IDE cause BSOD in Windows 11

Development Tools IDE 2.x
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Hi I got the same problem. Arduino IDE make W11 have blue screen of death!
I not doing anything special, just running Arduino IDE and coding for many hours and then suddenly Blue screen of death, never happens using any other program.

Maybe its then hit upload code to the ESP32 board the crash happened but I think it happened when just editing code as well... So I have a feeling it have a memory leak.

1 Like
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Topic split, please do not hijack topics. Your problem does not seem to be the same.

Which exact version of the IDE are you using?

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Hi @Fableman. Please tell us which USB to serial bridge chip your Arduino board has. This is a black chip near the USB socket.

The chip will usually be identified by writing on the top. This might say something like "WCH CH340G" or "SILABS CP2102".

Examples:

WCH CH340

CH340
CH340223×151 63 KB

📷

SparkFun - CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)

Silicon Labs CP2102

CP2102

📷

SparkFun - CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)

If it isn't clear, alternatively you can provide the link to where you bought the board from and we'll see if we can determine the chip from the product listing.

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Don’t know.

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image0.jpeg1512×2016 481 KB

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That board has a very strange design. The USB chip is inside that "T-U2T" adapter, and the USB C socket on the board is being misused for the serial signals instead of for USB.

It makes perfect sense to use an external adapter for the USB to serial conversion, but using a USB socket for something other than USB is sure to cause lots of confusion when people try to plug a USB cable directly into these boards and find they can't upload.

Anyway, you are using the adapter as required so my comments above are tangential, but I had to get my rant in.

The adapter uses the CH9102 USB chip. The reason I asked about the chip is because we received a report of BSOD occurring when boards that have a CH340 chip print a lot of data to Serial Monitor:

I'm not sure whether the bug also affects the CH9102. Does the BSOD still occur if you use Arduino IDE with the Serial Monitor view closed? Note that the Serial Monitor view is a tab in the bottom panel of the Arduino IDE window, and the bottom panel can also contain other tabbed views such as the "Output" view that opens whenever you compile or upload. So even when you aren't actively using Serial Monitor, you might still have it open and not notice it. So you must make sure the Serial Monitor tab is closed, which can be done by clicking the X icon on the tab:

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image405×345 38 KB

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I agree on the bad board design to use a USBC not fully supporting USBC ( it's just a few extra components)
I use serial monitor all the time.

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That doesn't answer my question:

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The BSOD happen after 2+ hours of coding, don't know what to do code without serial monitor running, because all my coding depends on serial monitor.

What I can say that my MAC M1 running Arduino IDE never crash.

1 Like
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I wanted to add my issue, which aligns with the above sentence. However, it does not cause a BSOD but a black screen and a reboot on my Windows 11 PC. The issue only happens if Arduino IDE is running (having the board for hours connected to the USB does not trigger the issue, so my guess is the problem is Arduino IDE and not the CH340G driver).

I am running arduino-ide_nightly-20250311_Windows_64bit

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That's something.

I also observed the same thing. Whenever Arduino is running, it can randomly cause BSOD in my case.

When I'm running CH340 but using Visual Studio Code (VSC), it's not rebooting even with the same drivers.

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I also experienced this only on Arduino IDE 2.3.4. However, if I use Arduino IDE 1.8.19, there is no BSOD and it is safe to use with Serial Monitoring

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Hello again @Fableman, @misan, and @FansElectronics. A potential fix has been made in the serial-monitor helper tool that provides communication between the Arduino IDE 2.x Serial Monitor tool and the serial port of the Arduino board:

Arduino IDE 2.x automatically updates the serial-monitor when a new version is available, so the version with the fix (0.15.0) should already be installed on your computer and in use by Arduino IDE 2.x.

I already verified that the change another problem that affected boards with the CH340 chip (arduino/arduino-create-agent#1000). However, I was never able to reproduce the problem reported here, so I am not able to check whether it is fixed or not.

Please check to see if the problem occurs when using the latest driver version and then add a reply here on the forum topic to let me know what you found.

I'll provide instructions you can follow to do that:

A. Update Driver

If you read the issue I linked in my previous reply, you might have followed the instructions provided there to work around the bug by "rolling back" to an older version of the CH340 driver that does not seem to cause this problem.

If so, you will need to update the driver again to the latest version. Follow these instuctions to do that:

  1. Connect the Arduino board to your computer with a USB cable.
  2. Open the Windows Device Manager.
  3. Select View > Devices by type from the Device Manager menus.
  4. Open the "View" menu.
  5. If there is a ✓ to the left of the "Show hidden devices" menu item, click on "Show hidden devices" to disable it.
  6. Open the "Ports (COM & LPT)" section of the Device Manager tree.
  7. You should see a port identified as "USB-SERIAL CH340 (COMn)" under the "Ports (COM & LPT)" section (where "COMn" is some serial port e.g., COM4). Double click on that item.
    The "USB-SERIAL CH340 (COMn) Properties" dialog will open.
  8. Select the "Driver" tab of the "USB-SERIAL CH340 (COMn) Properties" dialog.
  9. Click the "Update driver" button.
    An "Update Drivers Device - USB-SERIAL CH340 (COMn)" dialog will open.
  10. Click on "Search automatically for drivers" in the "Update Drivers Device - USB-SERIAL CH340 (COMn)" dialog.
  11. You should now see the driver installation wizard update the driver. Wait for the update to finish, as indicated by the message "Windows has successfully updated your drivers" in the dialog.
  12. Click the "Close" button in the "USB-SERIAL CH340 (COMn) Properties" dialog.
  13. Close Windows Device Manager.

B. Check If Fault Still Occurs

You can now perform a simple experiment by following the instructions below. If the bug has been fixed, this experiment should not result in a BSoD. If the bug has not been fixed, then it will still cause a BSoD.

  1. Save any unsaved work in open applications to ensure you won't lose anything if a BSoD does occur.
  2. Start Arduino IDE 2.x.
  3. Upload the "hello" test sketch to the board:
    void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
}
void loop() {
  Serial.println("hello");
  delay(5);
}
  4. Open Serial Monitor.

Hopefully this time a BSoD will not occur.

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Hi @ptillisch ,

I tried to update the driver, but my Windows 11 PC already had the latest version, 3.9.2024.9, dated 16/9/2024.

I downloaded the latest 64-bit stable version of the IDE 2.3.5.

I ran the sample "hello" sketch, and it does not seem to trigger the problem (in my case, it was a black screen followed by a reboot without any previous warning).

I will keep it running all day, just in case, but previously the problem happened just after a few minutes of Serial Monitor traffic.

19

OK, great. I included the driver update instructions just in case you had used that "roll back" workaround. For anyone who hasn't explicitly performed a "roll back", it is expected that you will have the 3.9.2024.9 version, as Windows update installs that version by default.

Great news! Thanks so much for taking the time to try it out and sharing your findings.

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