Blue Screen: win32k.sys - SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION

Hi ROBO Design,

·         When do you get the Blue Screen of Death (at start up or while using any application)?

This error occurs when if you have made any hardware changes and the device or the device driver for the device is not compatible with Windows 7. Remove the hardware and try to boot again. Check the Microsoft Hardware Compatibility List to verify that the hardware and its drivers are compatible with Windows 7.

Update the hardware drivers for the computer from the manufacturer’s website and check if that helps.

Update a driver for hardware that isn't working properly

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/Update-a-driver-for-hardware-that-isnt-working-properly

You may also try to run a Check Disk. Follow the link given below for more details.

Check a drive for errors

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/Check-a-drive-for-errors

 Hope this information is helpful.

Amrita M

Microsoft Answers Support Engineer
Visit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think.

Thank you very much for your reply. However, this is a rather standardized reply :).

I already mentioned that I didn't change my hardware and all of its components are fully Windows  7 x64 compliant. I already stated that it worked for two months without any issues. Something *else* has changed. I can only blame the Microsoft Windows Updates or a failling hardware component. I also did not install any new software at all. I don't know how to check if it's hardware failure or not. Any ideas?

The two BSODs I got were while I was watching videos. Once it was when I was watching a movie in VLC Player and the other BSOD occured while I was watching a Youbute HD video in Opera 10.51 with Flash Player 10. For me, watching videos with VLC or using Opera to watch videos on Youtube is not uncommon. Since day one, that is, from december 2009, I watch videos almost daily using any of the two methods I mentioned, thus it is not something out of the ordinary in the way I use the PC. I should also mention that these two BSODs occured on two separate days, after 10 hours of PC up time and they did not occur after boot.

I've used a BSOD MiniDump viewer and it has come to my understanding that the nVidia driver has caused the BSOD. I updated my video drivers now, and I am still waiting to see if I get any more BSODs. Until now, everything seems fine. I'll get back to you here, if I get another BSOD.

Thanks again!

Best regards,

Marius

It is really unfortunate that after two-three hours of my reply, I got another BSOD. Exactly the same error as before.

I'd need some suggestions on how to figure out what is happening. Can you help me? What should I test?

Best regards,

Marius

Hello, again!

Because solving this issue for me is of utmost importance, I began investigating the issue. I installed the windows debugger for x64 and I came up this these details:

SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION (3b)
An exception happened while executing a system service routine.
Arguments:
Arg1: 00000000c0000005, Exception code that caused the bugcheck
Arg2: fffff96000124283, Address of the instruction which caused the bugcheck
Arg3: fffff880078c1070, Address of the context record for the exception that caused the bugcheck
Arg4: 0000000000000000, zero.

STACK_TEXT:
win32k!HmgLockEx+0xa3
win32k!SFMLOGICALSURFACE::OwnsSurfaceCleanup+0x40
win32k!SFMLOGICALSURFACE::DeInitialize+0x4e
win32k!bhLSurfDestroyLogicalSurfaceObject+0x4b
win32k!GreSfmCloseCompositorRef+0x10f
win32k!NtGdiHLSurfSetInformation+0x1a8
nt!KiSystemServiceCopyEnd+0x13
0x7fe`ff304efa

EXCEPTION_CODE: (NTSTATUS) 0xc0000005 - L

FAULTING_IP: win32k!HmgLockEx+a3
fffff960`00124283 0fb7430c movzx eax,word ptr [rbx+0Ch]

DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID: VISTA_DRIVER_FAULT
BUGCHECK_STR: 0x3B
PROCESS_NAME: dwm.exe
CURRENT_IRQL: 0

SYMBOL_STACK_INDEX: 0
SYMBOL_NAME: win32k!HmgLockEx+a3
MODULE_NAME: win32k
IMAGE_NAME: win32k.sys
DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP: 4a5bc5e0
STACK_COMMAND: .cxr 0xfffff880078c1070 ; kb

One may notice that DWM somehow has caused the BSOD in win32k.sys. As far as I can tell, by not being a coder myself, it is related to drawing on screen elements or related to the display. Since this BSOD dump, I had upgraded my nVidia driver, but still, I received again BSODs.

Any ideas?

Thanks for your time and best regards,

Marius

Hi ROBO Design,

Please see the following post with a similar issue and possible fix:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itprogeneral/thread/ad2b7744-4118-4e36-9d79-9ba25e73318e

Hope this helps!

Hello, again!
I've been meaning to post an update to my situation here. Thanks a lot for your reply, it's greatly appreciated.

I think I have to explain the situation's background, the context of this BSOD.

Since late December 2009, I installed Windows 7 x64 Pro. Back then, I installed all the latest drivers I've found for my hardware and all the software I require. I do not use any specific firewall software, just the included one from Windows. As an antivirus I installed Avira Antivir Personal.

In the first weeks, I also tested a few games to see how the system fares. So, until April no problems occur, of any kind, no BSODs, no freezes/locks. Of course, poorly coded applications crash at times, in certain conditions, but that is unrelated to the OS. I should also note that I did not install any additional drivers since January or any new devices. I also did not upgrade/change any drivers.

Since I installed Windows, I've enabled Windows Automatic Updates. Given the media coverage of latest Windows Updates which caused numerous BSODs for systems which were running fine, I started to suspect myself as well the updates which were installed by Windows. Before jumping to any conclusions, I ran multiple PC burn-in tests for CPU, GPU and other devices to find any possible problems related to hardware failure. All the tests were succesful, no BSODs occured.

Having no other choice, I uninstalled all the Windows Updates of April 2010 and the last two from March 2010. Since then, that's one week already, no more BSODs occured :). This is troubling, because I would really like to use Windows Updates and it seems Microsoft pushes unreliable updates. Here's the list of the updates I uninstalled: KB980302, KB980182, KB981433, KB979683, KB980232, KB890830, KB979309, KB978601. I have no idea which one causes the BSOD in my case. I've read their descriptions to try to figure out which one would be the cause, but no luck.

If you know which update causes the BSOD, please let me know.

So, to conclude, the solution to stop having BSODs was to uninstall all the Windows Updates of april 2010 and to deactivate Windows Automatic Updates. For now, I do not intend to use it anymore. It seems that one never has to fix a system which runs fine :).

Best regards,
Marius

similar BSOD post I'm handling:http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7hardware/thread/01d53557-997d-47c3-b787-aaf4551a251a/#1a96d512-2a26-4d78-b7b4-0c01a1f4863e

Please upload your all minidump files on Windows Live SkyDrive.

Hello!

Here are the minidump files: http://img.i7m.de/show/onauo-dkek9-p5b8u-5ykf0.zip

Thanks.

Best regards,

Marius

I've scanned your minidump files. There is two minidump files; so I hope you get the BSOD only for two times.

Once you get error from nvlddmkm.sys. Which is a nVidia driver related file.

You may worked well with present driver since December but once it get a BSOD then you should update it.

Try to update the driver from the link below:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7_winvista_64bit_197.45_whql.html

It would be better if you could manually uninstall the previous driver first then install the new driver. But if you can't then it would be done automatically by the nVidia driver during update.

Then reply me if the problem frequency is reduced or totally vanished?

Please read my previous posts for details. You may see that I updated my video card driver and nothing got fixed. I still got BSODs.  I got 4 BSODs in total, but I have only two minidumps. For now, I found  my own solution: i uninstalled all the windows updates prior the first BSODs. Microsoft produces totally unreliable updates. I will only install Service Packs from now. :)