Aces High Bulletin Board
Help and Support Forums => Technical Support => Topic started by: SirLoin on February 10, 2006, 02:26:39 PM
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Been gettin these every hour or so...Screen freezes hit reset button.
Any suggestions?
thnx
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Here is a range of stuff I'd try, in rough order I'd try it in. (I.e., I'd check if Aces High runs after each of the steps.) Don't do any of the steps you aren't reasonably comfortable with -- botching the following could mess up your system more than it is messed up now.
Did you overclock your video card or computer? Set it back to normal settings (or even underclock it) and see if things work.
Check that your fan in your computer and on your graphics card (if it has one) are working.
Uninstall any low-quality utilities that might autostart when you boot up Windows and that you don't need. Disable or turn off any other software that is running in the background just while you do a test run with Aces High to see if any of them might be the problem.
Install the latest video driver. Get it not from your OEM card manufacturer but straight from the Nvidia or ATI site (depending on whose graphics chip you have).
Install the latest sound driver. Again, get it from the maker of the chip (like Creative), not whoever made the card (unless the two are the same).
Flash your motherboard BIOS up to the latest level if that is easy to do (such as if you have a Dell, where Dell makes latest BIOS updates easily available). Especially don't do this if you aren't sure what you are doing.
Uninstall and reinstall Aces High.
If crashes are happening for more than Aces High, unplug your computer, make sure you touch metal case in your computer (to get rid of static on you), and physically unplug and replug all of your cards in your computer (to make sure they are all seated correctly). See if anything doesn't look right. I wouldn't do this, though, unless my computer were crashing in every application, not just Aces High.
If none of that works, for me, it would be time to wipe my computer clean and reinstall the OS and drivers from scratch. Back up whatever you don't want to lose first, of course.
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Well thank you Brooke....I will try it out as im sure it's a problem on my end.
:aok
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be sure there is no spyware. Those blasted things can give you mini freezes when they report home. Go to http://www.downloads.com and get the free Ad-aware spy remover.
Check the temp of your vid card and Mother board processor, if available. You can check the processor temp in BIOS. Should be running in the 50's or 60's. If it's over 100 "warning Will Robinson" it's prolly buggered:eek:
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Um Lynx, hehe.
50-60 C is pretty warm/hot. 100 F is not hot.. Thats something like 37.777* celsius.
100 C and you better get a fire extinguisher handy.
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I lock up alot also, but it is because i have dual core system
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I've got a Pentium D dual-core processor and have no problems at all with lock ups.
For folks who want to see the temperature of their video cards, there is Rivatuner that allows you to see temperature (and to play with fan speeds to optimize noise vs. temperature). It's a free program and supports nVidia and ATI chipsets. You can get it here:
http://www.guru3d.com/rivatuner/
To see GPU (graphics processing unit) temperature, click on the "customize" symbol in the "Target adapter" panel. Then click on the "Hardware monitoring" symbol. That gives you a chart of GPU clock speed, GPU memory clock speed, GPU temperature, etc.
On my nVidia GeForce 6800GS, the GPU temperature is about 45 C in normal 2D mode and near or above 50 C for 3D gaming. If I had very demanding 3D going (Doom 3, Quake 4, Battlefield 2, with high res and lots of quality settings), it might get up to 60 C. 100 C (the boiling temperature of water) is very hot for a GPU.
In my experience, lock ups are most frequently the result of (1) Windows getting all garbaged up with an accumulation of old applications and poorly written little tools that launch at boot time or (2) drivers that didn't install right or incorrect, missing, or old drivers. Less frequently, it is hardware malfunctioning, but that becomes a risk for anyone overclocking hardware enough to push it to its failure limit.
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I tried everything SirLoin, for 2 years, finally figured out it was Nvidia drivers...apparently the newest drivers are optimised for their newest cards, to make the benchmarks look good, with little regard for the older cards.
So by using the newest drivers for my Nvidia card, it actually caused the problem.
The ONLY thing that solved my lockup problem permanently was using the Omega drivers from http://www.omegadrivers.net/
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SirLoin, any luck yet?
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I got a new dual core and it locks up about once every hour.
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Storch, sorry to hear that. I don't know if it's the dual core itself, though. I've got Dell Dimension 9150 (Intel motherboard and Pentium D dual-core CPU). It's very stable, although I did wipe it clean at the start and do a fresh OS install (as Dell had a lot of junk installed on it). No crashes yet after two months of use, many hours each day and running many, many hours straight of Aces High, WWIIOL, Battlefield 1942, MS Office applications, Java programs, etc. I judge it just as stable as the most-stable single-core machines I've ever used.
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The dual core problems lie with the AMD systems. MS released a hotfix hoping it would fix the issue, but the problems still persist. It is operating system/driver related. At least, that is what everyone is hoping it is, as the alternative is a flaw in the CPU architecture.
Dual-core/HT enabled Intel CPU's do not have any known issues at this time.
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mine is an AMD
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If you disable one of the cores storch, the problems will go away.
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I just had my son in law order me an intel cpu no more amd for me thanks for the help guys
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I have to agree with Skuzzy on this one. I'm running an AMD 64 X2 +3800, and with the Dual Core enabled, could not get past the 1st clipboard. Called HTC and got Skuzzy, He told me to disable the Dual Core in the Bios, and I have not had a problem since, except for storch shooting me a lot.:D