P4 System hangs, returns pixellated

[JHiggins]

Hi everyon

This has been happening on this system for quite a while now (a fe
months at least) but has increased since I recently upgraded m
motherboard and memory

My system is as follows

ASRock P4V88 Motherboar
Intel P4 2.
1024MB DDR PC320
GeForceFX 5600 Ultra (256MB
Running WindowsX

The mo'board and memory are new as I mentioned above. While I had th
system apart I took the opportunity to blow out all th
dustballs/dirt. I first noticed the problem while playing my ol
favorite, Tribes 2 (yes, I was online). The system froze for abou
5-10 seconds and then snapped back with a bit of pixellation goin
on. 15-20 minutes later, the system would hang again and come bac
more pixellated then before, etc, etc..

My first thought was that maybe it was internet related since I wa
playing online--apparently not. Playing Knights of the Old Republic
it did the same thing to me

The only background software of note is ZoneAlarm, Lexmark printing
daemon and that's about it. Any ideas?

Jo

 

[Sparex]

My first thoughts is check your temps..
if temps check out..
check your drivers for your video card.. get the latest ones and
reinstall them.
When you install and New MB, windows likes to use its drivers so there
might be an older reference driver its useing that is not the right one
that you need to be using.

if all else fails.. go into task manager and shut everything down that
windows will let you. dont close svchost programs or you might pop the
RPC or other Services that are required to be running and have to
reboot and start all over. (unless you get command prompt open
beforehand Run > "Cmd" and do a shutdown /a to abort the shutdown in
time)

good luck let us know how it works out.

 

[JHiggins]

Thanks for the feedback Sparex

I have no way to monitor my temps w/out rebooting into BIOS. So that'
what I did after the last "hitch". My CPU temp was 109 F and my Mob
was 100 F. As I watched the CPU went up to 111 F. That didn't strik
me as horrible so I poked around in my BIOS some more

I found that my AGP aperature was set to 64MB--I have a 256MB card, s
since 256MB was an option, I chose that. Also, Primary display adapte
was set to PCI, which I switched to AGP. I don't know how I misse
these things when I set it up. I haven't jumped into a game yet t
test it out, but I'm feeling optimistic

Will post back with results. P.S. I also reinstalled the latest Nvidi
drivers (77.77 I believe) and and upgraded (I assume) driver for m
motherboard chipset. The drivers didnt' make a difference--still ha
problems

Jo

 

[David Maynard]

Thanks for the feedback Sparex.

I have no way to monitor my temps w/out rebooting into BIOS. So that's
what I did after the last "hitch". My CPU temp was 109 F and my Mobo
was 100 F. As I watched the CPU went up to 111 F. That didn't strike
me as horrible so I poked around in my BIOS some more.

Checking in BIOS will not tell you what it is like when running. Download
and install motherboard monitor.

I found that my AGP aperature was set to 64MB--I have a 256MB card, so
since 256MB was an option, I chose that.

AGP aperture has nothing to do with how much memory is on the card. It's
how much of system RAM to allow the card to use (like when it runs out of
onboard memory and wants to borrow system RAM as a substitute).

Also, Primary display adapter
was set to PCI, which I switched to AGP.

Doesn't matter unless you have both a PCI and AGP video card installed. In
which case it tells the BIOS which one to use as the primary (first)
display. When there is only one it'll use the one.

 

[Sparex]

well from what your reading here. is idle temps and they look ok, MB is
a bit high in my tastes but could just be summer heat and ambient
temps... if your MB gets to much higher though it would be an issue of
case cooling. CPU has a way to go till its insanly too hot..

Get a Program to check your temps, either from the Mobo maker or get
Motherboard Monitor and set it up. (MB mon doesn't have an auto detect
for finding out what you have for sensors wise, unless they added it in
the past year..) Keep it running in the background and once your
graphics mess up again quickly alt-tab to it and see where the temps
are..

let us know how it goes.. also something to look at is to make sure all
your fans are blowin the right way... dunno how many times I forgot to
look for those little arrows and found my intake to become an
exhaust..... gives me a chuckle every time i do on acident.

 

[Kadaitcha Man]

well from what your reading here. is idle temps and they look ok, MB
is a bit high in my tastes but could just be summer heat and ambient
temps... if your MB gets to much higher though it would be an issue
of case cooling. CPU has a way to go till its insanly too hot..

Get a Program to check your temps, either from the Mobo maker or get
Motherboard Monitor and set it up. (MB mon doesn't have an auto detect
for finding out what you have for sensors wise, unless they added it
in the past year..) Keep it running in the background and once your
graphics mess up again quickly alt-tab to it and see where the temps
are..

let us know how it goes.. also something to look at is to make sure
all your fans are blowin the right way... dunno how many times I
forgot to look for those little arrows and found my intake to become
an exhaust..... gives me a chuckle every time i do on acident.

