Ok I just build new computer and for some reason when the sound drivers are turned on they cause it to crash. This happens when either the onboard sound is turned on or the sound in the video card. Since they are both separate units I'm thinking that whatever feeds them is the problem.
Event 41 Kernel Power Critical Error Windows 10
Any help would be appreciated.
How compatible are your motherboard and CPU with your current BIOS version, or in general?
Considering the error is happening in your CPU, it can't be the CPU itself since it is crashing with onboard sound as well as on a separate sound card.
This leaves the motherboard. The motherboard itself (less likely) or its software (BIOS, more likely) isn't running perfectly or properly enough with your CPU.
This used to not be a problem, but after not upgrading for just short of a decade and upgrading a couple times in the last year, I can say this has been a problem I've encountered more than once. And I am not happy about it.
I would recommend going to the motherboard website, going to the forums section for motherboards, and searching your motherboard model and looking at how many posts (assuming it isn't moderated to delete them) are of people saying their computer is crashing for various reasons. And if you are considering upgrading the BIOS version to attempt a fix without changing motherboards or CPUs, also check the forum search results for people complaining the BIOS bricked their computer, assuming you only have one BIOS on your motherboard.
Currently Playing:
Fallout 4 (Xbox One)
Puzzle Pirates (PC) Dreadtooth on Emerald Ocean
"Dying's the easy way out. You won't catch me dying. They'll have to kill me before I die!"
Doing a blend test in prime 95 (non-AVX version), or doing a custom test with similar settings to blend but 2000 or more RAM, and 3 min instead of 15 is also a good way to test memory.
right version, right settings to do a separate test of either memory, clocks, voltage, overclock, stability, memory controller, etc, ...
If it was memory then it would crash if the sound was turned off. The only other reasonable explanation would be that the power is on the tipping scale and the sound draws just enough to cause the crash. That is highly unlikely as well because even with everything running 100% it won't crash with sound off. Its at a core process where the sound signals are being connected to the driver.
Memory problems can cause all sorts of wierd oddities that don't make sense.
Going by the same "it has to make sense" logic, then a sound card in and of itself can't draw so much power that it's causing your PSU to have problems either (unless it's short circuited, in which case it would be smoking and possibly on fire).
Computers that have a lot of interconnected parts, both hardware and software, that all have to line up just right to work. The cause-and-effect errors don't always make sense at first glance.
So I did some thinking and some more messing around following @13lake instructions. The only thing I have been able to do is make it take longer before crashing. It only crashes if one of the sound drivers is active. The onboard sound driver or the GPU sound driver. Either one of those is turned on and it crashes. If they are turned off then the computer runs flawlessly. So that leads me to 2 conclusions. Either the mobo is bad or there is a driver that conflicts.
Now if we are to assume it is a driver issue with the sound of both the mobo and GPU then that would be extremely rare. It has to be something on the mobo that is causing problems when the sound is activated. That really is the only logical explanation I can come up with. If it was anything else causing this problem then the system would crash with the sound turned off and it does not.
If disabling both sound drivers fixes the crash, then that narrows it down a lot.
Doing a blend test in prime 95 (non-AVX version), or doing a custom test with similar settings to blend but 2000 or more RAM, and 3 min instead of 15 is also a good way to test memory.
right version, right settings to do a separate test of either memory, clocks, voltage, overclock, stability, memory controller, etc, ...
If it was memory then it would crash if the sound was turned off. The only other reasonable explanation would be that the power is on the tipping scale and the sound draws just enough to cause the crash. That is highly unlikely as well because even with everything running 100% it won't crash with sound off. Its at a core process where the sound signals are being connected to the driver.
Sound cards use very little power. You can get a decent ballpark guess of how much power a chip uses by looking at the size of the heatsink on it. That can't tell you the difference between a 30 W part and a 50 W part, but it can pretty reliably distinguish a 0.1 W part from a 100 W part. A bare heatspreader and nothing more means a few watts at most and likely much less than that.
Doing a blend test in prime 95 (non-AVX version), or doing a custom test with similar settings to blend but 2000 or more RAM, and 3 min instead of 15 is also a good way to test memory.
right version, right settings to do a separate test of either memory, clocks, voltage, overclock, stability, memory controller, etc, ...
