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Automated Game & System Crash Diagnostic Suite (drivercheck)

Evidence-based Windows PC gaming diagnostics. Pinpoint the exact root cause of game crashes, GPU driver timeouts (TDR 4101), black screens, and sudden reboots in 30 seconds — without guessing, wiping configs, or blindly reinstalling Windows.

⚡ Quick Start (30 Seconds)

Option 1: Interactive Launcher (Recommended for Gamers)

  1. Download and extract the latest release package.
  2. Double-click Run-Diagnostics.bat.
  3. Press [1] (Diagnose Latest Crash & Open HTML Report).
  4. A dark-mode HTML Report (CrashReport_<timestamp>.html) will generate and automatically open in your default browser.
========================================================================
  AUTOMATED GAME & SYSTEM CRASH DIAGNOSTIC SUITE (v4.5.0)
  Evidence-Based Engine (Crash Dumps, Logs, Telemetry, Hardware)
========================================================================

  [1] Diagnose Latest Crash & Open HTML Report (Recommended)
  [2] Scan Full Incident History (All Recent Incidents)
  [3] Export Support Bundle (HTML Report + ZIP for Discord/Support)
  [4] Motherboard, Chipset Drivers & PnP Hardware Health Audit
  [5] Display, EDID Timings & DP Scaler Saturation Audit
  [6] GPU Driver Health & Downgrade Prevention Audit
  [7] Apply GPU Downgrade Protection (Lock Windows Update Drivers)
  [8] Power, Fast Startup & Sleep Transition Audit
  [9] Maintenance & Cache Cleaning Tools
  [0] Exit
========================================================================

Selecting Option [1] automatically scans backward in time (up to 30 days) to find the most recent crash or fault incident, tightly correlates pre-crash telemetry around that event, and opens the HTML report. Option [2] expands the analysis across full historical incidents over the past 30 days.

Option 2: PowerShell CLI (Power Users & Tech Support)

Run directly from PowerShell (no administrator privileges required for scanning):

# Default: Incident-Anchored Scan for Latest Crash with HTML Report
PowerShell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\Analyze-LatestCrash.ps1 -ExportHtml -OpenReport

# Full Incident History Scan (Past 30 Days)
PowerShell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\Analyze-LatestCrash.ps1 -AllIncidents -ExportHtml

# Create Support Bundle ZIP (Report + Sanitized Logs for Reddit/Discord)
PowerShell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\Analyze-LatestCrash.ps1 -ExportZip

# JSON Export for automated pipelines or CI
PowerShell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\Analyze-LatestCrash.ps1 -ExportJson -Quiet

🔍 What drivercheck Checks & Reports On

drivercheck runs a full audit of your gaming software stack, hardware telemetry, and Windows system policies:

