Screen Freeze

[ronin42]

Howdy, I searched the forum for this topic but only had one item popup.
The system will run for 5 minutes or 1 hour or whatever and then the screen
system will just lockup.
Can't use the keyboard to reboot so I have to cycle power.
The information I got points to the graphics card, some info on the web said
there is a driver issue with ATI cards.
they don't agree.
Anyone have issues with system lockup?
AMD 64/FX 4000+ 939, 1GB RAM Crucial, ATI x800GT 256.
Upgraded the BIOS to 1.0A.

 

[wanderer27]

Welcome aboard !

What MB ?

I've seen similar behaviour when the Sound Card IRQ conflicts with the Video Card IRQ. You may try moving your Sound Card (if you have one) to another PCI slot.

I'd also uninstall it (from the Device Manager) and let Windows re-install it in the new slot just in case there is some other wierd behaviour going on.

 

[ronin42]

hmm hadn't thought of that but I have sound on the MOBO.
How about sound drivers?
I notice just at the point of freezing I get a buzz out of my speakers.
I'm using the default REALTEK C97 driver that's installed by default.

 

[wanderer27]

If you're using the MB sound, then I doubt that's the problem. You may want to see if there are updated Drivers that may fix this.

If you have another PCI type card plugged (NIC ?), you may want to try moving that and using the deinstall/reinstall procedure.

 

[ronin42]

I only have the one PCI-e 16X card plugged in all other slots are empty.
Most perplexing

 

[wanderer27]

NF4 Firewall/Forceware installed ? These can cause problems, but usually they show up with Internet use.

How about Memtest ? Any Memory errors reported ?

Prime95 ? Stable/no issues ?

 

[ronin42]

Memory was the other thing I was wondering.
I was going to pull the chips to see if that would fix the problem.
I don't think I the firewall apps are loaded, I didn't do it intentionally
and haven't seen it as in install.
Had to lookup Prime95, wasn't familiar with it, and might try that just
for giggles.

 

[ronin42]

I just surfed around and found this link:
http://www.hardwareforum.com/bbs/archive/index.php/t-120-p-3.html
It pointed out turning off the Nvidia SmartGart driver cured a similar issue
with K8N Neo3 Platinums.
I saw something about this once before but it wasn't clear and I was looking
for the ATI smartgart/gart not the MOBO's.
I'll give this a whirl as soon as I find it on the system.

 

[grooge]

AGP (gart) drivers are not installed on PCI-e motherboard. increase memory voltage to 2.7. And a low quality PSU is not really recommended with newer hardware.

 

[ronin42]

Well I bought a Neo Power 480 since I was building a new system with an AMD 4000+.
I'll check my mem voltage settings in the BIOS.

 

[ronin42]

Thanks I checked the BIOS and found a setting.
Changed that to 3 from 2.5 and I haven't had a glitch in the past
several hours of COD2.