Can Quicktime physically harm a computer?

[VTX1800N1]

So, I thought my old motherboard, an Abit KR7A-133R, was bad because I would get constant BSODs running Win XP Pro. I had bought a new video card for it, GF 6800 512MB, as well as some Corsair VS 512 X 2. I also have a Creative SB Live Platinum. CPU is Athlon SP 1800+ not overclocked, with an Alpha Pal 8040 IIRC and silver paste, new Sparkle power supply.....

Basically, I replaced everything but the motherboard with what's listed above, and still I would get BSODs just while trying to install XP Pro. I couldn't even format the hard drives during install without a system crash. So, I thought it had to be the motherboard or CPU. I stuck it on the shelf for a year or two and just recently got a "working pull" Abit KR7A-RAID. I installed all my old hardware on this motherboard and installed XP Pro without a problem. I got it all up and running with the latest drivers for everything, then installed Quicktime to watch some movie trailers. I was watching the upcoming Star Trek trailer in 480p (DVD quality) and noticed some tearing in the video. Then the screen went blank, the computer seemed to reboot to.... nothing, and I got one long beep followed by a long pause over and over again. Hit the reset button and now I get failure to boot or BSODs of the "Paging fault in non-paged area" kind.

So I tried to wipe the drives and reinstall SP Pro again, only to get more BSODs and lockups. The question now is, can Quicktime physically harm software, or is this just my crappy luck at work again? I'm in the process of trying a hard drive format again, but I don't want to be reformatting the drive every time I want to watch a movie trailer.

Maybe it's time for Linux.....I hate Micro$haft and I hate Apple.

 

[phide]

I can't imagine any way that QuickTime could possibly be to blame for your issues. In Windows, its roots don't actually go that drastically deep.

Seems like a hardware issue to me.

 

[wopsang]

I would agree that it seems like a hardware issue.

 

[djgizmo]

I agree, sounds like you have a faulty video card(s). You never mentioned which brand of card it was.
Also, what kind of surge protection do you have. If you're in an area prone to electrical surges / brown outs, that could cause your power supply to do some weird things as well.


Back in 2003, my computer caught fire (literally) due to a bad Gefore 4400 card. The brand name... Gainward. A supposed good company.

Burnt out my mobo, video card, and power supply.

 

[VTX1800N1]

I started out with one of the original series of Creative Geforce cards, and replaced it with an ASUS GF 6800.

Likewise, I replaced the memory with new Corsair VS. I also bought new hard drives, and have tried them on the HPT372 controller and on the native controller.

I do have a very low level buzzing sound when I plug the power supply in. I wonder if that is the problem. Does anyone even make power supplies with the connections I need anymore? I do have a generic A/V surge arrestor and no power related problems with anything else in my house.

Now, when installing Windows XP, the installation halts at different points while copying files (before I actually get to the GUI) to the hard drive from the XP CD, saying it can't find this or that file.... The problem is I just installed XP off this same CD a couple days ago and there are no scratches on it, so there is no reason it shouldn't work.

I'm left where I was before I replaced the motherboard. Again, different motherboard, new ram, new video card, new hard drives, and still random hardware errors.

I understand how computers go together, I just can't seem to keep them together. It seems no one builds any kind of quality hardware anymore. In the last two years, I've gone through about 8 hard drives, some on my desktop, one in my Dell laptop, two in my Clevo laptop, one in my Gateway laptop, and now I just got another SMART drive impending failure warning on my Gateway laptop. Gateway just replaced this hard drive about 6 months ago under warranty, and now their crappy replacement is dying. I even use a laptop cooler fan under my portables and still they fail. It just makes me sick- it seems like these things are designed to fail on purpose. The hard drives have come from all different manufacturers. If I could find one that made a quality drive I would be happy to pay for it, but none of them have any idea what quality is....

