Unexplained crashes

[DeRusto]

I have no idea what is wrong with my computer. Starting just today out of absolutely nowhere it crashes and then will not boot unless I turn off the PSU for a few minutes before trying to boot the system. If I don't wait it will freeze during the boot somewhere before loading Windows. After booting it will run seemingly stable for about 10 minutes before crashing again. The only recent change to the system was about 2 weeks ago when I got a new PSU to replace my fried PSU. I am thinking possible culprits to this problem are that the motherboard was damaged in the brown-out that took the PSU's life or that the new PSU is junk. Who thinks I could run stably on a damaged motherboard for 2 weeks before it showed any signs of damage? I suppose another possible culprit would be my sound card since it has so far only crashed while playing audio. The first time while I was playing an mpg file, the second time while I was listening to music and running Photoshop and the third right after it booted up and I loaded Winamp. I could rule this possibility out very easily though.

Any help would be great, thanks!

 

[DeRusto]

Alright, it is beginning to look like my soundcard may be the problem. I haven't uninstalled it yet, but in the 20 minutes since writing this...and NOT playing any audio, there have been no crashes. I will see how long this lasts.

 

[Fuchs]

do you have any case lights/led's?

I had an led begin to go bad, then my dumbass played with the innards when it was turned on. It shut off on me a few times and rebooted. Eventually my PSU went bad from it. I took out all of the leds/cathodes and replaced my PSU....hehehe

I wont ever do that again.

 

[DeRusto]

Yes I do, however I am still suspecting my sound card now because the machine has been running just fine doing whatever I want for nearly an hour now whereas it normally crashes in less than 10 minutes. Maybe I will start up Winamp now and see what happens

 

[HardcoreRobot]

make sure all your heatsinks are clean of dust and all your fans are working. could be an overheating problem.

 

[DeRusto]

I thought so as well, but there are absolutely no warm components in the system and temperatures are the same as they have always been. CPU is currently at 43C. I made sure to check for dust and I cleaned out my videocard heatsink as it was the only thing with some minor dust in it.

I don't know what the problem was/is but it has not crashed since I started this thread. Must have scared it away.

 

[DeRusto]

Just over 3 hours later now, it crashed again. I turned off power, turned power back on..it loaded into Windows but crashed before it even finished loading startup applications. I guess I am going to take out all unneccesary hardware and see how it runs then.

 

[DeRusto]

yeah, its still being retarded.. i think im just gonna take a wild guess and say my motherboard isnt too stable.. hopefully thats all i need

 

[cluster550]

First I'd like to say hello since this is my first post here. I've been having very similar problems with my computer lately. It started on Saturday when I was having a LAN party. I had problems with Call of Duty and Rise of Nations sometimes, but everytime I ran Warcraft 3 my system crashed, that is until I hurried into a game. I found that if I did not spend more than a minute or so in the menu I was fine. I didn't have any problems with UT2004. I have been suspecting my sound card too since its drivers are the only thing that has been changed in my system lately. I haven't taken the time to reinstall the old drivers yet. I was wondering what hardware you have to see if the problems are related.

My system:
AMD Athlon XP 2000+
MSI K7N420 Pro
1 GB PC2100
MSI GeForce FX 5600
SB Audigy Gamer
WD 100 GB IDE
Windows XP Home SP1

 

[DeRusto]

Specs are as follows:

Athlon XP 2400+
Gigabyte 7VRXP
512 MB PC3200 Corsair
ATi 9600XT
Game Theater XP
Maxtor 40, 80, 120 GB
WinXP Pro SP1

I think I can rule out my sound card because it has the same problems with or without it installed..by now I'm pretty sure my motherboard must have gotten damaged in the brown-out a couple of weeks ago.

 

[n7]

Originally posted by: DeRusto
Specs are as follows:

Athlon XP 2400+
Gigabyte 7VRXP
512 MB PC3200 Corsair
ATi 9600XT
Game Theater XP
Maxtor 40, 80, 120 GB
WinXP Pro SP1

I think I can rule out my sound card because it has the same problems with or without it installed..by now I'm pretty sure my motherboard must have gotten damaged in the brown-out a couple of weeks ago.

I'm no pro on PC problems, but my older (see link to rig in my sig) PC's PSU died on me, & after i replaced it, I had similar problems in terms of crashes & freezing.
I finally got a new mobo, & it's been rock solid since.

I think the mobo somehow got damaged when my PSU died; perhaps it surged the board somehow.

Sounds a mobo problem to me.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: n7

Originally posted by: DeRusto
Specs are as follows:

Athlon XP 2400+
Gigabyte 7VRXP
512 MB PC3200 Corsair
ATi 9600XT
Game Theater XP
Maxtor 40, 80, 120 GB
WinXP Pro SP1

I think I can rule out my sound card because it has the same problems with or without it installed..by now I'm pretty sure my motherboard must have gotten damaged in the brown-out a couple of weeks ago.

I'm no pro on PC problems, but my older (see link to rig in my sig) PC's PSU died on me, & after i replaced it, I had similar problems in terms of crashes & freezing.
I finally got a new mobo, & it's been rock solid since.

I think the mobo somehow got damaged when my PSU died; perhaps it surged the board somehow.

Sounds a mobo problem to me.

