticks comes to 16GB not 32 unless you mean you have 4 sticks fitted?

Oh, my bad, mistyped. Yeah, two sticks of 8GB.

The verifier has been running for about 18 hours now, and I've been using chrome while gaming and whatnot to increase the likelihood of a BSOD, but no BSODs yet.

I don't recall ever getting this error, but when running DxDiag it says "DxDiag has detected that there might have been a problem accessing the system information the last time this program was used. Would you like to bypass the system information this time?"
Not sure if that has anything to do with my BSODs, but I figured I'd mention it.


When I test my GPU by removing it & running the onboard graphics, what should I expect? Are there any tests I should run, or should I just try to use it as I normally do?

 

[kemical]

Not sure if that has anything to do with my BSODs, but I figured I'd mention it.

It could be just a bug try running a dxdiag again.

When I test my GPU by removing it & running the onboard graphics, what should I expect? Are there any tests I should run, or should I just try to use it as I normally do?

Well first just use the machine as you normally would and see what occurs. If no blue screen appears then chances are the gpu is bad. Any new bsod's please post.

You might need to install the latest intel gpu driver:
Link Removed

 

[SpaceKitkat]

So.. I guess I should hold off on a fresh install of Windows until I test the onboard graphics? D:

 

[kemical]

Might be an idea..

 

[SpaceKitkat]

I still haven't gotten the time to test out my onboard graphics, I'm going to have a busy week
and I may have done something dumb, but.. maybe it worked out?
I forgot to turn off driver verification, so when I started up my VPN I use for work, I got an immediate BSOD, with (what looks like to me) an entirely different error message.

 

[SpaceKitkat]

Like an idiot, I just reproduced the same BSOD because I, once again, forgot to turn off driver verification.

I don't recall ever having BSODs while specifically using the VPN and working, it usually happened when I was alt-tabbing between things (and usually between a game and chrome/firefox)
However, it's possible the VPN's processes were still running in the background.. that said, I know for a fact that 2 separate BSODs I didn't have my VPN running, because I'd recently restarted my computer. I feel like this might just be a conflict between the driver verifier and my VPN, and not anything related to my GPU and previous BSODs. That said, I'm still uploading the minidumps just in case.

 

[kemical]

*******************************************************************************
*                                                                             *
*                        Bugcheck Analysis                                    *
*                                                                             *
*******************************************************************************

Use !analyze -v to get detailed debugging information.

BugCheck C4, {f6, 484, ffff9e0cc4da8080, fffff8036344f6d0}

*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for SWIPsec.sys
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for SWIPsec.sys
Probably caused by : SWIPsec.sys ( SWIPsec+f6d0 )

Followup:     MachineOwner

Hi,
Bugcheck C4 means the verifier caught a driver although it could possibly be a false positive.

SWIPsec.sys Fri Oct 16 22:53:11 2015: SonicWALL IPsec Driver

swvnic.sys Mon Feb 23 03:04:50 2009: SonicWALL Virtual Miniport Driver

See if you can update the above drivers
MySonicWALL.com - User Login

You could also test by simply removing the above and just use the pc as you normally would. If no bsod's occur then you may have found your culprit.

cmudaxp.sys Tue Dec 20 03:23:23 2011: C-Media Audio Interface Driver (WDM) by C-Media or ASUS Xonar DG Audio Interface driver needs updating.
Z97-A - Support

Xonar DG - Overview

tap0901.sys Wed Nov 5 13:16:32 2014: TAP-Win32 Adapter V9 or OpenVPN driver or COMODO please update:
http://openvpn.net/index.php/open-source/downloads.html
http://forums.comodo.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=17220.0;attach=17692 Requires registration

dtsoftbus01.sys Fri Feb 21 09:49:36 2014: Daemon Tools. Well known in debugging circles for causing BSOD's please remove.

See how you go after making the above changes. I have a feeling the bsod's will continue as your gpu is looking prime candidate but you just never know..

 

[Circinae]

I had a look through your thread and signed up to chime in.

I have an R9 290 and the exact same problem, it has plagued me for the majority of the year. You may stop butchering your PC now.

