Crashes with games

[KavinCross]

Hi there.

I hope someone can save me from this crash.

While Im playing an online game usually about one or twice the system will shut down the program telling me The program had to close. Other times it totally reboots the system. When windows restarts it tells me the system has recovered from serious errors on a half dozen different windows. It saves a bunch of files that look like minidump files. I dont know how to diagnose them.

Ive done driver updates on every concievable system. I have also removed the memsticks and tried both of the sticks to see if it would stop if one of them wasnt there, looking to see if one was bad but the problem persists. I even down clocked my system to see if it was a procesor instability. I uninstalled my soundcard and used the ac97 on board and it still keeps up. I dont know what to do.

Im hoping that someone on theese forums can point me in the right direction. Im praying that its something I may have overlooked and not a damaged component. I cant afford any new ones right now.

 

[Creston]

When it says the system has recovered from serious errors, is it talking about Harddisk errors? You may want to let chkdsk run on your drive, see if it doesn't have any bad clusters on it.

Alternatively, your computer might be overheating. After it crashes, immediately go into the BIOS, and check the PChealth section for temperatures of your processor and motherboard. Try playing with your case open and see if the issue persists. (if it doesn't, it's probably heat related.)

Finally, it could be a crappy video driver. Download driver cleaner and reinstall a solid driver (I know the Catalyst 4.11 was good, not sure about Nvidia ones), then try again.

Hope that helps.

Creston

 

[KavinCross]

Fresh and brand new hard drive, it works great.

I first thought it was a cooling problem too, i replaced the heatsink and fan with artic silver 5 and a monster heatsink and fan. It works really good. Also to find out if it was the heatsink I had moved my system with open case closer to the air conditioner. I ran the games with a temperature of about 30c with the air blowing thru the case. Yet it still happened. There was no difference in the behavior or the crashes wether it was being supercooled or not.

As for driver cleaner where do you get it? I will try this out and see if there are any lingering video drivers. My system is a somewhat fresh install of about 2 and a half months. It doesnt hurt to yank all drivers for a vidcard and reinstall now and then though.

 

[KavinCross]

Also, Im still kinda new to these forums so im not sure how to post these for maximum effeciancy. The crash itself has several strange behaviors. I can sometimes "feel" it coming on as the sound will make the occasional "brrt!" sound. It sounds something like the normal sounds going on in the game but strained. Sort of like a freeway rumble strip they put down to wake drivers up on long stretches of road. I first thought this was overheating, but after upgrading my cooling it still persisted. The game itself doesnt seem to visibly slow down while it does this.

I think its the soundcard. I have an older SBlive platinum, the pre 5.1 kind.

 

[farscape]

Yeah Soundblaster cards have a bit of wacky history with crappy drivers.

But to be honest with you - a bit more info on your system would be helpfull to troubleshoot. OpSys, Proc, Mem, M Board, OCed?, Snd Crd, Games?

 

[KavinCross]

I have...
Windows xp profesional
SP 2
AMD Athlon XP 2600+
1 gig of ram DDR 333
Soltek SL-75FRN
Non-Overclocked
Soundblaster Live Platinum (pre 5.1)

The main game is Splinter Cell Chaos Theory by Ubisoft, yeah I know, Its easy to blame it on them with their track record but... Doom 3 does the very same thing.

 

[FlyingPenguin]

SBLive is notorious for PCI IRQ Channel sharing issues (not the same as IRQ conflict) that causes random reboots. More info here: http://soldcentralfl.com/quakecoop/glfaq5.htm#5_9

Only real fix is to try the card in different slots, but my advise is to ditch it. Any cheap $15 C-Media card will do a better job. Chances are your mobo has an on-board C-media sound chip.

It is possible the cause is something else, though. You generally don't get any errors with PCI Channel sharing issues - it just reboots without warning.

I would recommend you disable the "auto reboot on serious error" feature of XP which should then allow Windows to display an error message that may give you a clue as to what's going on. Rightclick "My Computer" - > properties -> Advanced tab -> Startup and Recover Settings button. Under "System failure" uncheck "Automatically restart". One of Microsoft's dumber ideas...

But trust me, lose the SBLive anyway. They make dandy door stops.

 

[KavinCross]

Do you know if this problem persists with newer soundblasters? I was looking at the audigy 2 zs. I definetly going to replace the live, never really liked it to begin with. In hindsight I should have returned it but It was the best card out at the time.

Also thanks for pointing out that stupid reboot command. I took care of it quickly.

One major new observation I made with this problem was that i can tell when its going to crash now. The forwarning that usually happens is that the mouse look speed gets quicker when playing games. You turning one moment at a certain speed then your aim speed doubles. The crash usually happens right after that. Normally the reboot kind of crash.

I had no idea there was anything like pci channel sharing. My mobo bios never indicated anything like it, although ill go back and check. I have never even heard of it before now. You really do learn somethng new everyday, some days its more than others.

 

[stockjock]

How old is this setup?? The reason I ask is because 2 of my nephews brought their computers over to me this weekend....both with overheating problems...one look and I told them both that they need to do a better job of cleaning their room...they said, "why?" I told them to look at the heatsinks and they both got real quiet. Their heatsinks were clogged so badly that there was no way air was circulating....so, take a look at your heatsink and make sure its not clogged.

Just an idea!

 

[spherrod]

May also be the PSU as well - i had similar issues and my PSU was on the way out and unable to supply sufficient power when games demanded it

 

[KavinCross]

The PSU is brand new and was chosen because it exceeds all my needs X2 on every voltage rail. And the case is clean as can be.

New sound card is on the way, though i moved some of the cards around to improve the situation. Got a little better and a little worse in some areas, overall its about the same. Im going to try some different combinations. Any suggestions?

 

[KavinCross]

I moved the soundcard away from the network card and vid card. I have seen a marked improvement in game speed and the mouse doesnt seem to be affected anymore, or at least its no longer changing speeds. Now there is this god awfull static sound when things get loud in the game and it doesnt go away until you close the application.