DescentBB

My pc is having a problem... this never happens in-game. It happens either during idle time or when surfing. It happens when I am folding. My machine crashes to a blue screen, not your normal run of the mill blue screen. It says... "hardware malfunction" "contact you vendor" "system halted".
I have cleaned the box. System temps are normal. I am running an epox 8kha+ mobo with an amd 2600+, 768m ram, nvidea 5900 ultra in dual view, 2 17in lcd monitors, the samsung 710*, soundblaster live. Two hds, primary is about 25% free space. I have a 470w ps and lots of air flow. No recent HW changes. I have updated my virus scanner, adware, spybot ect. all scans are clean. Any ideas?

VonVulcan wrote:My pc is having a problem... this never happens in-game. It happens either during idle time or when surfing. It happens when I am folding. My machine crashes to a blue screen, not your normal run of the mill blue screen. It says... "hardware malfunction" "contact you vendor" "system halted".
I have cleaned the box. System temps are normal. I am running an epox 8kha+ mobo with an amd 2600+, 768m ram, nvidea 5900 ultra in dual view, 2 17in lcd monitors, the samsung 710*, soundblaster live. Two hds, primary is about 25% free space. I have a 470w ps and lots of air flow. No recent HW changes. I have updated my virus scanner, adware, spybot ect. all scans are clean. Any ideas?

Nothing comes to mind immediately since it doesnt crash while ingame. If your playing online, there is pretty much nothing in the computer, the game isnt using at least to a small extent. First thing I would do is to check the fan on your 5900 Ultra. I recently had a fan cease on my video card, causing wierd random BSODs and reboots. Next thing I would do is run memtest86 for about a half a day and see if it fails anything. If you still find nothing, start removing cards and reseating them, cleaning the contacts. I currently like to use PC board contact cleaner that you can get at Radio Sh1t ... um ... er Shack. Then I would install and run a monitoring program like MotherBoard Monitor. I hate the fact that MBM is not being updated anymore. But there may be other utilities like MBM out there that runs on your equipement. It'll help you keep an eye on your systems temperatures, and if your not using water cooling, it will watch the speed of your fans as well. That might give you an idea of whats causing the problem.

Oh ya, one more thing, since its not a standard BSOD, try virus scanning. Its possible that what your really seeing isnt a BSOD at all but a virus generated screen designed to fool you into thinking it is one.

Edit: I just thought of something. There used to be this problem with the nvidia card and soundblasters compeating for too much of the system bus. It drove ppl crazy because both companies were blaming the other. Try using the directX Diag tool to set down the soundblasters hardware acceleration by one notch.

Thanks, will try the mem test, I mentioned that I updated and scanned for virus and adware/spyware, won't hurt to try it again though.

VV

I've seen those epox boards cause alot of problems before, just out of the blue. I've seen enough of them, that I don't buy them anymore, they're almost as bad as MSI

Yeah, I've seen enough annoyances with epox boards now.

I have an 8kha+ board with failing IDE controllers sitting around here somewhere. The existing NF2 board in my server is also an epox, it has LAN issues if it runs for too long (more then a little annoying for a "server"), also it doesn't shut off the PSU when you turn off the computer. I'll probably snap and buy a nice Abit NF7 for the server sometime.

Funny you mention that ... I pulled an 8K7A+ out of a closet it had been in for about 9 months and set it up in a case w/CPU and 1Gb RAM ... When I turned the power on POP! POP! POP! There go the capacitors ... its toast now. I had put this board in storage because I had been having all sorts of problems with it ... now I remember why I lost my patience with it.

Jeesss.

The experiences listed out in here, I think Ill avoid those boards in the future.

Well, not that its completely Epox's fault - there was a go-round on several motherboard manufacturers about the time that board came out with faulty capacitors (from the same supplier). Abit was hit by this just prior to the NF7 (I never saw a bad nf7) also.

Another thing you might check (oddly enough) is your screensaver. I've had my computer die many, many times for no apparent reason, simply because it was running a screensaver. It usually (pretty much always, actually) happened when I got one of those 3D screensavers.

