Weird crash, anyone have a clue?

T

TSx

Gawd
Joined
Jan 11, 2004
Messages
647
Last night while playing World of Warcraft, out of nowhere I got a crash which resulted in having to restart. It happened after about 10 hours online of running perfectly through raids, running around, zoning, changing chars, etc. I was in the zone it crashed in for probably 10-15 minutes before it happened...my graphics went weird and like flickered shapes and stuff then locked up. I ctrl+alt+deleted a few times and after a minute it hit a blue screen with text, but I hit ctrl+alt+delete right then so I didn't get a chance to read the blue screen.

After my comp restarted, I loaded WoW and got on, ran around for probably 5-10mins again, no problem, then all of a sudden while I was sitting still at 64fps doing nothing, it crashed again. Same thing, but no blue screen, totally froze, had to power my comp down. After it rebooted, I loaded WoW again, only about 4-5 minutes later it did it again, but this time it kept flickering different shapes/sizes/screens, it would show one for 15sec then flicker a bit, I could hear/see the game moving between flickers, then it would do it again.

I alt+f4'd the game and got a game error which wasn't very useful. http://imagelink.org/image/3039.jpg

Comp specs:

AMD 64 x2 3800+
eVGA N516 7800GT
ASUS A8N5X
2gb Corsair ValueRam
250gb WD 7200rpm
80gb Maxtor 7200rpm
Antec NeoPower 480w psu
ViewSonic VP930B monitor

CPU 46º(maybe 42, can't remember), case 40º, video 51º at the time of the second crash...I checked the temps after it rebooted and was in windows.

The board, proc, and video (and 1gb ram) are less than a week old. I got the new parts and 2 days after getting them, the video card went bad. Shipped it back, got a new one, it was bad on arrival. There was also speculation that the motherboard PCI-E slot was bad, so I sent both back and got new video and motherboard on the 23rd, used them fine until this.

Last night the black on the forums here had all sorts of blue dots/lines in it, and white seems to have some yellow in the text. Today after restarting those are gone and it seems fine.

I grabbed my digicam since I couldn't very well screenshot what was happening, and was able to take two short movie clips of what happened. The blue dots all over on the black screen in the clip is exactly what I saw on the forums black background last night. This is really irritating since I've had to deal with so much crap in the past ~10 days for this comp.

vid 1: http://www.blightedguild.com/movies/viderror1.avi

vid 2: http://www.blightedguild.com/movies/viderror2.avi

Anyone know what would cause this? I'm on a 1 day old Motherboard and Video Card, this being my 2nd board in a week and 3rd video card in a week, I'm seriously hoping nothing is wrong.
 
i'm no expert but it sounds like a video card hardware failure.
the little blue dots and corruption are normally caused by faulty pipelines and/or bad memory (vid card mem).

it probably failed after your 10 hrs of stressing it.

if you've oc-ed anything, run it stock.

don't know why so many of the cards you had went bad. possibly the power supply? i don't know.
 
It's not OC'd, running stock from the manufacturer. I've updated drivers to the current version from Nvidia.

The first card I got worked great, just the same as this one. After the second day of playing, I shut my comp down at around 3am. Around 3pm the next afternoon I turned it on again, only to get very a very garbled and messed up screen (as you can see in the screenshots below) which lead to me calling eVGA, and them recommending I get a card replacement.

1st vid card error: http://imagelink.org/image/3042.jpg
http://imagelink.org/image/3040.jpg
http://imagelink.org/image/3041.jpg

That one was also not overclocked. Stock cooling, stock settings. Nothing unusual about the setup at all.
 
well those screen shots show corruption when not even in windows.

the most likely possibility is a motherboard or videocard fault, i think.

but quite suspicious if you've changed both already. couldn't be the ram or cpu, i don't think (i've never seen anything like it before).

with your current card, can you boot into windows and use non-3D apps with no corruption atm?

do you get corruption with any other game? I suspect you must.

can you run prime to test if it's the cpu or ram or board?

check your voltages also.
 
The current card (3rd one) doesn't get the artifacts in dos/bios, and loads into windows fine right now. I'm on it typing this right now, and everything is crisp, smooth, and fast. I haven't tried playing a game yet today to see the effect there yet. I'll be loading WoW shortly though. (That's the only game I have installed at the moment.)

As of right now, using the ASUS PC ProbeII software, it lists voltages/temps at:
Vcore @ 1.38v
+3.3 @ 3.38v
+5.0 @ 4.92v
+12.0 @ 11.90v
CPU @ 37º
MB @ 38º

and using Nvidia's control panel, the video card shows @ 47º

I just did a bios update using the ASUS Update tool, which went from 502 to 602 I think it was. Upon rebooting per instruction of the update, I got a 'CMOS checksum error - Defaults loaded' error message. Went into the bios and everything seemed the same it was, exited out, and the comp froze before even posting. I powered it down, waited 30 seconds, powered it on and it loaded everything fine into windows this time.
 
yeah, the asus bios update thing does that some times - nothing to worry about.

all voltages seem good, and temp is ok too but got to recheck when under load.

looks like another rma for the video card is most probable, unless the bios update fixed any bugs.

best of luck.
 