Diagnostic Domain Exact Checks & What It Reports On
Windows Driver Overwrites • Audits Windows Update driver searching policy (SearchOrderConfig).
• Audits Windows Quality Update driver exclusion policies (ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate) to identify if Windows Update is silently replacing official GPU drivers with outdated OEM builds.
Mismatched & Desynced Drivers • Detects Dual-GPU driver version mismatch between discrete AMD Radeon GPUs and integrated CPU graphics (primary cause of atieclxx.exe crashes and 0x9F sleep hangs).
• Detects generic display adapter fallbacks (Microsoft Basic Display Adapter).
• Identifies AMD Software installation type (Driver Only vs Adrenalin Full GUI) and active AMD Crash Defender services.
Recent Windows Updates & Hotfixes • Queries Windows Update Agent session history for recently installed Windows Quality Updates, Defender updates, and driver packages.
• Audits installed Windows Hotfixes (Win32_QuickFixEngineering) to correlate new crashes with recent system changes.
Windows Event Logs (Crashes & Timeouts) • GPU Driver Resets: Display driver timeouts (Event 4101 / 0x141 / VIDEO_TDR_ERROR).
• PCIe Bus & Riser Errors: WHEA-Logger PCIe Root Port link communication faults (Event 17).
• Kernel BugChecks: System BSOD crash codes (WER-SystemErrorReporting Event 1001).
• Unexpected Shutdowns & Power Cuts: Kernel-Power Event 41 (transient PSU trips/hard freezes) and Event 6008.
• Virtual Memory Exhaustion: Windows commit limit / pagefile exhaustion (Resource-Exhaustion-Detector Event 2004).
• Network Drops: NCSI internet capability drops (Event 4042), Intel 2.5GbE ARP probe failures, and Wi-Fi failovers.
Application & Binary Crash Dumps • Deep binary minidump parser (MDMP) across Windows Kernel BSODs (C:\Windows\Minidump, MEMORY.DMP), User-Mode WER dumps (%LOCALAPPDATA%\CrashDumps), Steam dumps (Steam\dumps), Unreal Engine (Saved\Crashes), and Unity.
• Extracts exact Exception Codes (0xC0000005, 0x887A0006, 0xC0000409, 0x00000000), faulting module addresses, and in-binary assertion strings.
• Detects zombie/deadlocked background processes (e.g. headless steam.exe blocking relaunch mutexes).
Motherboard, BIOS & Chipset Drivers • Audits motherboard manufacturer, product model, and BIOS release date (flags firmware >3 years old lacking PCIe/AGESA stability fixes).
• Audits official AMD Chipset Software / Intel Chipset Device Software installations.
• Verifies core platform controller health (AMD GPIO, I2C, PCI Device Driver, PSP, 3D V-Cache / Intel MEI).
• Scans Plug and Play (PnP) devices for missing drivers (Code 28) and device failures (Code 43).
Display EDID Timings & Scaler Saturation • Parses binary EDID Detailed Timing Descriptors (DTDs) across HDMI and DisplayPort.
• Calculates pixel clocks (MHz) and vertical blanking lines to flag aggressive factory overclocks (e.g. 1440p 165Hz with vertical blanking >1500 lines) that saturate DP 1.2a scalers and cause periodic 2-3s blackouts without generating TDRs.
Rogue Kernel I/O Driver Audit • Scans for legacy direct port I/O drivers (inpoutx64.sys, WinRing0x64.sys, ene.sys, AsrOmgDrv.sys, gdrv.sys) left behind by RGB or hardware monitoring software.
• Diagnoses collisions with anti-cheat engines (Easy Anti-Cheat, BattlEye, Vanguard) and Windows Memory Integrity that cause INVALID_KERNEL_HANDLE (0x93) BSODs or video freeze lockups.
Power & PCIe ASPM Link States • Audits Windows Fast Startup configuration (HiberbootEnabled), which frequently triggers recurring 0x9F sleep/wake crashes.
• Audits PCIe Link State Power Management (ASPM) across active power plans, identifying low-power bus states that trigger GPU driver timeouts (TDR 4101) during idle or video load.

🎯 What Symptoms Does This Diagnose?

Symptom Detected Root Causes & Diagnostic Check
GPU Driver Timeout (TDR 4101 / 0x141) PCIe ASPM bus wake latency, shader compiler crash loops, short TdrDelay, or dual-GPU driver desync.
Black Screen for 2–3s (No crash dump) DisplayPort 1.2a scaler saturation / bloated EDID factory vertical blanking (>1500 lines) exceeding monitor scaler limits.
Game Freezes with Audio Still Playing Anti-cheat collision with legacy RGB/fan kernel I/O drivers (inpoutx64.sys, WinRing0, ene.sys, 0x93).
Silent Game Crash to Desktop Steam watchdog cross-thread pipe kill (pipes.cpp), engine unhandled assertions, or Intel 2.5GbE ARP link drops.
PC Instantly Reboots or Powers Off Kernel-Power Event 41 (BugcheckCode 0), PSU transient spike trips, or Fast Startup hybrid session corruption.
Out-of-Memory / D3D Device Lost Windows commit limit exhaustion (Event 2004) or missing/disabled System-Managed Pagefile.
BSOD 0x9F DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE Dual-GPU driver desync (AMD iGPU vs dGPU) or sleep/wake power transition failure with Fast Startup.
Micro-Stuttering & Input Lag Spikes Background Windows Quality Updates, Bluetooth RF interference, or uninitialized motherboard chipset controllers.

📊 What You Get: Diagnostic Report

Running drivercheck generates a self-contained, responsive HTML report featuring:

  1. Executive Root Cause & Actionable Guidance: Direct, evidence-backed conclusion with step-by-step resolution instructions (no vague "reinstall Windows" suggestions).
  2. Tiered Evidence Breakdown: Exact exception codes (0xC0000005, 0x887A0006), faulting DLLs, binary assertion strings, and correlated Windows event logs.
  3. Hardware & Configuration Audit: Motherboard BIOS age (>3 yrs flagged), AMD/Intel platform chipset driver health, EDID monitor timings, PCIe power states, and active GPU configuration.
  4. 1-Click Community Tech Support Export: Pre-formatted markdown block ready to copy and paste directly to Reddit (r/AMDHelp, r/techsupport) or Discord.

💬 Sharing for Community Tech Support

When asking for help online, you never need to screenshot multiple windows:

  1. Clipboard Summary: Scroll to the bottom of your HTML report and click the "Copy Summary for Discord / Reddit" box.
  2. Support Bundle ZIP: Select Option [3] in Run-Diagnostics.bat (or run -ExportZip). This creates a small DriverCheck_SupportBundle_<timestamp>.zip containing your HTML report and engine log excerpts.

