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Attempting to fix a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) when updating graphics drivers

Issue

When using recent Windows Insider builds, the system will crash when installing/updating the graphics drivers.

Investigation

Initial

When the system crashes an error code of WIN32K_CRITICAL_FAILURE would appear and the system would automatically reboot. When the system rebooted, I copied the dump file from C:\windows\ to my desktop for analysis. After opening the dump file in WinDBG, I analysed the memory dump by running analyse -v. Eventually I came across win32kfull!DDCIFreeMemory in the stack trace which helped me isolate what feature may be causing the issue.

What is DDCCI (DDC/CI)?

DDC/CI allows a computer to communicate to a monitor and lets the computer adjust various parts of the monitor, mainly volume and brightness.

Fix / Workaround

  1. Closed Twinkle Tray which is a program that lets me adjust the volume and brightness of my monitors.
  2. Reattempted to update the graphic drivers again.
  3. Reported the issue to Microsoft after confirming that the issue can be reproduced.