GPU-Z failing to start - Win 10 Home v1709

[MagicSmoker]

I double click on GPU-Z 2.5.0 and I see the blue swirl that indicates Windows is loading the program into memory, but then nothing happens. I've tried to see if the program loads in Task Manager and while there is a shift in the process list that seems to coincide with double-clicking on GPU-Z, I can't catch if anything relevant appears.

This has occurred with an AMD RX 570 or an NVIDIA GTX 1060 card installed. I've also tried right-clicking and choosing "Run as Administrator" as well as setting compatibility mode to Windows 7; neither worked.

 

[eidairaman1]

Try older version

 

[MagicSmoker]

Try older version

Aye, tried both 2.4.0 and 2.3.0 with the exact same results. I should note that I have tried searching if others are experiencing the same issue but haven't found any yet, so my issue appears to be unusual, if not unique.

 

[eidairaman1]

Aye, tried both 2.4.0 and 2.3.0 with the exact same results. I should note that I have tried searching if others are experiencing the same issue but haven't found any yet, so my issue appears to be unusual, if not unique.

there have been updates that bork windows 10 to the point where certain things don't work whether it's software like this or even Graphics drivers for that matter

 

[W1zzard]

Hrmm that suggests it crashes very early during startup.
Anything on your system that's not standard?

 

[MagicSmoker]

I think my system is pretty conventional hardware-wise. It's a semi-custom PC from Cyberpower that I bought on clearance from Newegg just after X-mas last year. Why it was on clearance may be evident from the specs: AMD FX-8300 CPU on a 760G chipset mobo with DD3 memory.

This is not the only peculiar behavior I've noticed, however. Plugging a USB 3.0 thumb drive into the front panel USB 3.0 port results in the keyboard and mouse suddenly turning sluggish; this does not occur if I plug the drive into one of two board mount USB 3.0 ports.

Also, after the Fall Creator's Update (1709), my treasured MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries would no longer run. The game load fines, but as soon as a mission is launched it crashes to the desktop with a fatal exception error (not a BSoD, though).

So, yeah, I do think the problem with GPU-Z is specific to my system - since no else seems to be complaining about the same problem - but I'm not sure where to look. I am willing (and mostly able) to dig quite deep into the system; I've been using computers since DOS 4.01 was the hot new O/S.

EDIT - I should also note that I used DDU to remove the NVidia drivers when I installed the new RX 570, so it's not a driver conflict - or, at least, not from having both NVidia and AMD drivers running at the same time.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I think my system is pretty conventional hardware-wise. It's a semi-custom PC from Cyberpower that I bought on clearance from Newegg just after X-mas last year. Why it was on clearance may be evident from the specs: AMD FX-8300 CPU on a 760G chipset mobo with DD3 memory. This is not the only peculiar behavior I've noticed, however. Plugging a USB 3.0 thumb drive into the front panel USB 3.0 port results in the keyboard and mouse suddenly turning sluggish; this does not occur if I plug the drive into one of two board mount USB 3.0 ports.

Given those problems, a bios update for your motherboard might be in order. The USB problem in particular seems similar to a few problems I've worked on and a bios flash/update usually fixes it. Driver update might also be in order. How that relates to GPUZ however is not readily obvious though it seems that because GPUZ accesses the chipset directly, it maybe be triggering the problem.

Also, after the Fall Creator's Update (1709), my treasured MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries would no longer run. The game load fines, but as soon as a mission is launched it crashes to the desktop with a fatal exception error (not a BSoD, though).

MechWarrior 4 seems like it will need to be in Windows XP compatibility mode, which would be a good idea for a game that old anyway.

 

[W1zzard]

Do you have time for a debugging session of Skype (text-chat only) ?

Add me, w2zzard

 

[MagicSmoker]

Given those problems, a bios update for your motherboard might be in order. The USB problem in particular seems similar to a few problems I've worked on and a bios flash/update usually fixes it....

I agree, but the latest BIOS (from April-20-2014!?) is already installed... So probably no hope there. I've had Ryzen envy for awhile now, though, and will be replacing the mobo, CPU and DRAM in about a week or so (already got the mobo and DDR4 memory on sale; waiting for the Ryzen 5 1600 to go on sale again).

MechWarrior 4 seems like it will need to be in Windows XP compatibility mode, which would be a good idea for a game that old anyway.

