DWM and others crashing on wake from sleep - forced to reset - help!

Hi guys, I've encountered a new issue (itself a variation on an old one I thought was gone) on Windows 10 Creators edition and could use some ideas.

In short, sometimes, very occasionally, when I wake the PC up from sleep, everything gets going except the monitor. It stays in sleep and I am forced into a restart to get it going again. It's a kind of black screen without the screen actually being on.

After some huffing and puffing I seem to have isolated the culprit to either dwm.exe, lockapp.exe or logonui.exe - they all crash when this happens (via event viewer), suggesting the normal signal to monitor simply isn't happening or is being blocked because lock screen and visual apps have broken down.

I Googled it and it is a known issue, so at least it's not just me, but is there any fix or remedy?

I disabled PLL overclock in the BIOS (no idea why), I disabled auto source selection in my monitor, and I've changed the DP2 port my monitor plugs into on my 1080Ti. All of these are stabs in the dark. I have also seen an actual black screen caused by Comodo, but it was able to recover without a restart, and I am also aware Nvidia drivers can cause this.

The following are the crash logs for each app:

Faulting application name: LockApp.exe, version: 10.0.15063.0, time stamp: 0x58ccbce3
Faulting module name: Windows.UI.Xaml.dll, version: 10.0.15063.540, time stamp: 0xd330c8c8
Exception code: 0xc000027b
Fault offset: 0x0000000000592aa3
Faulting process ID: 0x46f0
Faulting application start time: 0x01d329a023ce68f0
Faulting application path: C:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.LockApp_cw5n1h2txyewy\LockApp.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\System32\Windows.UI.Xaml.dll
Report ID: 69c9aa56-f515-4dc6-8f85-3880ae6d091c
Faulting package full name: Microsoft.LockApp_10.0.15063.0_neutral__cw5n1h2txyewy

Faulting application name: dwm.exe, version: 10.0.15063.0, time stamp: 0x982d0cc7
Faulting module name: dwmcore.dll, version: 10.0.15063.483, time stamp: 0x460f87da
Exception code: 0xc00001ad
Fault offset: 0x00000000000d467e
Faulting process ID: 0x4c4
Faulting application start time: 0x01d32657026c5424
Faulting application path: C:\WINDOWS\system32\dwm.exe
Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\system32\dwmcore.dll
Report ID: 62b57f7c-4aaa-48c4-89ba-15d4304bec4f
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

Faulting application name: LockApp.exe, version: 10.0.15063.0, time stamp: 0x58ccbce3
Faulting module name: Windows.UI.Xaml.dll, version: 10.0.15063.540, time stamp: 0xd330c8c8
Exception code: 0xc000027b
Fault offset: 0x0000000000592aa3
Faulting process ID: 0x46f0
Faulting application start time: 0x01d329a023ce68f0
Faulting application path: C:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.LockApp_cw5n1h2txyewy\LockApp.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\System32\Windows.UI.Xaml.dll
Report ID: 69c9aa56-f515-4dc6-8f85-3880ae6d091c
Faulting package full name: Microsoft.LockApp_10.0.15063.0_neutral__cw5n1h2txyewy

Hoping someone can impart words of wisdom. The annoying thing is this happens 'now and then' - meaning you can go a week on a new 'attempt' after adjusting something, think the issue is gone, it then happens and you've wasted another week trying to fix it. Can take months to resolve because of this. So could use some useful guidance!

Cheers.

ArazelEternal said:

As always, it doesnt hurt to check if there is file system corruption.

Open a admin command prompt and type: sfc /scannow. This will turn up any system file corruption and in many cases fix it.

Then, type: dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth. This will check and fix component store corruption.

Next, type: chkdsk C: /scan. This will check for any file system corruption.

These steps can help fix a lot of issues with Windows.

Try updating your NVIDIA drivers as well. You may also want to try using DDU: Display Driver Uninstaller - Display Driver Uninstaller. This will completely uninstall your NVIDIA driver. You will need to reinstall the driver afterwards. This can sometimes be useful in fixing display issues, as sometimes just updating drivers doesnt fix the issue if files are corrupt.

Hi there, thanks for the reply, yeah, did all that. Came through completely clean! And no point updating the Nvidias - on the latest ones and the previous ones had this issue too. And yup, always use DDU.

A deeper search is definitely needed to figure this one out.

ArazelEternal said:

It may be a flaky video card too. Its a longshot, but a possibility. Its always said that if new hardware is going to fail prematurely, its going to do it soon. I would try running Unigine Heaven benchmark on it for a while. Run it at Extreme settings to see if the crashes might happen when the system is being taxed. It shows the temp of your graphics card on the screen, see what it gets to after an hour or so, as long as it doesnt exceed 90C.

My card has liquid cooling - it maxes under the heaviest load at about 61C. I've also had that card since April! Nah, I don't think it's that. Something on the software side I believe is causing these apps to break down. I have tried a few adjustments and so far it's been ok but I've always found it usually takes around 10 days for an intermittent problem to manifest itself so I have a wait ahead!