Hardlocks from nowhere!!! (was: Something in my computer hates me)

[VirtualLarry]

What if you strip down your system, and put your Ti4200 back in?

I'm kind of tending towards DAPUNISHER's diagnosis, although I suggest taking the system apart, and (while properly grounded), remove and re-insert *everything*. Also, use a "can 'o air" or something similar to remove all of the dust from connectors, etc., before re-inserting.

Also, have you checked/replaced your CMOS battery lately? Double-checked your front-panel USB and audio cables? Made sure that all of the IDE connectors on the mobo and drives are plugged in snugly?

Have you tried overnight testing or otherwise running the system for significant periods of time, while underclocked?

Also, if you are getting IRQL_xxx BSODs - it could be the drivers. Try using DriverCleaner or the device mfg's special "full uninstall" utils to clean out the drivers. Try using older drivers if need be.

btw, you mention a TV card. Is it a Hauppauge board? I have a WinTV PCI board, an older one, and I recently re-added it to this machine, and am using their newest non-beta drivers for XP, and it hardlocks the machine after a few minutes of operation. I don't know if it's their drivers, or my hardware, but it's always been a bit touch-and-go for compatibility. I have to dig back into my driver archives and try to find the version that didn't cause system hardlocks for me.

 

[beatle]

The machine was running well until I installed those new detonators. I'm back to the 61.77s. Note: the computer did not lock like it normally does. The BSOD seemed to be specifically related to drivers, as you mentioned. I'll run DriverCleaner if I get another lock. I am leaning towards my Audigy 2 ZS being the problem. I'll let it go for a while to see if it locks up again with it out.

My case has filters, so dust is almost non-existant. I went back over the case when I had it apart and found nothing loose.

I already sold my Ti4200.

The CMOS battery is brand new, as the board is only a few weeks old. I haven't tried underclocking, though I did realize my memory was only at 166. I reset the board to defaults and then disabled the usual stuff I don't use (Promise SATA, LPT, serial ports, firewire). My TV card is a Leadtek 2000 XP Expert (see the A64 in my sig). As I mentioned, I pulled it out and put it back in.

I'm making progress, I think. My comp hasn't crashed (aside from the driver-related BSOD) since I've had the Audigy 2 ZS out. I ran Prime95 for 18+ hours last night and today. If I can go 3 days without a crash, I'll be convinced that it's my soundcard. I wonder if it's defective. How would you prove that to Creative?

 

[Philippine Mango]

Try installing the system in another case, could be a bad case(power switch and or reset button)... Worth a try!

 

[beatle]

That's a bit extreme...

A faulty power or reset switch would cause spontaneous reboots. I could always disconnect the switches and power it on with some pliers if I suspected the switches going bad.

 

[Wellcky]

0x0000000A IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL means it's an attempt was made to access pageable memory at a process internal request level (IRQL) that was too high. A process can only access objects that have priorities (IRQL) of equal or lower priority than its own. This is usually caused by a device driver using improper addresses.

Do you have any old cables being used in you new system? Try switching them out.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: beatle
The machine was running well until I installed those new detonators. I'm back to the 61.77s. Note: the computer did not lock like it normally does. The BSOD seemed to be specifically related to drivers, as you mentioned. I'll run DriverCleaner if I get another lock. I am leaning towards my Audigy 2 ZS being the problem. I'll let it go for a while to see if it locks up again with it out.

Well, that almost certainly clinches it as some sort of software/driver issue.

Originally posted by: beatle
The CMOS battery is brand new, as the board is only a few weeks old.

That actually doesn't mean anything. Oftentimes those boards sit in warehouses for a while, and can be exposed to temperature extremes, that will shorten their "shelf life" quite a bit. I treat mobos with factory-installed CMOS batteries kind of like inkjet printers with starter ink carts - you'll need to replace them sooner than later, generally-speaking. Use a DVM if you really want to check.

