Windows 10 Creator Update Cause Front End to Crash (possibly because of DirextX9)

Question

It seems that Windows 10 Creator Update (Version 1703) has caused Mathematica front end to crash across different versions. The symptoms are:

• When mma starts up and the welcome dialog appears, it stops responding. Disabling the welcome dialog will this symptom above from happening.
• In the notebook, when auto-completion is triggered, the front end will stop working. Disabling the auto-completion function will prevent this symptom from happening.
• When one trys to rotate a 3D graph, the front end will stop working.

The crash report generated by Windows:

Version=1
EventType=APPCRASH
EventTime=131362469031543987
ReportType=2
Consent=1
UploadTime=131362469034549633
ReportStatus=268435456
ReportIdentifier=f3cf3b40-481f-4ae2-a61e-2c1075616cf5
IntegratorReportIdentifier=cdd30522-0d52-4037-bc0c-cccadccb23e9
Wow64Host=34404
NsAppName=Mathematica.exe
AppSessionGuid=000000c0-0001-000c-f5a4-cd3078b1d201
TargetAppId=W:0000221a34e1a9c45da1ad2ee93089c180d00000ffff!0000fd4cd3fcff0562727ce4feceddac9eb194914857!Mathematica.exe
TargetAppVer=2017//03//14:00:43:41!cfa1eb!Mathematica.exe
BootId=4294967295
ServiceSplit=471750840
TargetAsId=3222
Response.BucketId=3a7fab9df15891867d190f71eb2f2f83
Response.BucketTable=4
Response.LegacyBucketId=120722075138
Response.type=4
Sig[0].Name=Application Name
Sig[0].Value=Mathematica.exe
Sig[1].Name=Application Version
Sig[1].Value=11.1.30777.29829
Sig[2].Name=Application Timestamp
Sig[2].Value=58c73cbd
Sig[3].Name=Fault Module Name
Sig[3].Value=d3d9.dll
Sig[4].Name=Fault Module Version
Sig[4].Value=10.0.15063.0
Sig[5].Name=Fault Module Timestamp
Sig[5].Value=631de416
Sig[6].Name=Exception Code
Sig[6].Value=c000041d
Sig[7].Name=Exception Offset
Sig[7].Value=000000000000fd0c

Judging from the crash report, the problem seems to be caused by DirectX9 (because the fault module is d3d9.dll).

I have had several different attempts to resolve this, including:

• Reinstalling graphical driver
• Reinstalling Mathematica
• Installing different version of Mathematica (including 10.3, 11.0, 11.1)

But none of them works.

Here are some relevant info about my system:

Hardwares

• CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K
• GPU: NVidia GTX 1080
• Installed RAM: ddr4 64GB @ 2400

System

• Windows 10 Pro 64bit Version 1703
• NVidia driver version: 378.66

Mathematica Version

• Mathematica for Windows 11.1
• Mathematica for Windows 11.0
• Mathematica for Windows 10.3

Anyone else has similar problems, and any suggestions? Thank you!

Answer 1

I have found the solution to solve the problem.

The problem is caused by RTSS (rivatuner-statistics-server), which usually comes with MSI afterburner.

Shutting down RTSS and all its related processes in the task manager will solve the problem. Alternatively, one can add a profile in RTSS which points to Mathematica.exe and set the detection level to "None".

This problem is indeed related to Windows 10 Creator Update. It has also been reported that similar problems occured on some other applications after the update, and the same solution can be used to resolve them.