About a week and a half ago, I decided it was time for my semi-annual reformat. I have done this dozens of times without incident, but this time, something went sour.
Whenever I game, I get hard lockups. Sometimes twenty minutes in, sometimes before the intro movie finishes (and I have had lockups in every game I have tried - Unreal 2, UT2k4 demo, BF1942, Temple of Elemental Evil, Morrowind, Chrome, Ghost Recon). Every now and then I will get a spontaneous reboot (and, yes, I have 'reboot on error' disabled) but these are rare.
For the past ten days, I have been chasing down possible solutions - I have, all in all, reformatted three times, played musical drivers, swapped out sound cards, and gone through a small lake of coffee. The only thing I have found that seems to help is lowering my FSB to 100 (my motherboard supports 200, and normally runs at 166). This, of course, halves my power - not a good solution.
I have looked at all of the obvious causes. I have tried obscure fixes. I have checked every wire, every connection. I have run out of ideas. My system has become almost useless - hard locking every twenty minutes of gameplay (and I make my income from gaming). I need help. Anybody - anything at all?
My system:
Windows XP Pro (SP1 and all other updates)
DirectX9.0b
Motherboard: Epox 8RDA3+
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2700+
RAM: 3x256MB DDR 3200
Power: Antec 480W
Video: ATI Radeon 9700 All-In-Wonder Pro (tried 4.2, 4.3, Omega 4.2)
Sound: Turtle Beach Santa Cruz (also tried with AC'97 onboard audio and Santa Cruz removed)
HDD: 40GB Western Digital 7200 RPM
Generic DVD ROM drive
Monitor: Viewsonic A90
CPU temp: Idle: 39C/Under load: 45C
From the BIOS:
VDD: 1.61
VCore: 1.64 (ran it up to 1.75 - didn't help)
Vdimm: 2.72
+5: 5.098
+12: 12.22
Vagp: 1.52
-5: -5.35
VBAT: 3.23
5VSB: 5.01
I have:
~Reformatted again, reinstalled Windows again (actually, I have reformatted three times altogether so far)
~Tested all RAM overnight with Memtest (zero errors)
~Tried numerous combinations of video settings (resolutions, refresh rates, write combining, fast writes, VAGP, AGP Aperture (64, 128), VPU)
~Disabled sound acceleration one notch at a time
~Lowered video hardware acceleration one notch at a time until games wouldn't even lauch
~Tried different VCore settings
~Killed all background aps
~Scandisk'd
~Virus checked
~Reseated all cards
~Switched the order of the RAM sticks
~Checked for shared IRQs (none)
~Tried numerous BIOS troubleshooting tweaks
~Updated BIOS (successful)
~Ran with failsafe default BIOS settings
~Unplugged extra fans (to free up power, plugged them back in afterward)
Any help would be appreciated. I am to the point that I am making wild guesses.
Whenever I game, I get hard lockups. Sometimes twenty minutes in, sometimes before the intro movie finishes (and I have had lockups in every game I have tried - Unreal 2, UT2k4 demo, BF1942, Temple of Elemental Evil, Morrowind, Chrome, Ghost Recon). Every now and then I will get a spontaneous reboot (and, yes, I have 'reboot on error' disabled) but these are rare.
For the past ten days, I have been chasing down possible solutions - I have, all in all, reformatted three times, played musical drivers, swapped out sound cards, and gone through a small lake of coffee. The only thing I have found that seems to help is lowering my FSB to 100 (my motherboard supports 200, and normally runs at 166). This, of course, halves my power - not a good solution.
I have looked at all of the obvious causes. I have tried obscure fixes. I have checked every wire, every connection. I have run out of ideas. My system has become almost useless - hard locking every twenty minutes of gameplay (and I make my income from gaming). I need help. Anybody - anything at all?
My system:
Windows XP Pro (SP1 and all other updates)
DirectX9.0b
Motherboard: Epox 8RDA3+
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2700+
RAM: 3x256MB DDR 3200
Power: Antec 480W
Video: ATI Radeon 9700 All-In-Wonder Pro (tried 4.2, 4.3, Omega 4.2)
Sound: Turtle Beach Santa Cruz (also tried with AC'97 onboard audio and Santa Cruz removed)
HDD: 40GB Western Digital 7200 RPM
Generic DVD ROM drive
Monitor: Viewsonic A90
CPU temp: Idle: 39C/Under load: 45C
From the BIOS:
VDD: 1.61
VCore: 1.64 (ran it up to 1.75 - didn't help)
Vdimm: 2.72
+5: 5.098
+12: 12.22
Vagp: 1.52
-5: -5.35
VBAT: 3.23
5VSB: 5.01
I have:
~Reformatted again, reinstalled Windows again (actually, I have reformatted three times altogether so far)
~Tested all RAM overnight with Memtest (zero errors)
~Tried numerous combinations of video settings (resolutions, refresh rates, write combining, fast writes, VAGP, AGP Aperture (64, 128), VPU)
~Disabled sound acceleration one notch at a time
~Lowered video hardware acceleration one notch at a time until games wouldn't even lauch
~Tried different VCore settings
~Killed all background aps
~Scandisk'd
~Virus checked
~Reseated all cards
~Switched the order of the RAM sticks
~Checked for shared IRQs (none)
~Tried numerous BIOS troubleshooting tweaks
~Updated BIOS (successful)
~Ran with failsafe default BIOS settings
~Unplugged extra fans (to free up power, plugged them back in afterward)
Any help would be appreciated. I am to the point that I am making wild guesses.