Originally posted by: beatle
I'm making progress, I think. My comp hasn't crashed (aside from the driver-related BSOD) since I've had the Audigy 2 ZS out. I ran Prime95 for 18+ hours last night and today. If I can go 3 days without a crash, I'll be convinced that it's my soundcard. I wonder if it's defective. How would you prove that to Creative?

Dunno. Call/e-mail their RMA dept., I guess. Sounds like you're making progress on the issue.

 

[The J]

If you think it's your Audigy causing the problem, then call Creative Tech Support. I would not recommend e-mailing them because you'll only get a bunch of replies telling you to do things you've already done before ("Did you try reinstalling DirectX?" "Try a new [insert all parts here]" "Maybe DirectX needs to be reinstalled again."). Call them, tell them everything you told us to troubleshoot it, and ask for an RMA number if they don't give you anything new to try.

 

[beatle]

I decided to take troubleshooting into my own hands and picked up another Audigy 2 ZS from Best Buy. If this works, I'll see about having the card replaced.

 

[beatle]

I put the card in earlier today and fired it up. 5 hours later, it had locked up, just like the other one. I am now convinced that Creative puts a little bit of evil into every soundcard they make. I am now trying it in the dreaded bottom PCI slot, which is the 3rd slot it has been in so far. If it locks up again, I may start looking for alternatives.

 

[milesl]

Question...does your case hard drive activity light light up solid when this happens?
I traced a lockup issue with an athlon xp system I had to the western digital hard drive causing the system to lock at random.
The drive would actually turn itself off I could hear it spin down and the hard drive light would stay on solid.Then the system would lock hard.
Just something else to check in your troubleshooting.

Never did completely solve the issue,but a bios update,and complete reinstall with the most recent drivers helped to minimize the problem from once a week to once a month.

Good luck.

 

[beatle]

Hard drive light remains off.

It is now confirmed! This soundcard is officially evil. It must hate one or more of the following:

[*] An optical drive
[*] A hard drive
[*] My floppy drive
[*] My Lian Li card reader
[*] A fan
[*] My fanbus
[*] My Musketeer
[*] A SATA or ide cable
[*] My case itself
[*] My will to live

I guess it's time to chuck the card. I'll start a new thread on soundcard recommendations.

 

[beatle]

Ok, I've tried every driver for this card that I've found on Creative's site. All of them exhibit the same hardlock issue. Being that this is the ONLY card that will do DVD-Audio, and I frequuently play games with it makes it even more important that I figure out what its problem is. Can anyone offer me some new ideas that I may have missed? I really don't want to have to chuck this and all of my DVD-Audio.

 

[flexy]

Originally posted by: beatle
Damn! I had 32 hours of uptime with my Audigy 2 ZS out of the system. I then reboot to install new Detonator drivers. While the machine is booting, I decide to go into bios. I notice that I'm still running a divider on my ram from when I was overclocking, so my ram was running @ 166 instead of 200. I play UT2k4 for a few minutes with the new drivers. I then go to quit and I get a BSOD (IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL). Seems like drivers, but I'll have to retest my memory again. :|

oooohh...interesting,

Got a laptop which had the same problem...and cost me lots of nerves and 2 days of re-installing windows and playing around with drivers.

This problem is very obscure.

I had two network cards in the laptop - one wireless, one wired.

I could stop that dreaded BSOD by disabling the one cetwork card (with the 'faulty' drivers) in windows. (device manager --> disable device).

Try checking your system, what physical devices you have, what interrupts they use. Disable every device you dont use. ESPECIALLY if you have multiple network cards.

please list ALL devices you have on your PC, also the onboard stuff, pci cards etc...might help here

 

[flexy]

Originally posted by: beatle
Hard drive light remains off.