Yep, MW4 is, indeed, that old, but a company called MekTek was granted rights to code (temporarily, anyway) and breathed new life into the game back in 2012, IIRC. They improved the graphics resolution and recompiled it for Windows 7 (and tinkered quite a bit with the game itself), so it should run on Windows 10... and it did, right up until 1709 dropped, anyway.

Do you have time for a debugging session of Skype (text-chat only) ?

Add me, w2zzard

Erf, I wish I got to this earlier, as this is a very generous offer (also, you probably don't have many examples of GPU-Z failing). I'll be tied up with holiday stuff for the next few hours and really wouldn't want to impose beyond that, but later this afternoon I'll be free (after, say, 4pm EST - or 5 hours from now).

Note the info I just posted above, though, that the CPU, mobo and DRAM are all slated for replacement sometime next week (hoping for an after x-mas sale on the CPU, as that's the last item I need to purchase).

 

[W1zzard]

I'll be tied up with holiday stuff

Me as well, add me and we'll figure it out from there.

 

[MagicSmoker]

Me as well, add me and we'll figure it out from there.

It's been awhile since I've used Skype and apparently Microsoft has totally borked the service as I've spent the last hour trying to log in only to be told I need to create a Microsoft Live account, add my home address, etc., and I am just not cool with that. If you have some technical things you want me to try I am game, but I just don't feel comfortable providing all that personal information to M$ (I am one of those people that spent a lot of time hunting down all of the privacy invasions in Windows 10, too).

 

[W1zzard]

It's been awhile since I've used Skype and apparently Microsoft has totally borked the service as I've spent the last hour trying to log in only to be told I need to create a Microsoft Live account, add my home address, etc., and I am just not cool with that. If you have some technical things you want me to try I am game, but I just don't feel comfortable providing all that personal information to M$ (I am one of those people that spent a lot of time hunting down all of the privacy invasions in Windows 10, too).

Ah I wasn't aware of that, totally with you on that one. Will send a PM tomorrow.

 

[MagicSmoker]

Ah I wasn't aware of that, totally with you on that one. Will send a PM tomorrow.

FYI, I'll have the new CPU, along with the mobo and DRAM I already purchased, by this Friday so we'll soon find out if this is a BIOS issue or what. If nothing else, at least I'll get real USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb/s ports, instead of the ones provided by 3rd party ASMedia chips. Oh, and about twice the overall speed... Always a plus, that.

 

[MagicSmoker]

I got the new CPU a day early and I've just spent the last 3 hours replacing pretty much all of the guts in my computer; 1 hour of which has been fighting with Windows because my old mobo used legacy BIOS and the new one uses UEFI. The main problem here wasn't converting the HDD from MBR to GPT, rather, it was this peculiar problem where I couldn't access the start bar nor type anywhere but into a run box (ie - Windows key + R).

ANYWAY... the problem persists, so now it is absolutely certain it is not the BIOS, mobo, CPU, DRAM, video card... leaving just Windows.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I got the new CPU a day early and I've just spent the last 3 hours replacing pretty much all of the guts in my computer; 1 hour of which has been fighting with Windows because my old mobo used legacy BIOS and the new one uses UEFI. The main problem here wasn't converting the HDD from MBR to GPT, rather, it was this peculiar problem where I couldn't access the start bar nor type anywhere but into a run box (ie - Windows key + R).

ANYWAY... the problem persists, so now it is absolutely certain it is not the BIOS, mobo, CPU, DRAM, video card... leaving just Windows.

Windows version?

 

[rtwjunkie]

Windows version?

1709

 

[lexluthermiester]

1709

Right.. duh..

Have you tried an older version of GPUZ? Try version 1.2 and see what happens..

 

[MagicSmoker]

Right.. duh..

Have you tried an older version of GPUZ? Try version 1.2 and see what happens..

Yes, tried older versions and under the direction of W1zzard the following were performed:

1. Run rkill to look for malware - none found
2. Run Event Viewer - found a critical error related to program execution: "The application was unable to start correctly (0xc0000005). Click OK to close the application."
a. Tried to make an exception in Data Execution Prevention for GPU-Z; Windows said DEP was required for this program.

Then despite my saying that this issue was happening with the previous video card and drivers - a GTX 1050 Ti - W1zzard became convinced that the modded BIOS on the new RX 570 is to blame and set out to reproduce my experience. I suspect that has been a fruitless pursuit...

