games crashing, very frustrating

[damarble]

I hope you guys have some insight on this. Most of my games are crashing soon after loading. I thought I had it fixed when I ended some antispyware apps and other non-esecncial services. Everything was working fine for a few hours. Now it's back to doing it and I cant figure out what it could be. Only games crash, any other app works just fine.

So far I've updated my ATI drivers (which messed up my TV detection, since i had the s-video out hooked to my TV for movies. Still havent got it to work again)

I disabled every possible system process.

I've set all hardware to stock clocks.

I've scanned for virii/spyware.

Any ideas?

[veryhumid]

what are your GPU and CPU temps like? which games don't crash? do you get any error messages?

[chevro1et]

What kind of 'crashes' are you getting? Crash to desktop/ BSOD/ reboot?
Are you overclocking cpu/ vid card? May be system instability. Have you run memtest to check your ram?

Cheers.

[FudgeNuggets]

I found a couple of my games seriously sensitive to my OC, so I backed off the FSB by about 25mhz and all was good

[damarble]

what are your GPU and CPU temps like? which games don't crash? do you get any error messages?

No error messages, amd my temps have never gone over 35c, on both GPU and CPU. (water) I havent tried a lot of games, but UT2004 seems to be OK. I'm getting crashes with BF2, Red Faction (most frustrating since it the game I'm best at and play the most), Wolfenstein: ET, HL2 and it's variations, and a couple I cant think of right now.


What kind of 'crashes' are you getting? Crash to desktop/ BSOD/ reboot?
Are you overclocking cpu/ vid card? May be system instability. Have you run memtest to check your ram?

Cheers.

No BSOD's or reboots yet, only crash to desktop. I still get it with the GPU at stock clocks, and my CPU is F@H stable for like a month straight, 24/7, although I havent tried lowering it to stock yet.

[FudgeNuggets]

yeah, seriously I encoded DVDs stable, did SETI stable and everything else for that matter but 2 of my games would crash out at random intervals during the game. Backed off the FSB by 25mhz and they never crashed.

[damarble]

I set the CPU clock back and still nothing. I reinstalled Red Faction (the one I'm most concerned about) and no go.

[Elif Tymes]

When did tis problem start occuring?

Also, haeve you updated your chipset drivers?

[squasher]

PSU is my bet. Its not that your heating is not working, its the fact that the cpu+vid card is too much for your powersupply

[Polish Fury]

I've been having issues with Red Fation as well, getting this bizzare lag with low pings, and nothing i've done thusfar has seemed to help. The only possible explination i can think of is that it does not like my dual-core CPU, which i have had problems with in other games (namely chronicles of riddick.)

[damarble]

I've been having issues with Red Fation as well, getting this bizzare lag with low pings, and nothing i've done thusfar has seemed to help. The only possible explination i can think of is that it does not like my dual-core CPU, which i have had problems with in other games (namely chronicles of riddick.)

AMD dual-core? In my quest for answers I've seen many complaints about Red Faction and AMD dual-cores. No resolutions yet that I saw.


Back to my problem, I haven't updated the chipset drivers in a while. But they're the same drivers I had when everything worked before.

Could be the PSU, but it's a beefy 550w Fortron that's been solid for a long time. But, it is getting older and has seen a lot of use too. Although the games normally crash after loading the first menu, and I wouldnt think that would use that much power, on a lowly x800xl and 3400+ (OEM 3500+ Venice for those that wonder). Not exactly the most power hungry combo.


Now another twist. Everything is working fine now and I didn't change anything since the last time I tired and failed. I don't trust it to keep working tho, there's something causing this.

[dfonda]

Have you tried going back to a restore point?

[damarble]

No, I've had system restore turned off for a while and forgot to turn it on. But everything is working so until it stops I'll leave it alone.

[John G]

It might be a good idea to put the memory under a magnifying glass. (figuratively speaking) Memtest, Prime95 (in the mode that stresses memory), etc... And, try relaxing the timings significantly.

[damarble]

Crap, it's doing it again for some games (or maybe never stopped, since I assumed the problem was solved when RF started working and didn't try any other games). BF2 will "minimize" every couple minutes, but if you click the taskbar button it comes right back. And Halo does the same thing, but it wont come back.

I guess it won't hurt to run some RAM tests. (I half hope it's bad so I have an excuse to get 2GB LOL)

[chevro1et]

Dis you run your virus scanner/ spyware killer lately?

Cheers.

[damarble]

Dis you run your virus scanner/ spyware killer lately?

Cheers.

Yes, when I started having the problem I did a complete scann and found nothing. I have the scans that run every night too. After my last spyware mess I have been almost paranoid about it and this PC has never been cleaner.


And, try relaxing the timings significantly.

That fixed it! I went from 2.5-3-3-7 @ 250mhz to 3-4-4-8 and I'm having zero problems with anything. I opened all my regular games and all work fine.

I'm surprised, the RAM is rated at 2-2-2-5 @ 200mhz so my setting seemed reasonable. And it passed memtest and Prime at that speed too.

[damarble]

Temp fix I guess. The prob is back. I'm thinking PSU now. I checked the 12v rail, idle it reads 12.02 and with the CPU and GPU loaded it reads 11.90. This test was done with no overclocks and now overvolts, so the problem should worsen when overvolted.