bluescreen on start since this week - please help

[Vertigo 7]

have you run a memtest on your machine lately? https://www.memtest86.com/download.htm

if you're not familiar, this nifty little jobbie helps suss out hardware problems. it'll guide you through creating a bootable flash drive and it'll beat your RAM up to detect problems with it. In my experiences, random things like what you're experiencing could be a symptom of some failing RAM or possibly even a PSU problem, though memtest won't show you issues with the PSU, you'll need to buy a PSU testing kit for that. Anywho, may be worth checking out. boot off the flash drive, start the test and go to bed. it will take quite some time to fully run.

[kuertee]

Thanks, Vertigo.

I performed the Windows Memory Diganostic instead - even if I have read that memtest is better, as you suggested.
Windows Memory Diagnostic didn't find anything wrong with my memory - which is as I expected because I've had no problems with other games.
But memtest may find a problem - but I'll leave using memtest until X4 crashes again.

Yes, I got X4 to work again today.
Have played it without it crashing to BSOD.
I got it to work by reverting back my video card drivers to their OEM versions - about 6 months old.

Using bluescreenview (https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html), I found that the problem was indeed the most recent video card drivers.
For some reason, my laptop has some incompatibility with Nvidia's most recent drivers. It could be the card, the motherboard, the RAM, etc.

Anyway, I'll try newer versions (but not the most recent version) of the driver in the coming days.
I do keep my laptop clean and up-to-date.
It's unfortunate that I can't use the most recent drivers.

[Alan Phipps]

The fact that it *needs* OEM drivers might lead one to suspect that the laptop makers have made some changes to the stock video card to make it work with their case, motherboard, interfaces, power supply and/or display. Hence the card itself has probably become OEM.

[kuertee]

Yeah, likely.

But I keep my laptop system clean and up-to-date.
It's only ever, at most, a month behind the most recent versions of the drivers.
And I only experienced BSOD and only with X4 after I updated to the most recent version of the Nvidia driver.

I have a feeling the new Nvidia drivers have a problem "waking up" my video card.
Crashes occurred after the video card goes black at initialisation of the game - but not immediately.
I can hear the game loading the files.
If the Egosoft logo doesn't play, I'll let the game hang. After about 5 minutes, I'll get the BSOD.
When I did get the game to play, the BSOD occurred during game save or load operations.

Remember: I threw most of my current games at the laptop: Prey, Witcher 3, Doom 2016, Stellaris, Endless Space 2, etc.
It's only X4 that BSOD.
I'm not saying that X4 is built poorly. I'm just stating that in my system, only X4 caused BSOD.