Stryker wrote:Another thing you might check (oddly enough) is your screensaver. I've had my computer die many, many times for no apparent reason, simply because it was running a screensaver. It usually (pretty much always, actually) happened when I got one of those 3D screensavers.

I have some 3d screen savers but I hardly ever have them selected. I usually just have the monitors set to shutdown after a given period of time. Just having them available would not cause a problem would it?

If the screensaver kicks in before the power down, it will suck the resources from your OS. I just turn off all options and turn my monitor off when I don't use it.

Run memtest and tell us what u get, then we can go from there.

Also check and make sure that all of ur drivers are up to date (esp chipset).

Iceman wrote:Funny you mention that ... I pulled an 8K7A+ out of a closet it had been in for about 9 months and set it up in a case w/CPU and 1Gb RAM ... When I turned the power on POP! POP! POP! There go the capacitors ... its toast now. I had put this board in storage because I had been having all sorts of problems with it ... now I remember why I lost my patience with it.

Icy, take a look at the circutry and see if you can find a bridge somewhere or a Cap in backwards.

Matrix wrote:Run memtest and tell us what u get, then we can go from there.

Also check and make sure that all of ur drivers are up to date (esp chipset).

I ran memtest for a couple hours and there were no errors, I used the puter for other things, I went to bed with it running memtest. Got up in the morning to a blue screen, the same one I described previously. I updated my sound drivers a few weeks ago, tonight I updated my video and via chipset a few minutes ago. we will see what happens in the next few days.
Thanks
VV

Youâ??re running the windows version of memtest? That version doesn't always do a good job since windows is reserving a large chunk of your RAM while the test is running.
Use the version that runs at boot up off a disk.

Almost make sure you are using memtest86+ from http://www.memtest.org/ It is updated more then the orginal memtest86 from the .com

Matrix wrote:Youâ??re running the windows version of memtest? That version doesn't always do a good job since windows is reserving a large chunk of your RAM while the test is running.
Use the version that runs at boot up off a disk.

Almost make sure you are using memtest86+ from http://www.memtest.org/ It is updated more then the orginal memtest86 from the .com

Ok, I went where you said and got memtest86+ and ran it about 10 hours. No errors. System still dies occasionaly as stated above.

I realize this article states for a computer that halts during boot, but it has some very good troubleshooting steps for exactly this kind of problem.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... %3BQ315223

As for the video card, you may try using onboard video if you have it or a different card.

Oh, and btw, Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Vulcan!!!

SuperSheep wrote:
Oh, and btw, Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Vulcan!!!

BAAAAAAAaaaaaaa back at ya! Thanks for the info Sheep. I reseated all my cards and memory, the cables and whatever else looked dangly... Will see what happens, Thanks everyone for your input.

VV

Nosferatu wrote:
Edit: I just thought of something. There used to be this problem with the nvidia card and soundblasters compeating for too much of the system bus. It drove ppl crazy because both companies were blaming the other. Try using the directX Diag tool to set down the soundblasters hardware acceleration by one notch.

And where is the directx diag tool?

Start > Run > dxdiag

Here is another little quirk... sometimes in the boot sequence, before the login screen showes, I get a box that has 2 little squares in the title bar followed by a backslash oo\ Something like that... where the oo are little square boxes. and in the body of the box is this... " 悀Ã?᷀ džc:\windows\system32\mcd32.dll" Well, the symbols at the beggining look different then what is showing here but the rest is accurate. It has an OK box at the bottom, it won't go away unless I click on the ok box/button. There is a close "X" in the upper right corner, but it wont close with that.

SuperSheep wrote:Start > Run > dxdiag

Ok, I ran it and all the tests passed. I bumped the acceleration back a notch.

Looks like that is the mini client driver for opengl. I read on one site that it is for 3dfx?? weird. What OS are you running. XP? If so, what service pack?

