Let me bounce a problem off youse guys

B

Bitchnmoan

2[H]4U
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Dec 1, 2001
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Updated: found the solution. Please see down about 6 posts if you're curious.

Please keep one thing in mind as you read this:

I travel alot, so I get very limited time to fart around with my machine - there may be some obvious things that I haven't tried, but it's probably because I'm time-crunched when I'm home. I'm kinda looking for some ideas of things that I've forgotten in my on-again off-again troubleshooting.

Ok, about 4 weeks ago, I picked up Medieval: Total War so I could play it on the road on my lappy. It runs but is sluggish. But it runs - no crashes. So far so good. I got it home after a two-week trip and tried to put it on my sigged machine. I played for oh, 10 minutes and the machine crashed hard - as in locked up like Alcatraz. Well crud. Reboot and it says missing or fault with C:\Windows\System32\Config\System. Couldn't recover from that (I later figured out how to fix it with help from MS support site) so I bit the bullet and re-did Windows. Worked a little while, tried to install same game, same crash but during installation. Ok, Medieval and my hardware don't get along, right? So I thought...

Re-install AGAIN, same thing while just farting around the web to get drivers. One thing I noticed is that after some reboots, whether or not I had a crash (some crashes were not as bad - plain ol BSODs), was that it would tell me I had a problem with the file structure on a drive. Odd, my drive had always been ok before but components gotta die sometime, right? Checked the egg to compare prices on a vid card (I've been looking to upgrade anyway) and an 80 GB Maxtor - BestBuy was within 10% or so, so I decided to get the stuff there (don't bash me for using BestBuy - I couldn't get RIGHT NOW delivery, esp on a Saturday, from NewEgg or anyone else). Put the 80 gigger as my main drive but kept the GF3 in the system since you should only change one thing at a time, right? Ran for a little bit, BSOD or two, "messed up drive" message a couple times on both drives (WTF?), then eventually the problem with that system file. Re-do Windows. Ugh. I got BF1942 and a bunch of the mods going for a day but then the problem happened again, once while simply surfing. Redo Windows, etc. Found the link on MS support to fix the system file problem - it worked for a little bit but crashed the same way after an hour or two.

Tried the ATI card (9800-based). Eventually same thing. Went with the base drivers for the card. Same thing. Didn't install the sound card at all. Same thing. Different versions of the VIA 4-in-1 drivers (now Hyperion drivers). Same thing. On a lark, ran good ol' MemTest86 - no faults. It somehow ran fine for a couple passes without crashing - I think I got lucky.

Now that I'm on the road again and away from the problem, I got to thinking that I previously (3-4 months back) had some trouble where I was getting locked up while I had my case laying on its side. I stood the thing up after doing whatever it was I was doing and it immediately ran great until this problem popped up. My suspicions are that I need to yoink the mobo, try the old cardboard mobo-tray test, see what happens. I'm thinking that I'm getting a short on the backside somehow; though I don't often go inside the box to mess with things so it's hard to explain why it would be shorting all of a sudden.

I need to check the PSU output and make certain all my rails are good and quadruple check all my internal connections. I did reseat the cards when putting in the new drive and again when I slapped in the vid card so I don't think a poor card connection is the trouble. I haven't re-installed the CPU and HSF yet and I'm hoping I won't need to. I'll give the mobo the once-over for crappy caps and such. My hunch is that a total disassembly/reassembly and physical inspection will be the best starting point. I will also try some different drive cables since that would explain some of the strangeness.

Before I do something drastic like upgrade the mobo, CPU, and RAM, any other decent, quick, cheap suggestions? Or am I on the right track with a total rebuild of existing parts?
 
LOL - I'll see if I can make some that make sense:

1. random crashes, can't seem to pin it down to any app
2. Crashes can be BSOD or just plain locked up. Usually locked up.
3. After crash, one of two things will often happen:
a. get fault with the file C:\Windows\System32\Config\System
b. get error message saying one of the drives needs to be checked.
4. Tried older and newer drivers, plus all Windows updates
5. Tried new hard drive
6. Tried new vid card
7. Tried different games/apps - will even crash just surfing
8. MemTest86 ok
9. Suspect shorting out on my mobo tray since it had similar problems a while ago when laid on its side.
10. Tried without sound card installed.
11. Will probably completely tear apart and re-build over the upcoming long weekend. My feeling is that this will find the problem.
12. Oh yeah, stock speeds all around, no OC.

13. Any other good ideas before I dump money on parts?
 
11. sounds good

It sucks but thats what i'd do.

Also, could you let us know what the BSOD msg is? I find googling BSODs help a lot. Hope it helps
 
Umm, ya know, I hadn't written down the messages (stupid, I know). I do remember that I got two different BSODs, though. I know they weren't "IRQ not less than or equal to...". I remember that bastard from the days when the chipset drivers were having troubles...

I should add in the Cliffy's, if it isn't the mobo shorting then maybe I have a bad drive cable. I was thinking this because I didn't have any problem running MemTest for several passes but the machine screwed up a couple times when closing programs and when installing a couple things, thus accessing the drives. Hmmm... got spare cables so that goes on my list.

Ah well, some quality time with the innards will do me good.... :)
 
The mechanical rebuild accomplished nothing except maybe a little bit of housekeeping. What I seemed to have forgotten was that maybe 4 months back, I had a stick of RAM fail on me. The original sticks were Crucial PC-2100, CT3264Z265.16T. Crucial sent me, under warranty, .8T. I also ordered a second stick of .8T, giving me a total of 768MB. I was getting faults initially until I set my BIOS memory settings to Auto - then it ran fine. Apparently, what I did not consider was that some apps would run (BF1942) ok and others didn't like the mixing and matching.

Searching the net for the VPU Recover fault I was getting came up with some threads on other boards saying people were often able to fix the problem by replacing their RAM. I decided to pull that one stick of .16T (I remembered the mismatch as soon as I read that) and the machine started working fine. Instead of crashing immediately, I was able to play Independence War 2 for several hours this weekend and will probably install Total War again next weekend. One mod for BF42 (Battlegroup42) would also crash immediately but now plays just fine. :)

Thanks for the input.
 
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