If it was memory then it would crash if the sound was turned off. The only other reasonable explanation would be that the power is on the tipping scale and the sound draws just enough to cause the crash. That is highly unlikely as well because even with everything running 100% it won't crash with sound off. Its at a core process where the sound signals are being connected to the driver.
Sound cards use very little power. You can get a decent ballpark guess of how much power a chip uses by looking at the size of the heatsink on it. That can't tell you the difference between a 30 W part and a 50 W part, but it can pretty reliably distinguish a 0.1 W part from a 100 W part. A bare heatspreader and nothing more means a few watts at most and likely much less than that.
When you plug the video card into hdmi it will play sound through the HDMI cable to the television. It doesn't use the onboard driver for this but its own separate driver.
A lot of really smart people on this thread, and valid points being made.
But maybe you could just rewind a bit and uninstall your video card drivers, and then reinstall them without the HD audio checked? I'm simple minded : /
I never install it because it breaks everything, and HDMI audio works fine when I want it.
Ok I just build new computer and for some reason when the sound drivers are turned on they cause it to crash. This happens when either the onboard sound is turned on or the sound in the video card. Since they are both separate units I'm thinking that whatever feeds them is the problem.
Event 41 Kernel Power Critical Error Windows 10
Any help would be appreciated.
Buy an Asus Motherboard? Don't use Seagate Magnetic Drives at all (Only Western Digital.)
Load Up EUFI/BIOS, check all the settings load defaults (Disable on board sound) Update the (EUFI / BIOS) from the company website...
If that fails, return the board and buy a better one...
I have a suggested fix. It sounds too stupid to work, but hey, apparently it has worked before! (I've probably done this a hundred times over the past billion years of building PCs LOL, we all probably have!)
Go into Device Manager and disable all of your cards and onboard sound/graphics. Then restart and re-enable them one at a time.
Currently Playing:
Fallout 4 (Xbox One)
Puzzle Pirates (PC) Dreadtooth on Emerald Ocean
"Dying's the easy way out. You won't catch me dying. They'll have to kill me before I die!"
I have a suggested fix. It sounds too stupid to work, but hey, apparently it has worked before! (I've probably done this a hundred times over the past billion years of building PCs LOL, we all probably have!)
Go into Device Manager and disable all of your cards and onboard sound/graphics. Then restart and re-enable them one at a time.
Yea I been doing that. The only time it doesn't crash is when all sound drivers are disabled.
It's realtek, it's windows, for instance realtek sound drivers on my asus crosshair IV formula cause huge sound issues when any other sound driver is installed with them present (yes even nvidia/amd hdmi).
And no matter how thoroughly you erase them, they still cause problems unless you reformat the disk they are on clean
(tried various DDU-like software to erase, manually erasing every registry entry and every hidden folder, manually accessing windows driver store and wiping everything from there, and using autoruns to stop any connected piece of code that doesn't show in msconfig without success, oh and erasing them from winsxs folder as well)
Windows update for win 10 always downloads some version of them within seconds and installs on the next reboot.
Heck even whatever win 10 installs at start while not connected to the internet caused similar problems a few times that i tried.
It's realtek, it's windows, for instance realtek sound drivers on my asus crosshair IV formula cause huge sound issues when any other sound driver is installed with them present (yes even nvidia/amd hdmi).
And no matter how thoroughly you erase them, they still cause problems unless you reformat the disk they are on clean
(tried various DDU-like software to erase, manually erasing every registry entry and every hidden folder, manually accessing windows driver store and wiping everything from there, and using autoruns to stop any connected piece of code that doesn't show in msconfig without success)
Windows update for win 10 always downloads some version of them within seconds and installs on the next reboot.
Heck even whatever win 10 installs at start while not connected to the internet caused similar problems a few times that i tried.
It was a living nightmare, ...
Well I am using the Asus 1151 Motherboard, and it has "Realtek" sound drives, + I have Nvidia sound drivers installed for HDMI Output I am not having any issues with the PC booting or anything... I did however have issues getting my ram to run at 3600 but I updated the Bios and fixed the problem.
