Final Fantasy 14 Causing Pc Lock-ups/freezes/restarts - Gpu?

Hi all,

THE PROBLEM:

My PC is hanging, or sometimes forcing a restart whilst playing FF14 even when I'm not doing anything taxing, or sometimes even anything at all - usually talking to an NPC or just stood inside a building. I've just resubbed since summer (when I didn't have this problem), and I don't find much time to game these days so I'm not currently playing anything else to be able to say whether or not it's isolated to the game, or is a system-wide problem. All I can say is I played WoW Classic pretty extensively from launch until approx. November 2020 and never experienced any technical issues - so in a nutshell, I've only begun to notice this in the past couple of evenings, and only with FF14 (as that's the only taxing thing I'm loading/playing). However, I've been able to do some fights, even a group boss fight and had no issues, but whilst I'm mid-dialogue with an NPC, bam.

The problem has so far manifested itself in a couple of ways:

1.) There's a noticable 'dunk' in the audio, or a barely noticable shift on-screen and suddenly I notice my entire PC is unresponsive. Nothing is moving, and no keyboard/mouse inputs are recognised. The in-game music continues to play. The PC doesn't restart itself, and I have to via the power button.
2.) As above, but the PC does restart itself. 50/50 whether it makes it past the blue windows logo on start-up. Sometimes the blue 'dot-wheel' also freezes. I have to restart the PC again and it loads up fine.
3.) As per #1, except the PC restarts itself and loads up fine.
4.) As per #1, except the PC restarts itself and I'm met with a blue " Your device ran into a problem and needs to restart" screen. This might be quite helpful because it tells me "What failed: nvddmkm.sys" (screenshot attached)

THE COMPUTER:

I built my PC in 2012. The only upgrades it's had since then is a new GPU in 2014 (GTX 970), +8GB RAM (16GB total) around 2018 along with a new PSU as my old one was giving out. Nothing is overclocked.

Its current specs are:

OS: Windows 10 Home 64-bit
CPU: Intel Core i5 3570k IvyBridge, 3.4gHz
MOBO: ASRock Z77 Extreme 4 Intel Z77 Socket 1155
RAM: Corsair XMS3 8GB DDR3 1600 MHz (x2 = 16GB)
GPU: Nvidia GTX 970 4GB
PSU: EVGA 500 B1, 80+ Bronze 500W

Obviously some more compotents but not sure they're relevant. Can try to get the details if required, otherwise I've attached a DxDiag to this post.

EFFORTS SO FAR:

I know new GPU drivers can make things temperamental and I'd only just updated by Nvidia drivers via GeForce Experience a few days ago (but still pre-dates resubbing to FF14 so can't say I noticed better performance prior to the update). I uninstalled all Nvidia drivers inc. GeForce via 'Display Driver Uninstaller' and then reinstalled from fresh. The current, latest driver is 497.29, released 20/12/21.

I've ensured Windows Update has no outstanding updates (other than Win 11)

I've tried to play the game in DX9 instead of DX11 but this didn't change anything; still crashed within a minute of loading in and speaking to an NPC.

I've downloaded OpenHardwareMonitor to see if it's an overheating issue, but I can't say that it does appear to be, but also because the program doesn't save logs on a crash, it's difficult to say this tool is helpful because everything's fine until suddenly it's not; and then I can't screenshot the readings. All I can say is that standing in-game at the same spot/camera angle where it's crashed 3 times, my CPU/GPU reads are per the attached screenshot and don't seem of concern to me?

GOING FORWARD:

I will continue to tinker with what I can whilst awaiting replies, but I wanted to get the foundations of the problem out there to best help direct diagnostic efforts, and give me something to build on as my efforts continue. It's been a few years since I've had technical problems, so I'm quite out of the loop with how to go about identifying and resolving the issue. I'm hoping some people here can help, as you all have numerous times over the years. Many thanks in advance!

