Deadlock causing severe crashes that fully reboot the computer

[Guggleywubbins]

Been having this issue in Deadlock. There's something about this game and Dota) that causes my GPU to generate some fatal error and not only crashes the game, but my entire computer. What's more, it only happens in specific matches. Once a crash happens in that match, I'll crash and keep crashing several more times during that game, but not others. One such game happened tonight: Match 99,980. I was playing Lady Geist and crashed nearly on repeat until the game was over.

Usually the crash causes the screen to freeze-frame, while the game sound still is going on behind it. I can hear my friends/teammates on Discord talking, but my microphone is no longer recording. Sometimes part of the screen turns magenta like some garish Instagram filter. It stays in this weird suspended state for 5 to 15 seconds before the screen goes black and the computer reboots. At no point does the temperature of the CPU or GPU go over 78°C during this time.

I've tried to figure out what the exact source of the error is, but have been unable to. The closest I can find is a Windows Event Log error that says: The driver \Driver\WUDFRd failed to load for the device ROOT\WINDOWSHELLOFACESOFTWAREDRIVER\0000., which makes me think it's some kind of kernel panic. I've used DDU tool to manually uninstall my Nvidia graphics driver and try both the newest and older, more stable versions, but none of the dozen I've tried have worked so far. I thought it might be a bad GPU, but it still happened even after RMAing my GPU on the new one.

I'd be happy to submit my crash minidumps somewhere if it'd be useful. It's been happening with Source 2 games for me for a few months now. My computer specs are as follows:

• CPU: Intel i7-12700F
• GPU:Nvidia 3080 FE
  • Driver: 537.58
• RAM: 32GB
• OS: Windows 11 Pro (23H2)
• Motherboard: ASRock H670M-ITX/ax

 

[jacobjeruesabino]

Warden in that game, hope you manage to find a fix!!

 

[Delmerik]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say this sounds like a hardware issue. The games design may trigger it.

Although your temps are normal, how is your power delivery?
Is your PSU new or does it have some wear to it?
Have you run mem test to check your ram?
Is your motherboard bios up to date? Asrock had a bunch of firmware issues with their windows 11 motherboards.

Id say it's most likely a voltage spike caused by faulty hardware or bios.

Hope this helps

 

[Guggleywubbins]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say this sounds like a hardware issue. The games design may trigger it.

Although your temps are normal, how is your power delivery?
Is your PSU new or does it have some wear to it?
Have you run mem test to check your ram?
Is your motherboard bios up to date? Asrock had a bunch of firmware issues with their windows 11 motherboards.

Id say it's most likely a voltage spike caused by faulty hardware or bios.

Hope this helps

I suspect it's a hardware issue too, but for the life of me I cannot find it. All I know is that only specific games trigger it -- Overwatch and Helldivers, for example, never do.

Here's a link to my completed build. The computer just turned two years old, and has since had both its M.2 drive and GPU RMA'd in the past couple months to no benefit. As for your questions:

• I have a Corsair SF750, which provides 750W to my rig which has a maximum TDP of about 550W. I cannot overclock this CPU and I have tried underclocking the GTX 3080 to see if it would help (it didn't). They both now run at stock.
• The PSU has just turned two years old. I bought it new.
• Yes, I ran it for a couple hours and returned no errors. I've attached a screenshot below.
  • I've also tried it with the XMP profile and and off.
• I've flashed the newest non-beta BIOS a few times as they have come out. They don't seem to help.
• I've also fully wiped my computer and installed only the most basic programs to see if anything was conflicting, but that didn't help either.

If you've got any other ideas, I'd be happy to give it a shot.

 

[Delmerik]

Honestly, you might just have a dud mobo/ram/cpu/psu - one of em.

Problem with hardware issues is you MIGHT be able to pinpoint them - but who the hell knows unless you actually have a suite of testing hardware.

The only thing I could think to do would be to recreate the issues on a testbench - 1 piece of hardware at a time.

My GUESS which isnt worth much is that due to some sort of power spike(more happening in game), something is shorting on the card? This is probably a card issue

 

[Delmerik]

Sorry for the double post, but I wanted to separate my thoughts here - do you actively use windows hello face recognition???

 

[Guggleywubbins]

Sorry for the double post, but I wanted to separate my thoughts here - do you actively use windows hello face recognition???

I do (and a nice catch on your part). I want to make sure Microsoft Recall can recognize me as a friend before it becomes sentient and commandeers the world's nuclear arsenal.

 

[SoBigHat]

I do (and a nice catch on your part). I want to make sure Microsoft Recall can recognize me as a friend before it becomes sentient and commandeers the world's nuclear arsenal.

Actually, I've been having the same issue, and everything I'm running is all modern and brand new. It can't be some hardware error because I've looked at everything.
I never had this issue with Dota 2 or any other game at all though, just exclusively Deadlock. This is the only game that this has ever happened with on this new PC.

I really hope this gets figured out at some point.