Well I am using the Asus 1151 Motherboard, and it has "Realtek" sound drives, + I have Nvidia sound drivers installed for HDMI Output I am not having any issues with the PC booting or anything... I did however have issues getting my ram to run at 3600 but I updated the Bios and fixed the problem.
I've never encountered a problem of the similar magnitude since, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. And windows 10 awful automatic driver installation just makes the issues happen more often than usual.
With that type of crash you don't get logs. The crash happens before a dump and you need to enable kernel debugging to get anything useful at all. I've never tried that with online games before because I suspect it can trigger anti-exploit code and maybe get you banned.
I know that other debugging software running in the background has triggered this before on some games. It's been a few years since I've seen something like that though and it was with GameGuard or nProtect.
You don\t get a dump but windows will still at least put up a error message, at least it always have whenever I fixed something like this.filmoret said:
If it was memory then it would crash if the sound was turned off. The only other reasonable explanation would be that the power is on the tipping scale and the sound draws just enough to cause the crash. That is highly unlikely as well because even with everything running 100% it won't crash with sound off. Its at a core process where the sound signals are being connected to the driver.
Then it sounds like an IRQ crash to me (which is something that windows indeed will log). Try taking out the external soundcard and use the internal (or at least turn of one in hardware management).
I assume you already have tried using another driver? A faulty driver is the most likely thing after all, IRQ crashes are rare (and so are DMA crashes which also is a possibility)
One thing you can do to make sure that it isn't a physical hardware thing is to install an older OS (you don't need to verify it so use any old thing and if you have a regular HD and an SSD you can just install it on the media drive so you don't have to re-install W10). It is just for testing purpose anyways.
As for memory, it is still a slight possibility, Windows tend to have certain places locked down for some basic processes (or at least it used to) so it is not unlikely that it put the sound drivers in same place when you boot. If it writes them but can't retrieve them you get a crash.
The thing to do in cases like this is trying to remove as many possible problems as possible until you have located one or a few likely areas. I would also try to plug in a few USB things (without their own power cord) with the sound off to clear that it isn't the PSU that is overloaded, it is unlikely but possible.
With that type of crash you don't get logs. The crash happens before a dump and you need to enable kernel debugging to get anything useful at all. I've never tried that with online games before because I suspect it can trigger anti-exploit code and maybe get you banned.
I know that other debugging software running in the background has triggered this before on some games. It's been a few years since I've seen something like that though and it was with GameGuard or nProtect.
You don\t get a dump but windows will still at least put up a error message, at least it always have whenever I fixed something like this.filmoret said:
If it was memory then it would crash if the sound was turned off. The only other reasonable explanation would be that the power is on the tipping scale and the sound draws just enough to cause the crash. That is highly unlikely as well because even with everything running 100% it won't crash with sound off. Its at a core process where the sound signals are being connected to the driver.
Then it sounds like an IRQ crash to me (which is something that windows indeed will log). Try taking out the external soundcard and use the internal (or at least turn of one in hardware management).
I assume you already have tried using another driver? A faulty driver is the most likely thing after all, IRQ crashes are rare (and so are DMA crashes which also is a possibility)
One thing you can do to make sure that it isn't a physical hardware thing is to install an older OS (you don't need to verify it so use any old thing and if you have a regular HD and an SSD you can just install it on the media drive so you don't have to re-install W10). It is just for testing purpose anyways.
As for memory, it is still a slight possibility, Windows tend to have certain places locked down for some basic processes (or at least it used to) so it is not unlikely that it put the sound drivers in same place when you boot. If it writes them but can't retrieve them you get a crash.
The thing to do in cases like this is trying to remove as many possible problems as possible until you have located one or a few likely areas. I would also try to plug in a few USB things (without their own power cord) with the sound off to clear that it isn't the PSU that is overloaded, it is unlikely but possible.
Are IRQ conflicts and crashes even still a thing? I mean... I do remember them being a thing back in the old hybrid Windows 3.1/DOS days when we had to often manually config the Soundblaster's IRQ and use utilities like QEMM to configure the lower 640k of memory... but these days? Windows has been managing the resource allocation and preventing those sort of conflicts for many years.
Mind you, it has been more than a decade since I used a 3rd party sound card in any PC I built. I suppose they could still be misbehaving.
