Blue Screen on Lenovo ThinkPad R500, Windows Vista

[jkacer]

I installed KSP on a ThinkPad R500 laptop with Windows Vista SP2 32bit and every time I run the game, I get a Blue Screen of Death after a few seconds. The OS is fully updated via Windows Update. KSP version is 0.25.0.642. It is a fresh system, newly installed and updated, with KSP as the only application installed.

The Blue Screen reports error 0x00000116 in module igdkmd32.sys, which is Intel's graphic card driver. The driver is also updated to the latest version available: 8.15.10.2869. The Blue Screen occurs only when playing KSP, it never occurred before and it never occurs when not playing KSP. The system crashes even if the player is not actually doing anything, it's enough to start the game (a mission or training).

Do you have an idea what I could do in order to eliminate the crashes?

Has anybody encountered the same issue too?

I can provide a screenshot of the Blue Screen (made with a phone) and the KSP log, if it helps.

Thank you for any suggestions!

JKacer

[sal_vager]

Hi jkacer, your KSP.log and output_log.txt may help, see the stickies for info on these.

A google search for the stop error 0x00000116 gives me these two pages from Microsoft (1) (2)

They mention AMD and Nvidia graphics drivers, and your failing module is also a graphics driver but in this case for Intel.

It is probably a good idea to fully uninstall your current driver, reboot, install the latest driver and reboot again, that is the best way to ensure the driver installs properly with no traces of old drivers.

If the problem persists please let us know

[jkacer]

Hello Sal Vager and thank you for your reply.

I have attached the log files here:

http://www./view/7hmt612a6me8qiz/buildID.txt

http://www./download/34kzc4jbzf3faon/KSP.log

http://www./view/rutmvka2l5crrlr/output_log.txt

I could not see anything interesting, except messages about graphics device reset in output_log.txt.

Thanks for the links, I had already found them before I made a post to this forum. Unfortunately I cannot upgrade my graphics - I already have the latest available version.

Any help would be highly appreciated :-)

Best Regards,

JKacer

- - - Updated - - -

I forgot to post the screenshot of the BSOD. Here it is: http://www./view/lz8erseqy991tnn/BlueScreen-Kerbal.jpg

Sorry for the poor quality :-)

[sal_vager]

Okay I'm not sure if this is causing the blue screen, it really shouldn't, bluescreens are usually indicative of deeper problems, but the output_log.txt does contain this at the end:

HandleD3DDeviceLost
  HandleD3DDeviceLost: needs reset, doing it
FullResetD3DDevice
ResetD3DDevice
dev->Reset
D3Dwindow device not lost anymore
HandleD3DDeviceLost
  HandleD3DDeviceLost: needs reset, doing it
FullResetD3DDevice
ResetD3DDevice
dev->Reset

This suggests that KSP was minimised during load, this causes the game to lose lock on the graphics card and it can't get it back, if this is what's happening in this case then running in windowed mode can avoid it or allowing KSP to fully load without minimising it or switching to another application with alt+tab.

Alt+Enter can be used to safely switch KSP to windowed mode while it loads, the game does not expect to have exclusive lock on the card that way so shouldn't crash.

If this doesn't work then maybe an older driver will fix the problem.

[jkacer]

Hi Sal, thank you for the hint!

I'll try again, making sure the KSP window is 100% time the active window.

I'll report my findings here.

Have a nice day,

JKacer

[jkacer]

Hi Sal!

I tried again, keeping KSP window focused all the time. This time, it really didn't crash with a BSOD -- good news :-)

However, very often when a new scene needs to be loaded, the window just goes all black and the program becomes irresponsive. I must finally kill it after a few minutes of waiting.

I think I will wait for a newer version; this problem seems to have no solution on this hardware.

Thank you very much for your support!

JKacer

[sal_vager]

Wish I knew what could help you jkacer, you really should not be getting stop errors at all, have you tried installing a different driver for the graphics card?

[jkacer]

I have only tried two different version of Intel's driver: the one supplied with the laptop by Lenovo and the newest one available at Intel's site. There seems to be no difference. And I don't think that downgrading to an older version will help. The version originally supplied by Lenovo is from 2008.

I will check periodically for new versions of KPS, maybe they will solve the issue in the future.

Thank you for your help, Sal! JKacer

[longbyte1]

Bug check 0x116 is a TDR timeout. Usually WDDM can recover/restart the device, but I suspect that your driver does not support WDDM.

