Need help, bad lockups

[Saintaw]

Been having trouble the last months, and it's becomming worse with time.
I suffer from pauses or worse, lockup in every 3d game (d3d or OpenGL) I'm trying to play.
After playing for a while, the game will freeze (AH is the only one that gives me disco/exit after 30 seconds).
This usualy ends up in a hard reboot, and sometimes corrupted data on a disk. (Usualy the disk where the application was running).

I've changed the soundcard, updated (properly) my GFX card drivers, everything I could think of.
Took off each memory separately and tested them both (still have the lockups).
Changed the grx card to an older GF3 ... lockups.

Short of changing my harddrives, I'm at loss at where that failure is...

Does this problem sound familiar to anyone, and if so... what am I to do next?

Thanks in advance.

My Sys specs

[Saintaw]

*insert drowning smiley here*

[Dingbat]

Have you run a scandisk to check for disk surface errors?
When did you last Defrag?
How long have you had this PC?
Did you build it yourself?
Did you put Heat goop on the processor?

It appears you have two hard drives, Are they on the same IDE channel?  If yes, move your secondary drive to another IDE channel and move the page file over to that drive.  It'll give you a little better performance.  Also make sure you set it to a static size.

Did you change anything other than the card the last few months?



Dump the C-Media card...

[Saintaw]

Thanks Dingbat, I'm about to throw the whole thing by the window...

Have you run a scandisk to check for disk surface errors?
Yes, it does so whenever I have a lockup and reboot. (so, I can say... quite often since I'm into testing this)

When did you last Defrag?
Didi it a few times on all disks (last time, 2 days ago)
How long have you had this PC?
Some parts are 4 years old, some (cpu / mobo) are a bit more than 2 years old
Did you build it yourself?
Yes, built it myself, piece by piece

Did you put Heat goop on the processor?
Goop ? If you mean a fan, yes it has one and it works.

It appears you have two hard drives, Are they on the same IDE channel?  If yes, move your secondary drive to another IDE channel and move the page file over to that drive.  It'll give you a little better performance.  Also make sure you set it to a static size.
They are on 2 different channels (one is coupled with the CD, the other is alone)
Page file is static 512mb on each drives. I did try to change these ... no effect.

Did you change anything other than the card the last few months?
The problem started occuring before I put in the last Ram. as I said, I tried removing it / changing it, but it keeps getting worse with time

Dump the C-Media card...
You mean the DVD card ? I removed every single PCI cards, and tried changing their location. nada.

[Dingbat]

Your Hard drives:  

I would only have 1 page file on the drive that is not the one XP is loaded on, it sounds like you have two...

I would get a diagnostic disk from the hard drive manufacturer and test the drives just to be sure it's not them.

As far as the goop goes, no I don't mean the fan.  All processors should have thermal paste (or pad) applied to it.  If it's cheap paste then after 2 years it's probably dried out and is not doing it's job of dissipating heat.

The more we get in to it, I'm thinking you might have a Power supply issue, if you can go into your PC's bios and check the voltage lines (probably under power management).  If you can provide your Motherboard manafacturer info I could put a walkthrough together for you...


The C-Media card is your Sound card, probably on-board.  These things are usually crap, they off load the processing onto your processor...  And since you have a celeron, it's not helping matters.  However, this is just an opinion and is probably not contributing much to the problem...

[Saintaw]

Your Hard drives:  

I would only have 1 page file on the drive that is not the one XP is loaded on, it sounds like you have two...

Done that now. No changes (tried a drive on both HDDs)

I would get a diagnostic disk from the hard drive manufacturer and test the drives just to be sure it's not them.
Thanks, digging this up next.

As far as the goop goes, no I don't mean the fan.  All processors should have thermal paste (or pad) applied to it.  If it's cheap paste then after 2 years it's probably dried out and is not doing it's job of dissipating heat.
It's old indeed then, and now that you mention it... when I was trying to play UFO Aftermath, my puter would slow down, and reboot... I discovered that my CPU heat on reboot was 74degs (BIOS CPU heat alarm is set to 75 degs)

The more we get in to it, I'm thinking you might have a Power supply issue, if you can go into your PC's bios and check the voltage lines (probably under power management).  If you can provide your Motherboard manafacturer info I could put a walkthrough together for you...
I haven't changed the PSU yet (I got it at the same time as the mobo ... +/- 2 years ago).
The mobo is an Abit BL -1.30M




The C-Media card is your Sound card, probably on-board.  These things are usually crap, they off load the processing onto your processor...  And since you have a celeron, it's not helping matters.  However, this is just an opinion and is probably not contributing much to the problem...

I previously had an Sblive and thought it was my system's culprit... I changed to an Hercules Mule 5.1. (I've had the same problem before I had this card)

Every onboard feature is turned OFF.(Lan, soundcard,...)
I loaded up the bios safe defaults as well.

I'm now going to dig some IBM drive testing software.
Thanks again for helping me out on this one

[Dingbat]

not a problem bro.  If you need to, you can email me direct

peterdavidwoodNOSPAM@yahoo.com

Remove the obvious

[Dingbat]

75 F or 75C?

Do you have the hardware monitoring software installed?

[Dingbat]

Just one last thing

Right from intel, for your processor...
Maximum Temp(°C) 76

You might have smoked it... like a bad joint it's making your PC sick...

[Saintaw]

The IBM drive is clean (so says the testing software).
Can't find the other one's brand yet (stinkin' cheapo chinese **** )

I hope I didn't fry the CPU (the system never fails if I am working, and I use heavy stuff while working (Photoshop for instance)).

I'm getting a Mobo and CPU for test tomorrow evening... if that's not it, last thing I can see is the PSU. I'd rather have to change the PSU than the CPU, hehe *crossing fingers*

I forgot to metion above than I get this problem after a fresh Windows install (I tend not to overload my system with blinking freewares anyway). So my take is it has to be hardware related...

I'l keep you up to date, thx mate

[Dingbat]

You may just need to replace the thermal grease...
I use and stand by:
http://www.arcticsilver.com/

[DAVENRINO]

Originally posted by Dingbat
You may just need to replace the thermal grease...
I use and stand by:
http://www.arcticsilver.com/

If 74 deg C is accurate, then I think Dingbat is correct in that your main problem is temp related.  Hopefully, the CPU is OK due to auto throttling down as it gets hotter.  Try the Artic Silver and make sure your CPU fan is working properly.  How hot is the system temp?  The difference between the two temps (if accurate) tells us a lot.

Are you sure the ob sound is disabled?  I may be wrong, but I thought C-media usually means ob sound?

You might also try a THOROUGH Scandisk.
My Comp/Hardrive/Prop/Tools/Error Checking.

DJ229-AIR MAFIA