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« DOEP (Daily Open-Ended Puzzle) (intermittent): Ending Oz || Back to Blog | Deval Patrick: Just Words » October 15, 2006
About 10-15 minutes into graphics intensive games, my machine is crashing and crashing hard: No blue screen of death, just the blackness of heavy blow to the head. Windows Event Viewer gives me an error #1 for Disk 1. That error message indicates a problem with the disk controller or the cable. But here's the fun part. I disabled Disk 1 via Windows disk manager (i.e., I did it through software, not by changing the hardware), and not only does the system still crash, it gives me the exact same error for the new Disk 1. So, I'm thinking it's not really a disk problem. I ran Mem86 overnight and it reported no RAM problems.. There are oceans of unused disk space, so that's not the problem. And I have 2 gigs of RAM, so I'm not running out of space. I ran AVG virus checker and CounterSpy spyware checker. No problems. The temperature monitors don't indicate overheating. Of course, I don't see the monitors when I have a full-screen, graphics-intensive game going. My guess is that the culprit is the graphics card. I have an ATI Radeon 9800xt. I've set AGP to off instead of its usual 8x, but it made no difference. What's your guess? [Unless Mac hardware never fails, please do not tell me to get a Mac. Thank you.] [Tags: bugs] Posted
by D. Weinberger at October 15, 2006 08:01 PM
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Comments
Is the fan on the graphics card working? The problem definitely sounds like overheating. Overheating on the graphics card (as opposed to on the CPU) probably isn't caught by your temperature monitor.
Posted by: Luis | October 15, 2006 09:41 PM
In your ATI control center you should go to the ATI SmartGart page and turn off AGP-FastWrite - it's often a cause of instability
- and always download and install the lastest drivers from ATI
Posted by: Andrew Tetlaw | October 15, 2006 10:04 PM
Unfortunately, the fan is working. Maybe I'll try running it with an external fan trained directly on the cards...
Posted by: David Weinberger | October 15, 2006 10:06 PM
If it makes you feel better, my MacBook Pro has the random shutdown problem, too (fan quit) -- so back to Cupertino it goes.
Posted by: AKMA | October 15, 2006 10:43 PM
I know of a case where the installed system RAM was incompatible with the motherboard which caused hard crashes during intense 3D tasks. The crash occurred when the motherboard tried to quickly transfer data from the system RAM to the graphics card memory. The problem system was a Shuttle PC and the solution was to only use the exact RAM specified by the motherboard manufacturer. Using RAM with the same technical specification but from an unapproved supplier failed. It was very annoying and expensive to correct...
Posted by: David Harrison | October 16, 2006 12:19 AM
Andrew, unfortunately, I had already turned it off, as well as turning off every other feature listed.
David, my PC has been stable for 1.5 years, with the same RAM. Of course, the RAM could be failing, but it passed 12 hours of testing with what I think is a reliable RAM tester (mem86).
Akma, I hope your Mac gets well soon.
Posted by: David Weinberger | October 16, 2006 12:47 AM
I had the intermittant shutdown problem similar to what you describe on my Intel Core Duo powered Macbook, and it turned out to be a design flaw in the motherboard that was causing the computer to shut everything off/down when a certain temp was reached. I'd send the computer back for warranty service.
Posted by: Wesley Fryer | October 16, 2006 04:44 AM
Maybe it's your electricity :-)
Posted by: geodog | October 16, 2006 05:36 AM
I suspect capacitor related problems should have died out by now, but here's a chappie who might be able to help if it's related to naff components:
http://www.motherboardrepair.com
I had one of my boards repaired there.
Posted by: Crosbie Fitch | October 16, 2006 06:55 AM
My first guess would always be heat. After that I'd guess video card craziness.
Can you find a way to max out your CPU for 20 minutes without using the video card? If your machine still takes a dive you'll know whether it's the card or not.
There are various benchmarking/testing utilities out there that'll run your system through its paces, though it's been a long time since I've used any of them so I'm not sure which to recommend.
Posted by: Brad | October 16, 2006 08:40 AM
It made it through the night with a graphics-intensive game running. Unfortunately, I changed two variables at once, so I'll have to backtrack to figure out which one was the cure. First, I reinstalled DirectX 9 (thanks to a suggestion from Mitch Ratcliffe). Second, I aimed a small portable fan at the graphics card.
I suspect it's DirectX because the fan's access to the hot elements on the board is blocked by the fan that's built into the board (and which is working fine). But, I'll try removing the fan later today and see what happens.
Thanks for all the great suggestions...
Posted by: David Weinberger | October 16, 2006 09:56 AM
I turned the external fan off and it crashed within the 1.5 hours I was out.
Looks like I'm going to get a water-cool system of some sort...
Posted by: David Weinberger | October 16, 2006 01:08 PM
Maybe it's telling you to quit playing games and get back to work. These things can be such nags!
Posted by: Charlie Green | October 16, 2006 02:17 PM
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Posted by: dsg | October 24, 2006 01:56 AM
TOO MUCH PORN
Posted by: Anonymous | March 13, 2007 03:45 PM