Kernel Security check failure

[Sean Pwnery]

I've always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with ATS - it seems like just when I get my combination of mods working just the way I like, a small update or three will break the game immensely and I walk away from it for months, sometimes a year or so. I recently updated the game again, and picked up all of the latest DLC's - added C2C, Promods, Canamania (which seems broken annoyingly), Alaska NTTF, the Aleutians, and even tried throwing in Dalton highway too. All of it seemed to jive well together - though I keep getting CTD's near Tacoma, WA ... a problem I had a long time ago and never solved either.

The latest came Sunday. I did *nothing* to the game, no more changes - I was pretty content with the way things were and just wanted to drive down from Prudhoe Bay to just about anywhere. The game had other plans. Every time I right-click my steam icon to fire up ATS now, it immediately BSOD's with the error "Kernel Security Check Failure" then reboots my machine. This is a i9 9900kf, with an Asus ROG Strix Mobo, 64gb of DDR4/3200, and a Gigabyte RTX4060. It all worked fine until Sunday. I ran a ram diagnostic and after several hours it came up with no faults found. I've re-verified the game files 4 time so far with no issues found or no need for it to download files again. Nvidia drivers are up to date, workshop mods continue to download and update. I'm kind-of at my wits end here.

...any ideas?

PS - one other thing to note - everything else works fine - every other game I have works. I just spent the last 4 hours in The Long Dark with zero issues.

[ThunderDownUnder]

Dalton highway mod is stand alone so I don't know how you'd be combining that with other map mods?

[dafm6ets]

have you tried sfc/scannow in command prompt as admin?

[Devil]

This issue is usually caused by corrupted system files, but it could also be due to faulty hardware or outdated drivers.

Check for Windows updates, Windows store updates, optional updates, check for BIOS updates and MoBo driver updates, sfc /scannow as said before.

[Wolfgang]

BSODs are caused by serious hardware and/or OS issues, not the game. Look up the stop code with a search engine of your choice.

Btw. updates don't break the game, your mods are.

[mojo_musica]

Like #Wolfgang said, a BSOD isn't the game, it's a common error in Windows operating systems that occurs when the kernel has trouble accessing or managing system resources. This error can be caused by a variety of issues, including:
Outdated or incompatible drivers
Corrupted system files
Faulty hardware
Malware infections
Damaged registry files
Faulty Windows updates

You need to carefully check your Windows install and drivers, and look in the Windows Event Viewer for any Windows errors recorded. Hardware needs to be checked too.

[ttower]

Originally posted by mojo_musica:

Like #Wolfgang said, a BSOD isn't the game, it's a common error in Windows operating systems that occurs when the kernel has trouble accessing or managing system resources. This error can be caused by a variety of issues, including:
Outdated or incompatible drivers
Corrupted system files
Faulty hardware
Malware infections
Damaged registry files
Faulty Windows updates

You need to carefully check your Windows install and drivers, and look in the Windows Event Viewer for any Windows errors recorded. Hardware needs to be checked too.

Originally posted by Wolfgang:

BSODs are caused by serious hardware and/or OS issues, not the game. Look up the stop code with a search engine of your choice.

Btw. updates don't break the game, your mods are.

As both of them said, a BSOD is almost certainly not the fault of the game, something else it wrong with the computer, either hardware or software. Why it is happening only when you launch ATS may be that booting ATS is attempting to use something about your computer that other games are not. A certain portion of the system files, or who knows what else. Tracking down what that BSOD stopcode actually points to should help figure it out.

[Sean Pwnery]

I appreciate the effort guys, but this isn't my first IT-issue. I came here hoping someone may have run into something similar might suggest something recently changed and they're having the same issue.

I'll try to address this a little more clearly - my BSOD does not include a stop-code, it literally says what I wrote in my original post, "Kernel_Security_Check_Failure" in all caps. There's no typical 0x0000000 kind of code on the screen at all.

