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system crashes

P

princejoe

Senior member
my computer keeps crashing since day 1 when my friend built it for me. The system would crash within five minutes whenever I listen to audio CD by using the CD-Rom while I was online or I was listen to the online radio while surfing the net. It is a pain in the neck, as I tried not to listen to CD or online radio when I was online, it still crashed. Altho not as often, maybe not as often(like once or twice everyday compare to every five minutes if I listened to music while I was online). When it crashed, the screen freezes, none of the buttons would function, not even ctrl-alt-del, I have to press the reset button to have the system reboot. The weird thing is that the PC works fine when I played PC games(not online), it never crashes even when I played heavy graphics games. It will great if someone could give me some feedbacks, thanks.

I am not sure if this helps, here are the specs of my system

window 98 second edition
Pentium III 600mhz EB
ASUS p3v4x VIA apollo pro 133A slot1 ATX
diamond monster sound MX300
Guillemot 3D prophet geforce 256 SDR
Maxtor 30GB 7200rpm
U.S.Robotics hardware modem

 
I believe it's very likely some of the drivers are causing this. Start win in safe mode by holding Shift key when you turn on your PC. The surf the net For A while and see if it crashes. If it does I dont know but if it doesnt its probably some driver problem. Maybe the sound card or Modem. Try getting the newest possible drivers. Reinstalling the windows just saved me a trip to the service so you might wonna try it. It resets a lot of things, maybe the right ones. And dont install DX 8.0. Just use 7.0a.
Hope it helps!
 
thanks, Atastrumf. I will try what u had told me once I have time. But as u could see, the components I used for the PC is kind of old, I don't know if they still have it, I am not sure if they still provide drivers for these parts. I will let u know if it work or not.
Do u think it has something to do with the compatibility of the motherboard? Could u tell me what is wrong with DX 8.0? Thanks
 
Chances are that you need the latest drivers for your MX300.

Try here to get the refs.

Be sure to remove your old drivers before installing these.

Let us know how you make out.
 
1) What version of the Via 4in1 drivers are you using?
2) What PCI slots are holding what devices?
3) Is the modem ISA?

This combo of hardware should make for a very dependable system, the P3V4X mobo is awesome. I've built several systems based on this board with 100% success. I think there was an error made in the initial setup.
 
It's a pci modem, Bad...I have it myself. I agree with replacing the diamond drivers with the final reference drivers (2048) from Aureal before they went bellyup.

The reason the games work ok but you have crashes elsewhere is because the games ARE using DirectX, while your other sound applications are using the normal sound driver (and video) drivers.

I would also download the latest reference drivers for your video card from Nvidia...they just released (officially) the 6.50 Detonator drivers.

Nvidia Detonator 3 Reference Drivers
 
Thanks for all the helps, guys... KGBman, do u think it's the sound card caused the crashing? I will let u know how it goes.

Badthad, I am using the Via 4in1 version 4.02. You asked me which PCI slots are holding which devices, does the order of which PCI slot holding have something to do with the performance of the system? I don't really remember which one is holding which device, but I will let u know when I go home. The modem is not ISA, it's PCI. I know the P3V4X is good, I went through lots of research, including the ANANDTECH site, it's been voted the editor's choice, right? That is the main reason I chose this motherboard, but when the problem occurred, I suspected that the motherboard was not compatible to the guillemot video card, what do u guys think?

slikkster, you have the same modem too? is it that bad? what driver are u using with the diamond MX 300 card?

again, thanks for the help!

 
Sorry For the late reply but I have had some Computer Crash Problems of myown. I Think its safer to work with DX7.0a than 8.0 since its still so new; and lets face it you really don't need DX8.0 at this time jet.
 
Oh Yea,another thing, as you probably found out for youself you cant surf in safe mode, since your modem won't work.(I've been working in safe mode a lot lately)So I suppose that aproach is useless. Sorry about that.
 
Slik is on to something....theres' been a lot of posts around RE the MX300 sound. Do a search and look for MX300, a lot of people have crashing problems with it.