 

[Delmerik]

I do (and a nice catch on your part). I want to make sure Microsoft Recall can recognize me as a friend before it becomes sentient and commandeers the world's nuclear arsenal.

Im wondering if you nuke windows hello - if this would keep happening.

I feel the vast majority of users opt out of hello so I dont know how to get a good pool of data on that

 

[Guggleywubbins]

Im wondering if you nuke windows hello - if this would keep happening.

I feel the vast majority of users opt out of hello so I dont know how to get a good pool of data on that

I really only use it when I initially log into the computer so I'm not sure if it'll have much effect once I'm already logged in and playing, but I'm sort of at the end of my rope on this one. I'll disable it via Group Policy for a while and see if it gets any better.

 

[Delmerik]

Actually, I've been having the same issue, and everything I'm running is all modern and brand new. It can't be some hardware error because I've looked at everything.
I never had this issue with Dota 2 or any other game at all though, just exclusively Deadlock. This is the only game that this has ever happened with on this new PC.

I really hope this gets figured out at some point.

Having built dozens of PCs and running my own repair business - I have to disagree with you. Modern hardware is more common to have issues than old hardware and there's only so much you can test. You can have incorrect voltage on a single capacitor or a lead from point a to point b that got a tiny too much solder in the factory. Before 2020 there was an average fail rate on all pc components of around 2% - but since then, I've had 3 motherboard failures, 1 PSU failure, 1 RAM failure, 1 CPU failure, 1 total monitor failure, 1 monitor with broken sound card, 2 monitors with dead pixels. Some of my failures were hardly noticeable

The only way I was able to test these is because I had known good hardware lying around and a test bench. All it takes is a 1 game to voltage spike at the wrong time on the right part of the failure and **crash**.

It's hard to put crashes like this that aren't a common issue on the game itself.

Q. Are you getting the same exact error he is having? If so, that does start to seem fishy but it allows us to diagnose this better.

The driver \Driver\WUDFRd failed to load for the device ROOT\WINDOWSHELLOFACESOFTWAREDRIVER\0000

 

[Delmerik]

I really only use it when I initially log into the computer so I'm not sure if it'll have much effect once I'm already logged in and playing, but I'm sort of at the end of my rope on this one. I'll disable it via Group Policy for a while and see if it gets any better.

After a little more digging - long story short - I think you have a driver conflict between your GPU and Windows Hello.

Deadlock is telling GPU to use something that Windows Hello is using as well. **Crash

 

[Guggleywubbins]

Actually, I've been having the same issue, and everything I'm running is all modern and brand new. It can't be some hardware error because I've looked at everything.
I never had this issue with Dota 2 or any other game at all though, just exclusively Deadlock. This is the only game that this has ever happened with on this new PC.

I really hope this gets figured out at some point.

Also, does your computer crash completely? What sort of hardware are you running?

After a little more digging - long story short - I think you have a driver conflict between your GPU and Windows Hello.

Deadlock is telling GPU to use something that Windows Hello is using as well. **Crash

That... would be an interesting conflict I hadn't considered. And knowing the jank that Windows and Nvidia have been pumping out with their updates lately, it wouldn't surprise me. One of the biggest mysteries I've faced is why my computer worked flawlessly for over a year after I built it, only to suffer these weird crashes when playing Source games. I've already disabled it and will keep an eye out over the next several days to see if it happens again.

 

[Delmerik]

Let me know!

 

[Guggleywubbins]

Let me know!

Well, didn't have to wait long. My game crashed within 3 minutes in my first match: 104,260 (which is actually still going!)

 

[Delmerik]

Hmmmm. Assuming event viewer shows the same thing?

I'll keep following this and keep digging to see if I can help over the next few days. I have time for 1 game then bed lol

Good luck man, hopefully it's something stupid.

 

[SoBigHat]

Well, didn't have to wait long. My game crashed within 3 minutes in my first match: 104,260 (which is actually still going!)

Yeah I can't get the game to run either anymore. I actually can't even boot into the main menu safely, after about 20 seconds it just crashes my entire PC.
Even tried switching renderers, nothing's working.

Real unfortunate. Hope something is tweaked where I can play again, soon.

 

[moltohd]

Your drivers are a bit out-of-date however you could try a clean clean driver installation using DDU (use it at your own risk). I'm a bit afraid it won't fix it :/

 

[SoBigHat]

Well, didn't have to wait long. My game crashed within 3 minutes in my first match: 104,260 (which is actually still going!)

I've just reinstalled Deadlock and things appear to be working better. Don't know if you've tried this yet. Give it a stab, for some reason everything is running better for me.

I've been spectating a match and all seems fine. Hero test had no issues.
Going to try playing another match in a minute. I'll give you updates.

 

[Guggleywubbins]

Your drivers are a bit out-of-date however you could try a clean clean driver installation using DDU (use it at your own risk). I'm a bit afraid it won't fix it :/

I did this two days ago. I deliberately went from the most up-to-date drivers available back to last years just to see if it was more stable. It hasn't helped either way.