Fans working on exhaust are known to provide better cooling than fans on
working intake, you stupid and illiterate ****stain.

 

[David Maynard]

David Maynard wrote:




David, just some FYI: Motherboard monitor lost support over a year ago
apparently. Many newer boards aren't supported. See
here.
bummer

Any other software suggestions? I'll look around myself, but trying to
figure this out is driving me nuts.

Try speed fan: http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php

I examined my BIOS yet again and turned off the built in AC97 sound as
I have a Creative Labs card installed. My BIOS version is 1.70, the
latest v. available is 1.80--with the only change being a new patch
for Turkish Win98SE--yippee. Not worth the trouble I don't think.

About 30 minutes ago I played my "test game" which is Knights of the
Old Republic, the computer hung for close to 5 full minutes then
completely crashed after maybe 5 minutes of play. On recovery I had a
message from Windows saying it had recovered from a serious error,
blah blah. Now I managed to look at details of the problem and found
a few files related to the problem in a temp directory on my HD, but
as soon as I closed the error messages, XP deleted the files!! Argh!
So I have nothing to examine after that. I will play some more to
cause another crash and maybe copy those files somewhere so I don't
lose them. Maybe they could be useful for someone here to help me
troubleshoot this.

Look in the event logs: Administrative Tools - Event Viewer.

 

[JHiggins]

Got it to crash again. I saved the info. There were 3 files tha
showed up after restart. One of the files was a *.dmp file--any ide
how I can examine this or make use of the info? Another file wa
sysinfo.xml--which I saved in a word doc. I'm really hoping tha
someone here can help me use this information to figure out where m
problem lies

Let me just reiterate one more time. The ONLY happens when I'm playin
a game. It doesn't matter which of the 3 or 4 I play. Doesn't matte
whether I'm playing online or offline--only when I'm playin
something--period.

Tried using SiSoftware Sandra to give me some feedback--didn'
discover ANYTHING useful

Here's an exerpt from the sysinfo file that might or might not b
pertinant

<DESCRIPTION>NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600</DESCRIPTION>

<HARDWAREID>PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0312&SUBSYS_00000000&REV_A1</HARDWAREID

<SERVICE>nv</SERVICE>
<DRIVER>nv4_mini.sys</DRIVER>
</DEVICE
- <DEVICE
<DESCRIPTION>Creative EMU10K1 Audio Processo
(WDM)</DESCRIPTION>

<HARDWAREID>PCI\VEN_1102&DEV_0002&SUBSYS_80651102&REV_0A</HARDWAREID

<SERVICE>ctaud2k</SERVICE>
<DRIVER>ctaud2k.sys</DRIVER>
</DEVICE
- <DEVICE
<DESCRIPTION>Creative Game Port</DESCRIPTION>

<HARDWAREID>PCI\VEN_1102&DEV_7002&SUBSYS_00201102&REV_0A</HARDWAREID

<SERVICE>gameenum</SERVICE>
<DRIVER>gameenum.sys</DRIVER>
</DEVICE

David, the Speedfan program didn't seem useful after I installed an
ran it. Tried to configure it to my motherboard, but ASRock wasn'
even listed. If you think I can make use of it somehow regardless
please explain as I am unfamiliar with it

Jo

 

[David Maynard]

Got it to crash again. I saved the info. There were 3 files that
showed up after restart. One of the files was a *.dmp file--any idea
how I can examine this or make use of the info? Another file was
sysinfo.xml--which I saved in a word doc. I'm really hoping that
someone here can help me use this information to figure out where my
problem lies.

You're wasting your time chasing after dump and temporary files. Like I
said last time, look in the EVENT LOGS. Control Panel, Admin Tools, Event
viewer.

Let me just reiterate one more time. The ONLY happens when I'm playing
a game. It doesn't matter which of the 3 or 4 I play. Doesn't matter
whether I'm playing online or offline--only when I'm playing
something--period.

Most likely you've got a DirectX or driver problem.

Next is memory. When AGP kicks in it's talking to system RAM too and that
stresses the memory timing because it's got both the CPU and Video card
accessing it simultaneously. Try setting RAM to the slowest settings.

Tried using SiSoftware Sandra to give me some feedback--didn't
discover ANYTHING useful.

It won't.

David, the Speedfan program didn't seem useful after I installed and
ran it. Tried to configure it to my motherboard, but ASRock wasn't
even listed. If you think I can make use of it somehow regardless,
please explain as I am unfamiliar with it.

Find out what the temperature sensor chip is and configure it for that. And
they list two Asrock boards on their site that support fan control as well.