Blue Screen of Death with some sound cards

EDIT: Creative has released new Beta drivers for their sound card - You should see if these are able to fix the problem for you!

If you're getting BSODs, it's likely because of your sound card having problems with Path of Exile. We've recently included a change that should prevent this crash by using software sound. Here is how you activate it:

Right click your Path of Exile Shortcut. It'll come up with this window:



Add --softwareaudio after the target, as shown in the image above.

Now when you start the game, you'll be using software audio which won't have this error any more.

We're still going to get all sound cards to work with the game correctly, but this will let you play until then.

Falkentyne has also come up with a solution that will work for some sound cards:

"
Falkentyne wrote:
If you have a creative labs X-fi (not an xtremeaudio), any PCI or PCI-E version,

Click on start menu->Run->Regedit
go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/Currentcontrolset/Control/Creative Tech

Go to Driver folder.
Then look for the PCI&VEN_1102&DEV_XXXX folder that should be there. Then click on the folder.

Add a new STRING and name it DisableXRAM, and set it to a string value of 1.
If you have more than one PCI&VEN in there, do it for the other folder.

Then restart the computer and test for any BSOD's while running the game or alt tabbing with the game running.


His original post here, which also has other solutions you can try.

~

Steam users:

"
sewerside wrote:
"
Arnven wrote:
How to put --softwareaudio in the Steam version of PoE?


Library -> Right-click Path of Exile:

Properties


Set Launch Options


-swa

OK!

:D
Balance & Design
Last edited by Henry_GGG on Oct 27, 2013, 2:56:16 PM
Last bumped on Sep 23, 2017, 6:51:01 AM
Just wanted to say thanks for this. No BSODs so far since this.
Last edited by Dercibal on Sep 27, 2012, 11:28:49 PM
Should I do this even if I don't know whether or not my sound card will give me a BSOD from this? Just to be on the safe side? Or would that cause a different error?
( ´∇`)ノ Hurray for theory crafting!
This won't cause any problems if you use it on any system. There isn't any way to easily tell whether the sound card will cause a problem or not, but it happens almost exclusively with Creative sound cards, so if you have a Creative card, I'd say better safe than sorry!
Balance & Design
Confirmed said issue, ever since I installed this game as of 10/22 it's the only game I've been playing, and I've had the BSOD happen on 3 separate occasions. I haven't used any other game application and this is the 1st issue I've had on my rig in months.

Tried -softwareaudio, also tried registry hive fix to disable XRAM, both to noavail. On the 3rd BSOD my sound-card registry hives were corrupted and I've spent the last several hours getting everything back in order, it was quite a mess.

This game will be put on the back-burner until it's stability issues with this particular card are squashed, or I get a new card, whichever is first.

Very interesting game, expansive skill system, beta is a beta however, isn't my 1st time around the block with these particular situations.

Kudos to the devs // users for the posted solutions, was worth a shot.
My relationship with Path of Exile is a love/hate one. Scuffed.
d3f1anc3, make sure you've got two - marks before software audio, like --softwareaudio. It shouldn't be possible to get a BSOD while this command is in place!
Balance & Design
Thank you very much for this quick fix. I really wanted to play this game, and was frustrated with the endless BSoDs I got!
guys this wont work i type --softwareaudio and it tells me that the specified path doesnt exist blah blah blah im running a windows 7 machine is there anything i have to type
"
orleymtnez wrote:
guys this wont work i type --softwareaudio and it tells me that the specified path doesnt exist blah blah blah im running a windows 7 machine is there anything i have to type


Make sure you just add the --software audio after your full path. On Windows 7 this will probably be:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Grinding Gear Games\Path of Exile\Client.exe" --softwareaudio
Balance & Design
I've started getting bsod's again. I've been using the beta drivers as well as --softwareaudio for a month or so with no problems.

Want to say it started again dec 3rd or 4th and Its happened once while I was idoling in the map room and 4 other times when I alt-tabed.

tried with full screen, fullscreen-wondowed and windowed modes

the BSOD occurs with or without --softwareaudio

--nosound still works fine



card is: pci-e X-fi Fatal1ty champion series

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