To the other poster that is still having ongoing problems:

Turn on mini dumps: RightClick My Computer / Properties / Advanced / Startup-Shutdown / change memory.dmp type to MINI or SMALL. Turn OFF auto reboot. Say OK a few times, and then when/if it happens again, send me the contents (within the past few days date) of the c:\windows\minidump\*.dmp files. bluescreens@comcast.net. If you have anything in there now, with a date of within the past few days, feel free to send that to me now, zipped. I'll see if I can see what's going on. No promises, but I'll try.

 

[cluster550]

Well I just reinstalled the original drivers that came with my sound card, and I was able to sit in the Warcraft 3 menu for a long time, which always crashed before. So I guess my problem is fixed for now unless it shows up again somewhere else.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: DeRusto
Specs are as follows:

Athlon XP 2400+
Gigabyte 7VRXP
512 MB PC3200 Corsair
ATi 9600XT
Game Theater XP
Maxtor 40, 80, 120 GB
WinXP Pro SP1

I think I can rule out my sound card because it has the same problems with or without it installed..by now I'm pretty sure my motherboard must have gotten damaged in the brown-out a couple of weeks ago.

Got the dump. The RAR file had 2 dumps in it. NAI was the cause of the first one; the second one, I'm not certain of. Unfortunately, I don't see anything; I'm sorry. I do see a lot of graphics card functions at the top of the stack; I see your ATI drivers are from March 22, 2004, which is a version or two behind - you may wish to update those and then send me the resulting dumps.

ASPI32.SYS that you're running (as of dump 072104-02) is from Dec 22 1997. Do you really need it in this day and age? If not, investigate getting rid of it.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: dclive

Got the dump. The RAR file had 2 dumps in it. NAI was the cause of the first one; the second one, I'm not certain of. Unfortunately, I don't see anything; I'm sorry. I do see a lot of graphics card functions at the top of the stack; I see your ATI drivers are from March 22, 2004, which is a version or two behind - you may wish to update those and then send me the resulting dumps.

ASPI32.SYS that you're running (as of dump 072104-02) is from Dec 22 1997. Do you really need it in this day and age? If not, investigate getting rid of it.

Got the new dumps. I see pointers to problems with Windows audio drivers and USB / audio drivers, so I suggest disabling all USB devices and audio devices (do you have a USB audio device?) and retesting. Unfortunately, as before, I don't see anything clearly indicating a problem, so let's just eliminate audio / USB devices as an issue, and uninstall any associated drivers via add-remove control panel.

You're getting NAIAVf5x.sys bugchecks left and right. I suggest uninstalling it.

I just want to be sure we're all on the same page here - driver verifier (ie verifier.exe) is banging hard on all of the drivers in your system, and they're not handling it well. I can't say for sure these are the *original* issue, but I can say that these drivers that are dying are badly written if this information is correct. A driver should *not* die when verifier is run, and these guys are really doing badly. This is assuming verifier is still running. If not, that says *really* bad things about these drivers.

I'm not certain it is - this is just my best information. I'm not nearly as certain of this analysis as I was of the other 2 sound card issues today from two other folks on here. Please understand that.

 

[DeRusto]

Thanks, I don't have any USB audio devices but maybe it is because the Game Theater XP breakout box has a built in USB hub? I already uninstalled NAIAVf5x.sys.. it should hopefully not be present in the last two dumps. I will go ahead uninstall all USB and audio related stuff I have though.

 

[ScrapSilicon]

I'd get another hd ..set it up..and try to duplicate the crashes(or no crashes) ..but then again the last psu blowout problem I dealt with the mobo has become gremlin-ridden like yours..have a spare nf2 ready..to ditch the msi kt4 based setup..the mobo was the only part I did not test in another known good setup..

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: DeRusto
Thanks, I don't have any USB audio devices but maybe it is because the Game Theater XP breakout box has a built in USB hub? I already uninstalled NAIAVf5x.sys.. it should hopefully not be present in the last two dumps. I will go ahead uninstall all USB and audio related stuff I have though.

OK. I see complaints about portcls and sysaud in the last two dumps, and both are Microsoft audio/USB-multimedia related drivers - from Microsoft. I'm trying to think of a reason why that would be a problem and not coming up with much. All I can really think of is let's remove it from the equation and try again.

Then I re-read this: "I suppose another possible culprit would be my sound card since it has so far only crashed while playing audio."

And then I had hope again that we were on the right track. Is this still correct? Does it crash only when you play audio? If you pop out that sound card and try a completely different sound card (+ different brand too) does the same thing happen?

 

[DeRusto]

Sound and USB devices are all uninstalled. Trying to run the MPSRPT_SETUPPerf.exe now.

 

[DeRusto]

Ok, the system has recently become highly unstable. I don't know if it is because I have failed to properly turn off the verifier but instead of crashing it now bogs down and will not run any applications because "there isn't enough of X resource" where X can be virtual memory, disk space, or almost anything else. I tried to run MPSRPT_SETUPPerf.exe but after letting it sit for a while the system eventually "runs out of memory" and becomes useless.. I am getting really confused here.

 

[DeRusto]

Can't forget my latest BS stop error as I was trying to shut the machine off..

"BIOS not fully ACPI compliant"
"STOP: 0x000000A5 (0x00000003, 0x822f9c14, 0xC000009A, 0x30565244)"


good stuff

 

[DeRusto]

Well, thanks to much help from dclive I have narrowed it down to being a bad motherboard. Muchas gracias! Domo arigato! Danke schön! Et alia..