Toasting a Computer Part Deux

[MIKECLAN]

Ok, so I got my wifes machine working the other week. Everything seemed to be working pretty well. But We knew she needed a new hard drive, the old one was just way to small.

Went out to CompUSA picked up a new 60GB HD. Dropped it in no problems. Did a full install of Windows XP onto the sparkly new blank hard drive, and life is good.

Dropped in her Old Drive (the one I thought was toasted), copied data etc. everything is Still running fine.

So last night I tried to install EQ2.. Not so good. Kept getting repeating erros saying files didnt match up properly, Hit retry went back to the previous disk, reads that, asks for next disk in sequence and keeps going. untill I put in the next disk, same error. So basically I went from Disk one, Disk two, Disk One, Disk two, Disk three, Disk two, disk three, disk four, etc.

Very frustrating to say the least.

Now, when I try to run EQ2, I log in, start the download/patcher and as its doing the scan of the files, Bang, Reboots itself.

When I try to reboot, about 1/3 of the time I get to the safe mode selection, and 1/2 the time it crashes while I try and start it up in safe mode. If I DO get into the machine via Safemode, as soon as I try to run a scandisk/defrag Bang~ Reboots.

The other 2/3 of the time when it reboots, I can get to the login screen when you select which username to click on.

Here's where one of three things happen.
1. As soon as I touch the mouse, it reboots.
2. I click the account name, it hangs till I click it again, then presents me w/ a blank screen w/ just the XP background image, then reboots.
3. Lets me log in normally but as soon as I try to run scandisk or any other program it reboots.

I've even gotten it to reboot just by rolling the trackball around and moving the mouse over the screen w/o clicking on an account name.

I'm really not sure what the heck is going on here, its behaving a LOT like it was when I thought the Hard Drive had gone bad a few weeks ago. now I'm 1/2 wondering if the stupid trackball mouse has gone bad and is screwing things up somehow.

Other folks have mentioned bad motherboards and Bad Memory. Is there a way to actually test the memory? Some kind of downloadable diagnostic?

[DocBobo]

For a quick memory test you can download memtest86 here (http://www.memtest86.com/). The iso version boots to a slimmed down linux, so you don't need to boot up windows xp.

[Soulcollector]

I would say memory

if you have some spare RAM at home just swap and test

[MIKECLAN]

Sigh~ OK I've been banging on this thing all day now. Last night I ran the Memtest all night, came up with Zero errors on the memory testing.

It apears that the problem is with Everquest 2 on this machine.

Right now Its running a AMD 2600 chip on a Its a Matsonic MS8157E motherboard, with 1GB of memory, a PNY 5200 vid card. and a Soundblaster Live sound card.

What I don't get is, that this is the same equipment I was running before the upgrades, and I could run EQ2 fine (albiet slowly). I've sped the thing UP and now its giving me problems.

I did some digging on EQ Boards for info, and it sounds like there may be a problem with older sound card support, but new drivers are supposed to clear that up. (Updated the drivers for the Sound Card and Trackball mouse today also)

I've even started swapping the sound card around inside the case to see if the slot I had it plugged into is somehow conflicting. No luck there either.

Should I just Ditch the Sound card and use the onboard sound?

[DocBobo]

At least can't hurt to tryif removing the sound blaster helps solving your problems.
In the device manager you can sort all devices by used IRQ. Do m/any of them share the same IRQ line? If so, try switching the cards around in the PCI slots till they don't. It's a bad idea to have graphic card and sound card share the same interrupts, for example.
If you don't need them, you can turn off the COM ports in the BIOS. It frees up interrupts 3 and 4 for other internal devices.

(I just did a quick google search and found out that the chipset of the board has integrated graphics. Are these turned off automatically when you plug in a video card? Same with the audio card, is it disabled when you plug in a device of the same type? The answer ought to be yes, I'm just trying to make sure.)

