The VideoLAN Forums

When ever I play HD movie with some audio and have the xonar as my Audio device, I get a BSOD (BAD_POOL_CALLER).
Installed the latest driver from Asus. Anyone an idea how to solve this problem?

BTw windows 8 64x (Under Windows 7 it was all working fine)

BSOD => driver bug => VLC community cannot help you.

VLC cannot trigger BSOD on its own; it does not run in kernel mode.

Not on its own maybe, but TOGETHER it does have a problem. And it is ONLY with VLC. I can play some of the movies fine with classic or standard media player, but they crash with VLC.
Found another post somewhere with exactly the same problem (in german): http://www.computerbase.de/forum/showth ... ?t=1163878

The point is, a VLC bug cannot trigger a BSOD. Only a kernel mode bug can trigger a BSOD. Hence the bug is not in VLC regardless of the fact that it is uncovered by VLC.

Update your drivers or change VLC video output module. That's all help you can get from here.

CAUSE IDENTIFIED. I hope digging up old threads isn't too rude; I'm only doing so because I'm experiencing the exact same issue on a newer card and have found an alternate cause and solution for it. I apologize in advance to any mods if this is an inconvenient way to report it.

Anyways, to it:
Card: ASUS Xonar U3 (CMedia chipset)
Audio Driver Version: 7.0.8.2153
OS: Win7 x64 SP1

Problem: BAD_POOL_CALLER BSOD when attempting to view media files with DTS or Dolby 5.1 audio tracks. Some other 5.1 media files (MP4 files, for instance), do not present the issue. Issue may happen under several media players (MPC-HC, VLC, BSPlayer).

Believed cause (short): Audio codec attempting to output DTS or Dolby audio track directly to SPDIF output on card, though sending it to the analog "Speakers" Playback Device in Windows instead. NOTE: I am aware that VLC does not use FFDAudio! Yet through extensive testing, the causes for crashing were -always- this direct pass-through attempt. I'm not sure how VLC handles it, but this solution also applied to it.

Solution: Always set the "Default Playback Device" in Windows to "Digital Output" before playing this kind of media. This can be done by right-clicking the volume icon on the taskbar, selecting "Playback Devices", right-clicking on "Digital Output" on the list that is presented and setting it as the default device. Revert this to "Speakers" later (after watching said media), if necessary.

The DTS and Dolby pass-through on the SPDIF output for my card then works perfectly by doing the process above on MPC-HC. I am not promoting a different player; merely stating what happened. On VLC, the BSOD stopped happening but the stream was then sent as a stereo LPCM stream, and video could be watched normally (only no 5.1 audio).

Alternatively (if you don't use SPDIF and don't care to have it disabled), you may disable DTS and Dolby direct pass-through on the audio codec.
On FFDAudio players: Double-click the blue "FFA" icon on your taskbar and look for the "Output" settings, at the bottom of the list. You'll find that there. Doing this will force the multi-channel audio stream to be software-processed by whatever other settings you have on your Xonar control panel (Dolby Headphone, or simply crush it down to a stereo stream like normal sound cards do).
On VLC: I could not locate a similar option, but I'm certain it must be there.

Note: This was tested for MPC-HC only because I am more familiar with it. It worked every time I made the change and BSOD'd every time I didn't, consistently tested, but -also- affected VLC and stopped the crashes all the same. The settings in VLC or other players may be a bit different but I believe the cause is the same. If someone knows where in the VLC settings these stream pass-through options (or similar) can be edited, please let us know.