Vista 64 Crashes During Games

[Fumz]

Seems like my memory is fine, I did mem check, and there was no error. I have also defragged my PC.

I am wondering, is there a way to just disable the Creative cards while having sound from my speakers? I went to Control Panel and disable the Xfi, as a result, I couldnt hear a thing

I have a strong feeling that this Sound card might be the problem here.

It's not possible to have completed a thorough memory test in the amount of time between your last post and this post, especially given 8GB's. It usually takes ~ 8 hours of running Memtest to conclude your sticks are ok... and even then, you've got to pass another 8 hours of Prime, or in this case Orthos (dual prime) before you can rule out RAM. Having said all that, I doubt RAM is your issue.

However, to find out what is, instead of guessing, let's try and recreate the error message? Have you run the games again yet? I would re-enable the sound card and try to game, only this time, try running the game set to 'run as admin'.

 

[pummumu]

hi Fumz,
i have run the mem check one time to 100%. That took me about 2 hours.

I am starting to really believe that my X fi extreme sound card is the problem.
I ran the game again, and ran as admin, still crashed.

I tried plugging out my sound card, but now I cant seem to find any Sound device on my Dell, even tho I have downloaded the latest driver.( Dell tech support was very useless, after all the wait, he told me to call Microsoft to ask for a driver.)

 

[Fumz]

Explain what you mean when you say you, "plugged out your sound card". Do you mean that you unplugged from your sound card the wires that go to your speakers, or did you remove the card from the machine?

In an earlier post you said you disabled the sound card from the Control Panel. What exactly did you do?

In order to run games you're going to have to have "some" form of sound, otherwise they won't run. If you want to try things without your creative card, that's ok, but you're going to have to enable your onboard sound (if you even have it?) in your bios. You're also going to have to install the drivers for the onboard audio.

 

[pummumu]

Hi Fumz,
I completely removed the actual Soundcard from mobo, and use my mobo as audio.

I am going to try now running the games, crossing my fingers it works! :D

 

[Fumz]

Don't get discouraged if you still crash. Crysis and Company of Heroes are games that a lot of guys play just fine, even with Creative cards.

 

[pummumu]

thanks much for your fast reply Fumz!

OK, confirmed now that Creative isnt the problem!haha
I unplugged it, ran sound thru mobo, and it still crashed.

Any idea what else might cause this?

 

[Fumz]

Well, what I've suspected all along is an issue with the nVidia raid driver. Nvidia is and has been notorious for really crappy disk drivers. IDE, SATA, RAID, makes no difference; if you're using one of these nVidia drivers, bad things happen, far more often than they should.

However, that's an area I won't touch because, as I said before, it's an area best left to others with a knowledge far greater than mine. Since you do have so much installed already, I would hate to see you get bad advice that would ultimately force you to go through a re-install.

Lets try a few more things and if we can't sort this out, we'll enlist teh RAID gurus. Mind you, calling out the RAID gurus is no easy task and will require the use of one chicken (live), 1 rubber glove, an onion, rubber tubbing and a report card from grammer school (any grade 1-7 will do) and a medium size plastic pale (the kind your kids take to the beach)... blue, it's got to be blue though.

While you're getting all your supplies together do me a favor and run this: Download Stress Prime 2004 BETA Before you do though, I'd like to see if we can find out what that error actually is? Right click on Computer, select properties, then select Advanced system settings. Allow it, then click on Settings in the Startup and Recovery menu. Uncheck 'automatically restart', and then close all that out. With any luck at all, Orthos will crash the system and spit us an error message we can use to track down the problem.

In the meantime, I'll start googling the issues in your event log and see if I can find anything helpful?

Remember now... that chicken has to be alive. No cutting corners with a bucket of KFC.

 

[Fumz]

hmm, your event log was... uneventful. I got nothing from it.

Why don't we try this? Right click on Computer, select properties. At the very bottom of the menu on the left select 'Performance'. Again from the menu on the left labeled 'Tasks' select Advanced Tools, then select 'Open Reliability and Performance Monitor'. Allow it, then, from the menu on the left select Reliability Monitor.

