Windows XP STOP Message, should I worry?

[OmniShinzui]

Yeah, I got it while playing a game, TESIV: Oblivion. I built my PC back in Late March, and this is my first Stop Message. I looked into the message, and it could be because of a bad driver.

I think it might be my video drivers, since I have been having problems with them lately. It seems my Screen Resolution will change from 1680x1050 to 1600x1200 when coming out of stand by. I also cant get into my desktop properties either, and when I try and change infor in my Nvidia Geforce 7900GT Panel, it will quit after trying to apply something.

Heres my specs:
Case: Antec P180
PSU: Antec SmartPower 2.0 500w
CPU: AMD X2 4400+
Motherboard: DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (Bios: 6/32/05 6.00PG -Phoenix)(Temp: 46c)
Ram: Kingston ValueRAM 2x1GB DDR400 1T
Hard Drive: Western Digital Raptor 74GB
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 300GB Sata3.0GB
Video: eVGA 7900GT CO (Bios: 5.71.22.14.03 | Forceware: 84.43)
Sound: Creative Labs X-Fi Platinum (with Sound Bay)
Optical: NEC DVD Burner 16x
Floppy: Samsung 1.44mb Black

Like I said, should I worry? Should I format? Thanks in advance

 

[Markbnj]

Well, I don't know about reformatting, but it's obviously not a great thing. It is possible for software (i.e. Oblivion) to cause a problem like this independent of any hardware/driver issue on the system. Ann app could program the video driver into an unresponsive condition, for example. If you don't see the stop code when playing any other game or using any other app, then it's probably a situation between TES and whatever driver is failing.

Those situations often rise from a version problem, i.e. a difference between what an app expects a driver to do, and what the driver actually does. I see that you are running unofficial drivers for your 7900. The official drivers are still 84.21, and there is an Oblivion special 84.25 available which I am running without problems. I would roll back from the tweaked 84.43 and see if things stabilize.

 

[Brentx]

Hmm that is weird. Usually with Windows XP, you will not see blue screens unless there is a hardware problem. Yes software can cause it, however, Oblivion is not a crappy peice of software. Have you ever ran Memtest86 before? I would just to check it out.

 

[bsobel]

It is possible for software (i.e. Oblivion) to cause a problem like this independent of any hardware/driver issue on the system. Ann app could program the video driver into an unresponsive condition

Wrong. User mode programs should not be able to perform any actions which result in a blue screen (short of loading a bad driver intentionally).

 

[OmniShinzui]

Thanks for the replies

Im going to roll back the video drivers to 84.25, and see if that was the culprit. Its wierd, cause I played Oblivion for 90hrs, and this is my first STOP message. I always get "Oblivion.exe has unexpectedly quit" and once in a blue moon, freezing. The most recent thing i've done is add that beta patch...

 

[Markbnj]

Wrong. User mode programs should not be able to perform any actions which result in a blue screen (short of loading a bad driver intentionally).

Yeah, except graphically intensive games do it when there are quirks in a driver. BF2 has blue-screened XP Pro on an infinite loop in nVidia's drivers a number of times for me. It happens. I guess that falls under your "loading bad drivers" category, but seems a slim distinction.

And the OP is running tweaked 3rd party drivers. I think I would look there first.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: Markbnj

Wrong. User mode programs should not be able to perform any actions which result in a blue screen (short of loading a bad driver intentionally).

Yeah, except graphically intensive games do it when there are quirks in a driver. BF2 has blue-screened XP Pro on an infinite loop in nVidia's drivers a number of times for me. It happens. I guess that falls under your "loading bad drivers" category, but seems a slim distinction.

And the OP is running tweaked 3rd party drivers. I think I would look there first.

Not a distinciton, that is clearly a buggy driver.