If you could post a minidump I might be able to analyze it with WinDbg. If not, at least could you tell me the parameters that came with the error?

[Padishar]

Given that this is on a 32bit version of Windows, I suspect the process could be running out of address space and the graphics driver (most Intel graphics share the main memory with the card) isn't coping with it very well. How much actual RAM does the machine have?

The first thing to try is to edit the settings.cfg and look for the line that says "TEXTURE_QUALITY =" and change the number at the end to a higher value. Try 3 at first (this should give you 1/8th res textures) and if this lets you run the game then you can try adjusting upwards a bit it in the settings screen in game.

[longbyte1]

Given that this is on a 32bit version of Windows, I suspect the process could be running out of address space and the graphics driver (most Intel graphics share the main memory with the card) isn't coping with it very well. How much actual RAM does the machine have?

The first thing to try is to edit the settings.cfg and look for the line that says "TEXTURE_QUALITY =" and change the number at the end to a higher value. Try 3 at first (this should give you 1/8th res textures) and if this lets you run the game then you can try adjusting upwards a bit it in the settings screen in game.

Do integrated graphics "cards" even contain dedicated RAM? I don't think so. Which could just mean that jkacer is running out of RAM but is getting another error for it.

Anyway, I'll keep gathering information. Open regedit and browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers and tell me all of the keys you see in there.

[jkacer]

Hello guys and thank you for you support!

@longbyte1: Here are the parameters I copied from the Blue Screen:

STOP 0x00000116

0x84CA5268

0x8D81BFB0

0x00000000

0x0000000D

igdkmd32.sys - That's Intel graphic card driver

address 8D81BFB0

base 8D805000

Unfortunately I don't have the dump file with me right now as I'm using a different computer. When I get it from the original computer, I'll post it.

@Padishar: The machine has 4GB physical RAM, Windows can see 3.5 GB. Kerbal was the only application running there at that moment.

Thank you for the with the configuration files, I'll try it asap and post the results here.

Big thanks to both of you!

JKacer

[jkacer]

Hi longbyte1!

Finally I uploaded the dump files to my MediaFire, here they are:

http://www./download/jk0859wcp49ybc5/Mini122714-01.dmp

http://www./download/sjclodaz0t63y75/Mini010415-01.dmp

Concerning the system registry, here is the info:

Folder GraphicsDrivers:

DxgKrnlVersion - REG_DWORD - 0x00001053

UseXPModel - REG_DWORD - 0x00000000

Folder GraphicsDrivers\DCI:

Timeout - REG_DWORD - 0x00000007

Folder GraphicsDrivers\Scheduler:

EnablePreemption - REG_DWORD - 0x00000001

Folder GraphicsDrivers\UseNewKey:

(empty)

It would be great if you could have a look at the dumps and the settings. Thank you!

JKacer

- - - Updated - - -

Hi Padishar!

It seems that your hint solved the problem! I made the configuration change you proposed and the game is running just fine! The kids have been playing it for about an hour and so far no crash :-)

Thank you very much for your help!

Anyway, I would appreciate if longbyte1 could do the analysis of dump files, maybe it will help the developers to avoid some potential errors.

JKacer

[longbyte1]

I have been looking around and I can probably narrow it down to a few things:

• Your drivers aren't up-to-date enough (why is the driver still dated 2012?)
  
• Norton is screwing everything up again (NisDrvWFP.sys Wed Jul 09 19:15:24 2014)
  
• Hardware/mobo/power supply problem (not enough watts being pumped)
  

EDIT: welp, it seems that you have already solved the problem. So much for using WinDbg..

Edited January 24, 2015 by longbyte1

[jkacer]

Hi longbyte1!

Thank you for analysing it.

The driver is really from 2012. It is version 8.15.10.2869 from 2012-10-04. This was the newest version I was able to look up at Lenovo site through the links in the start menu. If I look directly at http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/products/laptops-and-netbooks/thinkpad-r-series-laptops/thinkpad-r500/?tabName=Downloads they have something even slightly older (March 2012).

Norton/Symantec Security was really installed there initially -- the system was installed from the rescue partition on the hard disk. But it was uninstalled immediately and replaced by MS Security Essentials. So it seems that the uninstall process is not perfect and leaves something in the system.

Concerning power supply, the laptop is running on external power 99% of time, so I wouldn't say this was the problem.

Anyway, the problem seems to be solved by configuration now, so we needn't go into the details :-)

Thank you very much once again!

Best Regards,

JKacer