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Top Of The Line System Crashing!!!

P

pohl

Member
Heres the laydown of my hardware:

Athlon 64 3000+
ECS Extreme Mainboard with nForce 4 Chipset
nVidia 6600 GT PCIe
Audigy 2ZS Platinum
WD 200Gig HD
Lite On DVD+RW
Lite On CD+RW
2x512 Kingston PC400 RAM
Big Case with 4 fans.
Windows XP PRO with SP1.

I really dont know why this is happening. Before installing the sound card everything was pretty. After that, we went into some light gaming in a lan party. After some Alt+tab action my OS suffered my first crash. After that one, we continued on playing perfectly for around a couple of hours.

Back in my home, the system crashed for 5 consecutive times after some light surfing and messaging after just a couple of minutes.

While thinking that it was the Audigy (cause I've read some related cases), I uninstalled it succesfully. After a reboot, still had the same problem. I removed the onboard sound device from the BIOS as well. Rebooted, crashed once more... it all starts with the start bar or the MSN... then the browser, and so on and so forth.

Whats going on? I really dont get it...

Thanks for your help. Im really frustrated.
 
First of, that system isn't really "top of the line." Just look at ribbon13's rig...

Secondly, are you sure you removed the drivers fully, not just uninstalled the sound card? There's a procedure for that on creative labs website.

Lastly, nice rig.
 
How long had your system been operating without problems before the lan party? Are you sure that the problems started after you moved your computer?

Edit: What do you consider to be "light" gaming/surfing?
 
Ok haha, I know. Its not exactly top of THE line, but its a pretty fresh setup.

Power Supply: It came with the Raid Max case, 430 watts I believe. Seems... "solid".
Drivers: yeah, completely uninstalled. At the startup, windows asks me to install those "unknown devices".
How long it was stable? Some considerable hours. During all the software installation (office, utilities, drivers, etc), a FFXI benchmarking (hi res, 4996 points 😛, not bad!), and some old school (although not really old school) Unreal Tournament gaming. The first crashed occured with Need For Speed something, I tabbed to windows and IM'ed a little bit.
Light gaming-surfing? Simple Mozilla stuff, old games, nothing excepcional.

The last reboot was some minutes ago, it lasted for around 10 minutes without crashing! Im surprised... yet still frustrated!!!
 
Nothing top of the line about ECS. Anyway it's possible that you're overheating or that PSU just isn't quality sh*t enough to reliably power your rig. Even a 350W Enermax or Antec would do a better job. Look into it.
 
Allrighty. Lets drop the top of the line bomb, its designed to draw attention... and it works! So apologize me for that...

Besides the PSU... let me think of what else I've done.

After the first crash, still at the party, I ran Partition Magic to allocate around 60 gigs into an F drive which I also created at that moment. Transferred only music and some games from the old 120 gigs C drive to the new 180 gigs F drive. I dont think if that could be problematic though...

It generally begins with the start bar freezing, then the desktop, the browser, finally the active MSN windows. And well... yeah, the Power Supply could be jiggly, but it is RAIDMAX! haha. 50 Bucks in a faulty case with PSU? Well... it could happen...

Im just sad. I could buy this system after some hard time on my job, its so frustrating that I cant use... Right now Im on my old P3 @ 500mhz which only has around 180 MBs of free space. Yup...
 
Like a lot of people has suggested, if you have a 'higher' quality PSU, that would be the first thing to try.
Also, how did you disable the built-in sound? Did you also disable the MIDI/game port (and its I/O port address)?

There are many things that makes a PC crash. Memory is another. Make sure you have the latest BIOS for the mobo; usually the latest BIOS has better support for a wider variety of memory and also has the latest bug fixes.
 
I dont have another PSU, but thats what the stores are for. I wouldnt want to buy one just to "try it", though.

I disabled the built in sound through the BIOS. I dont think that I know to do disable the MIDI/game port... yet it aint working. Latest BIOS? I can look for that...
 
The MIDI/gameport settings are also in the BIOS. You can disable it just as easy.
As for the PSU, you buy one and then you....return it? ( as long as there is no restocking fee).
 
You fail to give details about quite possibly the most important part ... MEMORY!

What type of RAM are you using and in what configuration?
 
That PSU worries me. RAIDMAX PSUs are generally not very strong, and even if they operate at their rated wattage and amperage, they usually aren't rated for much.

Try a new PSU from a name brand if you have one on hand.
 
it's an ECS mb, not the best board out there. If you move it around much, connections may have come loose. If you think it's drivers related, use a cleaner.
 
Originally posted by: Tick
First of, that system isn't really "top of the line." Just look at ribbon13's rig...

Secondly, are you sure you removed the drivers fully, not just uninstalled the sound card? There's a procedure for that on creative labs website.

Lastly, nice rig.
Click to expand...

LOL 🙂

Yea when I read that I was thinking something like FX 53-55 or maybe an Intel EE.

Have you ran checkdisk or SFC? Have you checked for malware? Have you checked your memory timings? Is your cpu temps high? Has the heatsink maybe lost contact, it sounds like you have moved the system around? Ease up on the power supply by removing one of your cdrw drives, trying one stick of ram, or even testing your ram, maybe even switching ram to different slots? Have you tried running in safe mode with networking to see if you can at least surf? Have you checked for viruses? This is just off the top of my head.

If your going to build a top of the line system you better know how to troubleshoot 😉. j/k
Let us know how you make out.
 
!!! first thing to try is your sound card, uninstall all audigy and creative software since thats where the problem began.

1)Follow the directions explicitly here for uninstalling drivers: http://dmzweb3.europe.creative.com/SRVS...lish,VARSET=ws:http://us.creative.com/

2)download the web update drivers link is below:
Windows will detect your card when you restart after uninstalling cancel out of having windows find them. And click on the self extracting web drivers download

http://us.creative.com/support/downloads/download.asp

1_84_50.exe the third download on the page

if your lucky this will do the job for you. I had nothing but problems with that audigy card when I first got it by the way I did not reinstall other creative software either as it was creating dcom errors.

using web drivers only worked for me do not auto update do not install over the top did not work for me.

if not then explore the harder things
gl dan
 
I presumed he bought the most expensive box@a computer superstore from the thread title.
 
Originally posted by: AwesomeJay
oh snap.. the original poster got torn a new one in this thread.. guess he should have said "top of the line"
Click to expand...

Where exactly did he get "torn a new one"?
This isn't ownage.
 
Originally posted by: deathkoba
Wait a sec...are you even sure that's happening? Some people THINK weird stuff is happening when it's all find and dandy.
Click to expand...


Huh? 😕
 
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