It is now confirmed! This soundcard is officially evil. It must hate one or more of the following:

[*] An optical drive
[*] A hard drive
[*] My floppy drive
[*] My Lian Li card reader
[*] A fan
[*] My fanbus
[*] My Musketeer
[*] A SATA or ide cable
[*] My case itself
[*] My will to live

I guess it's time to chuck the card. I'll start a new thread on soundcard recommendations.

nono, its nothing of the above. it must be some pci-device where there is a driver conflict. Yes...start with stripping out pci-cards and disabling onboard-devices (if any)...and start to hunt the problem systematically. Eg. by switching on/plugging in devices after you know everything is ok. Then plug in/turn on the next device.

Forget memory and cables etc...this problem is device/driver related.

edit: just out of curiosity you can disable the onboard NIC and see what happens..maybe its the NICs drivers ?

 

[beatle]

See the A64 in my sig for a complete list of hardware. I've disabled everything onboard that I'm not using (serial, parallel, firewire, promise controller, audio). I will try running the card as the only PCI card in the system and see what happens. I've already tried pulling the tv tuner and 2nd video card individually while the Audigy remained in the system and I still had problems. The fact that these pieces of hardware were also in the P4 system which also exhibited this kind of behavior leads me to believe that they may be involved somehow.

 

[beatle]

It locked up being the ONLY PCI card in the system. I've now set pnp os to NO in the BIOS and moved the card to another slot so it now has its own IRQ. It previously used the same IRQ as my 6800.

 

[flexy]

Originally posted by: beatle
It locked up being the ONLY PCI card in the system. I've now set pnp os to NO in the BIOS and moved the card to another slot so it now has its own IRQ. It previously used the same IRQ as my 6800.

nope You probably still have the onboard NIC on..did you already try to disable it..or getting different drivers for the NIC ? My research showed that this BSOD is mostly related to NIC drivers. Its somehow unlikely that its the Audgy...dunno..why should you be the only one with that problem then ?

 

[beatle]

I'm not getting any BSOD's... these are hard locks.

I have the latest drivers for the NIC. Surely I'm not the ONLY person running an A8V (or any other card that uses this NIC chipset) and an Audigy 2 ZS.

 

[beatle]

Ok, locked up again. I disabled the onboard NIC and put in a Compaq PCI NIC. The Audigy still has its own IRQ.

 

[magnux]

I had a similar issue. I had a K8V SE Deluxe and it refused to play nicely with my Audigy 1. If I removed the Audigy, it ran fine. But with it in, it would randomly reboot, lock up, BSOD. You name it. I tried it in every PCI slot.

Asus tech support told me it was pretty much everything EXCEPT their board.. figures. However, once I ditched the Asus board, "magically" everything began to work flawlessly. Best move I ever made.

 

[Auric]

Perhaps, disable auto restart under Startup & Recovery and set the debug option to Kernel Dump to increase the chance of seeing a stop error screen rather than just experiencing a lock. A dump can be analysed with dumpchk and pstat from Windows Support Tools (on CD) and Windows Debugger from microsoft.com

 

[beatle]

I'm NOT getting bluescreens! These are hard locks which don't reboot until I hit the reset button.

So far so good with the PCI NIC though. I've been up for nearly 17 hours. After I hit 3 days, I'll be convinced that it's the onboard NIC.

 

[flexy]

Originally posted by: beatle
I'm NOT getting bluescreens! These are hard locks which don't reboot until I hit the reset button.

So far so good with the PCI NIC though. I've been up for nearly 17 hours. After I hit 3 days, I'll be convinced that it's the onboard NIC.

told ya

Btw. i had a LOT of fun (hahaha) calling HP tech support (in india) in this matter its always kinda depressing to realize that you know much more than a supposed "tech support" person...but as said..this case is/was kinda bizarre....i hope you get the issue resolved now

 

[beatle]

Damn! I had quite a bit of uptime with just the Audigy and this Compaq NIC. I was up to about 36 hours when I kicked the power cord and rebooted. I had another 36 hours after that. I added in my Matrox and TV tuner last night and ran Prime95 for 11 hours without a problem. Then I hardlock again. :|

 

[Arcanedeath]

Just get a non creative sound card and get it over with you might also try adjusting your PCI latency sometimes that can resolve issues created by you know who's sound cards...