Windows 10 hard freeze, dxgkrnl.sys the problem

[smodtactical]

Lately I have been getting hard lock ups on my desktop. I had no real software or hardware changes but I did notice the crashing was only happening during GTA 5. The locks up would never have an actual BSOD or error message just a hard freeze requiring me to restart or the system would restart itself.

Now it started happening even without running GTA 5. My cpu temps were a bit high (98 was the max) with GTA 5 so I thought that was the issue, but when idling + my hyper 212 evo, I get 30 deg temps and still crashed.

I did a crash dump analysis and dxgkrnl.sys is the item being called out in the crash drump. However the gpu driver is not getting flagged as culprit but instead avast is:

ffffd000`214a1608  fffff801`47b8b914Unable to load image aswSP.sys, Win32 error 0n2
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for aswSP.sys
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for aswSP.sys
 aswSP+0x3b914
ffffd000`214a1c18  fffff801`47a91472Unable to load image aswSnx.sys, Win32 error 0n2
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for aswSnx.sys
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for aswSnx.sys
 aswSnx+0x81472

What I have done thus far

1. Ran memtest for 8 passes, it gave me 0 errors.
2. Disabled SLI 3 days ago (since doing this I have completely stopped crashing) but I didn't try to game yet
3. Ordered a Corsair H105, will install this weekend.
4. Uninstalled AVAST recently
5. Did a very clean safe mode reinstall of nvidia drivers

I will keep working on this issue, but I wanted to know if you guys have experienced anything like this? My googling of the issue didn't turn up a very common culprit.

Please help me out. Thanks so much.

 

[ob1]

Not that I am an expert, but that temp, 98, seems pretty high. I would start to by turning off all O/C and running some benches to test temps again. You may have a sketchy mate of your cooler to the CPU or possibly it is clogged up with dust or the fan is starting to fail or something. Turn off the O/C stuff and measure temps is where I would start.

 

[smodtactical]

Not that I am an expert, but that temp, 98, seems pretty high. I would start to by turning off all O/C and running some benches to test temps again. You may have a sketchy mate of your cooler to the CPU or possibly it is clogged up with dust or the fan is starting to fail or something. Turn off the O/C stuff and measure temps is where I would start.

Ya I definitely de-clocked and cleaned out dust in my hyper 212, that seemed to help a bit but eventually i would spike back up with GTA 5 only. All other games I max out at around 80-85.

I hope the H105 will handle the cooling a bit better of my cpu.

 

[Armenius]

Is your HSF oriented the correct way? It should be vertical with the fan mounted on the front side of the case and the brace frame against the heatsink. This way it blows cool air through the heatsink and out the exhaust fan in the back of the case.

Is the HSF mounted the correct way, using the retention bracket and tightening the screws in an x-pattern?

Did you apply an appropriate amount of thermal compound? A thin vertical line down the center of the heatspreader is recommended on the 4770k due to the location and orientation of the cores. Example from Arctic Silver.

How is the air flow in your case? In general you should have directional air flow with intake from the bottom-front of the case to exhaust out the top-rear.

 

[smodtactical]

Is your HSF oriented the correct way? It should be vertical with the fan mounted on the front side of the case and the brace frame against the heatsink. This way it blows cool air through the heatsink and out the exhaust fan in the back of the case.

Is the HSF mounted the correct way, using the retention bracket and tightening the screws in an x-pattern?

Did you apply an appropriate amount of thermal compound? A thin vertical line down the center of the heatspreader is recommended on the 4770k due to the location and orientation of the cores. Example from Arctic Silver.

How is the air flow in your case? In general you should have directional air flow with intake from the bottom-front of the case to exhaust out the top-rear.

I think I am in good shape with all of this. Especially given that my idle temps are in the low 30 degrees on the cpu. I also ran this 212 on my cpu for about 2 years before I started to run into these gta 5 overheating problems.

 

[smodtactical]

I fixed my system, I checked both gpus independently and they both worked and there was no crash on either with gaming. I checked the SLI bridge and 1 part of it was slightly loose, so i pushed it in and since then I played GTA 5, KF2 and FC2 with no crashing.

 

[Gman1979]

I fixed my system, I checked both gpus independently and they both worked and there was no crash on either with gaming. I checked the SLI bridge and 1 part of it was slightly loose, so i pushed it in and since then I played GTA 5, KF2 and FC2 with no crashing.

I feel your pain. I once had a random crashing issue that caused me to replace a card outright as nothing seemed to fix it and XFX "lost" my card registration when I tried to RMA it under their old Double Lifetime Warranty. A year later while seeing if there were any parts on the card I'd want to scavenge, I came to realize the problem with the card was a tiny, tiny, tiny strand of wire or something else conductive on one of the memory IC legs. It was really only visible under magnification and lighting it was so small. It was causing the problem because it was moving in even gentle breezes and would sometimes contact the IC leg next to it. Fixed it by running a piece of panty hose over the area.

Sometimes the smallest things will hit you where it hurts most lol