System crashing... Video card problem?

T

theSkulptor

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Dec 17, 2005
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Hopefully someone has come across this problem & can help. Is this a video card issue?

Thanks for your help!

http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r210/skulpy/badscreen.jpg

The image illustrates the problem, the mouse will move on the screen after it occurs for a short time, then everything locks up & the pc just stalls, only once did it automatically shut down & restart generating a minidump. The rest of the time no minidump has been generated.

The minidump text is as follows:
The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x100000ea (0x874e90d0, 0x878a8008, 0xbacdbcb4, 0x00000001).

This specific problem did not start until recently, after I got my 2nd RMAed BFG 7900GT (easiest RMA process I have ever encountered, sent my card back on a Thursday, got the new one on Monday, both RMAs were this way).

I have been able to run Oblivion for the better part of the last month since I got the new vid card. It did not crash at all during Oblivion play, AA was not enabled.

This initially happened only during games, COH, and then during Galactic Civ 2: Dark Avatar beta. It seemed to go away when I disabled AA. Then this morning it occurred twice during work usage, running Tbird, FF and Word.

The system is one I built almost a year ago, with VERY stable operation, with the exception of the vid card failures (it would run fine with my backup EVGA 7300GS). Nothing is overclocked.

The vital stats on my pc.


WinXP SP2 (up to date with all MS patches)
AMD 3700+ SanDiego
ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe
2 GB Corsair RAM
Creative X-Fi Extrememusic
BFG 7900GT (FW 93.71 drivers)
x2 250GB SATA2 WD2500KS
NEC DVDRW drive
Antec TruePower 550W PSU
 
Try downloading the Omega drivers for your card and see how that works out for you.
 
Thanks for the suggestions.

I'll run through a series of varied drivers to see if that makes any difference this evening.

I really hope it is a driver issue, if it is the card it will be the 3rd RMA in 11 months. At least BFG has been good about them thus far.

Cheers
 
Looks like a hardware problem to me, but I suppose it could be a driver issue. Has anything changed on your system (drivers, BIOS, etc.)?
 
I have not changed anything driver wise other than when I received the new card from BFG via the RMA around a month ago, i did a clean video driver install. I used Driver Cleaner Pro to clean out the old drivers & installed the latest non-beta drivers from Nvdia when i installed the new card.

I have not made any changes to the BIOS other than changing the boot order, so I could run memtest off of a bootable cd, from the Ultimate Boot Disk.
 
This is very odd... It sounds like the Video card is defective... Maybe you should check your MOBO while you're at it.
 
Any suggestion of how to troubleshoot the motherboard? I have been quite lucky & never had to trouble shoot one before.

Thanks
 
Yes I used a EVGA GF7300GS as an interim card while my 7900gt was out for RMA.

It ran great for a limited capability card.

Thanks for the help
 
It has to be the card... There's just no other way... Did you try the drivers yet?
 
I haven't had the chance to yet, i won't be able to do that for a couple hours, after I am done with work.
 
Since it hasnt been said yet, Reseat your video card some dust may have built up on a connector in the slot. If that fails try a different cable to hook up your monitor. to me it looks like a hardware issue i have yet to see drivers pull that kind of wierdness.
 
Well here is the odd thing. I installed the 93.81 beta drivers off of the nZone site and attempted to duplicate the problem. And for the past 18 hours it has been working fine. I'll keep pushing it over the weekend to see if it happens again.

So for the time being it seems to be fixed. Heres hoping it was some corrupt driver and the problem stays fixed.

Thanks for the suggestion about reseating everything, that was the first thing I did. I reseated everything but the CPU. I didn't switch out the cable connector since I don't have another DVI cable. I reseated it on both ends though. I am rather fastidious about keeping dust out so its pretty much dust free.

Thanks everyone for the help & suggestions.
 
That's the nice thing about this forum, everyone trying to help eachother.

Good luck with your computer and fingers crossed for it all being fixed.:)
 
I totally agree about the forum posters being uber helpful. Thats hwy I posted here.

Unfortunately I spoke too soon about the issue being resolved. It took longer this time but it did the same thing again. It looks like I'll be calling BFG to see what their thoughts are about this.
 
2 RMA's before the one he's about to do? I think I'll be skipping on any BFG product now.
 
I am still trying to track down the problem.

As for BFG: I talked with their tech support last night, and since it did happen when the card was running in 2D mode, when I was running Word, FF and TBird, they think that it is either a memory or motherboard issue.

Even with the 2 other RMAs I would absolutely buy from BFG again: they have been nothing but professional on the phone and the RMA when needed is quick & easy. They essentially cross shipped the card, it was shipped out when I dropped my card off at the UPS store.

So at the moment I am still trying to track down the problem. I ran memtest86 from the ultimate boot disk for 8 hours last night with no errors appearing.

Any other suggestions anyone might have would be appreciated.

Cheers
 
I'm running an Athlon 64 X2 4400+ on an Asus A8N32-SLI with 2GB Corsair XMS PC3200 DDR RAM and a BFG 7900GT 256MB.

I believe I have had the same exact problem as you do over the past there months or so. Sometimes when I'm using my computer, my screen will tear the same way it does in your picture and then the screen goes dark and the computer reboots. This usually happens when I'm resizing or moving an explorer/desktop window. I also have the screen just go dark and then a reboot, mainly during video playback. I usually get this every 1-3 weeks. I've gone through multiple versions of the detonator drivers and a few Windows XP installs without fixing the problem.

I called tech support and they had me go through the whole driver replacement process (safe mode and driver cleaner pro etc etc) and when that failed recommended that I try to isolate the problem by changing out everything in my system one piece at a time (haha). Since I don't have the parts to do that and I'm pretty sure it's the video card, I'm currently sending it in for RMA. I put my computer through some pretty thorough stress testing so I doubt it is the mobo or RAM that is faulty.

On a side note, the people at BFG really are exceedingly nice and helpful. Definitely a reason to stick with them.
 
I have done a couple things to my system & it seems to have stopped doing the crash thing. (of course the last time I said that it seemed fixed it did it again, so heres to tempting fate) This is day 5 of no crashes. Below are the changes I made, I don't know if they actually fixed or I have not created the same situation to crash it even though I tried to.

I did a bios update to 1303 from the ASUS site ( I was running bios 1205). There is a mention in the bios notes about the 1205 bios update adding compatibility for 7900 cards, maybe they improved upon it in 1303.

After the bios update, I had to manually change the memory timing since the bios was not setting it to the timing recommended.

The recommended timing for the Corsair twinx1024-3200c2pt is 2-3-3-6, the bios was setting it at 3-3-3-8. I do not know if that would make any difference.

I am also running the 93.81 beta drivers for the 7900.

I ran prime95 with no trouble for 9hrs, and memtest ran fine for 9 hours. Both were run from bootdisk and generated no errors.
 
Hope that helps. I know that I was never able to cause the crash intentionally. It just happened every week or two.
 
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