[For the love of sod.]

Ah, I misread that.  I thought you meant the Asus Xonar drivers should be installed as opposed to the UNi ones.  I don't really know how to uninstall these drivers and keep them from coming back.  Nvidia's keep trying to come back, as do RealTek's (which I believe are the stock ones, yeah?).  After installing UNi's again the Asus ones soon came back as well.  I don't know how to keep these things from happening.

As of now I've run Driver Fusion, manually just deleted any UNi files of which I know the location, and reïnstalled the Asus Xonar drivers.

Round the time this started to happen (can't remember did it happen first or second) in July, I remember Nvidia tried to update, and it completely disabled my graphics card and left me with the onboard graphics,and trying to update it was no use.  I don't remember my method but I somehow attempted to clear the files and install the GPU as if it were the initial installation, and then the update worked.  This was after trying many other suggestions from forums over a period of a couple of days.  Perhaps something during that process caused the Nvidia audio to be enabled when it hadn't been before.

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As you have the Xonar card fitted it makes sense to have that as your default audio device, all other audio devices should be disabled in Device Manager and their drivers uninstalled, the aim of disabling the devices is to prevent Windows looking for and possibly installing drivers for them.

[phillpower2]

As you have the Xonar card fitted it makes sense to have that as your default audio device, all other audio devices should be disabled in Device Manager and their drivers uninstalled, the aim of disabling the devices is to prevent Windows looking for and possibly installing drivers for them.

[For the love of sod.]

All right, so my situation at present is that the Xonar is enabled and no-thing else is, and I've tried to remove and keep removed all drivers but the Xonar ones, using Driver Fusion and the 'disable' function in Device Manager.  My concern was that the UNi drivers are not part of Driver Fusion's scan, so something may be left over, but what I can say is that I played Metal Gear for two hours with no trouble.  I even left the internet open and alt-tabbed a few times just to stress it a bit more and see what may happen.  In the end I just didn't feel like playing anymore and exited the game, so that's pretty good.  I've uninstalled and reïnstalled Reaper so now my bridge function's back, and I've been using that for a couple of hours on a very memory- and processor-intensive piece of music (loads of high-end VSTs and effects on almost twenty tracks), with no trouble to speak of.

I'm about to start up Metal Gear again to make sure it wasn't a fluke that I'd no trouble.

In your previous post you said something about my virtual memory settings.  I don't know what that means precisely.  I always thought Windows just took care of that automatically.  Seems easy enough to change it, but I don't know what to change it to.

Here's a new Speccy snapshot, just in case the one you were looking at was taken before I'd updated Windows as fully as it would do it.  Whenever I check for updates now it says there aren't any I can install and it's up to date.
http://speccy.pirifo...nOvQlPhl67bwons

 

EDIT:  Ran Metal Gear again for about 4-5 hours' time with no trouble of any sort.  For about an hour of that time I'd just left it on pause but it was still running so I'd say it counts.  And the internet was open.  Tough to say the problem's definitely fixed but it looks good.

EDIT 2:  The previous edit and post are from a day prior to this edit.  Metal Gear crashed within two minutes of starting it up, and I'd been using Reaper and Sibelius for a lot of the day.  I started the game again, and it blue-screened me within a minute.  I restarted my computer (which I am really happy no longer takes 10-15 minutes but more like 3-5) and started the game immediately.  It ran for three hours before I exited.  The only difference I can think of was this time I closed all other programmes, whereas before the blue screen I had Firefox open.  You'll see from the mini dump that once again it's my sound card.  I suppose I can try going back to RealTek for a test but I'm 90% sure the problem is the card and that I would have no problems otherwise.

 

EDIT 3:  Started the game again a couple of hours ago.  It blue-screened rather quickly, so I booted in safe mode and arranged my system towork with the RealTek on-board sound.  As you may expect, on rebooting and starting the game, sound was worse but the PC didn't crash.  Attachment is updated.

Attached Files

•  Minidump.zip   964.2KB   327 downloads

Edited by For the love of sod., 18 September 2015 - 08:43 AM.

[penelopepony]

I'm in darn near the EXACT SAME RODEO!!!  I use to NOT automatically allow Microsoft updates, beginning to that that wasn't so dumb!!!

[For the love of sod.]

Sorry to hear that.  I see you've your own topic made, which was a good move.  Blue/black screens can often seem similar but be caused and solved by different things.  Best of luck to you.

[phillpower2]

cmudaxp.sys which is related to your ASUS Xonar audio device was implicated in both of your latest crash dumps.