SuperSheep wrote:Looks like that is the mini client driver for opengl. I read on one site that it is for 3dfx?? weird. What OS are you running. XP? If so, what service pack?

Yes, XP home v. 2002 service pack 2.

How long ago did you upgrade to SP2?

I have no idea.

Just wondering. I had a few issues after installing SP2, which caused me to uninstall it. I would wait and see if your puter crashes again, if so, I'd remove everything but the video card and drives and try that out. Also, remove all memory sticks but what you need to boot. Typically 1 stick, but sometimes 2 if it's DDR(I think).

If not memory or cards, probably the motherboard, but I'd start by doing that.

Another reason I asked about SP2 is if you just upgraded, that could be the cause of your problems, but if you don't know, then that probably isn't the case.

erk

and again

interesting... x3 LOL

SuperSheep wrote:Just wondering. I had a few issues after installing SP2, which caused me to uninstall it. I would wait and see if your puter crashes again, if so, I'd remove everything but the video card and drives and try that out. Also, remove all memory sticks but what you need to boot. Typically 1 stick, but sometimes 2 if it's DDR(I think).

If not memory or cards, probably the motherboard, but I'd start by doing that.

Another reason I asked about SP2 is if you just upgraded, that could be the cause of your problems, but if you don't know, then that probably isn't the case.

I am sure it was quite some time ago that I installed sp2... I only have 2 sticks of memory... did I mention that sometimes, it reboots instead of the blue error message screen? Since I re-seated all the cards, it has happened twice, one blue, one reboot. once when I was typing to my blog, the other time when I was away and the puter was idle... it never happens in game. Though, a couple times I was hosting a coop level of d3, and d3 crashed out with a memory error every time after a little bit of time. D3 never crashes w/the memory error when I am playing multi on a different server. And it never crashes when I play more resource intensive games.

Sounds like it's time for a format and a clean install of XP.

Matrix wrote:Sounds like it's time for a format and a clean install of XP.

GO A-WAY!

Well, it died tonight... I can't get 5 seconds past the login screen and it blue screens to the "hardware malfuntion" error message... so I guess I'll start jerkin parts tomorrow... Thanks for all your help guys, really got some good ideas to work on.

VonVulcan wrote:

Matrix wrote:Sounds like it's time for a format and a clean install of XP.

GO A-WAY!

I also wouldn't discount windows rot, if I had a problem like that I would have already formatted and reinstalled by now.

On another note, while your at pulling parts out of the machine, grab a can of compressed air (office duster) and blast the memory and the CPU fan clean. Actually, blast everything clean (including as much of the inside of the PSU as you can reach), even if it already looks clean.

Krom wrote:

VonVulcan wrote:

Matrix wrote:Sounds like it's time for a format and a clean install of XP.

GO A-WAY!

I also wouldn't discount windows rot, if I had a problem like that I would have already formatted and reinstalled by now.

On another note, while your at pulling parts out of the machine, grab a can of compressed air (office duster) and blast the memory and the CPU fan clean. Actually, blast everything clean (including as much of the inside of the PSU as you can reach), even if it already looks clean.

See first post.

Hey guess what. I replaced the cpu with my old one and it is much happier now. WHEEEEE!!

VonVulcan wrote:Hey guess what. I replaced the cpu with my old one and it is much happier now. WHEEEEE!!

Oh really now?

Was the new one a faster CPU?

If so its possible that you had an older BIOS that needed upgrading to handle the new CPU.

OMG LOOK WHAT I JUST SPIED!

http://www.epox.com/USA/article.asp?ID=1449

Thats your problem right there.

I upgraded the bios a year ago just before I installed the 2600+. It has been runnin fine all that time till about 3 weeks ago. I hardly think that the bios would be a problem?

It would certainly be worth a try, especially if you've exhausted every other avenue.

Of course before you try flashing it again, check it to see if you already have the version thats on that page.

Now here is a fun little tidbit. AMD made 2 versions of the 2600+. Make sure you have a 266 FSB model and not a 333 FSB model.