To remove the drivers, first remove the MX300 from device mgr (right click my computer>properties). Click on the sound device and remove it. Then go to control panel>add/rem programs, find the offending MX300 driver and delete it. Download the latest driver for it and install again or do whatever other folks are doing to get it stable.

RE: PCI card order. It doesn't really affect performance, just how IRQ's are assigned and shared. Sometimes putting devices in the first PCI slot can conflict with the video card cause it shares resources with the AGP slot. Similarly, the last PCI slot will share with the ISA slot. For those reasons, I avoid using those if at all possible. People also sometimes make the mistake of "skipping" PCI slots and installing to like everyother slot. Well, this seems like a good idea, but normally, every other slot also has some resource sharing. Some cards just don't share well and this can be the cause of crashes.

RE: Via tech drivers, the latest version is v4.25a, this is what you should be using. Get it HERE.. Just download it and install it following the directions. Be sure to enable "bus mastering" if asked.

RE: Modem, no thats a good modem!
 
thanks, badthad. Sorry if I asked u some stupid questions, I am not really a computer expert.
When u said that I should go to the device manager and delete the MX300, do u mean by deleting the "sound,video and game controllers"? The reason I asked that because I couldn't find the name "MX300" by itself, I found the "sound,video and game controllers", I clicked on it, then these items came below it:

HID-compliant game controller
Monster sound II gameport
Monster sound II MPU-401
Monster sound II PCI audio
Monster sound II sound blaster pro emulation, there is a "exclamation mark highlighted in yellow color" at this device, I don't know what it is. Does mean there is wrong with it?

Should I delete the whole "sound, video and game controllers" or the some items below?

For the VIA tech driver, do I have to remove the older driver first? If yes, how do I do that?

By the way, the modem I have is "U.S.Robotics 56K fax PCI", it's good, right?

thanks
 
What Bad doesn't know because he doesn't have the card is that the Diamond 300MX places an entry in Device Manager known as "Multifunction Adapter". Within that key is something to the effect of Diamond Multifunction Parent. If you delete that from Device Manager, the rest of the Diamond Sound stuff should go along with it.

Before you do that, though, you want to be sure you have the full version of the latest (and last version) of Aureal's 2048 Drivers for the Vortex2 (which the Diamond 300mx is, in reality).


Go here for the drivers:

Vortex of Sound Aureal vortex2 Drivers Page

You want to download/install the first two links:

Vortex Drivers themselves

And

A3D Drivers for 3D sound in Games

Install both of these files AFTER removing the Multifunction Adapter/Parent in Device Manager and rebooting.
 
Slik kicks a$$ again! Listen to him, he's good.

As I recall, that DOS emulation driver might be the problem. Slik?

You don't need to uninstall the 4in1 driver. Just run the new one and it will make the necessary changes.

The USR PCI Hardware based modem is good. No problems here.

Keep working on it. You have good hardware and you should have an extremely stable system when you get it. My system is similar and it NEVER crashes and it runs 24/7 SETI (except when I fire up Q3A, lol). 😀
 
thanks, slikkster and badthad. I tried the link which u gave me, but it doesn't work. Could u send it to me again,thanks. So the name of the new driver I need to download is vortex 2, right?
How do I get rid of old driver for the video card?
Badthad, since u have built several machines based on the P3V4X motherboard, what driver do u usually set the motherboard to?
 
Sorry for the bad links...what happened was that the website I'm linking to has an anti-linking policy. In other words, they want you to go to their main page and follow the links from there. So go here:

Vortex of Sound Vortex2 Download Page


Download three files, the one labled "Vortex 2 Full Install 9.5mb" plus the one labeled "A3D Drivers" and the one labeled "A3D Demos".

Now, follow the instructions on that page on how to replace/install drivers. Where it says to go to Add/Remove programs, substitute the Diamond 300MX for where it says to remove Vortex2...it should make a reference to Diamond 300MX in Add/Remove programs.
 
