Frequent Crashes, lockups ect..

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

[Captain Spencer]

Hi everyone,

Got a problem with my pc which is really starting to get on my rag. It's a problem which I thought had gone away, but it turns out I was just being slightly lucky for a while

The problem is related to my graphics card. When I play a game that needs a decent graphics card it tends to lockup and freeze on me. Funny thing is though, that it NEVER happens on Shipsim. It's very odd indeed, as the only error I get on my screen is a 'Input signal out of range' message which tells me the refresh rate that my graphics card is too high for my TFT monitor to support.

The game I have had problems with this error is WoW (world of warcraft) and Test Drive Unlimited (racing game). Not sure if it's locked up before on any other games, although I did used to get these problems when surfing the internet and doing web design. It would usually happen when scrolling down web pages with the mouse wheel or middle mouse button.

I've got the latest drivers (or at least fairly recent) and as far as I know my system is completely up to date. I printed off a article from AMD/ATI that listed some problems that I was experiencing, which did slow down the frequency between crashes, but I'd prefer it not to happen at all!!

Also, one other thing to note is, that when I was running Vista (on 512mb RAM I know I was crazy) I seem to remember I had no problems what so ever. So when I was running XP it crashed, when I upgraded to Vista it was ok now I'm back on XP Pro I seem to get crashes again.

I've been into bios and disabled the shadow cache, increased and lowered the aperture size which did seem to fix it but no avail. Sometimes, when I'm playing a game, the screen will go black, the message which my monitor display will show, and the game may still be running, and I can hear the sounds. However, ATI has a safeguard feature, which will detect any problems with the GPU and reset it if any are found. So sometimes I get my computer back, and sometimes it completely locks and doesn't respond to anything I do (apart from pressing the reset button on my case).

I'm starting to wonder if my card is actually broken, because I've done everything I can possibly think of. IF you need any more information I'd be happy to help. I have attached my DXDIAG below. Usually I can sort things like this out, but sometimes it's better to have a fresh head have a go

[TerryRussell]

Good evening, Cap'n.

Sorry for the delay, but I've been off working on a forthcoming goody.

So it works on Ship Sim, but not elsewhere?  Almost every other post in this section of the forum says it works everywhere else but not in Ship Simulator! Don't come too close or someone here may have you stuffed and put in a glass case with a bg label saying "Unique example"!

My strong suspicion is that your card is OK. It worked on Vista so that probably excludes and faulty hardware. More likely you have something wrong within your windows set up. Only 12 million possible culprits, then 

Which ATI-advised things did you do that worked?

OK, I'll have to do a bit of research and get back to you. I know this is strictly outside of the remit of this forum, but it certainly interests me. Who knows what we might gain from the comparison as well.

Back soon....

[Captain Spencer]

Good evening, Cap'n.

Sorry for the delay, but I've been off working on a forthcoming goody.

So it works on Ship Sim, but not elsewhere?  Almost every other post in this section of the forum says it works everywhere else but not in Ship Simulator! Don't come too close or someone here may have you stuffed and put in a glass case with a bg label saying "Unique example"!

My strong suspicion is that your card is OK. It worked on Vista so that probably excludes and faulty hardware. More likely you have something wrong within your windows set up. Only 12 million possible culprits, then 

Which ATI-advised things did you do that worked?

OK, I'll have to do a bit of research and get back to you. I know this is strictly outside of the remit of this forum, but it certainly interests me. Who knows what we might gain from the comparison as well.

Back soon....

Thanks Terry,

I'll try and find the white paper that I used

[TerryRussell]

We should get this thread moved to Technical Support, I think (maybe). I'll speak to Fred and get him to move it if he thinks that's appropriate. It might not be, because SS works OK for you....

Looking forward to that ATI information. I have to dash off shortly, so will resume tomorrow.

