how to troubleshoot

[Ampsonic]

For the last week or so, I've been experiencing system instability with my desktop. It first started happening while playing Battlefield Bad Company 2, but has since moved to happening even when I'm not doing anything intensive on the computer.

Both monitors will lose signal and drop into standby mode. Any audio playing does that crazy digital repeating sound for about 10 seconds before cutting out entirely. Only a hard reset brings the system back up.

My first guess is video card acting up, but I'm wondering if there is a way to find out definitely what is failing? I tried poking around the event logger, but I dont' really know what I am looking for (or where to look).

I did a clean format about a month ago, so drivers are up to date.

System is:
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R
Intel Q9550
4GB RAM
EVGA nVidia 8800GTS 320MB
Windows 7 x64 ultimate
2x300gb Seagate in RAID 0
XCLIO Goodpower 500W

 

[Dangman]

Follow the stickied Basic Troubleshooting Guide and see what happens.

 

[Mthr1]

Do you have another graphics card that you can use to troubleshoot? The video card would be my first area to investigate. Also, sometimes the most current driver isn't always the best driver to use. Experiment with previously old video drivers.

For the last week or so, I've been experiencing system instability with my desktop. It first started happening while playing Battlefield Bad Company 2, but has since moved to happening even when I'm not doing anything intensive on the computer.

Both monitors will lose signal and drop into standby mode. Any audio playing does that crazy digital repeating sound for about 10 seconds before cutting out entirely. Only a hard reset brings the system back up.

My first guess is video card acting up, but I'm wondering if there is a way to find out definitely what is failing? I tried poking around the event logger, but I dont' really know what I am looking for (or where to look).

I did a clean format about a month ago, so drivers are up to date.

System is:
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R
Intel Q9550
4GB RAM
EVGA nVidia 8800GTS 320MB
Windows 7 x64 ultimate
2x300gb Seagate in RAID 0
XCLIO Goodpower 500W

 

[Ampsonic]

No luck so far. I don't have an extra video card to test.

I just had my very first BSOD on win 7. Here's the log that came up after the reboot. Anyone know how to read this?

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033

Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: d1
BCP1: 000000000000000A
BCP2: 0000000000000002
BCP3: 0000000000000000
BCP4: FFFFF88008B8F9C4
OS Version: 6_1_7600
Service Pack: 0_0
Product: 256_1

Files that help describe the problem:
C:\Windows\Minidump\020511-21465-01.dmp
C:\Users\Nick\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-55629-0.sysdata.xml

Read our privacy statement online:
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If the online privacy statement is not available, please read our privacy statement offline:
C:\Windows\system32\en-US\erofflps.txt

 

[Ampsonic]

Also in the event log, I see this precedes most of the restarts:

The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk2\DR2.

How do I determine which hard drive this is? (I have a RAID 0 array for system, a 1 TB internal, and a couple of USB)

Also, I see a lot of this:

The device, \Device\CdRom0, is not ready for access yet.

 

[Dangman]

The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk2\DR2.

How do I determine which hard drive this is? (I have a RAID 0 array for system, a 1 TB internal, and a couple of USB)

Go into Device Manager, right click on the hard drives, and look at the Location. Bus 2 should be Harddisk2