HL2 and cs:source errors

[xcelr8]

I just setup raid and have a lot of problems with HL2. I keep getting memory errors right before or after loading the game. Last night I was able to play cs:source fine for a while, and all of this started today with no changes to the system. The error is as follows:
"The instruction at '0x241f94b7' referenced memory at '0x01080cc8'. The memory could not be 'read'"

I had been using the newest forceware, 71.84, I tried installing the older version i used succesfully before the raid format, 71.80, and receieved the same error. Does anybody have advice on what this problem might be? Also, my first install of winxp pro had a corrupted kernel.dll, which had never happened to me before, and firefox periodically crashes on me. Thank you.

 

[xcelr8]

I also have receieved the bsod a couple of times complaining about "nv4_disp.dll" My system includes the following:
nf7s-rev2
raid using 160gb maxtor sata and 160gb maxtor ata on serillel adapter
60gb maxtor ata
dvd-r
512mb kingmax ram @400mhz dual channel
2400+ xp mobile @stock speed and voltage
xfx 6600gt agp

 

[daveybrat]

Here's the 2 things that jump out at me:

1) Low wattage power supply or cheap quality? What brand/wattage are you using?

2) I've never used raid before without using identical drives. You are using 1 SATA native and 1 parallel with adapter, that may not work correctly or 100% stable.

 

[xcelr8]

The power supply is only a 250w, but I had been running 3 harddrives before with no issues, there was no raid setup then. I hope that the drives being different isn't the problem. I just tried running the doom3 timedemo on the raid and it got 17fps, then the second time through it crashed. I copied the game file over to my other hd and ran it fine twice through with 48fps and no crashes. I'm starting to get worried about losing everything that is on the raided drives.

 

[xcelr8]

I think my vid card may be dead/dying. I had been recieving the memory errors and crashes in hl2 and doom3 was crashing. I reformatted and installed winxp fresh. I installed the mobo nforce drivers and then went to install the 71.84 nvidia drivers, they didn't work with the card. I then tried the 71.81 drivers to no avail and older 69.83 drivers forced teh display to 4 bit mode. I'll have to try it in another computer tomorrow after work. If anybody is following my adventure here I am still open to advice.

 

[mechBgon]

If anybody is following my adventure here I am still open to advice.

I have some: try a quality-brand ~400W power supply before you blow something up. Enermax, Antec or Fortron are some brands with good reputations.

 

[Slikkster]

250 watts? You're lucky the thing boots. I don't even know that this is your problem, but it's a problem in the making. Do you still have the box that your video card came in? Read the power requirements. I'm sure it says at least a 400W Power Supply for that video card.

Edit: This is from the XFX website for the 6600GT card:

System Requirements
Pentium® III/4/Celeron? or AMD® Athlon®/Duron® AGP 2.0 or later AGP slot 128MB of system memory Installation software requires CD-ROM drive minimum 300W system power supply An available hard disk drive power dongle (smaller floppy disk drive connector is not sufficient). DVD playback requires DVD drive Recommended Pentium® 4 or AMD® Athlon® XP AGP 3.0 Slot

So, you can see they're saying 300W at minimum, which doesn't take into account your other system requirements.

Power supplies are generally very inexpensive, even for good ones.

When buying a power supply, don't let the total power output number fool you. (e.g. 300watts, 400watts, etc.). Power supplies divvy up power in "rails" or power channels, if you will. There's a +5 volt rail, +12v rail, etc. You want to make sure the number for the +12v rail is high, because that's the most important number in your psu.

Here's a blurb from a website about this:

Total Wattage/+12v Rail Load

Wattage ratings are deceptive as they are the total wattage rating under maximum load for all voltage rails. Find the power ratings for the PSU and check the load values. In particular, look at the +12v rail rating and make sure it is rated at 15A or higher. As for total wattage, buy a unit that matches the size of your system: MiniTower=350w,MidTower=380w, FullTower=450w and ServerTower=550w


http://compreviews.about.com/cs/casesandmods/bb/aabybpsus.htm

I just read your Abit manual about power supplies and it recommends AT LEAST 350Watts with 20A on the 12V rail. So, you definitely are underpowering your system all around.

