System lockups, out of ideas

[Darkbirdy]

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.

 

[Darkbirdy]

Minor update:

This morning I decided to give reinstalling Windows one more try.

I have installed it twice now this morning (and am working on attempt #3) - both times the install itself was corrupted. After a full format each time, Windows refused to load the first time, and would only half-load the second (it would load the desktop, but none of the systray items - not even Messenger to ask me if I wanted a .net account).

Something in my system has gone seriously, seriously wonky - and I am supposed to be starting a new work project in three days.

 

[Big Lar]

Have you tried any diagnostics on the drive itself? I believe Western Digital has tools you can DL to test it. Only other thing that comes to mind, would be a cdrom problem, or perhaps the video card or card fan.
"(and, yes, I have 'reboot on error' disabled)" Where is that option found?

 

[TD77077]

Darkbirdy,

I can't tell from your post whether you are running your FSB & memory at synch (same speed) or asynch (different speeds). But I can tell you I had some similar problems with an Asus A7S333 motherboard with an XP Thoroughbred (266 Mb FSB) processor. Everthing else worked fine except games would crash anywhere from 5-60 minutes in.

Hard lockups usually mean a memory crash. The only way I could get the lockups to stop was to run the 333 DDR RAM at 266 instead of 333 with my Thoroughbred. So, if your XP2700 is a Thoroughbred, try running your memory at 266. If it is a Barton, make sure you are running at 333 (So long as it's not PC2100. If it is, you might need to get some PC2700 to fix your problem). It's nice to get a little more speed, but it's nicer to have things running stable.

 

[illusion88]

WHen I first started reading your thread, the first thing that fame to my mind was a video card problem. But after reading your update that doesnt make sense anymore. Your update suggest a screwed up windows install. Perhaps your disk is scratched?

My two suggestions are try running it with a different video card AND installing it with a different Windows Disk. Hopefully you have a friend or two who can lend you these items. Anyways, Good Luck!

 

[Darkbirdy]

I did finally get windows reinstalled, by the way, and with only windows and the basic device drivers installed (no extra software, no 'tweaks'), did more testing.

I tried golfer39's suggestions. It wouldn't run for more that a few minutes with the chipset voltage at 1.8 - it forced reboots (and I do have pretty good ventilation - a 120 and an 80mm intake, plus the PS double-exhaust and a spare 60mm exhaust). The end result was just more lockups.

I ran full hard drive diagnostic (from the manufacturer), no errors.

I had previously ran a very thorough check of my RAM.

I played with my soundcard uninstalled and my onboard sound disabled - resulted in lockups.

I switched my 9700Pro for a GeForce3. Lockups.

Tried two sticks of RAM, tried one stick of RAM. Lockups.

I have, seemingly, eliminated my video card, sound card, RAM, hard drive, and software.

My power supply is an Antec 480 Watt, and is only a few months old, so I doubt it is that.

The BIOS settings are the same ones that I have run stable with for the past several months.

My only thought is that my motherboard may have gone bad - which would stink, as I just bought it (brand new) last summer. I am vaguely considering the MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR, but am not entirely sure.

Before I go and try to beg/borrow/steal money for a new motherboard, is there anything that I am missing? It certainly looks like the motherboard to me, but I would appreciate a second opinion before I spend money that I don't have.

 

[Big Lar]

OK Last thing I can think of = Are you running an NIC card, router? If so, whats the settings?

 

[Fern]

In reading what you have done (and I may have overlooked it), I didn't notice where you installed the chipset drivers?

Did you?

 

[warmachine]

Ok this might be Ur problem I'm guessing that Ur winxp pro cd is more than a year old,
if this is true and U are installing and the cd does not have sp1 slipsteamed into it and U are
doing Ur install with Ur computer conected to the internet during the first part before U apply
the service packs and fixes U will get a virus. U must download the fix and install befor Ur computer is conected
to the internet. Blaster virus or some other using same form of attack.
microsoft link

 

[Tango57]

this sounds more like a hardware problem to me. probably a processor starting to go bad. do you have an extra cpu you can swap in and test?? i'd try that first in order to rule out a bad cpu then try swapping out the motherboard for a good one and check that.

 

[rdbelden]

If you where not having any random lockups or reboots before, then this may not help. But most random reboooting when you get into heavy Processor use is caused by heat. Have you checked temp. right after a lock up. A seperate (from motherboard) temp reading would be best. And the major air mover is the power suppy. When my wife's was starting to go, she got random blackout and reboot from the heat buildup.

 

[Tango57]

Originally posted by: rdbelden
If you where not having any random lockups or reboots before, then this may not help. But most random reboooting when you get into heavy Processor use is caused by heat. Have you checked temp. right after a lock up. A seperate (from motherboard) temp reading would be best. And the major air mover is the power suppy. When my wife's was starting to go, she got random blackout and reboot from the heat buildup.

ditto, make sure you're cpu is properly seated flush against the heatsink with thermal compound in between then monitor your cpu temps.

 

[vansouza]

Not sure what you mean exactly about lock up... I get the BSOD. I reinstalled the OS then took days instead of hours to reinstall programs... I only installed the critical XP updates ... none of the others at all. And the system has been stable since. I think I have just not installed the offending program. I thought the advice from BestBuy support was really lame... but my system has not given me a blue screen since.... offered for what it might be worth...