It is categorically a result of AMD's drivers.

I am not exactly sure at what point the issue arose, but the same very frequent yet erratic BSOD/crashes on wake up have been present for the last dozen or more driver versions.

A poster on another forum found a BIOS altering solution that I didn't want to replicate, but this is what he discovered. It seems related to a new driver based power saving system that lowers the clock speeds of your card during idle situations. This was "improved" at some point over the 16.xxxx series of drivers and it causes it to lower the R9 290's clock speeds at inappropriate moments causing it to crash when put under load. He changed it using some custom speed altering software to force the graphics card to never drop below a certain level, which of course would strain it more, but utterly alleviated the crashes.

I myself, have just stuck with old Crimson drivers that functioned well before the changes. It means I have some issues in more modern games, like a loss of FPS for the first half a minute of booting up Overwatch (insignificant) and possibly marginally lower fps in more recent titles. I know for sure that games like Battlefield 1 require you to have the latest drivers and, in the Beta, I tricked it via registry edits to allow me to circumvent the restriction, but the game was filled with graphical errors (the floor didn't render).

Unfortunately, the old driver is the only reliable solution that I myself have found. There are threads on the AMD sub-reddit that have complained about it for months, but the company seems unconcerned. I am just hoping they change the core base driver soon and that it'll be passively fixed as it seems all the current ones are based on the same "16.30" driver, otherwise it is sticking with these old ones until I am due an upgrade. Then onto nVidia.

My drivers are: Radeon-crimson-15.12-win10-64bit

You can download them from Guru3D. Do a complete clean out with DDU as you did before and install these drivers. I am almost certain that it will stop the crashes. If it doesn't you can send me many angry faces

Hope that helps.

EDIT: Oh, just remembered, you'll want to make certain that you untick the "download latest drivers" option that is shown at the beginning and end (after reboot) of the driver installation. On top of that, it seems that Windows 10 has a habit of very helpfully updating your drivers automatically every so often as part of its updates. I have no idea how to stop this and maybe one of the helpful more knowledgeable folks in this thread can aid you, but it means you'll have to redo this process periodically.

 

[kemical]

I had a look through your thread and signed up to chime in.

I have an R9 290 and the exact same problem, it has plagued me for the majority of the year. You may stop butchering your PC now.

It is categorically a result of AMD's drivers.

I am not exactly sure at what point the issue arose, but the same very frequent yet erratic BSOD/crashes on wake up have been present for the last dozen or more driver versions.

A poster on another forum found a BIOS altering solution that I didn't want to replicate, but this is what he discovered. It seems related to a new driver based power saving system that lowers the clock speeds of your card during idle situations. This was "improved" at some point over the 16.xxxx series of drivers and it causes it to lower the R9 290's clock speeds at inappropriate moments causing it to crash when put under load. He changed it using some custom speed altering software to force the graphics card to never drop below a certain level, which of course would strain it more, but utterly alleviated the crashes.

I myself, have just stuck with old Crimson drivers that functioned well before the changes. It means I have some issues in more modern games, like a loss of FPS for the first half a minute of booting up Overwatch (insignificant) and possibly marginally lower fps in more recent titles. I know for sure that games like Battlefield 1 require you to have the latest drivers and, in the Beta, I tricked it via registry edits to allow me to circumvent the restriction, but the game was filled with graphical errors (the floor didn't render).

Unfortunately, the old driver is the only reliable solution that I myself have found. There are threads on the AMD sub-reddit that have complained about it for months, but the company seems unconcerned. I am just hoping they change the core base driver soon and that it'll be passively fixed as it seems all the current ones are based on the same "16.30" driver, otherwise it is sticking with these old ones until I am due an upgrade. Then onto nVidia.

My drivers are: Radeon-crimson-15.12-win10-64bit

You can download them from Guru3D. Do a complete clean out with DDU as you did before and install these drivers. I am almost certain that it will stop the crashes. If it doesn't you can send me many angry faces

Hope that helps.

