Major random hang/reboot issue :(

[Scouse]

Specs first:

• Asus A7N8X-Deluxe Nforce2 motherboard
• Athlon XP 2800+
• 1Gig RAM (2x 512meg sticks)
• 2xWestern Digital 200MB Drives, Primary master/Primary Slave config (yes, I know, I should have them on separate channels)
• Radeon 9700 Pro

Now. It's sorta a new development, but whenever I play a game for more than a few minutes the system either hangs or reboots. SERIOUS problem for me this, as I'm currently out of a job.

• The symptoms happened before I upgraded any drivers
• I recently upgraded the Nforce drivers in an attempt to alleviate an error that was coming up in the event log about IDE0
• Now nothing gets written to the event log about this, and I'm unsure if it's related anyway.
• I've updated all the drivers just in case. Same problem.
• I disabled Norton Anti-Virus just in case that was the issue. No difference.
• I removed all extraneous services then tried again. Same problem.

Now I'm into serious h/w troubleshooting.

Does anyone know of:

• A fast yet thorough program that will sector-scan my hard drives for bad sectors and the like.
• A fast yet thorough program that will check my memory bit-by-sodding-bit.
• Emphasis on free and easy for the above please!

There's four theories currently:

1) Hard drive problems. (Favourite). Either bad sectors being accessed regularly resulting in system fubar, or when both are being accessed at the same time some sort of system fubar occuring there.... (games are on D, system on C)

2) Memory problems.

3) Graphics card overheating (which shouldn't be a problem but if it is I'm pretty f*cked)

4) God hates me. (Probably the most likely but I'm trying to discount it for now).



Please!! Knowledgeable suggestions (yes, I know that's pretty cheeky and condecending (apologies) - but I do know what I'm doing!)

 

[sibanac]

HD probs dont tend to crash systems that hard.


I had the same thing happening and it turned out to be a fucked mem module.
http://www.memtest86.com/ is a mem tester, tho in my case it didnt find anything
(i found the prob using some expensive memtest tool from a friend who has a pc shop)


god hates you i am sure

 

[Dweller]

I might be going blind, but I didn't see you say which OS you're using. Assuming it's winXP, is it set to automatically restart after a crash ?

I had an issue with seemingly random crashes and restarts, and I had to turn this off in order to get more information from the blue screen crash message. I was then able to find out which device driver was causing the problem and fix it.

 

[Scouse]

Yup. It's XP pro. Doh!!! How come I can't edit my post??

XP was automatically set to restart after a crash but I've reset that now....

Ta for the memtest thing. Anyone else???

 

[inactionman]

I had a very similar problem recently. Has any part of your system changed recently? As I just upgraded to a Radeon 9800 Pro from a GF3, and it drew too much power, meaning the hard drive's couldn't get enough juice, and spun down when the graphics card needed more, i.e. in a game. You should be able to hear it as it sounds exactly the same as when you turn your computer on.

Fixed it by getting a 550W PSU (I have an athlon 1.4, apparently the hottest and hungriest processor AMD have ever made!).

What PSU do you have?

 

[Scouse]

Nah. No part changes have taken place.

The only thing I can think of at the moment (after having done the memory test) is that with both HDD's on the same IDE channel (on the raid controller) there's some sort of fuckup happening there.

I'm gonna change them to separate channels.

The only other really viable possible problem is the gfx card overheating - which will fuck me off royaly.

Any other ideas people?

It happens in Far Cry a lot - but unfortunately it's not exclusive to that game and it even happened in a pishy shockwave flash game the other day


Monkey fucks.

 

[wyrd_fish]

did you grafix card come with any software that'd tell you it's temp?

other than that, borrow a computer, and start swapping stuff, to see whats causing trouble

 

[Scouse]

I've got several already, just can't be arsed doing the whole piece-swapping stuff as I'm strapped for cash at the moment and if it does turn out to be the gfx card I'm kinda screwed anyway


Anyone else? */hopeshopeshopes*

 

[Mellow]

Have you tried using chkdsk /r

 

[Dr_Weasel]

A cheap way of seeing if its overheating is to take the side off the case and have a desk fan blowing into it.

That'll give it plenty enough cooling to see if its a heat problem.

 

[Scouse]

Ta for the suggestions people.

Still not got to the bottom of it and it's really beginning to bug me. There's also one more thing in the mix - nvidia platform sound drivers (!). I remember a problem I had long ago along those lines and there was nowt I could do about it apart from hope they updated them.....


.....I'll keep you updated for anyone who's *that* bored

 

[JBP|]

might be a silly question to ask but have you changed from an nvidia grafix card to your radeon your currently using?

if the answer is yes try formatting the hd and reinstalling



had a similar problem when yoni went from nvidia to radeon, it seems that nvidia leave stuff on your pc that youll never be able to find but it screws up using radeon cards

 

[Nightchill]

Does it definitely only do it when you're running windows? If you leave your PC in say, dos, bios or safe mode, is it perfectly fine?

If so, try getting one of those driver cleaners. The programs that clear out all the old drivers lying around on your system. Then reinstall the latest drivers afterwards.