DeepSparklePupa
Member
**Update #2: I swapped out the TNT2 Card for the GeForce 2 after successfully restoring all system data from tape. The machine recognized the card and cooly accepted the newly restored Detonator drivers without a hiccup. I then putzed around for 5 minutes or so to "confirm" stability and then shut down to install the 2nd stick of RAM. Booted, putzed, fired up RtCW. Within 2 minutes, BSOD. Except *this* time, got the lovely DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL_ZERO. *YES*!! Something I can diagnose! 🙂
I immediately pull the 2nd stick of RAM and run Win2K's verify program. BTW, Details here from M$. Sure enough, every driver checks out as stable with 2nd stick out. I can be certain that I've got bad RAM or a bad DIMM slot. Wahoo!!!
End Update #2
**updated: The machine has been stable for five hours with the following modifications to hardware/BIOS:
(1) TNT2 AGP Video vs. GeForce 2 MX 400
(2) One 256mb stick Crucial PC2100 vs. two sticks
(3) memory timings set back to "normal" under 8KHA+ BIOS vs. "Turbo"
What's next? I'm thinking I put the GF2 back in there and see WTF happens. Still would like to know why this may have imploded on me.
Thus ends the update
**********
Four months of Win2K up time without a single BSOD ? down the drain.
This is mostly a bitch ?n moan post, but what, if anything, could cause what appears to be this hardware failure that I?ve experienced?
Quick specs:
XP1600 no O/C
Epox 8KHA+
MSI GeForce 2 MX 400
SB Live 5.1
2 sticks Crucial PC 2100 256 mb ea.
Full specs here
I got a BSOD last night while playing RtCW. Unfortunately, I had not disabled ?reboot on BSOD?, so I only got to read a fraction of the full-page description of the error. What I was able to read was something like: ?A driver has written to protected memory. If this is the first time this has happened?.?
No biggie, I figured. I?m certainly used to BSODs from my Win98 days. To my shock, I am unable to boot into Windows ? getting a various memory-related errors on three successive boots from Win2k.sys, Nv4_disp.sys and Tmfiller.sys. When booting into windows in safe mode, I successfully reach the desktop but BSOD within 2 minutes. Diagnostics is impossible ? I figured the registry must?ve been hosed during crash ? I whip out the ghosted images of my original installation. Fortunately, I don?t change configuration or software very often and should be able to get the machine back to the condition it was in yesterday with a restore of the system state.
Now, quickly, I?ve learned to separate the OS on its own partition to the greatest extent possible. On C:\, I have only \WinNT and the standard \?my documents? directory with only the minimal data files necessary. I have reconfigured programs like Outlook and MS Office apps to default to data stored on the D:\ partition. Because of this, I can blow away the OS partition without fear of loss of data. Without fear, I begin installing a ghosted image of C:\
The partition is written cleanly by ghost, and I boot into windows without a problem ? though I?m a bit nostalgic reviewing the items on the desktop from my 3-month old ghosted image. I set NTbackup to restore the system state and those few files in \?my documents? (things like cookies and favorites), note a 10-minute ETA for completion, and head upstairs to relax.
When I return to the PC, it is resting comfortably at the login screen. Uh oh ? the darned thing rebooted! The Ntbackup log reveals that the system rebooted about a minute after I left it, while writing some harmless files to \?my documents?. Worse, the system proves itself to be still completely unstable, as I am hardly able to spend more than 2 minutes in windows before it BSODs.
Given that I?m working on a known ?good? installation (my 3-month-old ghosted image) I can only conclude that I am experiencing a hardware failure. Now I need to review my diagnostics training, but start with swapping out my GeForce 2 MX 400 for an old TNT2 card, pulling the second stick of RAM and lowering the tax on the memory system by reducing the aggressiveness of my memory timings from the 8KHA+?s ?turbo? to ?normal?. The system has been up and running for an hour, now, without any hiccups.
Can I conclude, then, that either my video card or some component of my RAM system has gone kaput? I?ve been running the machine at ?Turbo? settings (CAS 2, 4-bank interleave) for 3 months. Could this tax and damage the DIMMS? Crap ? know what? I have a feeling that the Turbo settings on the 8KHA+ bump the voltage up +0.10 to the RAM. How likely is it that this could degrade the RAM to this 100% catastrophic instability ?instantly?? I could see slow degradation with occasional errors, but to suddenly have no stability at all? With the Video card ? that seems entirely too rare to consider at this point.
