Blue screen errors while gaming.

[unholy414]

AMD Athlon X2 6400 | Zalman 9700NT Idle:50c Load:55C
2gb Corsair XMS2
Geforce 8800GTS 512 Idle:50C Load:60C
Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS Gamer
ASROCK Alivedual esata2 motherboard
74gb Western Digital Raptor
30gb Western Digital Caviar
PC Power and Cooling Turbo Cool 510 watt power supply
(power supply specs in link)


I've been having trouble with my PC for the passed 5 days. While gaming, the game will freeze with a sound loop, then bluescreen. Typically it'll freeze, sound-loop, unfreeze for about 3 seconds and act normal, then bluescreen (Battlefield 2142 and Team Fortress 2). More often than not, I actually do get ingame and actually play, but not for long (10 minutes or so), sometimes it'll freeze while loading though. I did have bluescreen errors out of game (freeze, unfreeze for 3 seconds, then bluescreen), too, but they've seemed to have gone since I did the OS repair install, although this was during the hottest part of summer for the passed 5 days, things have cooled off, and it seems gaming only triggers the issue now. Whether or not summer cooling down and me not having bluescreens out of game anymore are coincidence and doing the OS repair influenced anything, I'm not sure.


Here are the things that I've tried.....


I thought that this was a problem with my OS install becoming corrupt, so I ran the OS repair. After doing that, everything seemed to act normal for 2 days, but issues resurfaced. Whether or not summer cooling down and me repairing my OS influenced anything, I'm not sure.

Reloaded display drivers (cleaned with driver cleaner, reg cleaner, etc...)

3dark06 runs fine.

Crash logs and event viewer show no problems that would lead me to believe that something is wrong with the OS, or a software issue.

I ran Memtest86 and gave my memory 3 passes (4 hours of testing), no errors.

I scanned my hard drives with Spinrite for bad sectors and also ran the Western Digital diagnostic utilities on it, everything came up fine.

I thought my video card may have been heat damaged, being summer and all, but its' temps never get above 60C. Regardless, I ran Furmark to really stress it out, got it to 80C and maintained it for 5 minutes (15 minutes total run), and the system remained stable. If the card was infact heat damaged, it would've crapped out way before 80C.

I ran Prime95 (blend mode) for about 20 minutes, system remained stable.

I also used a friend's IT technician kit. The video card, hard drive, memory, and CPU tests all came up clean after multiple passes.

Ran various cleaning utilities (junk files, registry, etc...). I don't have any spyware or viruses anyway, but checked with Avast/Kaspersky for viruses and Adaware/spybot/spysweeper for spyware, all clean.

I never really play TF2, but gave it a try for testing purposes, and it froze within 10 minutes of being ingame.


The last culprit is the powersupply, but unfortunately I don't have anything reliable to test it with, except my intuition. It seems when the system becomes underload, this may be pushing the power supply over the edge, IE; the power supply is failing. What do you guys think? Any troubleshooting tips?


-thanks

 

[unholy414]

I found that the problem all this time was my raptor hard drive. I know this, because it died on me about 10 minutes after making this thread. I guess making a reinstall of BF2142 pushed it over the edge, it blue screened during installation. After doing a force restart, system files (hal.dll) and directories (windows/system) were reported as missing and/or corrupt, preventing me from reaching desktop. I attempted to access my Windows drive via Linux Live CD, but since the Windows drive did not power down through a proper shutdown, it locked itself, and Linux wasn't able to mount it, and since I could not boot the drive to properly shut it down, data retrieval via Linux was out. Not even a force mount would get me in. I attempted to do an OS repair install with my Windows disks, but the system kept crapping out in the middle of the installation with lockups and random reboots (6 attempts), leaving chkdsk to correct a bunch of bad sectors.

I managed to retrieve my data via DOS on a Bart PE boot CD with the xcopy command, backing up to my Western Digital My Book. I still somewhat suspect the power supply, but I guess I'll find out when my new drive gets here.


UPDATE 7/26/2008: It was the hard drive. I ordered a power supply tester with my new drive, and the tester showed no abnormalities. I believe it, because my system has been functioning normally every since I replaced the hard drive. I hated to let the raptor go, but shit happens.

 

[MarcVenice]

HDD's, most prone to failure of all pc components afaik. You seem to know a thing or two, good thing you could retrieve your data. I doubt it's the PSU btw. It's a high quality PSU, and I doubt it's messing with your hardware. The fact that your PC remained stable for 2 days after the system repair has to mean something as well.

 

[DSF]

If it's your power supply, which I would also tend to doubt, you got a bum unit. A properly functioning PCP&C 510W would have no trouble running your system.

 

[musicetime101]

That power supply should be ok for your system.