Widescreen Gaming Forum

Well played BC2 again today and it crashed twice, once to desktop and the second to atikmpag.sys BSOD.

What should I do guys? Has anyone ever heard of this atikmpag.sys BSOD ATI knows of the problem yet the Tech said they can't test it because it is to hard to test for and there is no information on it.

Thats whats known as a generic error and could point to a myriad of things - it could be cuased by the software install, it could be caused by a problem with the graphics card, it could be a stick of memory going bad, it could be that the system isn't getting enough power, etc., etc.

Thats whats known as a generic error and could point to a myriad of things - it could be cuased by the software install, it could be caused by a problem with the graphics card, it could be a stick of memory going bad, it could be that the system isn't getting enough power, etc., etc.

Well that is odd what kind of BSOD is that it obviously comes back with atikmpag.sys so where is it pulling that from. From the name it would seem that it is something to do with ATI being hardware or software.

If this was a memory problem or hard drive problem or any other problem I am assuming it would be a different BSOD.

I had posted this on another Forum and one of the very active members that knows a lot posted this to me.

"It's a driver recovery. It means your card crashed under load. It could be caused from an unstable overclock, temps getting too high on the VDDC phase 1-4 or could simply be a driver bug. Try going back to the 10.2 official set and see if the problem persists. "

So what would you suggest Dave. Was this guy on the right track or does he not know what he is talking about. Because yea the tech said they are well aware of it. And I just find it odd that it would be caused by anything other then ATI hardware or software since the BSOD is atikmpag.sys

Are there any tests I can run on the card to see if it is faulty. I mean obviously you are aware of the issue and someone had to of created the file atikmpag.sys so someone should know something about it. I even see this when the driver is installing all the files I see the exact name atikmpag real quick of all the things it is installing so what is it.

I've had graphics drivers reported as the fault in BSOD situations for both nVidia and ATi cards where it's been nothing to do with the GPU at all; a few times it's been a dodgy overclock on my testing rig, once it was PCI-E frequency too high (no SATA corruption as I was using IDE) I had the BIOS assign a soundcard to the same IRQ as the GPU once and that caused the BSODs whenever the GPU and soundcard tried to do a lot at the same time...

The desktop crash I'm more inclined to say is a buggy game. It's new, things don't get tested well enough any more. The BSOD... despite blaming it on the GPU driver probably isn't directly GPU related. I'd say the same thing if it was an nVidia card.

I've had graphics drivers reported as the fault in BSOD situations for both nVidia and ATi cards where it's been nothing to do with the GPU at all; a few times it's been a dodgy overclock on my testing rig, once it was PCI-E frequency too high (no SATA corruption as I was using IDE) I had the BIOS assign a soundcard to the same IRQ as the GPU once and that caused the BSODs whenever the GPU and soundcard tried to do a lot at the same time...

The desktop crash I'm more inclined to say is a buggy game. It's new, things don't get tested well enough any more. The BSOD... despite blaming it on the GPU driver probably isn't directly GPU related. I'd say the same thing if it was an nVidia card.

So did any of your BSOD come back with atikmpag.sys, and if it was nvidia gpu you think it would then come back as nvidiakmpag.sys didn't think so...

No, with NVIDIA it generally comes up with a nvlddmkm error. Here is a thread on it over at (and atikmpag.sys) NVIDIA's forums:

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=100800&hl=nvlddmkm

I'd take a look.

No, with NVIDIA it generally comes up with a nvlddmkm error. Here is a thread on it over at (and atikmpag.sys) NVIDIA's forums:

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=100800&hl=nvlddmkm

I'd take a look.

So the guy was right about it being a driver recovery issue, and the one posted in that thread is atikmdag not atikmpag. And also that thread was mostly on the driver stopped responding and yes I know about that one from Nvidia I had it happen before with my 260 SLI setup I had, but a new driver fixed it.

Thanks for posting the thread though. I wanted to let you know that I have ran memtest with no errors, I ran Prime for a few hours and my voltages did not drop so my PSU should be efficient. My temps on CPU and GPU when running Prime and games are around 35C on CPU and 62-65C on GPU. I know I am not overheating, this was all monitored with Everest.

I did notice it mentioned sometimes Realtek can cause the issue for the Nvidia one so I uninstalled my Realtek, I did just update this a while ago.

It's a very generic error. You should remove all hardware (soundcard,usb drive/sticks, etc) and use one memory module (i see you have 2 x 2gb) at a time. Then boot up the system and do some testing. Stuff like this is hard to narrow down though.

It's a very generic error. You should remove all hardware (soundcard,usb drive/sticks, etc) and use one memory module (i see you have 2 x 2gb) at a time. Then boot up the system and do some testing. Stuff like this is hard to narrow down though.

I am using onboard sound, I don't have any USB drives just KB/M. I ran memtest with no errors. What else do you suggest.

[quote]It's a very generic error. You should remove all hardware (soundcard,usb drive/sticks, etc) and use one memory module (i see you have 2 x 2gb) at a time. Then boot up the system and do some testing. Stuff like this is hard to narrow down though.

I am using onboard sound, I don't have any USB drives just KB/M. I ran memtest with no errors. What else do you suggest.

I would still remove a 2gb module and test the system. Try a different pci-e slot for the card. Did you disable the onboard sound to? Try to use the windows nforce drivers instead of nvidia's. And if possible post the error log. Or send in pm.