Princejoe - I always use the latest 4in1 driver available. Except when Via went through a spell of bad drivers that totally slowed down AGP, hehehe, but all that was fixed after v4.21.

Now, your geforce driver is another deal all together. On my old SDR similar to yours, I had all kinds of problems finding a driver that would play Q3A, Carmageddon TDR2000, Unreal Tourney, and MPG files without one issue or another. This seems to be trial and error cause I must have tried at least 5 drivers before I found one that worked! You need to try the newest driver first. Download the most recent driver fromNVIDIA. To get rid of it, just do this: Right click desktop>properties>settings>display type>change. You will then have to select "Show ALL Devices" cause only one or two may show up. Then, go to the top left pane and pick "Standard Display Types", in the right pane pick "Standard PCI" as the display type. Let it install and reboot the PC. IMPORTANT - YOU MUST ALWAYS DO THIS BEFORE INSTALLING NEW VIDEO DRIVERS!!. Now, install your new driver and test the system.

Good Luck!😀
 
thanks, slikkster and badthad. Slikkster, why do I need to download A3D demo as well? what is the used of it?
Badthad, u said that in order to get rid of the Nvidia driver, I need to do- right click desktop>properties>setting>display type>change, but I didn't see any "display type" to click on after the setting........ Also, how do u install the via 4in1 4.25? thanks

 
You don't NEED the demos...they only complete the set of files. It's your choice... They would help if you ever had A3D issues, whereby you could at least run the demos to see if they're playing right and then could rule out problems with the drivers vs. a particular game, for example.
 
I see you're getting somewere here. I have found that my computer was crashing because of 3COMs Modem Manager Software so i uninstalled the bloody thing and now everything runs fine. I wish your problem was so simple. I think that badthad and slikkster are gonna get your problem solved you just follow what they say. And dont be affraid to experiment a bit. Many things have been learned throug try and fail.
 
Sorry, the correct sequence is:

RIGHT CLICK DESKTOP>PROPERTIES>SETTINGS TAB>ADVANCED BUTTON>ADAPTER TAB>CHANGE>NEXT Now select "display a list". Select "show all hardware". In left hand pane scroll to the top and select "standard display types". Go to the right pane and select "standard PCI graphics adapter (VGA)">Next. The system will install the standard drivers and force a reboot, say OK.

Make sure you have the new driver ready. When windows boots back, it will look very odd using the standard PCI driver, but this MUST be done temporarily.

To install the 4in1 drivers, which you should do BEFORE the video card. Just open up windows explorer and double-click the file you downloaded, follow the instructions.

BTW - I still urge you to check what PCI cards are in what slots. For your system, I would put the MX300 in PCI2 and the modem in PCI3.
 
I think there might a problem with your sound card and the chipset you use. It is a known fact that the Diamond MX300 and the VIA KX133 and KT133 don't work together. Apparently this has something to do with timing issues between the sound card and the chipset. You can look for yourself at KT7 FAQ.

Although you are not using one of these chipset (only AMD CPU's use it), there might some similarities between them and yours as you also use a VIA chipset (your motherboard).

I suggest you take your sound card out and work with your PC and try to do the things that usually make it hang. If it doesn't hang, get another sound card. I have a motherboard with a KT133 chipset and had to buy a new sound card in the end.

Hope you have better luck
 
thanks, guys.. slikkster, I have to download and install both vortex 2 driver and A3D driver, right? I thought I only have to install the 2048 version which is the vortex 2, right? please let me know, thanks. I removed the old driver by deleting the mulit-function adapter which already included the Monster sound II multi-function parent, then I reboot the PC, but it seems like the system couldn't find the new driver I downloaded, and it automatically found the old driver and installed. Did I miss a step or something?

Thanks for the encouragement, Atastrumf. I appreciated.

Badthad, if PCI2 belongs to the sound card, and PCI3 belongs to the modem, what about the video card, where should it go? By the way, since u have built several machines with the P3V4X motherboard already, what is the high speed CPU this motherboard could be built on? thanks.

Thanks for the information, jabster, I will take a look at it.



 
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