Solved(?) my BSOD Crashes

[DeadJohn]

(This is more of a blog than a request for help, and my problem wasn't limited to KSP, so it's off-topic and goes to The Lounge.)

Two weeks ago I started getting BSOD crashes while playing KSP in Windows 10. Uh oh! It's been a long time since I saw one of those. The crash circumstances were weird, often happening while clicking parts in VAB. It wasn't always the same part triggering the crash. Sometimes it would happen on a left click to attach or move a part, other times a right click to see part info.

KSP sometimes didn't want to reload after the bluescreen. It was getting stuck loading Breaking Ground files. Both times I deleted my Breaking Ground part folder and copied it from a backup. Odd. I think KSP writes part thumbnails while in VAB and I guess the part clicked as the crash happened got corrupted. The most recent mod I added was Kerbal Wind Tunnel, and that does some heavy calculations, so I backed that out. Problems continued. The problem seemed bigger than just KSP.

Memory, CPU, etc. diagnostics didn't find any errors. Then I got lucky: a BSOD while doing some lightweight stuff in another app without KSP loaded. Armed with evidence that multiple apps could trigger crash, and my hardware seemed reasonably good (diagnostics can miss things), my next place to look was recent Windows patches.

I rolled back the 2 most recent Windows patches. I played KSP for a while but got another BSOD within an hour. Damn! Would I have to restore my entire system from backup!?

Before restoring, since I had nothing else to lose, I tried to add even more Windows patches, including an optional 21H2 update that didn't offer anything I cared about. It looks like that may have fixed my problem. KSP and everything else has been stable for around 10 hours, instead of BSODing within an hour.

Along the way I also slowed my system RAM from DDR 1600 to DDR 1333 just in case my 6 year old RAM is dying. If I get no more BSOD's I'll speed it back to 1600 and see what happens.

This whole experience was surprisingly fun assuming that things stay stable and my 10 hours of freedom from BSOD hell continues:

• It's nice to verify I still remember how to diagnose problems after many years since my last serious PC problem.
• I told my wife about things after I got the problem fixed. She asked why I didn't tell her about the problem earlier. "I wanted a solution, not sympathy" got a good laugh from both of us ... she's used to me being an a-hole.
• I'm starting to think about building a new PC. It's time.

Edited May 11, 2022 by DeadJohn

[Second Hand Rocket Science]

Looking forward to seeing what happens when you put the old ram back in. Plus, building a new PC will be a massive topic of interest for this forum! Best of luck!

[DeadJohn]

1 hour ago, Second Hand Rocket Science said:

Looking forward to seeing what happens when you put the old ram back in. Plus, building a new PC will be a massive topic of interest for this forum! Best of luck!

It's still the same RAM with the BIOS settings changed from 1600 to 1333.