This is gives (least it should) a detailed report about what happened. Click on one of those red circles with the white x in the middle. Look down and it will tell you the corresponding app that caused the event. Keep clicking the red circles until you find the game that caused the last crash and see what it says. Tell us if you see anything that might be useful... ps... everything is useful.

 

[pummumu]

thanks Fumz!
Im gathering all the supplies right now as we speak
For the stress test, I have ran it for about 20 minz so far and no crash yet. But I am going to call it a night today and start again tomorrow.

thank you very much for the helpz!

 

[Fumz]

Keep Orthos running for at least 8 hours, just so we can be sure of a few things.

That Orthos has yet to crash is both good and bad news. Although it takes a lot more than 20 minutes to conclude the system is stable and running well, 20 minutes is more than enough time to find out if the rig had some glarring issue in the sub-system; it would have crashed almost immediately, which is what I was planning on. The good news is your RAM is fine, as is everything else we've covered so far. The bad news is that I think it's an issue with the RAID driver. Orthos doesn't touch your hard drives; starting games does.

Could be wrong, hopefully I am, with luck you won't have to re-install everything, but if I were you, just to be on the safe side, I would start planning a full backup of anything and everything of value.

One last thought before we meet again tomorrow: did you ever get around to disabling that second list of crap from msconfig?

 

[Adrian Wainer]

Seems like my memory is fine, I did mem check, and there was no error. I have also defragged my PC.

I am wondering, is there a way to just disable the Creative cards while having sound from my speakers? I went to Control Panel and disable the Xfi, as a result, I couldnt hear a thing

I have a strong feeling that this Sound card might be the problem here.

Depends I presume if your motherboard has on-board sound or not, you should be able to see from the details of your motherboard specification. If it came with a manual it should say there. Either way disabling the sound card will help you either prove it is the cause of the problem or clear it of blame.

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

 

[Fumz]

thanks much for your fast reply Fumz!

OK, confirmed now that Creative isnt the problem!haha
I unplugged it, ran sound thru mobo, and it still crashed.

Any idea what else might cause this?

^ ... yeah we got that covered.

 

[pummumu]

Orthos has been running for an hour now ( at home.) Hopefully I will see result when I get back :D
I really do hope it doesnt come down to reinstall everything.
On the msconfig, I disabled most of them from the list, except messenger, haha.

 

[pummumu]

hi Fumz,

so, the Orthos crashed! but the entire thing went black, no warning or anything. IS that good or bad? I have told my wife at home to restart the PC, and it went back in windows no problem.

 

[Fumz]

Black, as in, "by the time your wife noticed the monitor's power saving kicked in" black, or black as in Orthos crashed directly to a black screen? I'm hoping it's the former because the latter would suggest your monitor wasn't getting a signal, and that means video card issues.

What you need to do is check the Reliability monitor and event logs to find out anything about this crash. Same method as described before.

By the way, what PSU do you have, make and model, and who made your video card?

 

[pummumu]

Black as in the Orthos crashed to a black screen
What I will do when I get back home is looking at computer's event log, and see what causes the crash.

PSU as in power supply?
Everything except my extra RAM came with dell XPS. I have not checked the model makers. I will check once I get home.

 

[Fumz]

Read this. I think it applies here: http://www.vistax64.com/graphic-cards/177070-issue-nvidia-chips-what-look-if-yours-failing.html

If there's a seal on the side panel of your case, don't remove it just to do the fan thing just yet. Doing so gives Dell an opportunity to deny you any possible claim. If the above link doesn't sort this out, through the bios update, then we'll work from there.

 

[pummumu]

thanks VERY much for all your help Fumz!
it seems my Nvidia Raid is the issue now?

anyhow, I have decided to exchange my PC with a workstation that comes with XP64( no raid). Unfortunately I cant afford spending more time figuring out the problem on my Dell XPS
I urgently need this PC to work, and I cant to afford to have a system that is not stable.

thanks again for Fumz and Adrian!