Metro Exodus - my system crashed once after 21 hours during exiting to main menu.

Monitor:AORUS AD27QD
Cpu: i7-9900K stock 4.7 with Noctua NH-D15
Gpu: Rtx 2080 Ti Aorus Xtreme Waterforce ( stock no oc,temps max 63C on load )
Ram: 32gb 2x16 GB DDR4 GSKILL 3000MHZ XMP
Psu: Seasonic Ultra Prime Titanium 850W
mb: Asus Prime Z390-A
SSD: Crucial 1TB
HDD: WB BLUE 1 TB
Case: Cooler Master Cosmos C700P

Hi. My question. I had a crash in Metro Exodus after 20 hours ,during exiting to MAIN MENU. Black screen,crash to desktop and unexpected reboot.

After crash to desktop i decided to log out from system and log back in again,and then system rebooted unexpectedly.

Why system rebooted after the crash? It happened once. Before reboot file appeared: --> PoW32kwatchdog.dmp
But i found this in windows/livekernelreports/PoW32kwatchdog.dmp <======== ( 1,8GB )
"a callout to win32k did not return promptly" windbg read








I tested other games no single issue. Memtest86 no errors,ramtest fine.realbench ok. I cant reproduce issue ,it happened once. But i am bit worried about that reboot ( Kernel 41 ).

Any ideas?

 

There have been complaints about the latest Nvidia driver GeForce 442.19:
https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/com...y_studio_driver_44219_faqdiscussion/?sort=new

Maybe back up to a previous version, or try the Hotfix driver:

Announcing GeForce Hotfix Driver 442.37 (Released 02/14/20)
https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/f3xisv/geforce_hotfix_driver_version_44237/
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforc...cing-geforce-hotfix-driver-44237-released-02/

Interesting, added support for Metro Exodus Sams Story is mentioned in 442.19 release notes.
https://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/156778/en-us

Although any unexplained crash is disheartening, you saying it's only this game - no other games are crashing - and it's only the one time, I'd chalk it up to "Cosmic Rays", or at the very least - Windows Sucks.

Update: crss.exe might be disk related, like a corrupt file - based on looking at other similar reports - try doing a chkdsk at boot on that file system and see if it fixed anything - and if you are on Steam use the "Check Game Files" tool (menu option).

Have you overclocked the CPU, Memory, or GPU? If it happens again I'd disable the one you think is the most iffy and then go back to gaming to see if that crash happens again. If it doesn't you maybe should detune that particular OC, if it does return I'd walk back all OC's and get back to defaults to see if it goes away.

It's a bit tedious to debug when it's not quickly repeatable, but hang in there and stick with it - as it's a good idea to de-fang OC's that are unstable, as some apps and games may just decide to corrupt data silently rather than die dramatically.

It could also be a hardware problem. I'd check the Windows System logs around the time of the crash to see what log entries are out of the ordinary, it might point to something useful as a potential culprit.

Windows Updates happen all the time, and bring device driver updates - even firmware updates, so check your Windows Update history for recent intrusions injecting potentially unstable updates. This is a very frequent source of instability in Windows 10, that just never stops giving.

Sometimes game saves get corrupted, installs get corrupted. If you complained about Metro Exodus today or after I would suggest using Steam's "Check game files" tool as sometimes files get corrupted and that can cause game anomalies.

Since you posted this Monday, well before Steam started selling Metro Exodus again, unless you bought a pre-order on Steam before it was yanked by Deep Silver for a bag of loot from EGS, you probably are using it on EGS or MS Game Pass, which one is it?

BTW, Metro Exodus is back on Steam today:

The Ongoing Disasters of the Epic Games Store
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...epic-games-store.827320/page-51#post-10990759

Please come back and let us know what you find toward the source of the problem

 

So it was hardware issue or not? Somebody said that this was caused by memory leak by game.

Game was running maybe 15 hours. Game not crashed before i click EXIT TO MAIN MENU. It crashed when i press ESC and then clicked EXIT TO MAIN MENU--->moment when GPU LOAD drops it crashed ,instead of EXIT TO MAIN MENU ofc.

I get BLACK SCREEN and no monitor signal for 1 minute, and crash to desktop with TDR driver crash in event log. After that i log off from system and log back in again and system rebooted unexpected.
Something with that logging off and back on again i think.

Happened once,not able to reproduce

Just more precised. Anyway its not reason to worry?

No bugcheck in event log,but i dont have configured dumps to C:/windows/memory.dmp
I have found only file in WINDOWS\livekernelreports\pow32kwatchdog.dmp

And log in game folder:
Crash was about c0000005 - memory access violation.

NULL POINTER WRITE.



PS:
Nothing is OC on my pc.

 

Yup, that log entry of the crash error helps

There's a bunch of search hits showing. I don't have time to read them now, please check them out and see if anyone found a solution, and please post it here when you find something that works:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Metro+Exodus+-+c0000005+-+memory+access+violation

For now maybe quit the game every couple of hours, you'll find a safe time span to do it after a couple of tries, and make sure to have all important work closed before starting the game, and exit the game when you are at a save point instead of leaving it sitting in the background.

This isn't that unusual, there have been games in the past that have memory leaks that after running for a while cause out of memory errors, and Metro Exodus seems to not be handling it well. Or Metro Exodus has a problem cleaning up at exit, also not uncommon.