[MIKECLAN]

Not sure on the audio portion, but I know I had to switch the BIOS so that the primary graphics was the AGP card.

I'll check on the Audio portion. The odd thing is, I got it running for about 30 min last night after swapping PCI Slots. Buttoned it up, and let my wife get on it to play for a bit and it started crashing again...

Tonight I'll yank the Soundcard tho, and see if it can be enabled on just the Motherboard.

If that doesnt work I'll see about shutting off the com ports too.

[MIKECLAN]

Well, so far I've taken out the SB Live card, installed new on-board Sound Drivers, shut off the Com port..

And it still crashes in EQ2. But at least its not rebooting windows anymore.

When WindowsXP pops up the "were sending an error message to Microsoft" it doesnt seem to give me a code for What the error was.

These are some of the codes I'm getting off this list.
0xc0000005 (twice)
0x80000003 (once)
But when I look these up, they're generally a sub-number for an error code, not he error code number itself.

Edit: Did a little more digging, came up with an interesting post :
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;325730

I know the Nvidia driver is up to date, but I think I'll try downloading the 4n1 driver just for giggles.

[DocBobo]

I did a little digging myself. This problem with nVidia cards on VIA boards is a little older, and as far as I recollect has been solved with drivers from both vendors about 2 years ago.
Here (http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=5&ArticleID=9) is a link from a VIA site that explains both bug and solution. I had already forgotten how bad it was for some people.

I certainly hope this is the problem, I'm beginning to run out of ideas what else to check.

Obviously you could rip out the GF5200 and replace it with your ATI card to see if that solves the problem. At least you can validate it is indeed a problem between board and graphics card this way.

[Mutton]

The next time you think a hard drive might be bad, run Hard Drive Regenerator (http://dposoft.net/). It is by far the best scan utility I've ever used.

As for the topic at hand, Quite a few of the computers I've seen rebooting at random lately are grounding issues (I recently saw one computer that would turn on at random because the NIC was misseated). If the drivers aren't your fix, you might want to check how everything is seated in your case.

[MIKECLAN]

Sounds like a plan to me. God, re-wiping this thing again... At Least I didnt install anything cept for drivers and EQ2 on it.

I do like the how-to part of the solution. Its a nice checklist for anyone putting a machine together from parts.

[MIKECLAN]

/Primal screaming

OK.. Now its not letting me install windows at all.

I did go to the Via page and down load the new 4n1 drivers, tested EQ and it stil crashed.

I downloaded the bios update, downloaded the installer and the Rom. Flashed the Bios, rebooted, loaded performance values, and shut off the bits I wasnt using like the modem, and set it to use the AGP slot for video, etc.

Fdisked the drive using the Matrox CD and installed the recommeded partition.

Installed windows, go to the point after checkign the hard drive and starting to load files when I got a BSOD.

PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

I've tried to re-do this several times, and sometimes it gave an additional code referencing either a problem with USB support or the ntfs.sys.

I've yanked any USB devices I could. Namely the USB Trackball my wife likes to use, and a combo Flobby Drive/Media reader.

Still gives me the BSOD PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA but so far has stopped returning addtional error messages saying its either a USB problem or a NTFS.SYS problem.

The last one for tonight simply has the STOP code of 0x00000050. It has given me several others, but I havent written them down.

Oh, and on the off chance it was indeed a memory problem I've also swapped out the two memory sticks to see if one or the other might be bad. No effect.

[DocBobo]

I did a little search for page faults and came up with this little diamond (http://support.microsoft.com/?id=817197). I quote:
This problem occurs because the driver for the USB Universal Reader from Lexar Media, Inc is not compatible with Windows XP.
This is not by any chance the drive your wife loves to use so much?

Anyhow, almost all search results point to a defect driver. They just don't point out which one it is. :roll:

different idea:
You can lower the front side bus speed of the CPU from 166MHz to 133 or even 100MHz. If the problem doesn't show anymore, it might be the connection between CPU and heat sink.

