Games Freezing (About to convert to Amishism) (1 Viewer)

[ogmzergrush]

Hi everyone, this issue is driving me absolutely mental, but I'll post here in the hope that someone has some ideas.

So, basically my problem is that I've carried out a bunch of upgrades (See specs for current system configuration), and now games refuse to run in a stable fashion. This refers to games like World of Warcraft, Quake 4, F.E.A.R., Serious Sam 2, and older games like Hitman 2, etc. Pretty much everything I've played so far seems to bring up these issues. These manifest themselves typically in the form of the machine hanging, the current sounds looping and the system being completely unresponsive (Requiring me to turn the power off at the wall to reboot). These are "randomly" timed, and will sometimes occur straight away upon loading a game, and at other times will not happen at all. As you can imagine, this makes it pretty hard to really get too into any games. The system was quite stable prior to the addition of this hardware (RAM and video card), though I formatted at the same time so it is difficult to determine exactly what the issue is.

Now, the specs:

AMD Athlon 3200
1024mb DDR400 Corsair (New) (1 stick, replaced 512 stick)
Gigabyte GA-7N400
Leadtek Winfast 6600GT (AGP) (New) (Again, replaced previous AGP card)
400W power supply

I imagine that's all that's relevant in terms of hardware. I am running a fresh install of windows XP Pro, which is fully updated. In addition to this, all mainboard drivers, etc are up to date, and the problem manifests itself using both the latest Omega drivers as well as the latest official drivers from Nvidia for the graphics card. I have indicated the items which have been recently upgraded.

Things I have tried:

* Formatted system, completely reinstalled from ground-up, issue remains.

* Varied drivers, as listed above using latest Omega and Nvidia releases.

* Suspecting faulty ram, run memory tests for eight hours straight with 0 reported errors.

* System temperature was something I considered. I have opened the system, cleaned everything, adjusted fans, etc. I have also applied a room fan blowing into the tower, meaning that the CPU temperature maxed out somewhere around 55, and the graphics card did not exceed 60 degrees celsius. To me, these seem to be well within the acceptable margins so I am reasonably confident that the issue is not caused by heating.

* I wondered whether the power supply was struggling to power all devices. In order to test this I have disconnected two cd drives within the system, as well as improving fan efficiency (Meaning that I am running two less fans within the case now, with no change in temperature). This means that the 400w power supply is running:
- Mainboard
- Graphics card (Attached to power supply using an unshared power connector, with no difference to crashes)
- Network card
- One hard drive
- 2 case fans, CPU fan

Again, to me it seems quite reasonable to assume that a 400w power supply is adequate for this fairly light setup. Of course, I have also checked all connections within the case.

* Spyware & virus scanning, registry cleaning, defragmenting, etc has been undertaken with no resolution to the issue.

* I have *significantly* underclocked the system (Reducing it from it's default settings, nothing here has been overclocked at any stage) with no resulting improvements in stability. I have also tried with bios fail-safe settings, again no difference in stability.

Hopefully I haven't left out any critical information. I'm trying to deal with this issue in a methodical manner, and it's driving me insane. Thanks in advance if anyone can help out. I've been doing research around the place and the issue seems to be widely reported, though the solutions tend to vary.

I have read about modifications to PCI latency, or turning the system to AGP 4x rather than AGP 8x rectifying this problem, though I am hesitant to try the former as I have read that it voids my warranty, and am reluctant to try the latter as I am not convinced that I should have to reduce the system's performance from standard levels to attain stability with these components. Bearing this in mind, I'd be over the moon if anyone could think of anything which did not negate my warranty, and did not resolve the situation by hobbling the hardware.

 

[ogmzergrush]

This just in: Removed all drivers again and installed the latest release on the actual Leadtek website, played from the Convoy section of Quake 4 to the medical labs without missing a beat. I'm hesitant to declare it fixed, but so far so good. Will post again to confirm the situation later on, for now though thanks to anyone who checked this out and gave it a bit of thought

 

[Minai]

I was about to say...some driver updates are just completely crap for some systems, and I've seen recommendations to roll back to previous drivers to attain stability

But seems all good now

 

[ogmzergrush]

Ok false alarm, crashes are still happening. In addition to the things tried above, I've also tested about six different driver releases, so far going as far back as 66.93s. The crashes do seem to be a little less frequent with the Leadtek drivers, but they still happen.

(Yes, between testing drivers I've been completely removing the old set, rebooting, installing new drivers then rebooting again).

One thing I've just noticed is that Serious Sam 2 seems to let me switch back out to the desktop now upon crashing by hitting the windows key, I don't recall anything being responsive at all before, so I'm not sure if this is a change or if I just wasn't patient enough. Regardless, when I did this I checked out the Serious Sam 2 crash log and notice this:

TRC: (Direct3D) Device lost - waiting for reset.

This seems to me to be the obvious problem, when the game hangs this is the last line in the log, then upon closing the game after swapping out a few additional lines are written.

So, device lost, what's this all about? :/ As I said I was pretty sure that I've eliminated both heat and power concerns, leaves me at a bit of a loss as to what could be causing this.

 

[Minai]

Ok false alarm, crashes are still happening. In addition to the things tried above, I've also tested about six different driver releases, so far going as far back as 66.93s. The crashes do seem to be a little less frequent with the Leadtek drivers, but they still happen.

(Yes, between testing drivers I've been completely removing the old set, rebooting, installing new drivers then rebooting again).

One thing I've just noticed is that Serious Sam 2 seems to let me switch back out to the desktop now upon crashing by hitting the windows key, I don't recall anything being responsive at all before, so I'm not sure if this is a change or if I just wasn't patient enough. Regardless, when I did this I checked out the Serious Sam 2 crash log and notice this:

TRC: (Direct3D) Device lost - waiting for reset.