[Captain Spencer]

Hi Terry,

I think this (http://www.amd-firefly.com/firefly2007/fireflyclient.jsp?loadServiceID=145615e10ce83cdae9-7ff9&loadLocationID=68bffad5112ba80974e-4000&loadDesignID=14114cf4d511422483ae1-2a5d&loadSubmissionType=requestStart&loadTemplateID=) was the information I followed.

Select the 3rd bullet point and then the second

Thanks,

[Captain Spencer]

I just wanted to add that I'm getting lockups again when just using my every day to day programs such as website program, photoshop, firefox ect..

Also, I have a wireless USB keyboard and mouse. When the USB dongle is plugged in, I can't use my USB PS2 adapter (which allows me to use a Playstation controller on PC). I looked at the small red light on the adapter and it dims a little when I plug my KB dongle in. It's wierd. I thought perhaps my PSU wasn't sufficient but I've had a lot more plugged in since. My PC is acting very wierd lately

Also I've unplugged the front two USB header pins from the motherboard as they failed to work properly after the plastic broke.

Any help would be greatly appreciated right now, as I don't have the funds to buy a new computer 

[TerryRussell]

Houston, we have a problem.

You're at the stage where most Technical Support people would say "Wipe the disk, start again and reinstall Windows". But, I hate doing that. It seems like an admission of defeat.

I'm a bit short of time tonight, but tomorrow I'll sort out some freeware programs that can look for all sorts of problems. I think you have accumulated a collection of niggles which are now ganging up on you.

One thing I reccommend you so before we get any further is to run chkdsk. I've said elsewhere that that I believe it should be illegal not to run this at leats once per month.

Open a DOS box (Command prompt) and type
chkdsk c: /f
Then press enter.
Windows will tell you it can't do it now, and will offer to do it when you next boot. Tell it Yes.
When you next reboot, keep your eye on the screen and watch to see if reports any problems. It won't stop and the screens go past quite rapidly, so you may not see what it says. No problem but might be informative.

I'll sort out those programs for you tomorrow.

[Captain Spencer]

Thanks for the suggestion Terry, I'll do that once I've written this post.

May I ask why you think I have a huge problem? I didn't reinstall windows that long ago, so it should really be clogged up just yet (although I'm starting to wonder, I do do rather a lot on my PC).

I do have a 500GB SATA drive (as you saw in the DXDIAG) which I could backup data on. PC is locking up like crazy today, it's driving me nuts. I'm just about to take a hammer to this thing but I won't because I won't have a PC if I do that

EDIT: I should point out that the lockups ect I really think are related to the graphics. I say this because I have a AGP card (GeForce FX 5200) which I used and my system didn't crash once. I think my ATI card is broken. Any thoughts??

Regards,
Adam

[TerryRussell]

Thanks for the suggestion Terry, I'll do that once I've written this post.

May I ask why you think I have a huge problem? I didn't reinstall windows that long ago, so it should really be clogged up just yet (although I'm starting to wonder, I do do rather a lot on my PC).

I do have a 500GB SATA drive (as you saw in the DXDIAG) which I could backup data on. PC is locking up like crazy today, it's driving me nuts. I'm just about to take a hammer to this thing but I won't because I won't have a PC if I do that

EDIT: I should point out that the lockups ect I really think are related to the graphics. I say this because I have a AGP card (GeForce FX 5200) which I used and my system didn't crash once. I think my ATI card is broken. Any thoughts??

Regards,
Adam

Hi Adam.

No, I didn't say _I_ thought you had a huge problem. It's just that I know the standard scripts for IT support and because of the nature of your problems, most of those scripts would now be at the "give up and tell 'em to wipe the system" box (I paraphrase somewhat). Somewhere it is likely that one or more components in your system are causing thsi problem.

Don't worry. As I said, that isn't what I'm suggesting. Now, it could be a broken or otherwise defective registry entry. (Only a million of those to look at!)

Or perhaps its a duff comonent in one of the thousands of dll, exe, configuration parameters and other components of Windows.

Or perhaps it's a defective piece of hardware. But hardware is generally the least likely thing to cause this type of problem. Could be that, though, but I'd suggest slimming the list of possibilities down a lot first. If you want an excuse to buy a new card, though..... Heh heh.

