X1900XTX corrupts windows???

[Ettubrute]

I just got a X1900XTX, installed CAT 6.7s and ran some tests: 3dmark06, Prey, HL2:Lost Coast, and they all worked remarkably well. But later i was playing the Company of Heroes Beta (at this point having ran the card for about 2hrs), and suddenly it crashes, saying "display driver was not responding". I had to restart, but upon restarting i found out I couldn't login to windows anymore! I get a bunch of error messages after the windows loading screen, saying stuff like "DLL cannot be found"...

Did my X1900XTX CORRUPT WINDOWS??? I need advice here, do you think it was the display drivers that did it, or something related to the hardware? It's hard to believe that they'd have access/ be able to mess up windows system files. another compounding factor is that company of heroes is a beta, but i dunno how much that matters. Also it was a hot day, would the card overheating do something like that?

My system:
A64 X2 3800+ @ 2.4ghz
ASUS A8N-E
4x 1gig OCZ ddr400
X1900XTX 512mb cat. 6.7
2x 36.7gig raptors
HIPER 580W PSU
LianLi pc-65 4x80mm fans

any help would be appreciated...

 

[PingSpike]

My first guess would be the x1900xtx is hogging up so much juice that it made the system unstable. So I would want to look at the power supply. Seems unlikely the display drivers would corrupt windows...can get in with vga mode?

 

[Ettubrute]

no can't in vga mode. windows is plain messed up. i do have a 580W psu, and its even SLI compatible, so one x1900xtx shouldn't be a problem right?

im mainly wondering if this is hardware related - if so i need to return the card, or if it is software related...in which case ill just have to mess with bios/drivers/etc.

 

[akugami]

What PingSpike said is certainly plausible. The display drivers in and of themselves should not be able to screw yo your whole Windows system. The additional power draw of the XTX coupled with your overclocking may have caused the system to become unstable. Make sure your Hypertransport bus is less than 1000mhz, make sure your PCIe and SATA busses are locked. I'm assuming you've used memtest86 and something like Prime95 to test both your memory and cpu for stability when overclocking.

 

[Ettubrute]

yah the system was stable before i installed this card. was using an x800xl before. i've done dual prime95 for 24hrs+ no problem, and i've done renderings with maya for 48hrs+ straight, no problem there either.

so it might be the psu huh...damn i would have thought 580w would have been enough...so is there any solutions that does not involve getting a new power supply?

(btw, why should i have my pcie & sata busses locked?, & ht < 1000mhz?)

 

[akugami]

Absolutely lock the PCIe and SATA busses. Especially the SATA busses if you are using an SATA HD as the main HD. Overclocking your system will cause the SATA bus to go out of spec and possible cause data corruption. Your HD isn't rendered dead but the data on it can be corrupted to the point you need to re-install Windows.

http://www.short-media.com/review.php?r=300&p=11

 

[Ettubrute]

hmm interesting i will look into it. i never messed with bus-locking settings, so i don't know if they're locked or not by default. also i guess i should check my hypertransport speed - don't know what the multiplier settings are right now, but the ref frequency is 240mhz x 10 cpu multiplier

guess ill have to mess around bios and such (and reinstall windows) after work

 

[Capt Caveman]

Welcome to the Forums! Have you tried reinstalling your x800xl to see if you can boot-up with that?

 

[Ettubrute]

no luck with that either. actual boot files have gone missing, or have been damaged, moved, corrupted, or something. i basically can't get into windows

 

[Hidden Hippo]

I don't think your power supply is the problem. I'm running an XT with the same power requirements on a 530W Tagan and my brother runs one on a 520W generic PSU. I suppose that the last resort is going to be reinstalling windows. However, with the RAID drives it could be a problems. Also, overclocking could have made it unstable.

 

[Ettubrute]

only the processor is overclocked, and my raptors aren't actually raided. i guess my best bet is to reinstall windows and try a number of stress tests to see if i can repeat the error

 

[Captante]

As noted in Zebo's A64 overclocking guide, many NForce motherboards don't lock the bus speed on SATA ports 1 & 2, so when running overclocked, you should use ports 3 & 4 to be safe.

 

[Ettubrute]

okay i will keep that in mind. so many little quirks to keep track of...