 

[xcelr8]

I understand the concern with the power. However, before I just setup the raid this past Friday, 3/11, I had been running the same system with one less hard drive (2 total) and one more optical drive (2 total) for 2 months with no problems, before that I had a 9800pro in the same setup that I ran for 3 months with no issues whatsoever. This is the reason I don't think that it's the power supply.

Does anybody know, can new mobo's use old agp video cards and/or can old mobo's use new agp video card? I either want to try this card in an older system in the house, or an old card in this system but don't know if either is safe/will work.

The reason for this is i want to exhaust all other possibillities before I buy a new psu, which could be for no reason, or at least it wouldn't solve the problem even though I know i could use more power.

 

[Slikkster]

Your manual (hint hint...read it) says it will take either an AGP 4X or 8X card. That covers a pretty wide spectrum of cards.

And I don't know why you're fighting the PSU issue. You're risking ruining your hardware, and then what will that end up costing you?

Here's a quote from PC World about Power Supplies. Compare this quote to the problems you're having:

"Your PC may be dying of starvation. CPUs, graphics cards, and other components have a voracious appetite for power; and an overtaxed power supply can cause performance hiccups, sudden freeze-ups due to memory errors, and even premature death from overheating."

It's your system. But I wouldn't expect people here to try and help ya with problems when you have an obvious situation that needs addressing that you're hesitant to repair.

Good luck.

 

[xcelr8]

The reason I asked about the video card is b/c I thought that old cards require 3.3v while new run on 1.5v. I know that one of the combos of card and mobo won't work and even thought it could kill one or the other.

The reason I'm being stubborn about the psu is b/c i had used it for the past 6 months or so with upgrades in that time without issue. I don't want to get a new one if i can't e sure that is the problem, even if it is a problem the vid card might be messed up too. If there was a 400w psu available for me to try today i would gladly do that. I'm not trying to sound ungrateful for the advice, i'm just trying to explain my perspective on things.

 

[Slikkster]

Well, there's a tipping point with everything. You're essentially saying that because you've been lucky enough to have this thing run for 6 months in an underpowered condition, that it should run forever that way.

Since we're dealing with electricity, let's use a wall jack as an analogy. You might run fine with a power strip plugged into a wall jack with several devices plugged in. But then you add/replace a device that might require just a wee bit more power than the old scenario, and all of the sudden the breaker trips.

The bottom line is this:

Both your motherboard manufacturer --Abit-- and your videocard manufacturer --XFX--specifically state a requirement for more power than you are currently providing.

You've spent good money on both this board and this video card. Why would you want to shortchange yourself on something simple like a psu? This is definitely a pennywise, pound foolish situation, in my opinion.

At some point, the time you spend trying to figure out other possibilities for these errors has to be worth something, too. Think about that.

 

[xcelr8]

Well I pulled the vid card out and put it back in and it seems to run fine now. However, I did check the voltage on the 12V line and it's averaging only 11.54, that's probably too low. I saw that newegg has the thermaltake 420w silent pure power for $36 and am thinking about getting it. The reviews seem good, but is there something better or quieter for around the same amount? Quiet is what i'm trying for here.

Also, the psu has a cutoff switch in it so it can't/shouldn't kill anything, much like a circuit breaker in your outlet analogy. To me setting up the raid with this would have been like having a stereo system setup for months working and plugged in, then one day deciding to hook your cd player to the tape deck to allow recording and everything goes to garbage.

 

[Slikkster]

You can't go wrong with that PSU. Go for it. The voltage you cite is probably within tolerance...it's never going to be exactly 12V, but it's the the amps it can push out that really counts. Hard to measure that under load.

 

[xcelr8]

Ok, got the 420w psu, put it in, it works fine. I kept having explorer.exe crash on me whenver i tried to use the start menu but hl2 and css played fine. I formatted to fix the winxp problem, reinstalled hl2 and css and i'm getting the memory read errors again. Any more ideas on what this could be? It shouldn't be lack of power any more. Thanks

 

[mechBgon]

As a point of fact, your TT 420W unit is still 10% shy of the 20 amps on 12V that Abit's recommending. They're kinda weak where it actually counts in today's systems.