 

Two things for you to do are detailed below;

 

To see if this is a Windows issue download then run the All in One Repair from here, disregard the malware guidance but follow the other steps to the letter and in particular ensuring that you first create a new restore point and perform a proper Windows clean boot before running the repair, details for the clean boot here.

 

The virtual memory setting that I mentioned earlier, you have 16GB of Ram and so for best performance you should have a pagefile setting of 24GB, this = 1.5 Xs the amount of physical memory available, see steps below provided courtesy of Microsoft for how to manually configure an appropriate setting of 24000MB;

 

 

1.       Open System by clicking the Start button , right-clicking Computer, and then clicking Properties.

2.       In the left pane, click Advanced system settings.  If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

3.       On the Advanced tab, under Performance, click Settings.

4.       Click the Advanced tab, and then, under Virtual memory, click Change.

5.       Clear the Automatically manage paging file size for all drives check box.

6.       Under Drive [Volume Label], click the drive that contains the paging file you want to change.

7.       Click Custom size, type a new size in megabytes in the Initial size (MB) or Maximum size (MB) box, click Set, and then click OK.

Note

·         Increases in size usually don't require a restart for the changes to take effect, but if you decrease the size, you'll need to restart your computer.

[For the love of sod.]

Thanks.  I'll try that within the next day or two (really busy right now), but I thought I'd mention that the next few times I tried Metal Gear, with onboard sound, it crashed every single time within five minutes of play.  That really shocked and bewildered me.  I was sure my sound card was the trouble.  Note that no other programme but Metal Gear has crashed since updating Windows and disabling all other sound devices but the Xonar, and all blue screens since that time have been during Metal Gear as well.  Cheers.

[phillpower2]

Thanks for the update and no rush on my behalf as I am working all weekend myself 

 

I thought I'd mention that the next few times I tried Metal Gear, with onboard sound, it crashed every single time within five minutes of play

 

 

I was sure my sound card was the trouble.  Note that no other programme but Metal Gear has crashed since updating Windows and disabling all other sound devices but the Xonar,

 

 

 

As mentioned in my reply #18

 

cmudaxp.sys which is related to your ASUS Xonar audio device was implicated in both of your latest crash dumps.

 

 

it is entirely possible that there are two issues going on here, one with the audio drivers/devices and one with MG, one check that you can do to see if this is the case is to physically remove the Xonar card from the system and then thoroughly test with various games and videos using the MBs integrated audio chip, having also uninstalled the Xonar drivers and reinstalling the MBs own audio drivers of course.

 

Just mentioning this for clarity, is the onboard sound that you refer to the MBs own audio chip, reason that I ask is because an add on device such as the Xonar is exactly that and so not referred to as being onboard even when in use.

[For the love of sod.]

Thanks for all that, let's hope the Tweaking repair tool has done it.  Before running that tool I played Metal Gear for a few minutes (knowing all I'd get is a few minutes!) and it blue-screened, so here's the new dump file, which looks different to the others.

I've done the clean boot and run the Tweaking Repair tool as mentioned, and I've changed the size of the page file as well.  The repair tool took ages to run so maybe it's done what was needed. 

 

However, could you help me get everything back in order now?  A lot of my stuff doesn't want to run as it's been disabled or depends on a service that's been disabled.  I want to reënable only what I really need in hopes of speeding up my system or at least not slowing it further.  Firefox for instance wouldn't load any pages, but Chrome and IE loaded everything fine.  I enabled Mozilla's maintenance service, which doesn't exactly sound like the 'connect to internet' service, and it's still disabled according to msconfig (haven't restarted yet), but Firefox is now loading pages.

 

Did I need any of the now disabled tasks in the Scheduler?  Probably a couple, but probably not most of them.

 

Newest Speccy snapshot for your viewing pleasure:

http://speccy.pirifo...ekdQDZZABJGOknH

 

About to try Metal Gear.  I need to restart this thing anyway.  May as well do it in style.

Cheers.

 

 

EDIT:  Attachment is now updated with the latest crash information, which is the Xonar once again.  Weird thing is directly following the repairs it worked for several hours, and then I turned it off myself.  This time it worked for what I imagine is at least an hour, maybe even closer to two.

 

One thing I've suspected but don't remember enough to be sure, is what if it has something to do with starting the game after restarting the PC and not after coming back from sleep mode.  Sleep seems to mess up a few programmes, and come to think of it they all rely heavily on sound.  If I leave Reaper, Sibelius, or YouTube on and put the PC to sleep, they will have crashed on coming back.  However, they don't seem to have any trouble working if I start them after waking the PC from sleep.