From what @filmoret has said in his latest posts about things running "100% OK" with sound disabled I would focus on nothing but getting rid of the addon soundcard, disabling nVidia's HDMI sound drivers --which are an optional component of their driver installation and you can un-check when you do a custom install, look at MB switch settings (if any) related to on-board sound as well as corresponding BIOS settings and wipe/re-install drivers related to the on-board sound drivers or just plain wipe and let Windows install whichever generic sound driver it thinks is the appropriate one from its driver database.
"100% OK" without sound and crashes with sound is pretty damn specific and points to one of 2 problems: a rare but not unheard of, fault with that single specific part of the motherboard HW that could only be cured with a MB swap or the more likely on board sound driver issue.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Well I am using the Asus 1151 Motherboard, and it has "Realtek" sound drives, + I have Nvidia sound drivers installed for HDMI Output I am not having any issues with the PC booting or anything... I did however have issues getting my ram to run at 3600 but I updated the Bios and fixed the problem.
I've never encountered a problem of the similar magnitude since, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. And windows 10 awful automatic driver installation just makes the issues happen more often than usual.
Realtek drivers can be, and it seems often are, customized for specific hardware. I've checked their site and other related sites and that is the message I'm getting after digging around a while.
I have a very similar problem to @filmoret and have had it with this ACER G3 for quite a while now. I've not been able to pinpoint it precisely but the realtek sound is a very strong candidate. It's hard to control which drivers are just present in the system including the Nvidia HD sound driver. Even when I didn't install it the driver was still there on the file system.
Realtek has cleaned up their game in later years(still happens way too often), but what's really annoying nowdays is how hard or downright impossible to not have hdmi audio drivers installed on your pc from either gpu camp, ...
Off the top of my head the only thing I can think of doing is uninstalling the Realtek driver/software if you haven't already done so. I know there was an issue with certain Realtek drivers causing the Windows Audio service to crash within Win10 so enabling the sound is probably interacting with Realteks software/driver and causing the crash.
Once uninstalled if you goto the official realtek site and download an updated driver from there as I hear that fixes any Win10 crashing issue's.
I wonder if its possible that the Nvidia driver is just a copy/paste of the realtek driver. Which would explain why they are both crashing.
Can you just try one thing? Right click on your Windows 10 logo and go to control panel > programs > uninstall a program.
Uninstall both your realtek driver and the nVidia graphics driver. Reboot your computer. (I'm assuming at this point that you do not have a separate sound card in one of your PCI slots - if you do, remove that first and uninstall its driver also.)
Does your sound work now?
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
I'd try seeing if you can disable the integrated sound in the BIOS. That will give you some more options to check, and will probably prevent Windows from automatically installing anything for it.
Comments
How compatible are your motherboard and CPU with your current BIOS version, or in general?
Considering the error is happening in your CPU, it can't be the CPU itself since it is crashing with onboard sound as well as on a separate sound card.
This leaves the motherboard. The motherboard itself (less likely) or its software (BIOS, more likely) isn't running perfectly or properly enough with your CPU.
This used to not be a problem, but after not upgrading for just short of a decade and upgrading a couple times in the last year, I can say this has been a problem I've encountered more than once. And I am not happy about it.
I would recommend going to the motherboard website, going to the forums section for motherboards, and searching your motherboard model and looking at how many posts (assuming it isn't moderated to delete them) are of people saying their computer is crashing for various reasons. And if you are considering upgrading the BIOS version to attempt a fix without changing motherboards or CPUs, also check the forum search results for people complaining the BIOS bricked their computer, assuming you only have one BIOS on your motherboard.
Currently Playing:
Fallout 4 (Xbox One)
Puzzle Pirates (PC)
Dreadtooth on Emerald Ocean
"Dying's the easy way out. You won't catch me dying. They'll have to kill me before I die!"
Going by the same "it has to make sense" logic, then a sound card in and of itself can't draw so much power that it's causing your PSU to have problems either (unless it's short circuited, in which case it would be smoking and possibly on fire).
Computers that have a lot of interconnected parts, both hardware and software, that all have to line up just right to work. The cause-and-effect errors don't always make sense at first glance.