But thinking optomistically, what I'd do now is to reinstall Windows, in case it's got some corruption due to your previous problems. I have some security suggestions on this page for keeping it worm-free during its vulnerable just-built stage, if you need.

 

[xcelr8]

That's the thing though, I did already reinstall windows and i'm still getting this error, or actaully getting it again, somehow it disappeared for a while before i got this new psu. Right now i'm trying to use scandisk to check for bad blocks/clusters on that drive, since i keep receiving memory read errors. I don' t know if this will help or not though.

 

[mechBgon]

What's your security situation at this point? Got a current-generation antivirus and firewall on there? Did you install any questionable/illegit software?

If you need something strong as a checkup tool, try a free 30-day trial of Kaspersky Personal 5: http://www.kaspersky.com/trials. Set it to use maximum protection on the real-time and on-demand scans, and hit Settings > Configure Updater and have it use the "from Internet, extended databases" option for updating. It appears to be the best there is, at this time.

My other tips are on the hardware area:

1) sync your RAM to your CPU's FSB. You do NOT want them running two different bus speeds, neither from a stability standpoint nor a performance standpoint. So that means setting your RAM to run a 1:1 ratio with your CPU, in the NF7-S's case.

2) boost your memory voltage to 2.7 volts manually, PC3200 often appreciates this.

 

[xcelr8]

I'll try out the ram suggestions. I think it's synced now but at 6:6 multiplier. I have a d-link router working as my firewall and am running norton antivirus fully updated. When i install windwos i always make sure the ethernet cable is unplugged until nav is installed to prevent anything from happening.

the scan disk finished and didn't find any bad sectors on the drive. The error I receive for the memory read always seems to occur in the same location(s) though.

Another odd thing has been happening and just did again after restarting. HL2 and css are fully installed, updated all of that, or were, but weren't working, they'd go in but the memory error would happen on certain css maps and hl2 wouldn't even start. After restarting steam says that hl2 and css are now only 70% and 42% complete and is downloading the rest, even though i had fully installed them off of the hd. This happened to me a coouple of days ago also.

 

[xcelr8]

Also, I have been trying to install the 4.57 audio driver for my nf7-s and everytime i try to update the sound drivers it says "an error occurred during the installation of the device. The data is invalid" Has anyone else recieved this message?

EDIT: This isn't good, I tried uninstalling the old drivers and installing the 4.57's still got the same error, then I tried to put the old version on, 4.42 i think, and recieved the error there, so now i don't have any sound drivers that i can get to work. Sweeeet

 

[xcelr8]

Just in case anybody is paying attention to this, here's what I did:
I couldn't get the sound drivers to reinstall no matter what, old or new versions, so i formatted AGAIN. After this in installed the 6.37 beta nforce drivers, but had to use the ethernet driver from the 5.10 version. I then installed the 76.10 beta forceware driver. So far everything has been fine, however i haven't installed the windows updates yet, i'm still a little wary of them. I did have the memory error pop up once so far, but i restarted and didn't see it again. It seems like it was either the video drivers or mobo drivers, I had tried older vid card drivers, but I hadn't used a cleaner to completely get rid of the old version. Just some FYI

 

[Relayer]

I ran across this thread searcing for a HL2 problem. My friend gets the following on her P4 2.2 GHz machine with a 350 watt PS and no raid. I'm not sure if it's hardware or just memory leaks in the game. (buggy software)

Application popup: HALF-LIFE 2: hl2.exe - Application Error : The instruction at "0x241f94b7" referenced memory at "0x01090cc0". The memory could not be "read".

 

[Relayer]

I found this:

http://steampowered.custhelp.com/cgi-bi...c2VhcmNoX3RleHQ9Y2FuIG5vdCByZWFk&p_li=

 

[Sycred]

I am not sure if this will help, but it did help ME

I have a P4 3.2 HT
2 GB DUAL DDR
BF6800 U OC
Giga-Byte Mother Board.

MY video card was sharing the same IRQ as 2 of the USB controllers.
No conflics reported. Because I was not using them I disabled them and the Crashes and memory errors went bye bye.