Random windows crashing

joe360 · Jul 13, 2005, 05:08 PM

So it's about a week after I've freshly re-formatted my computer , and windows seems to crashes randomly, under no particular load. For example, just now I had iTunes, Firefox, MSN running and the screen went totally black...but the music kept on playing for a bit. When I do a restart, no "windows error report" comes up.

-I've updated video drivers (5.6)
-Nothing wrong shows up in memtest-86 v3.2
-Ran Maxtor HD diagnostics, no problems

PC Specs:

A64 3000+ s754
1GB Corsair 2.5-3-3-6
MSI K8T neo
Asus Radeon 9600XT
Maxtor 80GB HD

Any ideas?

�amage� · Jul 13, 2005, 05:42 PM

First.. what type of PSU do you have?
Second.. do you have fastwrites enabled for your 9600XT?
Third.. do you have the correct aperture size for your AGP?
Fourth.. Have you overclocked your computer, ram, or vga card?

joe360 · Jul 13, 2005, 09:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by �amage�

First.. what type of PSU do you have?
Second.. do you have fastwrites enabled for your 9600XT?
Third.. do you have the correct aperture size for your AGP?
Fourth.. Have you overclocked your computer, ram, or vga card?

1)Antec TruePower 380watt

2)Fastwrites are enabled

3)128mb aperture size

4)No overclocking of any kind

Yousaif · Jul 14, 2005, 12:34 AM

Almost sounds like your GPU took a dump. What kind of temps are you getting on your vid card?

Also you mentioned that it happens at random times. So that sounds like there isn't any rhyme or reason to it.

You may want to try backing down to an older driver, like the 5.4 ATI to see if its a driver issue.

joe360 · Jul 14, 2005, 11:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yousaif

Almost sounds like your GPU took a dump. What kind of temps are you getting on your vid card?

Also you mentioned that it happens at random times. So that sounds like there isn't any rhyme or reason to it.

You may want to try backing down to an older driver, like the 5.4 ATI to see if its a driver issue.

lol! it's quite possible...how do you measure the temp of your video card?

Necrosis · Jul 14, 2005, 12:29 PM

Your card should show it, google for a program called ATI Tool.

joe360 · Jul 14, 2005, 01:41 PM

Temperature: GPU: 49.0�C GPU environment: 53.0�C

nitrousoxide52 · Jul 14, 2005, 01:44 PM

That's not bad for summer, try loosening up the timings on your RAM, or lowering the your FSB, just temporarily. If that fixes it you may have some faulty RAM

joe360 · Jul 14, 2005, 01:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nitrousoxide52

That's not bad for summer, try loosening up the timings on your RAM, or lowering the your FSB, just temporarily. If that fixes it you may have some faulty RAM

Hmm yeah, I think tight timings was the problem at first. I had them at 2-3-3-6, and I found alot of errors in memtest. I loosened them to 2.5-3-3-6 and it ran 14 passes with no errors, so I counted out the ram..

Necrosis · Jul 14, 2005, 03:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by joe360

Temperature: GPU: 49.0�C GPU environment: 53.0�C

Hmm compared to my old Ultra that is cool, and my XL a bit warmer. I'm honestly not sure what your temp should be. Hopefully some one will see this, and respond.

joe360 · Jul 14, 2005, 09:19 PM

Just an update:

1)I just updated to Cat 5.7 drivers and I had the usual crash except this message popped up "VPU recover has reset your graphics accelerator as it was no longer responding to graphics drivers commands."

2)Before I reformatted the computer, it also crashed alot and when those windows error reports showed up these were the two files in the "error report"
a)C:\DOCUME~1\username\LOCALS~`\TEMP\WER8466.DIR00 \sysdata.xml
b)C:\DOCUME~1\username\LOCALS~`\TEMP\WER8466.DIR00 \Mini071405-01.dmp
And now with the fresh format, these same files are popping up in error reports.

Any toughts?

�amage� · Jul 14, 2005, 10:35 PM

Ya.. do yourself a huge favor and disable the VPU Recovery options, it is more of a pain then a help.

�amage� · Jul 14, 2005, 10:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by joe360

Just an update:

1)I just updated to Cat 5.7 drivers and I had the usual crash except this message popped up "VPU recover has reset your graphics accelerator as it was no longer responding to graphics drivers commands."

2)Before I reformatted the computer, it also crashed alot and when those windows error reports showed up these were the two files in the "error report"
a)C:\DOCUME~1\username\LOCALS~`\TEMP\WER8466.DIR00 \sysdata.xml
b)C:\DOCUME~1\username\LOCALS~`\TEMP\WER8466.DIR00 \Mini071405-01.dmp
And now with the fresh format, these same files are popping up in error reports.

Any toughts?

This will help hopefully and should always be done when/after installing new drivers.

First go to "My Computer" click tools > Folder Options > View > and enable "show all files and folders" and get into your "Documents & Settings > Username > Local Settings > Temp Folder" and remove everything from inside there. Then go back into C: or whatever primary partition you've named it too and get into your Windows Folder and delete everything in the TEMP folder in there. Always (and this is rule of thumb) do a defrag of all drives after each fresh install of your vga drivers.. that being either Nvidia or ATi.

Yousaif · Jul 14, 2005, 11:02 PM

Are you playing a game when these crashes happen? If so, what game? I know that htere are some Sony MMO's out there that don't work on a 9000 series cards with anything newer than the 5.4 drivers. EQ@ and SWG just to name 2 of em.

joe360 · Jul 15, 2005, 12:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yousaif

Are you playing a game when these crashes happen? If so, what game? I know that htere are some Sony MMO's out there that don't work on a 9000 series cards with anything newer than the 5.4 drivers. EQ@ and SWG just to name 2 of em.

It happens when playing Gunz but it's in Beta, so I can understand that crashing. However most of the time it happens under no particluar reason, It usually crashes when im just surfing the web with firefox, usually have iTunes open, and MSN. I'll just be using it and the screen will suddenly turn black, and I have to push the restart button..