 

[hungryduck]

I understand how computers go together, I just can't seem to keep them together. It seems no one builds any kind of quality hardware anymore. In the last two years, I've gone through about 8 hard drives, some on my desktop, one in my Dell laptop, two in my Clevo laptop, one in my Gateway laptop, and now I just got another SMART drive impending failure warning on my Gateway laptop. Gateway just replaced this hard drive about 6 months ago under warranty, and now their crappy replacement is dying. I even use a laptop cooler fan under my portables and still they fail. It just makes me sick- it seems like these things are designed to fail on purpose. The hard drives have come from all different manufacturers. If I could find one that made a quality drive I would be happy to pay for it, but none of them have any idea what quality is....

get a mac.

 

[phide]

Anecdotally, I've been happy with Seagate hard drives, and you'll see Seagate drives being used in most production houses where reliability is mission-critical. They'll still fail every now and then, but possibly less so than drives from other manufacturers. Your mileage may vary

 

[AciDeX]

I started out with one of the original series of Creative Geforce cards, and replaced it with an ASUS GF 6800.

Likewise, I replaced the memory with new Corsair VS. I also bought new hard drives, and have tried them on the HPT372 controller and on the native controller.

I do have a very low level buzzing sound when I plug the power supply in. I wonder if that is the problem. Does anyone even make power supplies with the connections I need anymore? I do have a generic A/V surge arrestor and no power related problems with anything else in my house.

Now, when installing Windows XP, the installation halts at different points while copying files (before I actually get to the GUI) to the hard drive from the XP CD, saying it can't find this or that file.... The problem is I just installed XP off this same CD a couple days ago and there are no scratches on it, so there is no reason it shouldn't work.

I'm left where I was before I replaced the motherboard. Again, different motherboard, new ram, new video card, new hard drives, and still random hardware errors.

I understand how computers go together, I just can't seem to keep them together. It seems no one builds any kind of quality hardware anymore. In the last two years, I've gone through about 8 hard drives, some on my desktop, one in my Dell laptop, two in my Clevo laptop, one in my Gateway laptop, and now I just got another SMART drive impending failure warning on my Gateway laptop. Gateway just replaced this hard drive about 6 months ago under warranty, and now their crappy replacement is dying. I even use a laptop cooler fan under my portables and still they fail. It just makes me sick- it seems like these things are designed to fail on purpose. The hard drives have come from all different manufacturers. If I could find one that made a quality drive I would be happy to pay for it, but none of them have any idea what quality is....

I don't think a "generic surge protector" is enough. I've built quite a few systems for friends and family, of them three outright ignored my suggestion to get a UPS. Guess what? All three had issues down the line. One being my parents, they lost only their PSU fortunately. Two, my old roommate, we were playing LOTRO late one night a year ago around mid-springtime. Here in Omaha we get crazy electrical storms and *poof!*, we get a brownout. My PC stayed on and online since my network gear was also hooked up to my UPS. My roommate turned his PC back on and the monitor was all sorts of whacked out(trippy colors everywhere). I swapped his LCD with one of my 17" CRT's, then the next day he got BSOD's getting into windows. Ran Memtest'86 and low and behold somehow his RAM had fried in the storm but hadn't affected his system untill he turned it off for the night. My other buddy also had his RAM fry out that night too, followed a week later by his gfx card. Good thing it was all under warrantee, I just had to send in the RMA's. They all learnt their lessons and haven't had any problems since.

On a side note, anyone remember that story on [H]OCP a long time ago about a case study that was trying prove that some people might be technically "cursed"? They can be as careful as possible but still seem to constantly go through cell phones, home theater products, PC and laptop parts like no other. You sir may be one of the few, and probably a good candidate for a toughbook series notebook.

 

[VTX1800N1]

I'm pretty sure it's the memory controller on the motherboard that is fried. When Quicktime hung the system and BSOD'd XP, it rebooted and I got a long beep, long pause, long beep over and over again.

I just took out the main memory and got the same beep pause sequence. This is my second KR7A with similar problems.