What size is your pagefile on the C:\ drive? It's a hidden file so check the box to show hidden files in File Explorer. You can also open the System Control Panel, right click on the system icon on your desktop / file explorer and select Properties. Go to Advanced System Settings, Advanced Tab, Click the first option Performance click Settings, and check what size is currently allocated.


How to Change the Windows Pagefile Size
https://mcci.com/support/guides/how-to-change-the-windows-pagefile-size/

Double the pagefile and see if that stops the crash after exiting Metro Exodus, at the same elapsed time. I've found programs that need that memory allocation increase to run longer - leak memory longer - even if they don't seem to access it.

Back then the pagefile was on a hard drive and you could tell when it was accessing it - things would slow down and get jerky, but some programs even though they allocate enough memory to hit the pagefile often, don't actually do that.

Doubling the pagefile has solved some of the out of memory problems I've run across, effectively doubling the runtime between crashes. There are Windows system resources that don't scale with increasing the pagefile, but it doesn't sound like that problem here.

Even though increasing the page file might not work, it might so it's worth a try. It sounds more like a Metro Exodus coding problem at exit cleanup. But, increasing the pagefile doesn't take long - don't forget to reboot after changing the size to take effect - and it's easy to test.

I've also run into apps where disabling the pagefile solves the problem, but those are even more rare.

Please come back and let us know what you find and work out as a method of either fixing it or mitigating the effects.

 

But i dont know why system rebooted . Weird. After game crash to desktop i decided CTRL ALT DELETE to fast log out from system and log back in again. And then reboot unexpected. There was not bugcheck in event log.Only Kernel 41 and file was created: C:/Windows/livekernelreports/pow32kwatchdog.dmp

Maybe because of memory leak or something?

 

I am worried because somebody said this to me:" Something is *almost* stable. Things like this are incredibly hard to pinpoint, but generally you'll need to run whatever stress tests you're playing with for 24 hours or more to catch them. My bet is on RAM voltage being slightly too low (which will eventually show up in Memtest after a few days). ANY errors in Memtest, no matter how long you run it (within reason) point to a problem."


Also look at my screen:


1 arrow: 3 driver crashes from a game with black screen,CTD,turning circle instead of arrow
2 arrow:winlogon, i decide to ctrl alt delete , log out and log back again in
3 arrow: kernel 41 power and weird reboot


It was hardware fluke or software?

To be sure i tested RAMTEST,MEMTEST86,REALBENCH and other all games,no issues. Happened once after Metro.

 

If it happened once, one random time, why worry about it?

 

Again, if it's only in one game, and only after lots of hours running, and you aren't seeing out of memory errors - but you do see a memory error at exit - it's likely a programming bug in the exit code on Metro Exodus.

If you start seeing it in other games come back and let us know, otherwise I'd exit Metro between gaming sessions and not leave it in the background long term.

If you want to leave it in the background for hours then experiment with pagefile size or turning off the pagefile, and see if that helps.

But, I wouldn't mess with it, there's either nothing you can do about it or little you can do about it - extend the run time before error - neither are a fix.

I wouldn't increase the memory voltage. DDR4 memory is good to run at 1.2v-1.5v range, usually at "stock" speed it's 1.2v, at the XMP advertised speed it's 1.5v, so you are already at the top of the range. That stuff does get hot, so make sure you have air flow on the memory.

You could run with 1 stick of memory if you are thinking it's a flakey DIMM, and see if one or the other is stable long term, but again I don't think it's hardware right now as it's only 1 game and only after running it 20+ hours.

If it starts happening in other games come back and let us know, otherwise I'd forget about it, it's nothing to worry about.

We can't help you. If you want to pursue it, I'd open a ticket with the Metro Exodus Technical Support and let them help you, it's their game that's crashing so they are the ones to work with:

DeepSilver - Metro Exodus Technical Support
https://techsupport.metrothegame.com/

 

1 arrow: 3 driver crashes from a game with black screen,CTD,turning circle instead of arrow
2 arrow:winlogon, i decide to ctrl alt delete , log out and log back again in
3 arrow: kernel 41 power and weird reboot

Only find this after reboot:
C:/Windows/livekernelreports/pow32kwatchdog.dmp <---was created
WIN32K_CALLOUT_WATCHDOG <---

So it was bsod propably? Also i dont saw a bluescreen on screen,it rebooted so fast.

But nothing here:C:/windows/memory.dmp <--no exist

 

1 arrow: 3 driver crashes from a game with black screen,CTD,turning circle instead of arrow
2 arrow:winlogon, i decide to ctrl alt delete , log out and log back again in
3 arrow: kernel 41 power and weird reboot ( no bugcheck also )

Only find this after reboot:
C:/Windows/livekernelreports/pow32kwatchdog.dmp <---was created
WIN32K_CALLOUT_WATCHDOG <---

So it was bsod propably? Also i dont saw a bluescreen on screen,it rebooted so fast.

But nothing here:C:/windows/memory.dmp <--no exist

 

I don't know Windows internals (or externals, for that matter), but if this means that the system watchdog was tripped, it means that the CPU did not respond to a very high priority interrupt from the watchdog timer. That indicates that either the kernel was stuck at something even higher -- and there shouldn't be much of anything higher -- or there's a hardware fault that has caused the CPU to be unresponsive. That could be a problem with the CPU/chipset/motherboard or a problem with memory not returning (or less likely a problem with an I/O device). Memory is in my experience usually the most common and certainly the easiest to test -- run a full pass or two of memtest86 and you'll usually root out problems like this.