This seems to be a notorious problem with WOW. I used to do tech support but have moved into engineering now. We used to call World of Warcraft, World of Warcrash. I'll bet money it has absolutely nothing to do with your videocard and more to do with your dual core proc. ;)

Check out this thread http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=983781
 
After having WoW up for 15-20 minutes, the screen went garbled with artifacts and the abstract art design. I was able to alt+f4 the program only to result in seeing part of my desktop for a few seconds before it seemingly powered down. The monitor shut off as if connection was lost, and the comp did nothing. I had to power down manually.

My temps were:
CPU 42ºc
MB 39ºc
Video 55ºc

I know my case runs a little hot due to only having a 120mm exhaust fan, no intake fan, and the location of the case...but I wouldn't have thought that would be too much.
 
Try running something non World of Warcrash, like aquamark 3 or 3dmark 2006. See if you crash in that. The problem with alot of WOW players that I ran into is that they were ready to RMA their vidoecard but the card only crashed in WOW. They would be like, "that's all I play" well I couldn't rma the card based on 1 game. IMO I think you should stress test your card in 3dmark 06. Run it 3 or 4x in a row. If you can do that wow is the problem.
 
WoW is all I play, so that is indeed all I've tested on. The thing that bothered me was when I saw the blue bars/dots in windows with the game closed, just browsing the forums. I'm downloading 3dmark 06 right now, and will run it a few times when it finishes.

Also, I did read through that thread on AMD x2 fixes, but after going through nearly all of it and seeing people saying they were still experiencing the same problems/issues they were before trying those, I hadn't tried any. I see a lot of 'it fixed CS' or 'it fixed HL' but no 'it fixed WoW' which as I said is all I play right now.
 
TSx said:
WoW is all I play, so that is indeed all I've tested on. The thing that bothered me was when I saw the blue bars/dots in windows with the game closed, just browsing the forums. I'm downloading 3dmark 06 right now, and will run it a few times when it finishes.

Also, I did read through that thread on AMD x2 fixes, but after going through nearly all of it and seeing people saying they were still experiencing the same problems/issues they were before trying those, I hadn't tried any. I see a lot of 'it fixed CS' or 'it fixed HL' but no 'it fixed WoW' which as I said is all I play right now.
Click to expand...

If you look at my sig you'll see my proc
I had many of the problems and that thread was actually helpful and got me
to be able to run the games. It's definitely not useless. Give some of those
things a try. I did and it helped greatly. That thread is a sticky so as you
can tell many people but not all were helped with it. I think you should give
it a try.
 
I just finished running 3dmark 06 three times back to back, and all went flawless. I would have done another one or two more runs but it's time to load WoW for my guilds raids. I installed the ms hotfix listed in the #2 suggestion, and restarted. I've loaded wow now and am hoping it stays up this time.

I thought about it and I only crashed it one zone in WoW. I didn't understand how it would/could be an issue after 10 hours of solid running, then all of a sudden crashing every 5-10 minutes. I know with my previous ATI card, I would get vpu errors in only two zones in game...so it made me wonder if this could be something similar with an nvidia card. I've had WoW up for about 13-15 minutes right now and so far so good, granted the last crash didn't happen for ~15 minutes. If it does work, I don't know if the hotfix helped, or if it was just that one zone(area) causing the problems. I'll try hanging out in that zone again after we finish today.
 
Went strong for about 6 hours, then just crashed again. This wasn't in the same area as had previously happened, and this was after the ms hotfix for the x2 processor. Still looking for any suggestions.
 
After the last crash I booted up and played for another hour, then it crashed again seemingly out of nowhere. Did the same screen flicker then went to a grey screen; I could move my cursor but not do anything. It was just a solid pure grey screen, nothing else but the cursor...cursor moved full screen as if normal. Ctrl+Alt+Del did nothing, had to power down manually.

This is very frustrating -=o\
 
TSx said:
After the last crash I booted up and played for another hour, then it crashed again seemingly out of nowhere. Did the same screen flicker then went to a grey screen; I could move my cursor but not do anything. It was just a solid pure grey screen, nothing else but the cursor...cursor moved full screen as if normal. Ctrl+Alt+Del did nothing, had to power down manually.

This is very frustrating -=o\
Click to expand...

