Games Crashing To Desktop

Communities Gaming
1

So I've been having an issue over the past few weeks with games crashing. My screen flickers to black, then it crashes to the desktop. My in-game mouse icon is still active, and I can't click on anything. I go to the task manager, and the game is not responding, so i have to force close it. This happens in Starcraft 2 and Dayz SA for sure. Those have been when I've been playing lately, I know I've had issues in the past with other games crashing, but not quite the same. Any ideas?

My Specs:

OS: Windows 7 

CPU FX-8350

RAM: 16 GB of G. Skill Sniper (windows memory test detected no problems)

GPU: Gigabyte 280X (Driver: AMD Catalyst 14.9)

I've had issues with this card, where when i start up some games (titanfall for example) the screen is rapidly shaking up and down. Doesn't happen every time I boot up the game.

I have two monitors. The one I play the game on is hooked up via DVI, the second is HDMI. Same monitors.

I've ran the windows memory diagnostic tool with no errors found. I ran memtest for an hour with no errors found.

No error message is ever produced when it crashes, however:

Event viewer says: "Display driver amdkmdap stopped responding and has successfully recovered."

Followed by: "The program SC2.exe version 2.1.6.32540 stopped interacting with Windows and was closed. To see if more information about the problem is available, check the problem history in the Action Center control panel.
Process ID: 12a4
Start Time: 01cffe1442bdf0c2
Termination Time: 81
Application Path: E:\Video Games\StarCraft II\Versions\Base32283\SC2.exe
Report Id: 
"

I'm not sure what to make of this: http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/737-27116RadeonSeries-ATIKMDAGhasstoppedrespondingerrormessages.aspx

I understand that windows is not detecting a response from my GPU... but I don't really understand why, or which one the problem lies in.

Any ideas? Even just a guess at what it more likely is. Is it more likely my GPU than my CPU or ram?

I updated my BIOS a few days ago and have not had the same crash yet... but I've kind of been avoiding those games (even though I don't think it's specific to the games). Diablo 3 didn't crash in a couple hours of playing. Magicka crashed twice but not the same (that game is a buggy mess). And my computer has just frozen twice in the last week. Mouse and keyboard wont respond, no error message.

The highest my GPU temps get while gaming is 65C, and my CPU ~50C.

2

Have you changed your page file size in Windows ? If so try setting it back to Auto. I had a similar problem once because I had my page file set custom 256mb - 2048mb and it was way to small. Was causing lots of my games to randomly crash with black screens and kick me back into Windows. 

3

It looks like the display driver is causing this problem (at least Event viewer says so).

Have you overclocked the GPU? If so set it back to default sittings, if not try to lower the Clocks a bit, maybe the GPU is instable.

I don't think it's the pagefile cause mine is set to 512MB (fixed) and i got no issues whatsoever.

4

Thanks for the responses. I honestly know nothing about page file. Mine is at 16283MB.

My card has a factory overclock of 1100 MHz. I actually underclocked it earlier today after getting numerous crashes in a row. My card also has a switch on it which i switched off from the factory default and I underclocked it to 1000 MHz and wiped my drivers clean again and installed. So far I've only had 1 crash since changing that, and it was different. It just completely closed everything out (not worried about that) This is in 9 hours of dragon age inquisition. 

 

I'm hoping this solved it.

 

I do still get from time to time the issue where my screeen is rapidly flickering up and a down about a centimeter in the main menus/load screens, making it difficult to read any text on screen. Also the second monitor turns dark and this point (while in game) and doesn't display anything. 

5

Im wondering if the flickering isn't just a loose connection to the monitor, it shouldn't happen with a digital signal of course but....maybe? Also have you tried disconnecting your second monitor while gaming?

6

Hmm I have not tried that. I've about trying with just one monitor using HMDI or DVI and seeing if the issue happens. It's just pretty easy to fix by saving, quitting out and reloading the game, so I have not done too much digging on this issue.