This seems to me to be the obvious problem, when the game hangs this is the last line in the log, then upon closing the game after swapping out a few additional lines are written.

So, device lost, what's this all about? :/ As I said I was pretty sure that I've eliminated both heat and power concerns, leaves me at a bit of a loss as to what could be causing this.

Do you have another graphics card handy? Maybe stick another card in and see how the games run?

 

[ogmzergrush]

Got an email from Leadtek support back today suggesting that I try having it replaced (Under warranty), hopefully that'll be an end to these shenanigans.

 

[darksbane]

Ya, definately a video card issue, I've been having the same issue with my card (radeon 9600SE)...I had put it down to heat since its been pretty hot lately and its been getting pretty hot in the comp. After sitting a few 80mm fans on and around the vid card it seems to have helped, though in some games it still does it, I have not yet worked out why, but the video card has gotten very touchy and even the slightest bump freezes the system so i suspect it may be dying...

 

[ogmzergrush]

I've finally received the replacement card the other day, and, after putting it back in the system, and reinstalling drivers, etc, it was a bit of a kick in the nads to discover that the hangs are still happening.

I've contacted support again, and have received advice to use add/remove to uninstall the drivers, then reinstall them after updating bios and chipset drivers. Though doubtful as to whether this would help, and suspecting that I was wasting my time, I went ahead and followed these instructions. I had previously updated the bios (And no newer version has been released), however I did come across newer chipset drivers, which I promptly installed. I then reinstalled the graphics card drivers but alas, this has still not resolved the problem.

In light of this, does anyone have any further suggestions? Previously the PSU was highlighted as an area of concern, however I am hesitant to replace it before really knowing that it's going to resolve the problem (As I have no access to a different PSU to test with aside from purchasing one).

To reiterate, the 400W PSU is powering:
* Graphics card
* 1 HDD (120GB WD)
* Mainboard and associated odds and ends
* 2 case fans

Which I feel to be a fairly reasonable load. The graphics card is also still on an unshared power connector.

Thanks in advance, again. It'd kick serious arse to be able to play games some day this break

 

[s1n1Ster]

It could be driver failures
Run the games under safe mode and find out.

 

[AntiHyper]

Try "memtest86"ing it could be a ram problem.

Dismantle and properly re-insert your graphics card and ram. (then locking them in place with the sliders)

If you have a sound card (or any other PCI extensions) do the same thing.

A slight misplacement can allow electric current to jump between adjacent connector surfaces.

 

[ogmzergrush]

It could be driver failures
Run the games under safe mode and find out.

I have a sneaking suspicion that firstly drivers aren't the issue as I have tried just about every release within the last year, from both the Leadtek, Nvidia and Omega ranges. Further to this, no games short of solitaire and minesweeper will run in safe mode.

Try "memtest86"ing it could be a ram problem.

Dismantle and properly re-insert your graphics card and ram. (then locking them in place with the sliders)

If you have a sound card (or any other PCI extensions) do the same thing.

A slight misplacement can allow electric current to jump between adjacent connector surfaces.

Memtest86 was the one I used for my testing previously, 8 hours straight execution reports zero errors, so I'm leaning towards the assumption that the RAM is sound.

The sound is onboard, and I've disabled it completely for testing with no difference to crashing. It's thus been eliminated as a potential cause.

Today I was doing some swapping of cards between systems to ensure that the card was not faulty (Good news, it's not!). On top of that, I also goofed with the bios and installed the latest nforce chipset drivers from the Nvidia site (As opposed to the latest from the gigabyte (mainboard manufacturer) site. Somewhere along the way, the crashes seem to have decreased, though as you can imagine I haven't been at the computer a lot today. That is to say it hasn't crashed yet, but hasn't really been used enough to assume that they're fixed. More extensive testing is required

Thanks for the replies everyone, I'll get back to you and let you know whether it's resolved.

 

[Enoch]

some issues u might take a look at:


- is there a proper reading on ur cpu temp? perhaps whoever did ur comp didnt do it properly and didnt stick the silicon gel properly if at all/ or fucked the pins by putting in the cpu incorrectly..whilst working at comp store similar problems and wen i took out his cpu i saw that the pins had been bent cos the noob didnt put in the cpu into his mobo properly

- memory perhaps is a problem. to check, take out ur memory stick(s) (btw is ur memory 2X512mb or 1X1g) and stick in a memory stick that ur sure is working properly (ur friends maybe).

-one more problem is perhaps maybe to do with ur mobo...maybe u scratched it whilst ur hardware upgrade.

i doubt its ur video card as u got a replacement and it didnt help and also official drivers are usually ok so really..rolling back drivers that far doesnt do nething..

umm...im leaning towards a faulty memory stick(s)

 

[ogmzergrush]

I'm pretty comfortable with eliminating all those factors from consideration, as the crashing stopped when I swapped to a different card. I've fitted the CPU, RAM and all cards personally, and have done these things enough times not to mess anything up doing so. The RAM is two brand new sticks, and each has been benchmarked for eight hours minimum with no errors reported, so I'm leaning towards assuming that it's fine too.

More importantly though, after three or four hours solid gaming in the wee hours this morning we're still crash free at this end, so I think we can declare this problem resolved (At least until I come crawling back, crying about how the crashes are back and ready for sepuku).

I'm not sure if it was the updated chipset drivers, reseating the card, or something else I tried the other day, but as long as the crashes stay gone I can't say I'm too concerned

Thankyou everyone who has given this a bit of thought and/or replied, as you can imagine it's been driving me insane. Now, time for more "testing"