I got a headache...

[criscoduck]

Ive been working on an issue now with my system for about a month. I just came across your site in the past couple of days and tried a couple things to help solve me problem... so here I am. Ive been working with another forum posting ideas and my problem.

To sum up my problem. Im a gamer. My games are crashing to desktop. With absolutley no pattern in the crashes.

Ive got a thread on another board, that explains a lot of things and goes back and forth picking other peoples brains. Here is the thread:

http://forums.thetechguys.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3748

Ill let you folks read through that, I think I have exhausted their brains there and will now try and pick your guys' here.

Thanks for any help or ideas folks.

Quick system spec's:

windows XP (home) ((yes updated))
512 kingston HyperX DDR400 3200 memory (2 256 sticks)
Intel 2.6c processor
asus p4p800 (not deluxe) mainboard
seagate 80 gig 7200 cuda 4 hd
ATI Radeon 9700 vid card (not pro)
SB audigy 2

[Darthtanion]

OL... lets toss some info out and see if we can get anywhere to help you out.

1- You mentioned in your other posts the use of Stinger and you also have NIS and NAV installed. There are several well documented issues of these two vendors products not playing nicely with each other. Though it generally causes a drastic system slow down, I don't think that a crash to desktop would be out of the question. If you have Mcafee installed as well as Norton, this may be at least a part of your problem.

2- You also stated the problems began when you upgraded the memory, processor and mainboard. When I first saw this post, the first thing that popped into my head was a PSU not capable of handling the load you're throwing at it. What brand and size power supply are you using? Either a low wattage model or a cheapo low-bid model can cause exactly the problems you're complaining about. Intermittent crashes are a common side effect of too little juice.

Hopefully we can lick this problem. :)

[asklepios]

also please give us your IRQ screen shot from your device manager. it could be an IRQ conflict too.

[criscoduck]

okee

net security was uninstalled as well as virus software... now that was through the uninstall, ifn there is something in my reg there that may mess with me not sure.

as far as my PS, Ive got a 350 watt antec... I had thoughts about this, but antec has a decent rep and I figured I was okay here... perhaps im wrong.

As far as IRQ's go Im fine there, nothing sharing the same IRQ. At one point XP had assinged my printer port and video card the same IRQ... shrug... but that was long ago taken care of.

Thanks for the feedback and its nice to have a fresh set of thinkers on this.

[criscoduck]

im still lurking here guys, everyone go on vacation?

[G Smith]

Just a thought here. I agree that the PS might be the problem but..

Is your XP fully updated(oops missed that you already said that in your sig) and your DirectX?

What are your temps running?

Have you run spybot and/or adaware?

Just had a friend with the same problem that found some nasty net bugs on his system. Although he was crashing to reboot.

[criscoduck]

okay I nabbed PCAlert4 from the net.

Is anyone famaliar with this program? In the program it can give you volatge readings for your PC. 4 of them to be exact. All of my voltages are fine, minus the last of the 4. Which shows that a certain piece of my hardware should be running at 10-13 volts.. yet im running at 15+ volts... (with nothing on my machine overclocked).

I wish I could provide more info than this, but there is no help file for the program so I have no idea what voltage that may be refering to.

Just more FYI, the 4 voltage settings are as follows:

vcore - (range)1.2-2.5 (running 1.16-1.17)
3.3v - (range)2.5-4.5 (running 3.25)
+5v - (range)4.5-5.5 (running 4.95)
+12v - (range)10.0-13.0 (running 15ish)

[Soulburner]

The 12v rail often reads super high via software from some reason, I wouldn't trust it.

Mine has shown over 15v as well.

[criscoduck]

checked out my BIOS, my +12v setting reads in the 11's there, but my system monitor in BIOS is showing my PS fan as running too many RPMS's.

Also checked the back of my PS and it shows as a 15v PS and has no setting to set 12v (the little red switch on the back of my antec PS)

does anybodies PS have a 12v switch on it? or are we all running 15 ???

[criscoduck]

scratch that mine has to read 115.. not 15

*mumbles*

[Wiggo]

That switch on the back of the PSU is for changin' the input voltage between US household voltage and the voltage most of the rest of the world uses. Also don't believe all software that reports voltages as the software could be wrong or not configured properly. Try Motherboard Monitor and Sandra to see if ya get the same readings though it could also be the sensors on the mobo are out as well.

[criscoduck]

yeah, I grabbed Asus' MB monitor tool... Im running under 12 volts...

sigh... back to the drawing board.