I did run the memory diagnostic which took 2 hours and it found no errors.

I will agree that running the game is possibly making it attempt to access something that causes this error - I originally suspected a memory address - but the memory passed. As I said before, no other game, app, streaming software, OBS, etc apparently accesses whatever is causing this issue.

I'm aware 9900KF processors have a notorious reputation for running extremely hot all the time - as mine does. If my CPU was failing, I would have suspected errors everywhere, not just one single game, but I suppose stranger things can happen.

As of right now, my game is basically bricked - which is a shame because I was really enjoying it lately, as I often do when I come back to it - otherwise I wouldn't be buying up all the DLC's I missed between my lapses in play. The only thing left for me to do, which is something I've considered for a while now is replacing all my ram, and possibly doing a fresh install of my OS ... even though, I'm only having this issue - literally with this one game. I do plenty of reviews of hardware, software, games, general mechanic work, and an assortment of other processor intensive streams, video edits, etc - and I've been in IT since 1996. Everything suggested, while valid points - I just can't see applying to this particular situation... at least not currently. Time will tell.

Again, thank you guys for responding, but a lot of tests, backlogging, and frustration led me to making my post in the first place - can't win 'em all I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[ttower]

Just for the sake of testing, try running a high single-core load, benchmark or stresstest. This game will essentially only use one core, while most other games and programs will use multiple at this point. Im doubtful it would show anything, but who knows. Kernel Security Check Failure does sound more like corrupt files though, but at a much deeper level than I believe ATS goes. AFAIK, nothing ATS does is installed on the Kernal level, unlike some online game Anti-Cheats.

[dafm6ets]

Originally posted by Sean Pwnery:

I appreciate the effort guys, but this isn't my first IT-issue. I came here hoping someone may have run into something similar might suggest something recently changed and they're having the same issue.

I'll try to address this a little more clearly - my BSOD does not include a stop-code, it literally says what I wrote in my original post, "Kernel_Security_Check_Failure" in all caps. There's no typical 0x0000000 kind of code on the screen at all.

I did run the memory diagnostic which took 2 hours and it found no errors.

I will agree that running the game is possibly making it attempt to access something that causes this error - I originally suspected a memory address - but the memory passed. As I said before, no other game, app, streaming software, OBS, etc apparently accesses whatever is causing this issue.

I'm aware 9900KF processors have a notorious reputation for running extremely hot all the time - as mine does. If my CPU was failing, I would have suspected errors everywhere, not just one single game, but I suppose stranger things can happen.

As of right now, my game is basically bricked - which is a shame because I was really enjoying it lately, as I often do when I come back to it - otherwise I wouldn't be buying up all the DLC's I missed between my lapses in play. The only thing left for me to do, which is something I've considered for a while now is replacing all my ram, and possibly doing a fresh install of my OS ... even though, I'm only having this issue - literally with this one game. I do plenty of reviews of hardware, software, games, general mechanic work, and an assortment of other processor intensive streams, video edits, etc - and I've been in IT since 1996. Everything suggested, while valid points - I just can't see applying to this particular situation... at least not currently. Time will tell.

Again, thank you guys for responding, but a lot of tests, backlogging, and frustration led me to making my post in the first place - can't win 'em all I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

good luck

[Sean Pwnery]

Update : So what eventually happened was I would get a different blue-screen message each time. Sometimes it'd be the Kernel exception, sometimes it would be a Kmode exception, sometimes it wouldn't say anything. After wiping out the Nvidia driver package and starting over, I got a totally new blue-screen but this time... THIS TIME, it gave me a file name to look into.

Turns out - for some bizarre reason, I had a program that I used to use that backed up photos and videos from my phone to my computer - and somehow that program's driver file would cause ONLY ATS to crash and BSOD.

Talk about odd. Works now btw. I would have never guessed a completely different program that's been there for months suddenly interfering, but stranger things have happened I suppose.