What worked for me this week in a similar situation: many CPU heat sink are sold with a gum like substance on the bottom of the heat sink. This stuff should melt and distribute between CPU die and heat sink. In theory this stuff connects die and heat sink perfectly. For me this stuff transfers heat like crap. In fact because the layer of goop is so thick the heat sink wouldn't fit right on the die. So I scraped it off and replaced it with Arctic Silver (tm) (any other conductive compound will do nicely as well). Problem solved.

[MIKECLAN]

Yep, saw the same little gem last night when researching the error codes. Thats why I yanked all the USB devices I could. Pluged in my computers plug mouse instead. Still didn't work, but it stopped giving me the code that referenced the USB problem.

I'll try adjusting the clock speed tonight and see if that helps. Gonna try and check CompUSA to see if tey have any artic Silver stuff too. I could easilly see me putting on a too thick a layer of the thermal grease when I put this together.

All I can think of now is that its a problem with the motherboard.

[DocBobo]

I don't hink removing the drive itself would be enough. Uninstalling the driver (even manually) should be better. Just because the drive isn't there doesn't mean Windows tries to access it (just for initialization purposes. And then boom BSOD).

Lexar seems to have stopped support for the reader. This page (http://www.lexar.com/drivers/index.html) has the newest drivers I could find. Unluckily there are 3 revisions of the drive, each with its own driver set. And the numbering doesn't fit the description in the MS errata either. This is frustrating.

Any thermal grease will do. I just bought 10 grams of the stuff years ago and it lasts for dozens of CPUs. Plus it isn't exactly cheap either.

[MIKECLAN]

Well last night went somewhat better. I dug aroudn in the Bios and coulnd't find anything to let me change the Bus Speed, but It did appear to have something to let me change the speed of the memory. Went ahead and lowered that to200 I think. there were only 3 choices, Auto, 233? And 200 I think. Should have taken notes last night, sorry.

Anyway, let it try to boot up, and it did complete the Windows install process. It also hung and BSOD at the point where it wants to do a reboot to, but since it was rebooting anyway... Eh~

Got windows installed, started dropping in various drivers. I did notice when I went to reboot after installing drivers, during the windows shutdown process, it would hit a BSOD and reboot itself, but It would still come back up without erros... So I dont know what to say about that.

Seems like everything was stable, it allowed me to run scandisk & defrag without any problems.

Installed Everquest again, and got it running nicely, but after a few min, Bang~ Crashs me out to windows. No Error message poped up tho, I think because I havent didnt go through the normal routine of downloading all the windows updates & service pack 2.

Gonna try installing all those tonight and trying again.

Still have not picked up the Thermal grease either.

[MIKECLAN]

Well, finally tried the New CPU Fan. Picked up a new one from CompUSA last night.

Friggin thing works!!!!

Arrrgghhh All this freakin wasted effort, for the want of a new 20$ CPU Cooler!!

/bangs head on desk

[DocBobo]

D'oh! (http://www.bbc.co.uk/bristol/content/features/2002/animated_encounters/groening/homer.jpg)

[MIKECLAN]

Ya this whole mess just pi$$es me off no end. I'd BOUGHT a High End cooler when I started this process. But the one I got just would NOT fit regardless of it being one specifically for AMD chips or not. So I returned that one and kept using the old one...

But everything else worked~

Untill I installed EQ2.

I guess the aditional Work required to run the graphics would push the processor over the edge and make it shut stuff down? I've no idea why this stuff was happening.

What Kills me, is out of ALL the messages, error codes, etc, that poped up, NOT ONE, EVER refered to a Heat problem!

All I needed was ONE message from Windows or the BIOS "CPU is overheating, needs more cooling" and I would have had this FIXED Weeks ago!

AAAAHHHHHH!!!!!

The Good news is..

After My wife got to play EQ2 for the last few days on her machine, I get to buy her a new Video Card so she's not so laggy in the cities :)