 

So I just left my PC with nothing loaded in the foreground except this browser window. As I left the room I heard the tell-tale noise of my MOBO 'beeping' from a restart - turned back and found my PC had decided to reset itself, the only things loaded in the background being Discord, Steam , Universal Media Server & GeForce Experience.

I suspect some kind of 'what caused the crash' program might be useful? Looking at 'Event Viewer', I see the following:

Event: Critical, Last Hour: 1, 24hrs: 9, 7 days: 10
Event: Error, Last Hour: 6, 24hrs: 75, 7 days: 233
Event: Warning, Last Hour: 13, 24hrs: 184, 7 days: 348
Event: Information, Last Hour: 126, 24hrs: 1,432, 7 days: 3278
Event: Audit Success, Last Hour: 867, 24hrs: 6,218, 7 days: 18,549

All the Critical ones say the same:

Level: Critical
Source: Kernal-Power
Event ID: 41
Task Category: (63)
"The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly."

- System
- Provider
[ Name] Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Power
[ Guid] {331c3b3a-2005-44c2-ac5e-77220c37d6b4}
EventID 41
Version 8
Level 1
Task 63
Opcode 0
Keywords 0x8000400000000002
- TimeCreated
[ SystemTime] 2021-12-24T16:44:39.7358961Z
EventRecordID 21237
Correlation
- Execution
[ ProcessID] 4
[ ThreadID] 8
Channel System
Computer James-PC
- Security
[ UserID] S-1-5-18
- EventData
BugcheckCode 278
BugcheckParameter1 0xffffc30f65942460
BugcheckParameter2 0xfffff804576f856c
BugcheckParameter3 0xffffffffc000009a
BugcheckParameter4 0x4
SleepInProgress 0
PowerButtonTimestamp 0
BootAppStatus 0
Checkpoint 0
ConnectedStandbyInProgress false
SystemSleepTransitionsToOn 0
CsEntryScenarioInstanceId 0
BugcheckInfoFromEFI false
CheckpointStatus 0
CsEntryScenarioInstanceIdV2 0
LongPowerButtonPressDetected false

 

Hi all,

Small update - whilst I'm no closer to fixing the issue, I am closer to identifying what it is: nvlddmkm.sys

This has been the file stated to be 'wrong' on a few BSOD's now, and from googling it appears to be something to do with Nvidia graphics cards, but it's a generic issue that seemingly just means 'something' is up, and others have reported it being faulty RAM sticks that didn't appear faulty in MemTests, but they left 1 RAM stick in at a time and rotated playing with them until they identified which RAM stick was faulty. I've yet to reach for my screwdrivers due to shortage of time.

I have tried loading up another game, Natural Selection 2 - and can confirm it seems to be any game requiring GPU power will result in a crash, not just FF14. This occurred immediately upon loading into a training scenario.

I've ran a complete MemTest86 and over 3.5hrs reported a 'PASS' with 0 errors.

I've uninstalled the GeForce drivers again via DDU and manually installed a back-dated driver from November, but this also resulted in a BSOD within a minute of running around in game.

I've also confirmed the integrity of the installed games.

My next consideration is ordering some compressed air and anti-static brushes to give my internals a good blast and potentially re-seat components, but I'm dubious this will actually help and is just wasting time/effort.

In the absence of feedback/input, I'll continue googling and trying what I can find.

 

I'm rapidly running out of self-diagnosis options based on google results. Also, the PC has a couple of times now either restarted itself from the desktop with no obvious concern, or BSOD'd with the same error code - sometimes at the Windows login screen when just idling. I'm now trying to dig out my Ext HDD to back up important stuff before the whole thing goes kaput...

 

Sorry for multiple posts. Unable to edit after 20 mins or so.

Please find attached my latest 5 minidumps.

 

Hey,
This could be your powersupply going bad.

This happened to me on world of tanks and I had to replace my psu to stop the lock ups.

You might want to fix it asap.

A bad psu can kill mobos, ram, cpus, gpus, and hds.

 

Maybe this works on 14? https://www.thewindowsclub.com/final-fantasy-xv-keeps-stuttering-crashing-or-freezing-on-pc