EDIT: Oh, just remembered, you'll want to make certain that you untick the "download latest drivers" option that is shown at the beginning and end (after reboot) of the driver installation. On top of that, it seems that Windows 10 has a habit of very helpfully updating your drivers automatically every so often as part of its updates. I have no idea how to stop this and maybe one of the helpful more knowledgeable folks in this thread can aid you, but it means you'll have to redo this process periodically.

Worth a try at least..

 

[sven31415]

Hello Circinae and SpaceKitkat,

i read your posts very carefully SpaceKitkat and Circinae solution sounds very very reasonable.
I have the exact same issue as your SpaceKitkat.
I have and AMD R9 290x graphics card from XFX.
I also started butchering my system including Mobo bios update and GPU bios update driver update clean install with driver removal multiple times with practical allways the same result (BSOD).

Circinae solution sound very resolnable because i never have the BSOD during gameplay but during youtube watching or diffferent situations with low or light load or load changes.

I am currently running on Intel HD4600 internal graphics of my Intel 4790k CPU and have not had a single BSOD since then. My Radeon is disable via device manager now.

I checked with bluescreenview-x64. It produced these error reports i uploded in the file.
What makes me not totally happy that the error seems to be 99% graphics related but sometimes not.

I am also monitoring reliability history and there was an issue with the Asus Z97-A software that came with the board. The DipAwayMode exe seemed to cause trouble.
My initial problem before i started tinkering with the system was that after some time of idle i ended up with a black screen while windows was still awake.

I will try to downgrade the driver.

BR

Sven

 

[sven31415]

PS i attached my reliability monitor log also.

I am running windows 8.1.

 

[Circinae]

Quick update to my earlier message and this is still speculative, but I've actually updated to the latest AMD drivers as I noticed they had 16.40 rather than .30 for the first time in a long time.

I've been watching streams, playing Battlefield 1 and both at the same time, alt tab etc. So far I've had no crashes and no signs of the previous problems. I haven't had the drivers installed long so I could be jumping the gun, but it seems as though my hope for a passive fix I mentioned earlier may have actually happened.

I'll come back and update after I've had them running a bit longer, but I would have usually had multiple crashes by now.

 

[sven31415]

Did you install this one: Crimson Edition 16.10.2 Hotfix ?
I prviously had this one installed: Crimson Edition 16.9.2 and this one kept on crashing.

BR Sven

 

[kemical]

Hello Circinae and SpaceKitkat,

i read your posts very carefully SpaceKitkat and Circinae solution sounds very very reasonable.
I have the exact same issue as your SpaceKitkat.
I have and AMD R9 290x graphics card from XFX.
I also started butchering my system including Mobo bios update and GPU bios update driver update clean install with driver removal multiple times with practical allways the same result (BSOD).

Circinae solution sound very resolnable because i never have the BSOD during gameplay but during youtube watching or diffferent situations with low or light load or load changes.

I am currently running on Intel HD4600 internal graphics of my Intel 4790k CPU and have not had a single BSOD since then. My Radeon is disable via device manager now.

I checked with bluescreenview-x64. It produced these error reports i uploded in the file.
What makes me not totally happy that the error seems to be 99% graphics related but sometimes not.

I am also monitoring reliability history and there was an issue with the Asus Z97-A software that came with the board. The DipAwayMode exe seemed to cause trouble.
My initial problem before i started tinkering with the system was that after some time of idle i ended up with a black screen while windows was still awake.

I will try to downgrade the driver.

BR

Sven

If you need a dump file debugging please open a new thread but in any case thank you for your input on this issue.

 

[sven31415]

I will continue using the Intel HD 4600 GPU until the end of the week. If i do not encounter a crash I will try downgrading the driver to 15.20 as suggestd.

I think it will not crash as it was crashing almost every day before.

BR

Sven

 

[kemical]

I will continue using the Intel HD 4600 GPU until the end of the week. If i do not encounter a crash I will try downgrading the driver to 15.20 as suggestd.

I think it will not crash as it was crashing almost every day before.

BR

Sven

Hi Sven,
can you also post your system spec's including make and model of PSU?