Try disabling one of your cores software style. launch wow and quickly hit cntrl alt delete. Find the .exe file for world of warcraft and right click it. Choose set affinity and uncheck processor 1. Hit okay and then run wow see if it crashes.

Also did you download the amd processor driver from their site? Also after the hotfix you have to go in the registry and edit a entry there. Did you do that too? Sry so long to reply was watching Fernando Vargas get his arse kicked. :D
 
Or you can roll back to 78 series drivers like I did and never get a crash again. Also the new 83.90 beta drivers are suppose to be better. They can be found at guru3d.com
 
Hmmm.. My brother and I have been switching off in WoW for nearly 24 hours a day (we have irregular sleeping patterns) and haven't had a crash. The computer itself has been on for several days non-stop without a problem, so I'm more inclined to believe that the problem's about the hardware or other software affecting the system (namely the drivers).

If it's more "zone-specific" I probably wouldn't be able to fully test that since I cant really go anywhere I want in the world. I'm on the Horde so I wouldn't be spending time in Alliance Territory.

Can you tell me what part(s) of the world this is happening? If I can reproduce the problem, then it's most likely about the game.
 
Ok a bit of a recap. After the 6 hours on, crash, 1 hour on, crash, I was on for at least a few hours after that last night. During that stint, I logged on at around 12:30pm, did molten core, onyxia, then went to zul'gurub, at 6:30 was when I first crashed I think, in ZG. Got back on, did a bit more of ZG, then the 1 hour later crash. Got back on, finished the zone, logged some mules, and sat around chatting for a few hours with no problems.

Today I logged on again at about 12:00, did Ahn'Quiraj 40 for about 7 hours, cleared several areas of it, died and zoned in/out a few times, and crashed once, about half way through, while running through the zone doing nothing special after a wipe. Got back on and it was fine until we finished. I zoned out, went to Org, flew to Felwood, realized I forgot my plant salve, hearthed to Org, got them, flew back to Felwood, and crashed in flight at approx 9:45pm.

All crashes before when I thought it might be zone specific were in Felwood, while sitting perfectly still at 64fps doing absolutely nothing, camping whipper roots. However since I've since crashed in ZG, AQ, and in flight through probably ashenvale at the time, I don't think that's the case.

The #2 suggestion in the AMD x2 thread doesn't require editing the registry unless you want to disable the hotfix unless I read something wrong. I also tried the other fix mentioned, #3 on that list; changing the affinity to only CPU 0...that didn't seem to work either as I crashed twice after doing that.

I tried the 83.90 beta drivers also, which didn't work either, still crashed after those. I haven't tried the 78 series ones yet, so that will be my next test.

eVGA tech support I talked to last night said it sounded like a video issue more than anything, and wants me to rma the card through them this time instead of through mwave for a 4th time. I'll probably do a cross-shipped rma either way to see if the card was indeed the problem.
 
TSx said:
Ok a bit of a recap. After the 6 hours on, crash, 1 hour on, crash, I was on for at least a few hours after that last night. During that stint, I logged on at around 12:30pm, did molten core, onyxia, then went to zul'gurub, at 6:30 was when I first crashed I think, in ZG. Got back on, did a bit more of ZG, then the 1 hour later crash. Got back on, finished the zone, logged some mules, and sat around chatting for a few hours with no problems.

Today I logged on again at about 12:00, did Ahn'Quiraj 40 for about 7 hours, cleared several areas of it, died and zoned in/out a few times, and crashed once, about half way through, while running through the zone doing nothing special after a wipe. Got back on and it was fine until we finished. I zoned out, went to Org, flew to Felwood, realized I forgot my plant salve, hearthed to Org, got them, flew back to Felwood, and crashed in flight at approx 9:45pm.

All crashes before when I thought it might be zone specific were in Felwood, while sitting perfectly still at 64fps doing absolutely nothing, camping whipper roots. However since I've since crashed in ZG, AQ, and in flight through probably ashenvale at the time, I don't think that's the case.

The #2 suggestion in the AMD x2 thread doesn't require editing the registry unless you want to disable the hotfix unless I read something wrong. I also tried the other fix mentioned, #3 on that list; changing the affinity to only CPU 0...that didn't seem to work either as I crashed twice after doing that.

I tried the 83.90 beta drivers also, which didn't work either, still crashed after those. I haven't tried the 78 series ones yet, so that will be my next test.

eVGA tech support I talked to last night said it sounded like a video issue more than anything, and wants me to rma the card through them this time instead of through mwave for a 4th time. I'll probably do a cross-shipped rma either way to see if the card was indeed the problem.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it seems like something's up with the video card. My bro went to all of those places a few days ago with no problems at all. Except for AQ... we just opened the gates up a couple hours ago. Crazy shit on a PvP server. :D

Anyway, I didnt have any problems before nor after trying the dual core hotfix... Never needed to change the affinity or anything either. It pretty much worked "out of the box", so I'm pretty sure that it's the video card.
 
