graphics hell on earth

[car3on]

Hey guys, I have a serious system problem that I need real help with..
First I will give you some system specs to play with, here they are:
cpu: athlon xp1800+
M/board: asus a7n266-vm/lan(dolby version/N-force chipset)
sound: onboard
network: onboard(disabled)
modem: swannsmart 56k-v.90 external
vga adapter: Leadtek winfast a170 ddr-t
hdd: western digital caviar 40gb 5400rpm
ram: 256mb pc2100ddr
cd: Samsung cdr/rw sw-232b
monitor: lg studuioworks 700s 17"

Here is the problem:
Whenever I run a 3d game, with or without the sound enabled(in the bios)it will run for however long it wants to, and then freeze completely. This is usually accompanied by a black screen or a frozen game screen or a message like this:

WOLFSP caused an invalid page fault in
module KERNEL32.DLL at 0167:bff717ff.
Registers:
EAX=00000000 CS=0167 EIP=bff717ff EFLGS=00010246
EBX=01ae7880 SS=016f ESP=01ae7850 EBP=01ae7860
ECX=de9b2f00 DS=016f ESI=0000016f FS=32a7
EDX=00017ce4 ES=016f EDI=887e329f GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
66 64 c7 05 1e 00 00 00 ff ff c3 52 50 a1 e8 9c
Stack dump:
bff94402 40af88a4 000040af 00000000 bff719b8 0000889e 01aefe28 bff7186d 887e329f 00000000 40af887e 00000000 02460000 88dc0000 3caa0002 16d7bff9
(taken from return to castle wolfenstein)

Noting that the eax etc came up, I thought to disable the onboard sound, to see if that was the problem, but it wasn't.
I then changed the graphics card to a geforce 2 mx-400 to see if it was the card doing it, but the gf2 did exactly the same thing.
I diddled around in the bios a bit, setting the agp aperture to 64mb, disabling the onboard gameport, which I will never use anyway, and the onboard dolby digital processor, which controls the digital outputs, and also the onboard midi, which I will also never use(not that I know ofand it ran better, but still did the same thing. I disabled the cpu fast decode, which also made it run a little better, but still crashed the same in 3d games. ONLY in 3d games..

I set the write caching to "uc", which made the graphics run a little better in some games, but still crashed wolfenstein flawlessly. I also disabled the video bios shadowing, which can cause problems, according to learned associates. The problem still remains..

Please help, I am at wits end, I have done everything I can, and have windows and all my drivers totally updated, to no avail..What should I do?

 

[DaFinn]

Thats a memory problem report, referring to certain memory registers etc... Try with different memory module if possible. See if that removes the problem.

Have you overclocked that thing?


-DaFinn

 

[car3on]

no, its not overclocked, it's a week old, haven't had the chance to do anything like that because it hasn't worked for long enough for me to do anything like that...As for memory, I might have to take it back to the shop that built it for that one. Are you certain that's what it would be? It seems fairly stable on non graphical apps, and that goes for gf4 and gf2...

 

[DaFinn]

Normal apps dont stress your memory like games/3d apps etc... W. normal apps you also hardly ever use even 256Mb to 100%, graphic intensive games will suck that up in no time...

In your BIOS there should be setting like "quick power on self test" or something similar. Set that to disabled, so the BIOS does a more thorough test during bootup. It should detect most problems (not all!). Also get a good memorytest program like

Memtest-86
HERE

or

GoldMemory
HERE

Run them through to see if thats the problem.


-DaFinn

 

[car3on]

thanks, I shall surely give it a thwack!! Will tell you what becomes of it....

 

[alkemyst]

yeah run those mem tests....I like DOCMEM which some have said is MEMTEST86....I don't know.



Also if those check out make sure you are set for Programs and not System Cache in the Performance section of your system (Windows key+break, then ->Hardware->Advanced[Performance] Settings->Advanced[Memory Usage]

Good luck....I know how those errors can cause mental instability...thank God for lithium and beer.