I've located some suitable diagnostic software for you to run. That will check all sorts of things including registry problems (which it might be). Hopefully, it will point the finger at the culprit, or at least reduce the list of possibilities.

If that doesn't fix it, I'll see if I can locate a graphics card tester as well.

I'll send you the link to download it from my server in a separate PM.

[Captain Spencer]

Thanks Terry, I'll await your PM

Btw, I ran chkdisk last night and nothing was found. No errors that were detected.

[TerryRussell]

Thanks Terry, I'll await your PM

Btw, I ran chkdisk last night and nothing was found. No errors that were detected.

Good news from chkdsk. Always worth checking.

I've sent you the link in a PM now.

[Captain Spencer]

Good news from chkdsk. Always worth checking.

I've sent you the link in a PM now.

Have you? I've not got a new PM yet   

[TerryRussell]

Now sent by email to your silver... address

[Captain Spencer]

Now sent by email to your silver... address

Thanks Terry. I successfully downloaded and installed the software. Ran it with no problems but it's not stopped my crashes and lock-ups.

Did you mention something about a graphics card testing program?

Thanks,

[Cobrattack]

This may be a dumb question but how long has it been since you cleaned out your computer of dust?  I had a similar problem a long time ago where my screen did the out of range thing during high graphics games and what it ended up being was that my card was overheating,,, well sort of.  Somehow I had set the Temp so low on my card safeties that when it barely got warm it would think it was overheating and shut itself down.

[Captain Baines]

Since the only error you mention is the 'Input signal out of range' error I get the impression that indeed this is the only, or at least the main, problem. If you have installed and configured games while using a CRT monitor and have set refreshment rates settings in those games accordingly high that would cause problems if you later switched to a TFT monitor without first lowering these settings. Temporarily using a CRT again to lower these settings would then be the obvious cure.

If your driver has pre set refreshment rates for different games that might also cause problems if this driver doesn't 'know' that it must change these depending on the monitor used. Have you defined your monitor as the right type in Windows and is it set to only use refresh rates supported by that monitor?

I have a system with an ATI card in which, accessible through a 'tray tools' utility there is something called 'refresh lock' which I've not seen on other cards. The need for it escaped me at first until I experienced that after leaving a game (at 1600x1200x70Hz) the original refresh rate (at 1280x1024) was not properly restored to 85Hz (on a CRT). Maybe this tool is to compensate for some flaw with inaccurately (randomly?) switching refresh rates. Since TFT screens use lower refresh rates this could much more easily cause problems there.

If you still have a CRT monitor available it could be very informative to use that one for a while and check what happens with those refresh rates. The OSD (on screen display) is usually capable of telling you what the current refresh rate is.

But the suggestion to check cooling is certainly worth checking too. I'd not only check the cooling of the video card but also for dust build-up on the processor cooler and check the inside of the PSU (power supply unit) for dust and carefully clean it (when properly disconnected from the mains of course).

Success.

[Captain Spencer]

Hi guys,

Thanks for the help I've had the CPU heatsink and fan off and gave that a good clean and basically my computer has a 'spring clean' every few months, so really that wouldn't be the problem. I also have 4 80mm case fans (two which run constantly) and the other two are back ups. All for of these fans are controlled by a fan controller which slots into to a 5" bay on the front.

As for the refresh rate, I was wondering this myself, but then I thought well it couldn't be as I got at least 5 mins of gameplay (most of the time a little longer) before the screen went blank. It's very strange indeed because sometimes my computer could still be working away in the background (as it was if the monitor was working or not) and sometimes my mouse would stop moving, keyboard would stop working and the screenwould lock up. Then the monitor would flicker at me, sometimes giving me lines and strange colours and then the screen would go black, and produce that "Input signal out of range" error

I seriously think that my graphics card is broken. Still, I don't like to give up so easily. It's annoying because as I said in one of my posts above, I don't recall the card ever crashing when using Vista, I only switched back to XP because Vista run so slowly on my computer

I really have no idea what to do though, and thanks for the suggestions guys, I really appreciate the help

[Captain Baines]

What you describe is typically the behaviour of a system that changes refresh rate (or resolution I should add) to a value unsupported by the monitor. One reason why this might seem to happen at random moments could be the following.

