Hard locks in games

[Siegfried]

I'm having a really annoying problem that has suddenly developed with my system. I've had this rig as specified in my sig for about 7 months now and it hasn't had issues since I replaced the faulty off-brand PSU that I had initially purchased with the Antec.

 

OK, bear with me here while I take a step back and explain some issues I was having which I now believe to be resolved as of a few days ago. I was getting random bluescreens increasing in frequency on Windows XP x64. They appeared to be extremely random, but generally issues linked to drivers. I ended up restoring an old image of my windows partition and then finally going back to 32bit windows to clear it all up. I then got a few crashes linked to my sound card and resolved those with a driver replacement.

 

With all that (hopefully) behind me, I've started having lock ups in games. My system goes to a black screen and sometimes I have a nasty repeating sound from my speakers. I don't recall 100% with all the random restarts due to BSODs and associated angry outbursts clouding my memory, but I think this locking up started with the windows re-install.

 

I've tried the following things since this whole mess started:

1) Poked around in my case

RESULT - No spiders, no mouse droppings, no loose cables, no dead fans

2) Reverted to non-overclocked status (was running a very mild RAM overclock using a divider and CPU was up to 2.3ghz)

RESULT - No change

3) Scanned hard drives for errors, ran full sector scan on primary partition

RESULT - No errors

4) Ran memtest86 overnight

RESULT - No errors (around 17+ passes)

5) Ran Prime95 "in-place large FFTs" overnight

***RESULT - Lock up after 2 hours

 

This is where I stand now. My interpretation is that this points at a CPU heating issue, but it doesn't rule out motherboard or RAM problems. I checked my temps with SpeedFan, the first thing I could find, and everything looks normal, but I could really use a better monitor. Is there a temp monitor that records a disk log so I can learn something after a crash?

 

I was hoping to get to the bottom of this pretty easily, but it's looking like more than a software issue now and I'm not really looking forward to replacing parts (since I don't have spares ).

 

Thanks for your help folks, I know this must look simple enough to some of you, but I'm getting a little burnt out now. Think I'll go back to Soul Calibur 3 for a bit. Gotta try the game out if you haven't yet!

[davidhammock200]

Temps?

[Siegfried]

Unloaded

Board 29

CPU 39

 

3rd temp.. Northbridge I guess is 46. Is that in spec?

 

I don't know if 29C in the case is accurate, that's awfully hot. I'll take the side panel off and see if it still reads that.

 

Still need a better temp program.. is there a standard nForce4 or DFI temp program?

 

With load, it climbs up very slowly.. doesn't the winchester have an on-die sensor?

 

Edit:

This can't be right.. I opened the case and started Prime95 again and it says it's 41 degrees in there.. That's totally impossible unless it's reading in the CPU socket. The CPU reads 42C.. this is not right.... a 1 degree delta? The third sensor reads 45C. Perhaps that IS the in socket sensor? If that is the case, those are reasonable temps, no?

[davidhammock200]

Everything is under 50C so I don't think it is temps.

[Siegfried]

Got a few bluescreens again relating to memory errors. Guess it is RAM then.. I am trying running on one stick to see if I can figure out what's going on. I'm going to try running prime95 blend overnight on this stick and tomorrow on the other. If it crashes on both, then I'll know it's not RAM, or I'm unlucky as hell, eh?

[davidhammock200]

memtest both, one at a time & then together, 8hrs per is sufficient.

[Siegfried]

This reminds me of when I was testing the system to find the best overclock. I failed to uncover errors using memtest86 in that case as well. I ended up with a much lower overclock of the RAM after using prime95 to test stability, but it was stable. Memtest86 was not turning up any errors while my machine was still crashing.

[Siegfried]

I ran into the Corsair recommended settings thread, so I installed the latest BIOS and followed the post to the letter. No crashes or lockups since then and I'm now on my longest run of Prime95 blend since this mess started (6 hours).

 

Since my last post I got two more bluescreens which traced to good old creative drivers. I have upgraded to the Audigy beta drivers and haven't had any bluescreens for 3 days since then (I was getting a few every day or two).

 

I'm going to leave Prime95 running and I'll post when I hit a bigger milestone. Hopefully this was just another case of RAM being marginal for a long time and suddenly causing problems.

[JonnyFunFun]

I was having the same problems for the past week. In both x64 and the 32-bit versions of Windows, the system ran perfectly - passed every test and benchmark I could throw at it. Just couldn't play games. Upgraded to the Audigy beta driver and haven't had a problem since.

[Siegfried]

You were experiencing bluescreens relating to the audigy drivers as well? While doing some research on the issue I found that it's much more common than I thought. Also their non-beta drivers are about two years old and pushing three.. that says something.

[JonnyFunFun]

The cards are nice, but Creative is just not very good at pushing out driver updates. But since my install of the beta drivers, I've seen no problems at all. Now we move on to the overclocking stage.

[Siegfried]

I had no crashes in Prime95 blend after about 21 hours. I tweaked some of the settings a bit and ran it overnight again with no issues. Either that BIOS upgrade or one of the settings fixed it.