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Computer is randomly crashing...

Started by Funkymunky 35 replies 3.6k views
Original Post
Funkymunky
Funkymunky
Hey, I recently built a computer with some cannabalized parts from an old comp and a new mobo, cpu, and ram. Motherboard CPU and a Geforce FX 5200 AGP for the graphics card. Upon my first install of windows xp, the system seemed stable. I installed the drivers that came on the motherboard's cd (stuff like agp drivers, cpu drivers, lan drivers, directx..) I then installed the newest forceware drivers from nvidia's website. I began putting all kinds of stuff on it, like firefox, aim, vc++2005EE, etc... I tried running a 3d program of mine that had worked fine on the previous computer, and it flicked a bluescreen up for a moment and restarted the computer. I didn't want to dwell on it, so when it had restarted I went to http://www.reallyslick.com/ and got their screensavers. Tried looking at these, and some ran slowly (on my new processor, which baffled me) Then the bluescreen restart again. I tried one more time, and it hung on the bluescreen. It raid "The Display Driver got stuck in an infinite loop!" I reformated, reinstalled windows xp, used the mobo cd for only the lan drivers, then downloaded the agp drivers and cpu drivers from the asrock website. Installed these, then installed the nvidia forcewares. This system was again stable, and this time my 3d program ran flawlessly (and much faster too). After awhile, I tried the screensavers again, and they ran very quickly too. Then, while trying them all out, one of them caused the bluescreen/reboot. Again, I tried not to dwell. It has been 2 days and many hours spent using the computer for all kinds of things (I even tried out Quake 4, which i think the card isn't good enough for because the processor is tearing through everything it comes across) It has been rock solid... except ten minutes ago it did the random bluecrash when I tried to click on a popup menu in VC++2005EE. Does anyone have any suggestions, thoughts, or relevant information about this? It is extremely frustrating to have built my dream computer only to have it crash sporadically and suddenly. [Edited by - Funkymunky on January 16, 2006 3:20:43 AM]
Frank Henry
Frank Henry
Disable automatic rebooting and look what the bluescreen tells you.
Do you have enough power?
Are your fans hooked up correctly?
Is the ram ok?
Funkymunky
Funkymunky
Well, it said the above, and I looked into it when it happened at first. It has something to do with a driver conflict of some sort where windows won't respond to the card and so it keeps trying to update it with fresh display but can't and is therefore in an infinite loop. Something like that. That's why I tried a cleaner install of all the drivers, and it seemed to help. I wonder if this is a problem due to the combination agp and pcie slots...

the Power Supply i got is this this

The fans are spinning and lit.

The gig of ram shows up and the computer is blazingly fast

[Edited by - Funkymunky on January 16, 2006 3:25:57 AM]
Frank Henry
Frank Henry
Quote:
Original post by Funkymunky
Well, it said the above, and I looked into it when it happened at first. It has something to do with a driver conflict of some sort where windows won't respond to the card and so it keeps trying to update it with fresh display but can't and is therefore in an infinite loop. Something like that. That's why I tried a cleaner install of all the drivers, and it seemed to help. I wonder if this is a problem due to the combination agp and pcie slots...

the Power Supply i got is this this

The fans are spinning and lit.

The gig of ram shows up and the computer is blazingly fast

My comp had similar problems.
First I optimised the cooling. After that did not help (it helped a little) I checked my ram with a special test proggy. Turns out there was an error in an area that no other proggy checked (possibly because of its low position).
Replaced and the comp ran pretty smooth then.

could be this one (hotlink):
ftp://ftp.heise.de/pub/ct/ctsi/ctramtst.zip
IIRC you ahve to create a boot disk and then start your pc with it.
It then runs in video ram so it can check the entire ram.
If you speak german I highly recommend the mag and its fine collection of tools.
(shameless commerical to reimburse the hotlink ;) )

Do you have realtek sound?
When I went through my error fixing I thought at one time it might be the sound.
IIRC there was never really a version that seemed to be ok.
Funkymunky
Funkymunky
thanks i'll buy a disk and try that... no i didn't install realtek this time around

any other suggestions?
Nemesis2k2
Nemesis2k2
It can help to know the actual STOP errors that are triggering the BSOD's. First of all, disable the automatic restart when a BSOD occurs, by doing the following:
-Go to System Properties
-Click the Advanced tab
-Under "Startup and Recovery", click the Settings button
-Under "System failure", untick "Automatically Restart", and press ok

Your computer will now not automatically restart when a BSOD occurs. Now, it can help to see what the STOP codes were when the previous BSOD's occured. To find them, do the following:
-Open the run dialog, and type in eventvwr.msc
-Click the System item on the tree view on the left
-Select View->Filter from the menu
-Under "Event source", select "System Error", and press ok

You should now have a list of events generated from each BSOD. View the properties of a few of them, and give us the STOP error codes you got. That can help to narrow down the problem.


Anyway, after checking that information, I recommend a full RAM diagnostic. It's a likely candidate in cases like this, and it's easy to test. Download and burn the Ultimate Boot CD. It has (amoung many other things) some very good tools that can thoroughly test your RAM for errors. When you have it burned, boot from it, and run "Memtest86+" from the "Mainboard Tools" category. This will continuously test your memory for errors. If it finds any, at least one of your memory modules needs to be replaced. Let it complete at least one full pass, which may take up to an hour, depending on the amount and speed of your memory.
kanzler
kanzler
If you have a floppy drive I recommend downloading Windows Memory Diagnostic for testing your memory. It's small and easy to run.
Funkymunky
Funkymunky
Hmm... i'm not sure exactly what the stop code is, but here is the text of the error

Quote:
Event Type: Error
Event Source: nv
Event Category: None
Event ID: 108
Date: 1/16/2006
Time: 4:31:22 PM
User: N/A
Computer: ATHLONX2-SILVER
Description:
The driver nv4_disp for the display device \Device\Video0 got stuck in an infinite loop. This usually indicates a problem with the device itself or with the device driver programming the hardware incorrectly. Please check with your hardware device vendor for any driver updates.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 00 00 00 00 03 00 46 00 ......F.
0008: 00 00 00 00 6c 00 04 c0 ....l..À
0010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........