At any rate, all that is known for sure now is that the program fails very early on in the execution process, and Windows reports a fairly nasty access violation error - 0xc0000005 - as a result. The problem persists after installing a new mobo, CPU and DRAM in the machine (and a new PSU, because the one that came with this Cyberpower PC was appallingly inefficient), so pretty much all the hardware is absolved, ergo, the prime suspect is Windows (NB - the prime suspect would be the program, except no one else seems to be experiencing this same issue).

 

[W1zzard]

As per our PM conversation. You are using a modded BIOS, so you need a modded graphics driver for the card to startup.

That seems to be the only uncommon theme in your setup. I haven't had time to try to reproduce yet though.

Anyone using a similar config?

 

[lexluthermiester]

modded BIOS on the new RX 570

When you say "modded", are you using an extracted firmware that you modded yourself and reflashed, or are you using a version intended for a different card? If the later, that is likely why it will not run. Have you used another utility, like HWInfo, to read your card's info?
https://www.hwinfo.com

Anyone using a similar config?

Actually, I am. Have a Xeon based system with a FW modded Geforce. Drivers are stock from NV. Not having problems with GPUZ running on that system. The mods to the firmware are limited to fan profile settings, minimum clock states of the GPU & RAM and the default voltage was dropped as it doesn't need the max voltage to run properly.

@W1zzard, Could the problem be that GPUZ is seeing conflicting states, IE the FW saying one thing and the executable seeing mismatching HW and crashing because it doesn't know which set of info to display or knows how to handle the mismatched info? If that's the case, adding a few routines that instruct it to default to one or the other, or possibly show an alert to caution the user of the conflict and then displays both in separate lists. Example, It could show the info read from the FW on one tab and what it actually discovered in an adjoining tab. Of course, these are just ideas. Obviously you would know how the code runs and might have much better insights.

 

[MagicSmoker]

As per our PM conversation. You are using a modded BIOS, so you need a modded graphics driver for the card to startup.

That seems to be the only uncommon theme in your setup. I haven't had time to try to reproduce yet though.

Anyone using a similar config?

Ahem:

This has occurred with an AMD RX 570 or an NVIDIA GTX 1060 card installed.

EDIT - I should also note that I used DDU to remove the NVidia drivers when I installed the new RX 570, so it's not a driver conflict - or, at least, not from having both NVidia and AMD drivers running at the same time.

That said, GPU-Z was behaving exactly the same when the system had the stock GTX 1050 Ti and Nvidia drivers, and I did use DDU to remove those drivers when I switched over to the RX 570.

Might I suggest we stop focusing on the modded BIOS in the AMD RX 570 (with Radeon drivers)? EDIT: note that 3 separate cards have been installed in this machine recently as I dip my toes into mining cryptos.

I suspect the most pertinent data point is the Access Violation reported in Windows' Event Viewer; this is a huge naughty-no-no as it means that GPU-Z is trying to write to a memory location already in use. What is present at that location and why GPU-Z needs to write to it I don't know, but that seems like a pretty good clue, no?

 

[W1zzard]

Could the problem be that GPUZ is seeing conflicting states

The GPU-Z binary is not started at all. In a private test build I put a popup message right at the earliest point where I could in my code, before any hardware or drivers are accessed and not even that was loaded.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Might I suggest we stop focusing on the modded BIOS in the AMD RX 570 (with Radeon drivers)? EDIT: note that 3 separate cards have been installed in this machine recently as I dip my toes into mining cryptos.

In that case, given that it's Windows 10 and it's reputation for borking things up with needless "feature" updates, you may wish to rollback the latest update, or just get an ISO for 1709 and do a fresh install(my recommendation).

The GPU-Z binary is not started at all. In a private test build I put a popup message right at the earliest point where I could in my code, before any hardware or drivers are accessed and not even that was loaded.

Could it be that the inbuilt Windows Firewall has a config that is causing a problem?

 

[W1zzard]

Might I suggest we stop focusing on the modded BIOS in the AMD RX 570 (with Radeon drivers)

Do you have a spare HDD on which you could install fresh Windows to check whether GPU-Z works on a new install on the same system?

 

[lexluthermiester]

Do you have a spare HDD on which you could install fresh Windows to check whether GPU-Z works on a new install on the same system?

^ This. Although, I still recommend a fresh install anyway as 1709 was a major update and fresh installs are historically more stable and less problematic.