I cannot even format and load XP now. It formats the drive, and then I get errors when copying files to the hard drives for the install. It's always a different file that cannot be copied correctly, but at about the same amount of time in the copy process. I'm guessing that the memory controller is fried and works just long enough to copy some files, but then heats up and kills the install. If I tell it to ignore the file (retrying to copy works a few times, but more and more files cannot be copied eventually) it will eventually BSOD with a "paging fault in non-paged area" error.

I wish movie trailers came in another format than Quicktime. Every computer I have ever installed this crap software on has had problems.

 

[CFlux]

To be honest considering how much hardware you have swapped out that really sounds like a marginal power supply to me. Power supply issues can manifest in all sorts of ways. But it causes weird system issues when things are drawing more power like formatting a drive or doing rendering.

 

[phide]

I wish movie trailers came in another format than Quicktime. Every computer I have ever installed this crap software on has had problems.

I really doubt any of these problems were in any way related to QuickTime. Yeah, QuickTime is absolute garbage on Windows, but it's just a bloated piece of software -- it isn't malicious and I certainly see no way it could destroy hardware.

You can always decode QuickTime .mov files (in various formats) using various software and re-encode them into a format and container you're more comfortable with, like WMV, DivX/AVI, x264/Matroska and so forth. You don't necessarily need QuickTime installed to do this.

 

[MattyC]

You can always decode QuickTime .mov files (in various formats) using various software and re-encode them into a format and container you're more comfortable with, like WMV, DivX/AVI, x264/Matroska and so forth. You don't necessarily need QuickTime installed to do this.

No need for all that, VLC can play most quicktime movies. I have seen it do some wierd stuff with a few though:
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

But yeah Quicktime for Windows is just bloated and clunky. iTunes is too. No idea why as they run great on a Mac. Microsoft stuff for OS X seems to be the same way, inferior to the Windows version imo.

 

[sdotbrucato]

I do have a very low level buzzing sound when I plug the power supply in.

Yeah i'd say so. Reading disks, encoding etc requires parts to spin and draw more amps then idle. I'd have to say your PSU is dieing...

As mentioned above, when parts get under/over volted... they act very funny. Could also lead to some permanent damage. . .

As for QuickTime causing harm... not likely.

 

[Black Morty Rackham]

I really doubt any of these problems were in any way related to QuickTime. Yeah, QuickTime is absolute garbage on Windows, but it's just a bloated piece of software -- it isn't malicious and I certainly see no way it could destroy hardware.

Compared to what, exactly? VLC has some serious stability issues and has really shitty scrubbing/skipping/fast forward features. WMP has always been very slow for me, and generally unstable too. What else is there? Mplayer? Most video players I've tried on most platforms are actually kind of rubbish. The only real problem I've ever had with Quicktime, is the lack of a 64-bit version.



As for the actual topic, no, Quicktime cannot actually harm your hardware unless it was already damaged.

 

[phide]

No need for all that, VLC can play most quicktime movies. I have seen it do some wierd stuff with a few though

I've just had too many issues with playback of QuickTime files with non-QuickTime software. My modestly-powerful rig can't even play back 1080p QT content without severe frame drops (in MPC, anyway). QuickTime player handles them admirably, but it's typically a face-tearing experience from having used MPC for so long.

Compared to what, exactly?

Compared to practically every media player on Windows, including WMP, or at least those that I've used. Of all the media players I've ever used on Windows, QuickTime is by far the most bloated, slow, overly complicated for the number of features it sports, unstable and unreliable. Don't get me wrong -- I generally love Apple software, but have no love for anything they've produced for Windows.

I personally use Media Player Classic, which is an absolute joy. It's a bit over-complex, but very light, very powerful and obscenely stable. If you haven't tried it, I couldn't recommend it more highly.

 

[BigBadBiologist]

You said you have a Sparkle power supply. That's most likely your issue. Other thing to check is the caps on the mobo. Boards of that era are notorious for having bad capacitors. Check for bulging and/or leaking.