As you can see it just recently crashed. it is immediately precipitated by a warning from W32Time which reads

Quote:
Event Type: Warning
Event Source: W32Time
Event Category: None
Event ID: 36
Date: 1/16/2006
Time: 4:19:38 PM
User: N/A
Computer: ATHLONX2-SILVER
Description:
The time service has not been able to synchronize the system time for 49152 seconds because none of the time providers has been able to provide a usable time stamp. The system clock is unsynchronized.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Gametaku
Gametaku
Quote:
Original post by Funkymunky

As you can see it just recently crashed. it is immediately precipitated by a warning from W32Time which reads

Quote:
Event Type: Warning
Event Source: W32Time
Event Category: None
Event ID: 36
Date: 1/16/2006
Time: 4:19:38 PM
User: N/A
Computer: ATHLONX2-SILVER
Description:
The time service has not been able to synchronize the system time for 49152 seconds because none of the time providers has been able to provide a usable time stamp. The system clock is unsynchronized.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.



I belive it has something to do with the fact that windows was unable to conect to a time sever and synchronize your clock.
Just me
Funkymunky
Funkymunky
what if i don't have a floppy drive...? And, you guys seem to be telling me to check the RAM, yet that seems to be operating properly. It's two sticks of corsair ddr 512 mb. It seems to be a problem with the graphics driver, and what i'm assuming is a conflict with the motherboard having both pci-e slots and an agp
Frank Henry
Frank Henry
Quote:
Original post by Funkymunky
what if i don't have a floppy drive...?

hmm good question.
Would a cd work? Anyone know?

Quote:
And, you guys seem to be telling me to check the RAM, yet that seems to be operating properly. It's two sticks of corsair ddr 512 mb. It seems to be a problem with the graphics driver, and what i'm assuming is a conflict with the motherboard having both pci-e slots and an agp

Uhm, it seemed to work fine on mine as well.
The errors you listed are common.
It might also be heat problems.
Funkymunky
Funkymunky
alright it just happened again, and this time i'd disabled the auto reboot. stop code: 0x000000EA (0x86277020, 0x86296ce0, 0xf7a1bcbc, 0x00000001). It seems to happen most commonly when I view a video file

::screams in horrid frustration::
Eleventy
Eleventy
Take back the whole thing and buy all new parts.
Eleventy
Funkymunky
Funkymunky
come on...

i mean, wouldn't buying a pcie graphics card fix this problem? Or maybe someone can tell me how to better pinpoint the problem. i really don't want to take it all back and start from scratch again...
Eleventy
Eleventy
Lol, I was kidding.

I recommend that you run the MemTest86 program to test your RAM. Faulty RAM can cause all sorts of weird errors. One time bad RAM caused me to get the exact same error each time, so bad RAM can definately cause numerous false errors pointing to the same hardware device (such as a video card). A CD version of it can be downloaded. If you don't know where to find it, I can email the .iso file to you.
Eleventy
Funkymunky
Funkymunky
Phew thanks I was worried you were serious. Guess I'm a little stressed out with all this.

I got the Windows Memory Diagnostic and it lets you save an iso and burn that to a cd. So I did that and booted off of it, and it found no errors (i stopped it during it's third tedious pass)

....dammit
Funkymunky
Funkymunky
It doesn't happen when the computer is idle. I can leave it running all night and it was fine in the morning. It's just usually when I run a 3d app or watch a video clip (more commonly the latter)

What does that mean?
Frank Henry
Frank Henry
Quote:
Original post by Funkymunky
It doesn't happen when the computer is idle. I can leave it running all night and it was fine in the morning. It's just usually when I run a 3d app or watch a video clip (more commonly the latter)

What does that mean?

Maybe a heat problem.
You do have all the current drivers, right?

Open up your pc, put a huge fan next to it and let'er rip.
ajones
ajones
I had a similar problem a while ago - at first my pc would crash whenever I played dawn of war, but eventually the pc wouldn't turn on unless I left it switched off for a while first.

The problem was that the graphics card was old, and on its last legs. It was having problems switching between display modes, which resulted in windows crashing, or the pc stalling while waiting for a display mode switch that never happened.

I've only skimmed the thread, so this might have been suggested before, but if you can, I'd recommend testing your components with ones from a friend or spare pc. Remove anything you don't need first (e.g. sound card if there is one), and if you're using more than one stick of RAM, try using each of them on its own.

I'd also recommend taking your pc to a shop where they'll diagnose this for you - I certainly preferred waiting for a phone call than wondering if my rummaging around inside a PC was doing more damage than good.

Good luck! [smile]
infrmtn
infrmtn
Unless it's an IRQ conflict, it could indeed be a heat problem. My Athlon XP 2200+ setup had been working great for a few years, then I started getting these random blue screens, usually pointing at nv4_disp. I'd had IRQ conflicts before, so after making sure no important interrupts were being shared and seeing that it did nothing, I decided to underclock the CPU from 1800 to 1400 MHz. The crashes stopped. The temperature before was a little high, around 57 °C, but that's nothing serious. The volts were still at their factory default, so it can't be that.

Anyways, the CPU heatsink may have come loose, but I haven't bothered checking it thoroughly since 1400 MHz is good enough. The temps are 47 °C now, but of course the ongoing winter has a cooling effect. A good dusting of the heatsink always helps too.

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