Crashes and instability

G

GenBanks

Gawd
Joined
Feb 26, 2008
Messages
634
When I play Empire Total War, the sound sometimes starts to get distorted and will sound very robotic and strange, with voices stretching out and stuttering. This quickly gets accompanied by my mouse cursor getting laggy. Eventually the computer will freeze completely, and I get a grey screen with vertical stripes and a high pitch quiet buzz in my headphones.

I have also been having another problem which might be related. In most games, after playing for a while, the keyboard keys will get unresponsive and weird. I press W, for example, and it will take 2-3 seconds to respond. Then the W keypress will sometimes repeat indefinitely.

What's going on? :s Would appreciate any help!
 
Run some stability tests, like prime95, memtest86, etc. Could be your OC or memory, etc.
 
Hmm KB is one of the highest priority I/O devices - if that's getting stuck, not good. I'd say try another KB, but I'm betting it's something to do with your chipset/mobo. I looked at your other thread and you mentioned this happens at stock as well, so that is somewhat alarming.
 
Ok, good news is that I plugged in my Logitech G13 keypad, started up TF2 and played using the normal keyboard until the weird stuck/laggy keys thing started happening. Then I switched to the keypad and was able to play normally using that.

However... not long after the normal keyboard started acting up (after switching to the G13) I started hearing the robotic pops and sound hiccups which I described in the first post in TF2. The game started hanging for brief moments and I felt like it was going to crash soon. Then I lost connection to server so I quit the game and returned to desktop.

So, switching the keyboard helped, but it wasn't the only source of the problem and I'm still in need of help :(
 
Had the E:TW crash again this morning... robotic, popping sound, laggy cursor (even though the game itself was still running smoothly) and then a hard freeze.

My temps are normal, I did a memtest run for about 2-3 hours and nothing came up. I'll try returning all bios settings to default just to make sure it's some kind of unstable setting or overclock that's causing the problem.

Could it be some kind of motherboard/sound driver issue though?
 
Ok... I went into bios and restored all settings to default. So no overclock at all.

I went into ETW and resumed my campaign, but pretty soon the weird sounds came, followed by laggy cursor and freeze. This time though, the game crashed to desktop instead of a hard freeze and then Windows shut down of its own accord. :S

Any ideas??

Some of the errors I have in event viewer from the past few days are:

*The driver \Driver\WUDFRd failed to load for the device Root\SIDESHOW\0001. This is the most common one

*Windows detected your registry file is still in use by other applications or services. The file will be unloaded now. The applications or services that hold your registry file may not function properly afterwards.

DETAIL -
0 user registry handles leaked from \Registry\User\S-1-5-21-3003527355-1856425851-3864018519-1000:

*The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk1\DR1.

*A fatal hardware error has occurred.

Reported by component: Processor Core
Error Source: Machine Check Exception
Error Type: Internal Timer Error
Processor ID: 0

The details view of this entry contains further information.
This one has only turned up once in the event viewer
 
Hi. I'm having the same problem. And now I'm sure it's the motherboard fault. My config is i7 920, rampage ii gene, 6gb ocz 1866, radeon 5970, windows 7 x64.

So my Apple Keyboard does this crazy stuff every time when I turn my PC on for the first time. After a shut down and restart the situation is normal. I've used this keyboard on many different PCs and there were no problems back there.

Today I was finally able to install the original Apple Boot Camp drivers, which I used every time since I have the KB. So, I can't confirm if the problem is solved, since I restarted my PC as usual. But I am optimistic for tomorrow.

First - here is the link for the drivers: http://dox.bg/files/dw?a=fc4c1b7ac0

UnRAR them, then run BootCamp64 installer. Install, restart and voala. Your keyboard will use the original Apple multimedia controls with OSD notifications. (F7-F13 only). You can change the usage any time from the BootCamp manager (keyboard section) from the tray.

But there is one thing you must know about these drivers - despite it will show you a lot drivers installed during the installation - don't panic - it will actually install only the keyboard and won't ruin your windows. But the most important here is on every Windows start you will have 5 sec OS hanging. This is the time where Boot Camp Manager loads. Well, you'll get used to it.

I haven't played with any options outside the keyboard section and I advise you don't too. Well, that's it. At least if it won't work out for you, you will be able to use the extra keyboard functionality.

If the problem continues in my PC, I will sell the KB and buy a Microsoft Arc one in February.


edit:
Problem not solved. I quit trying and will switch to Arc keyboard soon.
 
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Update: I wrote to ASUS. They told me there is a new BIOS update that should fix the problem. It really worked. The keyboard works like a charm. Just update to the latest BIOS firmware (1104 I think).

Good luck :)
 
Arghh...it reduced the times where the problem comes out, but at the end it's still here...Tomorrow I will contact the support again :(
 
I installed the bios and it seems so far to have solved the problem, I can play various different games and browse the web for a long time and no crashes or unresponsive keyboard.

But judging by your update this stability is temporary :(


Edit:
Yep... Worked fine all day, but just now I launched ETW and the keyboard malfunction followed by crash problem came back.
 
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I now know what the problem is - overheating.

I discovered this because it's been very cold outside and my PC is next to the window. When a game starts to act up and the keyboard gets unresponsive, I've noticed that opening the window quickly brings things back to normal.

I suspect it is the motherboard overheating, since the Rampage ii Gene has that reputation and also it's the keyboard that is having problems, which is controlled through the motherboard I assume.

I now keep the window open while using my PC, but I'm going to have issues when summer rolls around.
 
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