Is my system dying?

[cr0ssfire]

Specs:

Corsair TX750W
Core 2 Duo E6400 w/ Xigmatek HDT-S983 @ 2.56 Ghz
Gigabyte GA-965p-DQ6 Rev. 1.0
4GB G. Skill DDR2
Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS
MSI Radeon HD 4830 w/Accelero S1 Rev.
Auzentech X-Fi Forte
Asus EHD3-100 TV/FM Tuner

This is the latest in an ongoing series of problems that I've had with my computer since trying to get my Asus EHD-100 to work. Let me give you a little background info.

When I got the EHD3-100, I decided to stick it in my only unobstructed PCI-e 1x slot. The problem was that I had my Auzentech Forte stuck in the 4x slot, which disables all of the 1x slots...and I had forgotten that. As you can imagine, things started acting up. After a kind AT member pointed out my mistake, I removed the tuner card and the sound card worked again. Something was clearly damaged, though - my system became unable to hold anything but a very modest overclock.

I do have another open PCI-e 1x slot, but it's obstructed by a heatsink. I wondered if there was some PCI-e 1x "extender cable" I could use to get around this, and sure enough, I found one on eBay. I moved the Forte to my unobstructed 1x slot, used the extender cable with the obstructed 1x slot, and it all worked flawlessly.

Then, two days ago, my system went crazy. I started getting random blue screens (Driver IRQL not less or equal) and reboots. Some of the time, it retains the OC settings and other times it reverts back to stock. I know when it reverts to stock because it'll always either throw up a blue screen before Windows finishes loading or right after it shows the login screen. But when I OC it, it usually boots just fine.

Things got even stranger just now when I was playing Battlefield 2. When I loaded it up the first time, my sound/video settings were somehow reset, so I put them back to normal and loaded it up again. This time, the graphics were screwed up ingame - half the ground looked like water, half was transparent...but character models were fine. I loaded it again and the graphics were back to normal, but after a few rounds the sound started acting up - there was a lot of muffled static and I'd only hear the first half-second or so of sounds. I closed out of it and I'm back here in Windows...with no sound.

Seriously, I don't even know where to begin with this other than I might have unfortunately done my system in. If you've got any ideas, I'm certainly open to suggestions.

 

[mpilchfamily]

Check the RAM with Memtest.

 

[cr0ssfire]

Check the RAM with Memtest.

It's good.

 

[theevilsharpie]

Does your system operate normally at stock clock speeds?

 

[cr0ssfire]

No. If anything, it actually seems to be MORE prone to errors than when it's overclocked.

Here's what the BSOD I get says:

*** STOP: 0x0000000D1 (OxFFFFF88105A00FFF, 0x0000000000000002, 0x00000000000001, 0xFFFFF88004AC42F2)

*** PhilMAS64_48D71043.sys - Address FFFFF88004AC42F2 base at FFFFF88004A61000, DateStamp 4a8e69ae

 

[theevilsharpie]

If you physically remove your sound card and tuner from your PC, does it work properly?

 

[cr0ssfire]

That seems to prevent the errors, although obviously that's certainly not an ideal setup. I also tried using just the sound card as well as just the tuner card and I also didn't get any errors in either case.

I guess there's still something fundamentally incompatible about using them both at the same time. But there shouldn't be any electrical problems, unlike the first time, and I installed the latest drivers and software for both of them. What could be wrong? I figured it was something more than that since the effects seemed to spill over to the video card in BF2.

By the way, do you know any web sites I look over for learning this sort of troubleshooting? I know, I know, "use Google". But I'd appreciate it if you had any personal recommendations. I'd rather not run around forums like a chicken with its head cut off when something goes wrong with my system :/

 

[NoQuarter]

Update your mobo bios?

 

[cr0ssfire]

Update your mobo bios?

Already done. I make sure to keep current with my updates.

 

[theevilsharpie]

That seems to prevent the errors, although obviously that's certainly not an ideal setup. I also tried using just the sound card as well as just the tuner card and I also didn't get any errors in either case.

I guess there's still something fundamentally incompatible about using them both at the same time. But there shouldn't be any electrical problems, unlike the first time, and I installed the latest drivers and software for both of them. What could be wrong? I figured it was something more than that since the effects seemed to spill over to the video card in BF2.

This is likely a driver or resource conflict.

Verify that the drivers for all of your hardware components (including the sound card and tuner) are up to date, and then try running your hardware again.

If it still crashes, you may have a resource conflict. Turn off OS Plug & Play in your BIOS and manually assign separate IRQ's to the sound card and TV tuner. Alternately, if OS P'n'P is disabled, turn it on and see if that resolves the issue.

The only other thing I can think of is that some drivers have difficulty with systems that have 4GB or more of RAM. If nothing else works, remove a stick of RAM from your system and see if the stability problems go away.

By the way, do you know any web sites I look over for learning this sort of troubleshooting? I know, I know, "use Google". But I'd appreciate it if you had any personal recommendations. I'd rather not run around forums like a chicken with its head cut off when something goes wrong with my system :/

In order to understand how to troubleshoot, you need to understand how the underlying technologies work, to a degree. The rest is experience. There is no web site you can go to or product that you can buy to "learn" troubleshooting. Sorry.

 

[cr0ssfire]

I've always had a vague understanding of what IRQ is, but I used Google to get a more exact definition and flipped through my motherboard's manual to figure out how to manually assign it. Once I reserved an IRQ for the sound card, everything worked just fine.

I guess you can tell by now that I only learned the bare essentials necessary to build and overclock my system. I guess I still have a lot to learn. Thanks!