🔒 Privacy Guarantee

  • 100% Offline & Local: No data is ever sent to external servers or telemetry endpoints.
  • Automated PII Redaction: Diagnostic reports, JSON exports, and support bundles automatically redact personal identifiers:
    • Windows usernames and user profile paths (C:\Users\<username> → %USERPROFILE%)
    • Personal Wi-Fi network SSIDs ([Redacted Wi-Fi Network])
    • Steam Account IDs ([U:1:REDACTED])
    • Personal possessive names on Bluetooth audio devices

🏛️ How It Works: The 4-Tier Diagnostic Hierarchy

drivercheck strictly prioritizes concrete binary crash artifacts over generalized system logs:

  1. Tier 1: Crash Dumps & Binary Thread Inspector (Primary Ground Truth)

    • Inspects binary minidump streams (MDMP) across Windows Kernel BSODs (C:\Windows\Minidump), Windows Error Reporting (%LOCALAPPDATA%\CrashDumps), Steam dumps, Unreal Engine (Saved\Crashes), and Unity dumps.
    • Architecture-aware parsing across 64-bit (x64) and 32-bit (x86) processes.
    • Extracts exact Exception Codes (0xC0000005, 0x887A0006, 0xC0000409, 0x80000003, 0xC000001D, 0x00000000), faulting module addresses, and in-binary assertion callouts.
    • Audits live processes for zombie / deadlocked background processes (e.g. headless steam.exe instances blocking relaunch mutexes).

  2. Tier 2: Application & Game Engine Logs (Secondary Evidence)

    • Discovers and analyzes engine logs across Unreal Engine, Unity (Player.log), idTech (qconsole.log), Source 2, and Godot.
    • Inspects Steam Overlay, CEF WebHelper, and IPC pipe logs (gameoverlay_ui.txt, webhelper.txt, connection_log.txt) while intelligently suppressing clean game exit teardown events (GameOverlayRenderer.dll detaching).

  3. Tier 3: System Logs & Hardware Telemetry (Tertiary Telemetry)

    • Correlates Windows Event Logs timestamp-aligned to crash incidents:
      • WHEA-Logger CPU, bus, and PCIe hardware errors (detects PCIe 4.0/5.0 riser cable packet loss / WHEA Event 17).
      • GPU driver TDR timeouts (Event 4101 / 0x141 / VIDEO_TDR_ERROR).
      • Virtual memory / commit limit exhaustion (Resource-Exhaustion-Detector Event 2004).
      • Kernel BugChecks (WER-SystemErrorReporting BSOD codes).
      • Unexpected shutdowns (Event 6008) and dirty reboots / instant power trips (Kernel-Power Event 41).
      • Driver load failures (Kernel-PnP Event 219) and storage/NVMe timeouts (stornvme, disk).
    • Audits Windows Fast Startup configuration (HiberbootEnabled), which frequently causes recurring 0x9F driver power state crashes.
    • Audits PCIe Link State Power Management (ASPM) settings across active power plans (SUB_PCIEXPRESS), identifying low-power bus transition latency spikes that trigger GPU driver timeouts (TDR 4101 / 0x141) during idle or video playback.

  4. Tier 4: System Hardware & Configuration (Contextual Audit)

    • Audits Motherboard, BIOS Firmware & Platform Chipset Drivers (Manufacturer, Model, BIOS release date, AMD Chipset Software / Intel Chipset Device Software version, and core controllers: AMD GPIO, I2C, PCI, PSP, and 3D V-Cache Optimizer).
    • Audits Plug and Play (PnP) Hardware Health across all system devices for missing drivers (Code 28 CM_PROB_FAILED_INSTALL), failed devices (Code 43), and uninitialized chipset devices.
    • Audits Rogue & Legacy Kernel I/O Drivers (inpoutx64.sys, WinRing0x64.sys, ene.sys, AsrOmgDrv.sys, gdrv.sys) left by RGB or fan tools, diagnosing collisions with anti-cheat software (Easy Anti-Cheat, BattlEye, Vanguard) and Windows Memory Integrity that cause INVALID_KERNEL_HANDLE (0x93) BSODs or video freeze lockups.
    • Audits active graphics hardware (Win32_VideoController), detects Dual-GPU driver version conflicts (e.g. AMD Ryzen integrated graphics vs. discrete Radeon graphics), AMD Software installation type (Driver Only vs Adrenalin Full Install), and checks Windows Update driver overwrite policies (SearchOrderConfig, ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate).
    • Audits Connected Displays & EDID Detailed Timings via WMI and Registry, detecting aggressive factory overclocks (e.g. 1440p 165Hz with bloated vertical blanking >1500 lines or pixel clock >585 MHz) saturating DisplayPort 1.2a budget scalers and causing periodic 2-3s blackouts without generating Windows TDRs or crash dumps.
    • Audits graphics subsystem configuration (TdrDelay, TdrLevel, Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling).
    • Audits Bluetooth gaming controllers (DualSense, Xbox, VR, Stadia) and network adapter stability.

