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BSOD When Playing Helldivers 2 On Steam

Anonymous
2024-03-13T01:06:26+00:00

I have relatively new Acer Nitro 5 gaming laptop. When attempting to play Helldivers 2 on Steam, my computer often blue screens when either starting or finishing a mission. It should be able to support the game just fine. My computer has an RTX 4060 GPU, 12th Gen Intel i7-12650H CPU, 16GB of RAM, and a 1 TB SSD.

The BSOD error it gives is always VIDEO_DXGKRNL_FATAL_ERROR (Error Code 113). Reliability summary indicates a Hardware Error 141. I suspect there's something wrong with my device that doesn't usually impact performance but gets triggered by the game. Though, I've never had this problem with any other game. Some people online have hypothesized that nProtect GameGuard, an infamous anti-cheat software the game uses, may be killing my Direct X. But I don't know how to verify whether this is the case, or if it is even true.

I've tried several things to no avail: restarting computer, setting game to minimum graphics setting, reinstalling the game, limiting FPS, checking game file integrity, ensuring the device is not overheating, forcing Direct X11 (instead of X12), reinstalling NVIDIA graphics drivers through device menu, running sfc scan, running dsim restore health, and running windows maintenance. Game still BSODs.

Notably, when running sfc, dsim, and game file integrity check it occasionally says some files got fixed. Not sure if those were because of the BSODs or whether they are related to the root cause. But fixing the files didn't seem to fix the game.

I've pasted event viewer output below. Feedback would be appreciated. Thank you for your time!

Source

Windows

Summary

Shut down unexpectedly

Date

‎3/‎12/‎2024 7:32 PM

Status

Not reported

Problem signature

Problem Event Name:	BlueScreen

Code:	113

Parameter 1:	19

Parameter 2:	2

Parameter 3:	10de

Parameter 4:	28a0

OS version:	10_0_22631

Service Pack:	0_0

Product:	768_1

OS Version:	10.0.22631.2.0.0.768.101

Locale ID:	1033

Source

Windows

Summary

Hardware error

Date

‎3/‎12/‎2024 7:32 PM

Status

Not reported

Description

A problem with your hardware caused Windows to stop working correctly.

Problem signature

Problem Event Name:	LiveKernelEvent

Code:	141

Parameter 1:	ffffd28b01fe2010

Parameter 2:	fffff807484832d0

Parameter 3:	0

Parameter 4:	0

OS version:	10_0_22631

Service Pack:	0_0

Product:	768_1

OS Version:	10.0.22631.2.0.0.768.101

Locale ID:	1033
Windows for home | Windows 11 | Gaming

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-03-17T11:12:25+00:00
    • If you are only having problems with this one game your gpu is not the likely source of the problem.

    You have signed up to the Playstation Network as the game requires, yes ? (for PC gaming? Image )

    • Also... You can't change the gpu to another PCIe slot on a laptop. You would be lucky to even be able to remove it as

    they are generally soldered in.

    • Helldivers 2 is a recent release already with 52,000+ negative reviews (out of over 300,000... Popular game eh!) on Steam,

    and it looks like the anti-cheat is a common issue.

    The dumps point to watchdog.sys (a Windows driver) which can point to a security violation, and that may be coming from

    the games anti-cheat.

    If there is a fix for your particular problem atm I reckon a dedicated Helldivers 2 forum would be the best place to find it.

    .

    4 people found this answer helpful.
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  2. Anonymous
    2024-04-08T08:15:39+00:00

    I had a similar problem, I found a temporary solution that allows me to play without BSODs so far.
    Go to Nvidia GeForce Experience app, and under drivers install "Studio drivers" not the ones for gaming.
    The game worked fine for me and I just sacrificed few fps.

    Anyway, thats a 10 minute work around worthy the test.

    Good Luck

    1 person found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2024-03-18T19:19:00+00:00

    I just recently fixed the problem. NVIDIA customer support suggested changing some settings for the game in the NVIDIA Control Panel. This included enabling the High-Performance mode. Their recommendations prevented BSOD errors, but the game was still crashing. It was a step in the right direction though! I was able to finally resolve the problem by further experimenting with the NVIDIA Control Panel settings. The following combination of options seems to work for me:

    • Triple buffering - Off
    • Threaded optimization - Off
    • Vertical Sync – Off
    • Maximum Frames /s – 60

    Not sure why these settings were causing the game to BSOD me, but I'm glad I was able to finally resolve it. Thank you for your help along the way! :)

    1 person found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  4. Anonymous
    2024-03-13T10:53:05+00:00

    Hi Bernard, Thank you for the swift reply. I appreciate the clear instructions.

    I've uploaded my minidump files to Microsoft OneDrive. You should be able to access them through the link below. All of them are from the right time frame, so I assume they are also all related to my problem. Please let me know you have trouble accessing them.

    https://1drv.ms/f/c/0d5ba2c38b3577ed/Egmr3GM_vmxIs-c6WZCOhPsBa2KBgWatx-ClN2IAsDnDsw?e=uGGGxo

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  5. Lester Bernard Reyes 77,810 Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2024-03-13T05:15:23+00:00

    Hi Jedediah, thanks for reaching out. My name is Bernard a Windows fan like you. I'll be happy to help you out today.

    I understand the issue you have, there is nothing to worry I am here to help, based on the logs and initial errors you get, it seems that there is a display driver error on the PC, in addition, we need to further check what is causing the issue, can you please check if you have minidump files on the PC:

    Press Windows key + E (To open File Explorer)

    Click "This PC" > then follow the file path:

    C:\Windows\Minidump

    Copy the Minidump files and save them to another location like Desktop or Documents.

    Then please upload it to Cloud storage like OneDrive or any cloud storage you are using and please share the shareable link here.

    To upload and share the link using One Drive:

    Go to this link: https://onedrive.live.com/ then upload the file.

    Then provide the shareable link by following the steps from this link: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/shar...

    Let me know how it goes and I hope that helps.

    Bernard

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