Try pressing and holding the right shift key for more than 8 seconds (or press any single shift key five times in a row) while in the game and see whether that reproduces the effect.

My previous advice about temporarily using a CRT monitor and checking the other things I mentioned (apart from temperature issues perhaps - provided you properly applied new heat sink compound after you removed and replaced your heat sink!!!) still stands.

One more thing. Many strange things can happen when a PSU (power supply unit) isn't up to its task any more. How many Watt is it? If you have a spare PSU lying around of sufficient capacity it might be worth a try swapping it.

Good luck.

[Cobrattack]

Very good point on the PSU,, I kept losing a stick of RAM due to my PSU not being high enough to run my 2 vid cards in SLI mode.  It basically goes into critical power mode I'm guessing here it starts shutting down things to keep more critical stuff working like you hard drives and CPU.

[Captain Spencer]

Well I have tried to run NTune which crashed everytime I ran the stability test. My lockups are seriously doing my head in now and I really have about had enough

My PSU is 400W, so perhaps it's not suffient? Then again, why would it crash when simply browsing the internet??

I could be surfing the net and it would crash within mins, and then I could be playing a 3D game and run it for 30 mins ect.

Would a lack of RAM make things crash?? I nicked the 512MB DDR module from the PC downstairs, thus giving me 1GB of RAM and everything ran a lot faster, although it crashed on me ONCE when in Vista. After that, I was playing Test Drive Unlimited for 40+ mins. Could this be the culprit or would I be waiting money??

[TerryRussell]

A faulty PSU can cause all sorts of problems. I had one about 12 months ago that caused all sorts of wierd things - lockups slow running etc. I swapped it and all went OK. Not a common problem though. Difficult to prove except through substitution. Make sure you substitute using one that is powerful enough, of course. But I don't see how running a different version of Windows could have much effect.

But, having faulty RAM will cause all of the problems that you report. If even one bit out of the millions of bits in the RAM is defective, when you your PC uses it, it may crash, corrupt data and so on.

First thing is to check it, of course. When your PC boots up, go to BIOS set up page (usually pressing the DEL or F1 key gets you there, but check the opening message when you start the PC). Somewhere in the menus you should find a "Quick Start" or similar option. Disable it, so that it checks all of the memory at start up. See how that goes.

After that, you can find RAM testing software all over the itnernet. Get one that does an extended test and let it run (probably overnight). se what it tells you.

http://www.memtest86.com/
You can burn this to a CD which then becomes bootable. Just run the testing software having booted from the CD.

Of course, you PC needs to not freeze for long enough to burn the CD in the first place....

[Captain Spencer]

Thanks Terry,

I'll have a go at the couple of things you mentioned and report back.

Again thanks for the help, might be worth swapping my RAM with the PC downstairs and see how that goes... 

[TerryRussell]

If the PC downstairs has a similar PSU, you could try swapping that. (If you do it wrong and die of an electric shock, please don't blame me, though....  )

Probably easier to try the memory testing software though.

[Captain Spencer]

If the PC downstairs has a similar PSU, you could try swapping that. (If you do it wrong and die of an electric shock, please don't blame me, though....  )

Probably easier to try the memory testing software though.

That's ok, I know what I'm doing in that respect, had a computer completely in bits many times

Only problem I face is that the PC downstairs is ALWAYS used, so won't be able to try till tomorrow morning (1AM ish)

[Captain Spencer]

Just got my motherboard to check the memory and it's checked it without any errors. Also, I tried downloading and burning Memtest to a CD but it won't recognise the boot file. Perhaps I've burned it incorrectly??

Will post back when or if I can use the PSU from the PC downstairs