What is a "GPU sound driver"?
Currently Playing:
Fallout 4 (Xbox One)
Puzzle Pirates (PC)
Dreadtooth on Emerald Ocean
"Dying's the easy way out. You won't catch me dying. They'll have to kill me before I die!"
But maybe you could just rewind a bit and uninstall your video card drivers, and then reinstall them without the HD audio checked? I'm simple minded : /
I never install it because it breaks everything, and HDMI audio works fine when I want it.
I'm sorry if I missed any of this, there is a lot to read through.
Have you tried removing the sound card entirely?
Currently Playing:
Fallout 4 (Xbox One)
Puzzle Pirates (PC)
Dreadtooth on Emerald Ocean
"Dying's the easy way out. You won't catch me dying. They'll have to kill me before I die!"
Don't use Seagate Magnetic Drives at all (Only Western Digital.)
Load Up EUFI/BIOS, check all the settings load defaults (Disable on board sound)
Update the (EUFI / BIOS) from the company website...
If that fails, return the board and buy a better one...
I have a suggested fix. It sounds too stupid to work, but hey, apparently it has worked before! (I've probably done this a hundred times over the past billion years of building PCs LOL, we all probably have!)
Go into Device Manager and disable all of your cards and onboard sound/graphics. Then restart and re-enable them one at a time.
Currently Playing:
Fallout 4 (Xbox One)
Puzzle Pirates (PC)
Dreadtooth on Emerald Ocean
"Dying's the easy way out. You won't catch me dying. They'll have to kill me before I die!"
And no matter how thoroughly you erase them, they still cause problems unless you reformat the disk they are on clean
(tried various DDU-like software to erase, manually erasing every registry entry and every hidden folder, manually accessing windows driver store and wiping everything from there, and using autoruns to stop any connected piece of code that doesn't show in msconfig without success, oh and erasing them from winsxs folder as well)
Windows update for win 10 always downloads some version of them within seconds and installs on the next reboot.
Heck even whatever win 10 installs at start while not connected to the internet caused similar problems a few times that i tried.
It was a living nightmare, ...
And windows 10 awful automatic driver installation just makes the issues happen more often than usual.
I assume you already have tried using another driver? A faulty driver is the most likely thing after all, IRQ crashes are rare (and so are DMA crashes which also is a possibility)
One thing you can do to make sure that it isn't a physical hardware thing is to install an older OS (you don't need to verify it so use any old thing and if you have a regular HD and an SSD you can just install it on the media drive so you don't have to re-install W10). It is just for testing purpose anyways.
As for memory, it is still a slight possibility, Windows tend to have certain places locked down for some basic processes (or at least it used to) so it is not unlikely that it put the sound drivers in same place when you boot. If it writes them but can't retrieve them you get a crash.
The thing to do in cases like this is trying to remove as many possible problems as possible until you have located one or a few likely areas. I would also try to plug in a few USB things (without their own power cord) with the sound off to clear that it isn't the PSU that is overloaded, it is unlikely but possible.
Mind you, it has been more than a decade since I used a 3rd party sound card in any PC I built. I suppose they could still be misbehaving.
From what @filmoret has said in his latest posts about things running "100% OK" with sound disabled I would focus on nothing but getting rid of the addon soundcard, disabling nVidia's HDMI sound drivers --which are an optional component of their driver installation and you can un-check when you do a custom install, look at MB switch settings (if any) related to on-board sound as well as corresponding BIOS settings and wipe/re-install drivers related to the on-board sound drivers or just plain wipe and let Windows install whichever generic sound driver it thinks is the appropriate one from its driver database.
"100% OK" without sound and crashes with sound is pretty damn specific and points to one of 2 problems: a rare but not unheard of, fault with that single specific part of the motherboard HW that could only be cured with a MB swap or the more likely on board sound driver issue.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Once uninstalled if you goto the official realtek site and download an updated driver from there as I hear that fixes any Win10 crashing issue's.
Uninstall both your realtek driver and the nVidia graphics driver. Reboot your computer. (I'm assuming at this point that you do not have a separate sound card in one of your PCI slots - if you do, remove that first and uninstall its driver also.)
Does your sound work now?
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED