APPCRASH ntdll.dll on Steam games only

[DigaumSpider]

So, this annoying error started happening a few days ago, when I bought with Space Hulk Ascension on the Steam Summer Sale. I'd get, randomly, an error that would crash me to desktop and the "appcrash" message displayed would only inform me this:

Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: game.exe
Application Version: 4.5.5.37569
Application Timestamp: 5434f29e
Fault Module Name: ntdll.dll
Fault Module Version: 6.1.7600.16695
Fault Module Timestamp: 4cc7ab86
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 00022262
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1046
Additional Info 1: 6eb3
Additional Info 2: 6eb3bc36cc527d7afc5a645dd2aa4db9
Additional Info 3: 51fa
Additional Info 4: 51fa06ed9dde7cd55822da46e13f9526

My specs are: Windows 7 64, 16GB RAM, i5 3550, VGA: NVIDIA GTX 770 4GB VRAM, 128GB SSD as the SO and the games installed on a 1TB Western Digital Black HD.
I have a triple monitor setup, but I always run games in fullscreen, leaving the other monitors to do some "out of game research" on a few games, but never even got to alt tab from these games I'm mentioning now.
I'm always monitoring the temperatures and usage on my VGA and CPU, as well as RAM. My VGA never went above 60Celsius with the mentioned games, and the RAM usage never went above 51%. The CPU is also never going above 53Celsius with an average use of the cores.

Initially I thought this was a problem with the Space Hulk Ascension game itself, so I posted in their forums. Obviously, I tried all the recommended steps and nothing came out of it. I was able to play the game, albeit always having to save on pretty much every few moves, because I never knew when the next crash would come. Sometimes I would play for an hour or even more without getting the error. Some other times, I'd get the error every 5-15 minutes.

Yesterday I bought the Pillars of Eternity game, again, using Steam. Installed, started playing the game and 15 minutes later, what do you know?! I got the same error!
Started the game again, played for 30 minutes and the error again. Started the game, 10 minutes and the error again. Rinse and repeat.

So I opened a game I bought yesterday as well through another DRM platform (which I really don't like) and started playing. This game is much more taxing on the hardware than the other 2 games, but even so, my RAM was just fine and the temps were also at normal numbers. I've played that game for an hour or so and didn't get any errors whatsoever, so that leaves me with Steam being the only common between the 2 games that were presenting that error mentioned. I've ran the Steam Integrity check on both games and even uninstalled and reinstalled 1 of them twice (the Space Hulk) before finding out that the other game was presenting the same error.

I've ran memtest86+ RAM test for 8 hours and 4 tests passed flawlessly, I've ran checkdisk on both disks and no errors were found, my SSD life is at 96%, according to an SSD Life tool I used.
I've uninstalled the VGA driver and installed an older version (from 2 months ago) to test, and the same thing happened. I've disabled the sound devices on the device manager to see if that was causing the issue, but the same problem kept coming back.

All of this left me thinking that it might be a Steam related problem, so I disabled Steam Overlay on both games, but to no avail.

Now, has anyone here experienced such a thing? What do you recommend my course of action to be? My internet connection is not very good and I'd like to try everything possible, before having to remove the dozens of games I have installed and installing them again, so reinstalling Steam should be a last resort. Or, if I'm to reinstall Steam, I'd like to know of a way to completelly backup all of the games I have installed, along with savegames and such.

Anyway, I know it's a long post, but I wanted to make it very clear that I've tried all of the "cookie cutter" suggestions before posting.
I'll appreciate any and all info on this matter.

Thank you very much

[Bad 💀 Motha]

http://steamcommunity.com/app/317620/discussions

[DigaumSpider]

Автор сообщения: Bad-Motha

http://steamcommunity.com/app/317620/discussions

Thank you very much, but since this problem is not only related to the Space Hulk, but it seems to be related to Steam, as the game Pillars of Eternity (this one is not Space Hulk) is presenting the very same error, but even more frequently.

When I play other non-steam games (Wildstar, Dragon Age Inquisition, Eve Online), the crash simply doesn't happen.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Try opt into Steam Beta from Client > Settings > Account and see if the Beta version fixes that.

I had the same issues u are experiencing about a month ago with GTAV (and a few other games through Steam) since I did a reformat and I realized I wasn't using Steam Beta on that system. Updating to that addressed the issues for me.

[DigaumSpider]

Автор сообщения: Bad-Motha

Try opt into Steam Beta from Client > Settings > Account and see if the Beta version fixes that.

I had the same issues u are experiencing about a month ago with GTAV (and a few other games through Steam) since I did a reformat and I realized I wasn't using Steam Beta on that system. Updating to that addressed the issues for me.

Thank you very much for the suggestion. I tried doing that. Opted into beta, closed steam, reopened, Steam updated itself to Beta, then I tried running the game. Same error.
What is extremelly odd to me is that other, more taxing games, are running without flaws.
I've went the extra mile, uninstalled Steam (thus losing all the games I had installed), completelly deleted the leftover folder from Steam and downloaded the latest version.
Installed Steam, redownloaded Pillars of Eternity and Space Hulk. Tested Pillars of Eternity, the game that has the biggest chance of causing that error, and 5 mins into the game, CRASH, the same error!

I am now going to create a ghost image from my current Windows install and try to repair it, to see if that's related to some system DLL that's screwed up.
That's annoying, to say the least...

Thanks again for the inputs and as usual, any other ideas or tips are greatly appreciated!

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Anytime u want to "redo / refresh" Steam Client; u just delete the files in the Steam folder, EXCEPT for the following:

Steam.exe (application)
SteamApps (folder)
UserData (folder)
SSFN#### (file)

Then to make steam get the latest files (non beta, as that status is now cleared out) u right click Steam.exe and click Run As Admin. All your games are still under Steamapps folder.


Overall sounds to me like either an OS issue, overheating issue, or you have background apps that are getting in the way, like antivirus app for example. Help to pause av protection while gaming. Otherwise add an exception rule to your av, such as the whole Steam folder.

[DigaumSpider]

Автор сообщения: Bad-Motha

Anytime u want to "redo / refresh" Steam Client; u just delete the files in the Steam folder, EXCEPT for the following:

Steam.exe (application)
SteamApps (folder)
UserData (folder)
SSFN#### (file)

Then to make steam get the latest files (non beta, as that status is now cleared out) u right click Steam.exe and click Run As Admin. All your games are still under Steamapps folder.


Overall sounds to me like either an OS issue, overheating issue, or you have background apps that are getting in the way, like antivirus app for example. Help to pause av protection while gaming. Otherwise add an exception rule to your av, such as the whole Steam folder.

Thanks a lot!!
After a LOT of bashing through and even after repairing the OS (using the "upgrade" function on the DVD, which pretty much does a full reinstall keeping all your programs intact), thinking that was the cause, the issue still remained.
Then, after a lot more of trial and error to find the culprit, I was able to finally get to the root of the problem!

- Riva Tuner

Yes, I installed that a long while ago to keep an eye on my VGA temps (I never used the software to overclock my VGAs, mind you, just temp monitoring) and save logs, but it turns out that it was causing the error with two of my steam games (OFTEN - Pillars of Eternity, less often - Space Hulk Ascension). I don't know exactly if it's because it keeps running and, even with the option to disable the overlay, it keeps trying to load the riva tuner overlay on top of the games, or whatever.
I disabled Riva Tuner and the games ran flawlessly for hours. It seems like the issue is finally resolved for good!

So, after doing tons of reinstalls and security patches, thinking that this was an OS issue, turns out I was really aiming at the wrong target.


Thanks to everyone who tried to help and thanks a lot for all the tips!