 

[Bovinicus]

Memtest will definitely help you to determine if memory is the problem. It is a very intensive program that runs all kinds of various patterns of information through those DIMMs. It is also possible that you need to update your chipset drivers, as they contain the AGP drivers. Try updating all of your drivers and Window's files to their latest versions. Update your BIOS as well, if the option is available. Another option to try is the disabling of fastwrites in the BIOS.

 

[car3on]

sorry dudes, I didn't give you enough info...
I am running a fully updated version of 98se, and a geforce4mx-440 ddr-t
Not the onboard graphics board, so those graphics drivers are useless to me. All other drivers for m/board are the latest, as are all other drivers in the system, and the bios..

 

[BFG10K]

Do you have the latest BIOS and chipset drivers for your system?
Is your power supply powerful enough to handle its' load?

Also you might like to try the safe defaults in your system.

 

[car3on]

yeah, all the latest, I took it back, they replaced the ram, and it is still doing the same thing....aaaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhh!!!!!! What to do what to do!!!

 

[azkiwi]

Tell them to run the game for a while before they give it back. Do you have faith in the shop? I think I'd be fairly PO'd if a new 1800+ wouldn't run RTCW. If I couldn't get prompt satisfaction, I'd be looking at a return..

 

[car3on]

Yeah, I know, I have just put it on xp, clean install, with the dolby digital support, network, and gameport disabled in the bios, so no drivers were installed for them.. Am currently running windows update, and then I will run a game or two, to see if I didn't have a bum install of windows... I hope that is what it was, I hope... If it was I will be happy, but if it still forx up, I will throw it through their window and make them replace the mobo with an a7s333...

 

[car3on]

hmm, so far so good... Could a bum install of win98se have caused all of my problems?
I had heard it told that one must install peripherals in a certain order.. Could it be? Gotta try a couple other games yet, but who knows. I hope that was my prob, that would make it all easy...

 

[car3on]

well, wolfenstein works great, but gunlok restarts the system when I exit it....Hmmm. I Can't really tell if it is the game or the system with that one. I guess I will have to keep trying different games and se how many of them actually work

 

[wizdum]

yeah gunlok sux anyway so you shouldnt be worried about that. anyway, if it gives you more problems return that baby!


yeeeeeeeeee

 

[car3on]

I dunno, I sorta loiked it.... If wolfenstein running flat out and perfect is anything to go by, I think I am in business..I got a two year warranty on this baby, so I think I will mess with it for a while, see what happen.. Also, I noticed that windows update doesn't particularly like you to open avi/mpegs whil it is doin its' stuff Mega crash

 

[bfonnes]

Originally posted by: car3on
yeah, all the latest, I took it back, they replaced the ram, and it is still doing the same thing....aaaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhh!!!!!! What to do what to do!!!

I would still blame the ram. I have a couple of other things I think it might be, but cheap ram seems to be the likely culprit, so if you went back and had them replace the ram at the store, then they would just put the same brand in that was already in there to begin with.

Bfonnes

 

[car3on]

Time to kick myself again, gunlok may be generating an error, but that is, I would say, most probably a software thing, any of you dudes know about the setting in system properties, called startup and recovery, you know the one with the tab that says, "Automatically restart"? I daresay that with that unticked, whilst gunlok crashes, win-xp probably wouldn't, eh? Neither would it for much else, I daresay.

I would still blame the ram.

Whilst it would be easy to blame the ram for such a thing straight up, faulty vga drivers, sound, network, etc drivers will all do pretty much the same thing to you, won't they? As it happens, the ram they put in is a different brand, but still of decent quality, as these guys aren't shonky at all. I think, for now, until it proves me wrong, that I have seemingly isolated the problem, and that it was more software related than anything else. The moment I put xp on and got rid of 98, everything started to go fast and work properly. Hell, if I got 5500 3dmarks on a buggy as ya mama win98 install, I wonder how many I would get now

Thanks for your help doods, and I will keep you posted of any new horrors which I uncover....