random lockups in war3

[hoppa]

I'm experienced semi-irregular hard lockups playing warcraft 3 with all patches installed. I've got a system with new everything except HDs. Fresh XP pro install, fully updated. All drivers are new. Ran prime 95 for a couple hours and everything was fine, except until I tried to run some other big app (dont remember what it was) while the test was still going on, then I bluescreened.

I check voltage and heat after the lockups and everything is quite alright.

I can't imagine its the PSU as I'm hardly even stressing it with warcraft 3, and it should be plenty powerful anyway.

PSU Fortran 450w
AM2 4200+
DFI Infinity NF UltraII-M2 / nForce4
7800 GT (fanless)
2 gigs g skill PC-4300 (266 mhz) running @ 250 mhz
2 HDs


I've got very little running in the background: aim, itouch and setpoint, and windowsblinds, which I never have had any trouble with before.


Any thoughts?

 

[concreteDonkey]

Just going from my own experience...

I've had 2 periods of random crashing with my pc. Once was cheap ram, and the other time was the northbridge overheating.
I had put a big h/s on it when I bought the board as it had a really small and annoying fan on it. Turns out the fan was there for a reason and not for show as I had suspected in the first place. Anyway, as soon as I put the fan back on with some fancy thermal compound (Ceramique I think), it came good.

I've just noticed that your 7800 GT is fanless...

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: hoppa
I'm experienced semi-irregular hard lockups playing warcraft 3 with all patches installed. I've got a system with new everything except HDs. Fresh XP pro install, fully updated. All drivers are new. Ran prime 95 for a couple hours and everything was fine, except until I tried to run some other big app (dont remember what it was) while the test was still going on, then I bluescreened.

I check voltage and heat after the lockups and everything is quite alright.

I can't imagine its the PSU as I'm hardly even stressing it with warcraft 3, and it should be plenty powerful anyway.

PSU Fortran 450w
AM2 4200+
DFI Infinity NF UltraII-M2 / nForce4
7800 GT (fanless)
2 gigs g skill PC-4300 (266 mhz) running @ 250 mhz
2 HDs


I've got very little running in the background: aim, itouch and setpoint, and windowsblinds, which I never have had any trouble with before.


Any thoughts?

Read my guide on BSODs (see my .sig) and debug your own dumpfile. Let us know what you find as the culprit.

 

[hoppa]

I'm not getting BSOD, I'm getting a hard lock. You know, the kind where the sound starts repeating 1/10th second clipp and there is no response whatsoever. Thus, no BSOD log.


Do others think it could be my north bridge? It does get hot... normally around 60C, but the bios lockup temp is all the way at 80, so it's not even close to that. Something of note though is that both of my recent lockups have been when I just started playing, and in both instances, after the reboot I started playing again and went for quite a few hours longer. Thus, it seems to me fair to rule out heat.

As for cheap ram, well, the brand has been recommended by AT before, is in their price guide, and comes with a lifetime warranty, so it can't be that bad, I don't think.

 

[dclive]

I saw this: H> except until I tried to run some other big app (dont remember what it was) while the test was still going on, then I bluescreened.

??

 

[hoppa]

Ah yes, sry, I was referring to the lockups. I guess perhaps I should check out that log, though I figured it was completely due to prime 95. I can't imagine that a test like that is really meant to be running while other stuff is going on, but I dunno.

 

[dclive]

Analyze it, and let us know what it says.

 

[hoppa]

Interestingly enough, there is no windows/minidump folder, even though logging is on. Now that I think about it, I may not actually have BS'd in that situation. I think it was just an instant reboot. The fact that there are no logs (and logging is turned on and has always been) seems to imply that.

Yes, hidden and protected files are being shown.

 

[hoppa]

Alright, lucky me, I got a bluescreen.

This is the result of the dump thing:


Loading User Symbols
Loading unloaded module list
.............
*******************************************************************************
* *
* Bugcheck Analysis *
* *
*******************************************************************************

Use !analyze -v to get detailed debugging information.

BugCheck 100000D1, {ffffffff, 7, 8, ffffffff}

Unable to load image Envy24HF.sys, Win32 error 2
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for Envy24HF.sys
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for Envy24HF.sys
Probably caused by : portcls.sys ( portcls!CServiceGroup::RequestService+5d )

Followup: MachineOwner
---------



Envy24 is my soundcard chip. I dont know what that portcls.sys is, though its in the drivers directory. I guess this is a sound bug?

 

[hoppa]

Well, I reinstalled the drivers (they were already the newest ones), and I installed drivers for my onboard sound, which had an exclamation mark in device manager because I had no drivers for it. Any other possible solutions?

 

[dclive]

Find out what portcls.sys is. Run mpsreports and look in the drivers.txt file until you find it, then post the portcls.sys section here.

 

[hoppa]

Module[128] [D:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\PORTCLS.SYS]
Company Name: Microsoft Corporation
File Description: Port Class (Class Driver for Port/Miniport Devices)
Product Version: (5.1:2600.2180)
File Version: (5.1:2600.2180)
File Size (bytes): 145792
File Date: Tue Aug 03 23:15:50 2004
Module TimeDateStamp = 0x41107f13 - Wed Aug 04 02:15:47 2004
Module Checksum = 0x0002e05c
Module SizeOfImage = 0x00023980
Module Pointer to PDB = [portcls.pdb]
Module PDB Guid = {9380C119-FB25-4169-B341-5C54DEF742F5}
Module PDB Age = 0x2

 

[hoppa]

Note that nothing I've done so far has solved the problem, I just experienced another lockup.

And I physically checked the heat inside the system after the crash and nothing was even remotely hot. The heatpipes on the 7800 were at most warm to the touch.

Could this be a physical sound card problem? The card is only a year old, though doing other reading on the net about portcls bluescreens people say it may be a physical issue. Note that I never had this problem in my old build using the same card.

 

[dclive]

And the PC locked up this time, no BSOD?

Lockups are hardware; I'd start with taking the PC to your PC vendor and having them give you a new one if you can reliably reproduce this issue.

 

[hoppa]

It's a custom built system, and everything is brand new save the sound card and the hard drivers. I'll try running the game with onboard sound rather than the chaintech card and seeing if I crash.

The system locks up, and after about a minute it reboots, though only once have I actually seen a blue screen and gotten a dump.

Any thoughts on the portcls error?

 

[dclive]

Sure - it's a random error that's caused by hardware is my guess, particularly given your other problems.