I have the exact same problem with WoW..

I solve it by removing one of the 2 memory sticks (I have 2x512mb) so I play with only 512mb of ram...

it's weird but that works with me..
 
The fact that you can run 3dmark 06 3 or 4x in a row prooves that it isn't a problem with the videocard. 3dmark 06 puts videocards on their knees. If you can run that without crashing it's World of Warcrash. :D :D Seriously I've said it before this game has issues.
 
I'm still not convinced it's just WoW. I don't underdstand why I would be able to play for 6-10 hours at a time, often in high-usage areas (raids with 39 other players on screen, while taking videos using gamecam) where my fps will drop down to 10-20, and run fine...then all of a sudden crash out of nowhere in a non-intense situation. If it is the game, the fixes I've tried thus far have proven to be rather useless, so I'm not sure what to do.

I put in the 78.01 gpu drivers last night and don't think I've had a real chance to try them yet, so maybe they will work; but if it's a processor thing...heh.
 
TSx said:
I'm still not convinced it's just WoW. I don't underdstand why I would be able to play for 6-10 hours at a time, often in high-usage areas (raids with 39 other players on screen, while taking videos using gamecam) where my fps will drop down to 10-20, and run fine...then all of a sudden crash out of nowhere in a non-intense situation. If it is the game, the fixes I've tried thus far have proven to be rather useless, so I'm not sure what to do.

I put in the 78.01 gpu drivers last night and don't think I've had a real chance to try them yet, so maybe they will work; but if it's a processor thing...heh.
Click to expand...

If you are not getting crashes in 3dmark06 it is not a hardware problem. I had the same issue with crashes in WoW. Reverting back to the 78 series of drivers fixed the problem.

Also you state that the the card came from the factory at 470/1100 up from the stock specs of 460/1070 on the N516. Set the clocks back to 460/1070. Looking over at the EVGA some people have had these problems.
 
TSx said:
I'm still not convinced it's just WoW. I don't underdstand why I would be able to play for 6-10 hours at a time, often in high-usage areas (raids with 39 other players on screen, while taking videos using gamecam) where my fps will drop down to 10-20, and run fine...then all of a sudden crash out of nowhere in a non-intense situation. If it is the game, the fixes I've tried thus far have proven to be rather useless, so I'm not sure what to do.

I put in the 78.01 gpu drivers last night and don't think I've had a real chance to try them yet, so maybe they will work; but if it's a processor thing...heh.
Click to expand...

Try updating your sound drivers if possible. I've also heard Wow is not too stable with onboard sound and a sound card is highly recommended. Perhaps it could be an audio driver problem. Also try updating drivers for nic card too.
 
Using a SoundBlaster Audigy LS sound card, that's one of the parts I kept in from before...been in for a while now, ran wow for a year with it no problem. I did however also add 1gb of ram while upgrading, so I have 4x512 Corsair pc3200 ddr400 ValueRam, which I don't know why would be a problem.
 
Hmmm since this is an issue for more than one person, it *might* be WoW... Maybe you should use memtest to check it out your memory too. I'm using some of the latest beta drivers right now (dunno which ones but its not posted at nvidia.com), so I don't think that it's a video driver issue. Never had problems with previous drivers either.
 
Yoshiyuki Blade said:
Hmmm since this is an issue for more than one person, it *might* be WoW... Maybe you should use memtest to check it out your memory too. I'm using some of the latest beta drivers right now (dunno which ones but its not posted at nvidia.com), so I don't think that it's a video driver issue. Never had problems with previous drivers either.
Click to expand...

I agree with this above ^^^^^^ www.memtest86.com. Let it loop the test about 3x and check for ram errors. ;)
 
I ran memtest last night as suggested, and it found no errors. I also tried the 78.01 drivers and have since crashed ~4-5 times. Today I loaded WoW and within 5 minutes crashed, powered down comp (totally froze it again) and loaded back up, no crash for several hours. Since then it's crashed twice, both hours apart. I can't find any pattern to the crashes, so I have no idea what is causing them inparticular.

eVGA shipped out my soon to be 4th card today via UPS so hopefully it gets here soon and perhaps fixes it. If not, I honestly have no idea what to do. I've tried 4 drivers for my video card, updated all bios and chipset drivers, tried various 'hotfixes', tried changing the affinity for WoW. I didn't crash while running 3dmark06 over and over, however as I said sometimse WoW will run for 10 hours without a crash, then crash a few times in a row, or be fine for a while again.

I'm really distraught over this as I bought these upgrades specifically for what I wanted to do, and all I've had since I got them is problems.
 
No luck with the 77.77 drivers either. New card from eVGA should be here today, let's hope -=o\
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top