blue screen of death?

[Raost]

I play dark souls two for a while, then I blue screen. It's happened randomly in several occasions. I thought it was from tabbing in and out of the game though when i played it in window it happened as well. Once was during the use of a human effigy, another was when dying to the chariot guy. Seems very random.

[Raost]

bumping for views

[Arkaea79]

Sounds like some bad memory. Might try swapping ram in and out of slots to see if you have a bad slot or stick.

[Colen Bardbarian]

Originally posted by Raost:

I play dark souls two for a while, then I blue screen. It's happened randomly in several occasions. I thought it was from tabbing in and out of the game though when i played it in window it happened as well. Once was during the use of a human effigy, another was when dying to the chariot guy. Seems very random.

Try memtest 86

[Raost]

Why would it be bad memory? I have never had this problem with other games. Only issue being dark souls 2. I've had diablo 3 crash on me once or twice when I close the game due to video driver error, though i recently updated my amd drivers so doubt that's the case. Might have to do with the game being new though and possibly amd's drivers not being up to date for dark souls 2 yet.

[Raost]

bumping for views

[SirSlaughter]

Gonna say check your video card. Also your Drivers for your video card. Sometimes you have to revert ot older drivers. I've seen many things cause bluescreens from RAM to your GPU to small hiccups in your OS or HDD errors.

There are many ways to fix this but you would have to run some good diag on your PC. May I suggest Memtest 86 as stated above and then from there go and download advanced systemcare. The latest version has a built in HDD doctor and it can see if you have errors or anything like that.

From there what is your GPU (Graphics card) and what are your highest temps? Then what about your motherboard and processor? Are you running an AMD/Nvidia build? Perhaps an Intel/ATI? Did you change videocards at one point and forget to delete the old drivers?

After that are you on an SSD? HDD? Hybrid? Raptor drive?
Are you OC'd? If so then what is your clock speed? What about your ram? Do you have that OC'd? Again, if so what clock speed?

How old is your rig? Are you running laptop or desktop?

A quick way is also to check your file integrity using steam to see if any files are messed up or missing. This many times will fix it. From there did you try to re-install the game? If not be sure to make a backup of your save game as steam does not have cloud saves for DS2.

Also, with RAM make sure that one of your memory slots isn't the actual cause. Try reseating your RAM as that many times will help.

I could go on and on, but I think you got the point. A bluescreen is basically when your computer encounters something it just can't understand or handle. So maybe when you are playing an error occurs and your computer just derps.

[𝗠𝗲𝗮𝘁🌞]

Also check your temps, could be caused by overheating as well. I recommend using Speccy (freeware)

[Chewy102]

Did you READ the BSOD? It tells you why the crash happened. Doesn't give a lot of time but it tells you what you need to know and what to look for in problems.

I had a BSOD while playing DkS2 that was a Windows Driver fail and happened on a hosts death. I had a memory BSOD while playing Minecraft (LOTS of mods). Then another long ago when my CPU overheated from the thermal paste going bad. Each time the BSOD told me why it crashed. We can't do much of anything to help without knowing why you crashed either.

[Raost]

I don't really see where to check it when the bsod comes up. It just gives me a bunch of number errors so I don't know where to look for that error.

[Raost]

It did say that one file was missing when i did the integrity thing though I doubt that would be the only case considering I crashed once when dying to the chariot, once when using a humman effigy, though there was no screen tearing either. The only info I have is from the event viewer and this is the bugcheck.

BugcheckCode 269
BugcheckParameter1 0x5
BugcheckParameter2 0x0
BugcheckParameter3 0x1202
BugcheckParameter4 0xfffffa8007d4f410
SleepInProgress false
PowerButtonTimestamp 0

[Chewy102]

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_bBIMntF1G8w/TU9zwp4TtmI/AAAAAAAAAGc/Mml73CumlYI/s1600/bsod.gif

Basic mock of a BSOD, a joke but good enough to see where things are. Right below where it says "Windows detected bla bla bla" it will tell you what caused the crash be it memory, heat, or what ever. From this you can know where to look. Without this everything is blind luck and a guessing game to wha the problem it. Might not be a problem and a really bad case of hic-ups.

[Raost]

seems it could be an issue with betterds3tools....

[Chewy102]

Can't help with that. I just use motionjoy and didn't know about that one.

[NukeJockey]

Originally posted by Raost:

Why would it be bad memory? I have never had this problem with other games. Only issue being dark souls 2. I've had diablo 3 crash on me once or twice when I close the game due to video driver error, though i recently updated my amd drivers so doubt that's the case. Might have to do with the game being new though and possibly amd's drivers not being up to date for dark souls 2 yet.

It could be anything. The thing with bad RAM is that because it is RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY it means that files will generally be stored on different, random sectors. So with ram that only has a few bad sectors, you may only trigger a BSOD/Crash 5% of the time, whereas the other 95% it acts fine. This is because a typical game/app will use far less of your system ram, meaning that your bad sectors have a much smaller chance of having anything stored on them.

Doing a full memtest run will ensure that every single sector of your ram is loaded and unloaded over and over so it will find errors if there are problems with your ram, whereas a game/program will run into those errors at a lower rate (unless youre maxing out your ram).

I guess my point is, even though its highly unlikely the problem is your ram (going by the fact it only happens in DS2), its still worth trying these types of things.

Anyway, as with all troubleshooting, its worth trying everything suggested (within reason). Especially if you're asking for help on here of all places.

If you want to find out what error you are receiving on the BSOD, you need to turn automatic restart off. (Right click computer > properties > advanced system settings > Settings (under startup and recovery) and untick "Automatically restart". Next time you get a BSOD, it will stay on the BSOD screen until you hit the power/restart button on your PC.


I always find a good place to start (with BSOD troubleshooting) is think back to when it started, did you change anything before it happened? Did you install new drivers or a new program, did you install new hardware etc.

[Raost]

Alright, for now i'm going to uncheck the automatic thing and wait till it happens again to see what the issue is. That way if it does freeze up on me again I can see what the problem is before going and unplugging and redoing everything. Thank you very much ^^. I'll post here if it happens again.