Attached Files

•  Minidump.zip   1.01MB   305 downloads

Edited by For the love of sod., 21 September 2015 - 11:45 AM.

[phillpower2]

Best course of action is to remove the Xonar add on card as previously suggested;

 

it is entirely possible that there are two issues going on here, one with the audio drivers/devices and one with MG, one check that you can do to see if this is the case is to physically remove the Xonar card from the system and then thoroughly test with various games and videos using the MBs integrated audio chip, having also uninstalled the Xonar drivers and reinstalling the MBs own audio drivers off course.

 

[For the love of sod.]

Thanks, I thought as much.  I've already removed the Xonar and am now running Driver Fusion to remove the drivers.

 

Played Metal Gear again before this, though, assuming I'd get a half-hour and then either it would crash or blue-screen, and then I'd remove the Xonar.  Well, it froze and the whole computer stopped working and there was a black screen with the mouse pointer, and eventually I tried holding down the power button as the usual alt-tabbing and Task Manager attempts weren't working, nor the Start Menu button on my keyboard.  Held down the power button for nearly a minute and got no-thing.  Waited a bit instead of hitting the PSU switch in the back, and eventually it did power itself down, in kind of an abrupt way with the screen flashing white for a second.

 

This is what Driver Fusion says about my outdated drivers.  Should I update them?
http://prntscr.com/8jbnmf

My Xonar was covered in a thin layer of dust on the top side.  How can I remove that?  I do use compressed air regularly but for some reason the dust cakes on the Xonar in a way it doesn't with other components, and applying it directly just now only thinned the layer rather than blowing it all off.  What's your advice regarding dust?  A lot of the pieces in this machine don't seem to let go of dust so easy, though I've never seen it as bad as with the Xonar.

 

How will I store the Xonar?  Don't think I've an anti-static bag anymore.

 

Thanks very much.

EDIT:  Played for four hours with no problems after removing the Xonar.  Still not ure how to store the Xonar for now, or about the dust.  But we had a similar experience when I disabled int in favour of on-board sound last time.  I have not put the computer to sleep and woken it yet.  I did have a thought perhaps sleep could be the problem, if you recall.

Edited by For the love of sod., 22 September 2015 - 07:52 PM.

[phillpower2]

Please be careful when using Driver Fusion, I have not used it myself as I prefer DriverMax but I have read warnings about how a computer can become unusable if using Driver Fusion goes wrong, see article here and especially the Verdict;

 

Driver Fusion provides an easy way to thoroughly remove driver files and Registry keys. This can be an absolute disaster if it goes wrong, though, so use only with extreme care (and a full system backup)

 

 

My canned for DriverMax below;

 

Run DriverMax to see if any driver updates are suggested.

 

Please note that you are only allowed to download two drivers a day for free and be sure to uncheck the “install AVG toolbar” option box.

Remember to always create a new restore point before updating any drivers.

 

 

For cleaning internal hardware use canned compressed air to blow away the dust first, for cleaning anything stubborn use rubbing alcohol and Q tips

 

Store the Xonar in an appropriate size cardboard box well away from other electrical equipment, anything remotely magnetic and moisture.

 

Put the computer to sleep as part of the testing while the Xonar card is removed.

[For the love of sod.]

Thanks, I'll try DriverMax.  Without the Xonar, after waking from sleep I played Metal Gear and the game crashed after a half-hour or so, but not the PC.  I'll try again and see will it blue-screen.

Another thing I've just thought of is perhaps sleep is interfering with Steam, as Steam is the launcher.  I know there's been problems where if you don't disable the Steam overlay for Metal Gear the game locks up, which has happened to me and many others.  In this case it's been reported that Steam would become unresponsive, which was the case for me as well the one time it happened before I disabled the Steam overlay.

Now, when the game crashes without blue-screening, Steam has always been fine once I'd dsabled the overlay.  Still could be a problem I suppose.

[phillpower2]

DriverMax is worth running as a one off to see what it suggests but it is unlikely to help in this instance as looking at your update above Steam/MG are the issue, I cant particularly help you were Steam is concerned I`m afraid as I have rarely used it but one thing that I have seen in the past is conflicts with AV and Firewall software, see how it goes with your testing and get back to us.

[For the love of sod.]

No time to post the dump but the PC blue-screened once again within five minutes of play.  Seems that the pattern is Restart-->Play for as long as you want-->Quit-->Play as many times more as you want-->PC sleep-->PC wake-->Play game-->Game crashes-->Start game again-->PC blue-screens-->Repeat.

Will try restarting Steam before playing this time.