Anyhow, mostly a bitch-n-moan post. Thanks for listening.
-DSP
I immediately pull the 2nd stick of RAM and run Win2K's verify program. BTW, Details here from M$. Sure enough, every driver checks out as stable with 2nd stick out. I can be certain that I've got bad RAM or a bad DIMM slot. Wahoo!!!
End Update #2
**updated: The machine has been stable for five hours with the following modifications to hardware/BIOS:
(1) TNT2 AGP Video vs. GeForce 2 MX 400
(2) One 256mb stick Crucial PC2100 vs. two sticks
(3) memory timings set back to "normal" under 8KHA+ BIOS vs. "Turbo"
What's next? I'm thinking I put the GF2 back in there and see WTF happens. Still would like to know why this may have imploded on me.
Thus ends the update
**********
Four months of Win2K up time without a single BSOD ? down the drain.
This is mostly a bitch ?n moan post, but what, if anything, could cause what appears to be this hardware failure that I?ve experienced?
Quick specs:
XP1600 no O/C
Epox 8KHA+
MSI GeForce 2 MX 400
SB Live 5.1
2 sticks Crucial PC 2100 256 mb ea.
Full specs here
I got a BSOD last night while playing RtCW. Unfortunately, I had not disabled ?reboot on BSOD?, so I only got to read a fraction of the full-page description of the error. What I was able to read was something like: ?A driver has written to protected memory. If this is the first time this has happened?.?
No biggie, I figured. I?m certainly used to BSODs from my Win98 days. To my shock, I am unable to boot into Windows ? getting a various memory-related errors on three successive boots from Win2k.sys, Nv4_disp.sys and Tmfiller.sys. When booting into windows in safe mode, I successfully reach the desktop but BSOD within 2 minutes. Diagnostics is impossible ? I figured the registry must?ve been hosed during crash ? I whip out the ghosted images of my original installation. Fortunately, I don?t change configuration or software very often and should be able to get the machine back to the condition it was in yesterday with a restore of the system state.
Now, quickly, I?ve learned to separate the OS on its own partition to the greatest extent possible. On C:\, I have only \WinNT and the standard \?my documents? directory with only the minimal data files necessary. I have reconfigured programs like Outlook and MS Office apps to default to data stored on the D:\ partition. Because of this, I can blow away the OS partition without fear of loss of data. Without fear, I begin installing a ghosted image of C:\
The partition is written cleanly by ghost, and I boot into windows without a problem ? though I?m a bit nostalgic reviewing the items on the desktop from my 3-month old ghosted image. I set NTbackup to restore the system state and those few files in \?my documents? (things like cookies and favorites), note a 10-minute ETA for completion, and head upstairs to relax.
When I return to the PC, it is resting comfortably at the login screen. Uh oh ? the darned thing rebooted! The Ntbackup log reveals that the system rebooted about a minute after I left it, while writing some harmless files to \?my documents?. Worse, the system proves itself to be still completely unstable, as I am hardly able to spend more than 2 minutes in windows before it BSODs.
Given that I?m working on a known ?good? installation (my 3-month-old ghosted image) I can only conclude that I am experiencing a hardware failure. Now I need to review my diagnostics training, but start with swapping out my GeForce 2 MX 400 for an old TNT2 card, pulling the second stick of RAM and lowering the tax on the memory system by reducing the aggressiveness of my memory timings from the 8KHA+?s ?turbo? to ?normal?. The system has been up and running for an hour, now, without any hiccups.
Can I conclude, then, that either my video card or some component of my RAM system has gone kaput? I?ve been running the machine at ?Turbo? settings (CAS 2, 4-bank interleave) for 3 months. Could this tax and damage the DIMMS? Crap ? know what? I have a feeling that the Turbo settings on the 8KHA+ bump the voltage up +0.10 to the RAM. How likely is it that this could degrade the RAM to this 100% catastrophic instability ?instantly?? I could see slow degradation with occasional errors, but to suddenly have no stability at all? With the Video card ? that seems entirely too rare to consider at this point.
Anyhow, mostly a bitch-n-moan post. Thanks for listening.
-DSP
