[Godzilla]

I am really furious with my computer! It always seems to crash during games, its not any game in particular, just basically any game i play. My old computer also used to crash during games as well, i thought it was an overheating problem somewhere, but with this new computer im not so sure.

The types of crashes vary from game to game, on some games, it just comes up with blue screen (Enter the Matrix, Vice City), on some it freezes (Metal Gear Solid 2:Substance), on some the computer just restarts itself (Varies from game to game), and on some games the computer just closes the game and quits back to the desktop (AvP2, AvP2:Primal Hunt etc)

Can anyone explain this strange behaviour?

[Oni]

Could be the RAM is running too agressively, or is undervolted.

If you're overclocked, drop back to stock and see if the problem goes away. You might also want to check your heatsink. Clean it out, and re-seat it, too.

[glock19owner]

What video card drivers are you also using...

But I tend to agree with Oni...sounds like a memory issue more then anything...

[Godzilla]

Does anyone know how i can test my memory? My system is not overclocked. I am using the latest cat 3.4 drivers too

But one thing i forgot to mention... (sorry guys).......I had a Geforce 3 Ti 200 before, and i upgraded to the Radeon 9700 pro. From then on i noticed the crashing. I uninstalled the old drivers but someone told me it might still be old gfx drivers lying about and suggested a complete reformat

Anyone agree with this?!

[Chris]

Originally posted by Godzilla
Does anyone know how i can test my memory? My system is not overclocked. I am using the latest cat 3.4 drivers too

But one thing i forgot to mention... (sorry guys).......I had a Geforce 3 Ti 200 before, and i upgraded to the Radeon 9700 pro. From then on i noticed the crashing. I uninstalled the old drivers but someone told me it might still be old gfx drivers lying about and suggested a complete reformat

Anyone agree with this?!

www.memtest86.com use that to test you're memory. It could be old drivers left from the geforce card, you can manually go through the registry and delete all records from the geforce card. Try asking in the Nvidia forum, as im not totally sure where all the old registry entries are on geforce cards

[Godzilla]

I tested the memory using that memtest86, and it didnt seem to come up with any errors.

sooo......................?

[Chris]

Try this to get rid of the old drivers http://www.guru3d.com/detonator-destroyer/ but it still could be a memory problem you need to let memtest run for quite a few hours for it to test properly

[Godzilla]

I've tried that detonator destroyer before, but it says it cant find any nVidia files lol, seeing as tho i uninstalled the old drivers first thru add/remove programmes in control panel.

How long do i have to leave that memtest to run? I left it for 2 and a half hours and it passed 4 tests, so i quit it. If i have to leave it for longer, then ill have to leave it running overnight

[TUK101]

Try taking out one of your sticks of memory. On some of my older comps that did the trick. Also, what do you have your swap file set to? Try turning it off, with that much memory you dont even need it. What refresh rate are you running at? How old is your monitor? Could be the monitor switching off too. Just a few suggestions, take them for what they are.

[InThrees]

It's JUST during games that you experience crashes, right?

You never experience any instability doing, say, a whole LOT of other stuff, like viewing lots of large pages in IE while outlook is running and you're scanning your box with an AV or AAW program with photoshop open in the background and an mpg playing you get the point?

If so, it probably is graphics related.

As a simple first ditch effort, reinstall the cat drivers, then reinstall directx.

Then reinstall chipset drivers for your motherboard.

[InThrees]

Oh yeah, as another testing method, try this:

However you normally game, try playing in minimum resolution with the quality turned down. I know, I know, painful, but if it doesn't crash, then I would suspect either a hardware problem with the graphics board, or some sort of AGP/memory problem, or some sort of driver issue...

[Godzilla]

Ok guys, i ran memtest86 for 10 hours flat overnight and it passed 19 tests and came up with NO errors! so that rules the memory out right?

My gfx card is not overclocked, and my monitor is about a year old and its a Samsung SyncMaster 753DFX running at 85mhz refresh rate, but i think some games lower it down automatically?

This might sound like a stupid question, but whats a swap file and where do i find it? lol!

Tonight im gonna run Prime95 overnight, i ran it for an hour before and it came up with an error in 55 minutes!

[Perre]

what did the error message say?
Couse you can tell by the numbers (usually) if it's the cpu or the mem...sounds like a mem problem though.

Have you tried to change DIMM slot? My brother had all kinds of wierd problems and it did the trick.

[Godzilla]

Hmmmm, i forgot what it said, i should have wrote it down

But dont worry, please check back here cuz ill run Prime95 again and if it comes up with another error ill put it up here!

Thanks

[alien76]

Its good to reinstall windows after changing gfx card!!!
You have to do this and hope to carry away your problems!

[TUK101]

Have you tried running scandisk to check for any bad sectors? Just one more suggestion to ad to the many others lol.

[plbowler]

"My gfx card is not overclocked, and my monitor is about a year old and its a Samsung SyncMaster 753DFX running at 85mhz refresh rate, but i think some games lower it down automatically?"


Change it to 60mhz, see if that helps.

[Godzilla]

nope 60mhz didnt help!

Hey Perre ive got a message from Prime95 for ya!

i just ran it again and it said..............

FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 1, expected less than 0.4
Hardware Failure detected, consult stress.txt file
Torture test ran 47 minutes, 1 errors, 0 warnings
Execution Halted

All i have to say to that is WTF!!!!!!!!!!!

I ran memtest86 again last night for 12 hours! and it passed 23 tests with NO errors!

NOTHING in my system is even overclocked!

Somebody please HELP!!

[Godzilla]

Just ran Prime95 again and came up with a totally different error in 2 minutes!

"FATAL ERROR: Resulting sum was 90929551246.96339, expected: 91443239269.7292
Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file.
Torture Test ran 2 minutes - 1 errors, 0 warnings.
Execution halted"

OMG! 2 minutes! and it dies

WTF! is wrong with this piece of S***

I even disabled EVERYTHING running in the background before running these tests.....

[InThrees]

Set your actual FSB 33mhz lower to underclock your machine, and see if that causes prime95 to not fail anymore.

This will isolate the cpu as the culprit, by underclocking it and relieving stress.