🛠️ Modular Tools (scripts/)

Every tool in the scripts/ directory can be executed independently as an isolated, standalone diagnostic:

Script Category Description
Inspect-CrashDumps.ps1 Crash Dumps Direct binary inspector for BSOD, WER, Steam, Unreal, and Unity minidumps.
Inspect-GameLogs.ps1 Logs Scans Unreal, Unity, idTech, Source 2, and Godot logs for fatal errors and asserts.
Inspect-SteamLogs.ps1 Logs Analyzes Steam IPC pipes, CEF browser errors, and sleep/wake crashes.
Get-PnpDeviceDiagnostics.ps1 Hardware Scans all active hardware for missing drivers (Code 28) and device errors (Code 43).
Get-MotherboardAndChipsetDiagnostics.ps1 Hardware Audits motherboard model, BIOS version/date, and platform chipset drivers (AMD/Intel).
Get-GPUDriverDiagnostics.ps1 GPU Audits display adapters, detects driver downgrades, and locks Windows Update driver policies.
Get-DisplayDiagnostics.ps1 Display Audits connected displays, EDID detailed timings, and DP 1.2a scaler saturation hazards.
Get-PowerAndSleepDiagnostics.ps1 Power Audits Windows Fast Startup, unexpected shutdowns (6008), and sleep/wake transitions.
Get-BluetoothDiagnostics.ps1 Peripherals Audits Bluetooth radios, gaming controllers, and connection reset errors.
Get-NetworkDiagnostics.ps1 Network Audits network adapter link speed, duplex negotiation, and link flapping events.
Get-WindowsUpdateHistory.ps1 System Audits recently installed Windows Quality Updates and driver packages.
Clean-ShaderCache.ps1 Remediation Purges DirectX, AMD, and NVIDIA shader caches to resolve shader compile crash loops.
Clean-GameConfig.ps1 Remediation Purges stale game configs and shader caches (creates automatic .bak backups).
Clean-SteamCache.ps1 Remediation Purges the Steam CEF HTML browser cache (%LOCALAPPDATA%\Steam\htmlcache).
Repair-EthernetSettings.ps1 Remediation Applies stability settings to Intel/Realtek Ethernet adapters (disables VLAN/Priority).
Repair-PciePowerSettings.ps1 Remediation Disables PCIe Link State Power Management (ASPM) on active power scheme to eliminate TDRs.
Repair-GpuSleepSettings.ps1 Remediation Optimizes GPU watchdog timeout (TdrDelay = 8s) for 4K/high-refresh display wake stability.
Disable-RogueKernelDrivers.ps1 Remediation Scans for and disables problematic kernel I/O drivers (inpoutx64, winring0, etc.).

🛡️ Safe Remediation & Non-Destructive Principles

Diagnostic scans are 100% read-only. Optional remediation tools adhere to strict safety guardrails:

  • Automatic Backups: Before modifying or deleting any configuration (.cfg, .local, user_engine_option_save.xml), Clean-GameConfig.ps1 generates an exact .bak copy in the same folder. Your keybindings, sensitivities, and custom settings are never lost.
  • GPU Downgrade Protection: Get-GPUDriverDiagnostics.ps1 -ApplyFix sets standard Windows registry policies (SearchOrderConfig = 0, ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate = 1) to prevent Windows Update from silently overwriting official graphics drivers with outdated OEM builds.
  • Zero Power-Impact Defaults: Repair-GpuSleepSettings.ps1 resolves display wake TDRs by increasing watchdog tolerance (TdrDelay = 8s) rather than disabling GPU sleep states, preserving full idle power efficiency.
  • Non-Destructive Kernel Driver Disabling: Disable-RogueKernelDrivers.ps1 configures driver autostart services to disabled via Windows Service Control Manager (sc.exe) without deleting system files, immediately resolving anti-cheat conflicts and BugCheck 0x93.

📋 System Requirements

  • Operating System: Windows 10 or Windows 11 (64-bit or 32-bit).
  • PowerShell: Windows PowerShell 5.1 (pre-installed on Windows) or PowerShell Core (7.x+).
  • Privileges: Standard user privileges are sufficient for all diagnostic scans and HTML report generation. Administrator privileges are only required when explicitly applying system policy changes (e.g. locking Windows Update driver policies or reconfiguring Ethernet adapter properties).

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Check your driver installation for issues such as Windows overwrites or mismatches

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