I'm out of ideas

bomb__digiti · June 5, 2020

I'm having the problem of a program window (mainly Tarkov) losing focus. Game almost crashes, then freezes and I can hear the game being responsive in background. After reading around and finding many possible things... i'm running out of things to try.

Things I've tried:

- uninstall and reinstall game

- check game file integrity

- try higher and lower settings in game

- update graphics driver

- roll back graphics driver (using DDU)

- check power settings for graphics card and system (all set to use max power)

- set all system components to stock speeds/volts

- make sure Google Chrome is closed when trying to play

- install the game on a different hard drive

- update Windows version

- uninstall any RGB software (gigabyte aorus, steelseries engine, evga led sync)

- reinstalled Windows

- run benchmarks for GPU and CPU for any stock stability issues

- I'm sure there are a few I've missed

System

9900kf (Watercooled and stock speeds atm)

36GB Patriot Viper (running at 3600Mhz)

Gigabyte z390 Aorus Pro

Sound Blaster Z

EVGA 1080 FTW

Windows 10 Version 2004 (19041.264)

Boot drive is a Samsung 960 Evo SSD (500GB)

Game drive is an ADATA SX8200PNP m.2 (2TB)

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

aDoomGuy · June 5, 2020

Try Windows Focus Logger to see what has focus. If something else steals focus from a game or even Windows Explorer the app will log and identify the culprit.

http://www.adminscope.com/downloads/window-focus-logger/

bomb__digiti · June 5, 2020

Ok, so something isn't stealing focus from the looks of it...

Couple things I'm seeing in Event viewer

"Failed with 0x57 retrieving AppModel Runtime status for package Windows."

and

"Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered."

Graphics card could be going?

I'll check to make sure all power connectors are seeded properly as well as the graphics card.

bomb__digiti · June 5, 2020

What do you guys make of the pictures? Nothing has ever been spilled on it. Feels like a grease.

Kabrevre · July 26, 2020

On 6/5/2020 at 11:22 AM, bomb__digiti said:

What do you guys make of the pictures? Nothing has ever been spilled on it. Feels like a grease.

It could be left-over soldering flux. Manufacturers should clean it up but some don't get it all off. If it can be dabbed away with a paper towell that's unlikely to harm it, but if it's cake-like or crusty then it would need to be picked off. This can also be done but at much higher risk to damaging your components.
The less pleasant thought about the goop is that it's just old palm and finger oils from skin.
If there is no smell then it's unlikely to be capacitor juice. Laptops don't generally use barrel type capcitors though and this is unlikely.

To address your first question, I'm having intermittent crashes occur similarly. I first tried to fix it by changing a bunch of Services to automatic to make sure a slew of things were already running which pop up in my event wiewer along with DCOM warnings en mass. 0x57 problems are all over the internet at the moment. Some people only have issues since Win 10 version 2004 got installed, but others like me had the problem long before that. The good news is that it's not likely to be any specific piece of hardware you have, considering that this problem occurs across the entire spectrum of system specs and brands, it's clearly an issue with Windows. The bad news is that all official Windows help sources will tell you is that "you should ignore DCOM warnings, they're not related," and Microsoft seem to be doing very little to address the problem. I dare say that most users have no issues, so until a larger percentage of the user base start to cry out, nothing will be done about it.
Changing my Services helped to reduce the frequency of the crashes, but they still happen. I have my own speculations about it being caused by switching from monitor to monitor, and specifically in games it happens when a transparent layer is over the top of something like at Hero/weapon loadouts and overlays which come up beofre you get to see the killcam. Photoshop has also crashed the system, but was stable until I added transparency to the layer. The only other behaviour which exacerbates my problem is mocving the mouse cursor very rapidly.