Need to get to the bottom of this

[Disturbedguy]

Hey all

As some of you may know I've been having problems with my PC.

I recently put this down to a RAM issue as I ran memtest and it returned faults, ive rma'ed this RAM this week, I remove the stick that proved faulty last week and havent had any problems until tonight.

PC has been running fine the past week and abit, no freezes or crashes, no nothing so thought all was well.

That is until tonight, about 45 Minutes ago, while playing CoD4 it froze, when it freezes i lose all interactivity with the system and lose sound, then I get a stutter of sound then nothing and this could remain for like this for maybe a minute or sometimes I have to restart the computer.

I dont think its my temps as both CoreTemp and PC Wizard both report my temperatures being rather low, the only temp that seems to get imo abit high, is the gfc card, at 72 - 74 degrees, but all my system temps seem fine, ive ran Prime95 and the pc has passed the tests, even with prime95 the temperatures remained low.

To make sure i was sending the correct ram back, I memtested all the ram again yesterday morning, all in the same slot one at a time.

So im stuck as to what the problem might actually be, im lost for ideas.

Someone mentioned in an ealier thread of mine that theres a setting in the BIOS i can change so if the system blue screens (which it didnt) I can read the message that comes up.

I also, now look at my dump file but tbh I dont know what am looking for, so tomorrow ill convert the file to text and then post the results here.

I thought I may have had an virus or some other infection, i scanned and round nothing at all.

Tomorrow im going to see if its CoD4, im going to uninstall and then reinstall the game.
Check the dump file.
Run prime again, download and run orthos.
Check my CoreTemp log file to check the temps.

Thats all I can think of, am getting quite annoyed with this now, the system is less than a month old.

Im hoping someone here could give me an idea of what to look for, nothing is overclocked so I know thats not an issue, what i dont understand is, I can have Photoshop open, Windows Media Player open, various webpages open, teamspeak, msn, the F@H client, Xfire and more open and I get no problems, no sluggish behavior and no crashes.

I appreciate any help I recieve.

Thanks

[Splash]

Someone mentioned in an ealier thread of mine that theres a setting in the BIOS i can change so if the system blue screens (which it didnt) I can read the message that comes up.

Not in the BIOS, in Windows.

Right click My Computer>Properties>Advance>Startup & Recovery settings. Uncheck Automatically Restart - now when your PC bluescreens it will sit with the error on the screen. Make a note of the error (and any associated STOP code) and then post it here or have a look on your favourite search engine.

Personally I'm wondering what motherboard and RAM you have, how much of it, and what voltage you're running through it. Also your BIOS version.

There are some boards that have issues with 4Gb of RAM when all 4 slots are in use (which a BIOS update can usually sort), and also some RAM needs more juice than the JEDEC standard.

[kalniel]

I had something very similar - I never found out the problem, but overclocking my CPU fixed it. Yes, you read that right. Granted mine is a completely different system, also my crashes also never produced an error report - the application would literally freeze and the sound would stutter until I reset.

Better avenues would be reinstalling directX, sound card/motherboard drivers, maybe even a fresh windows install. If that doesn't help, then try the bizare (OK, I initially overclocked to deliberately increase the strain on my PSU to try and induce more regular failures - the fact it cured the problem was a surprise).

[Disturbedguy]

Better avenues would be reinstalling directX, sound card/motherboard drivers, maybe even a fresh windows install.

This is a fresh build system mate so I dont think I need to format.

I will try reinstalling the DirectX drivers and ill probably try reinstalling the game.

@Splash: - Motherbaord is an Abit IP-35 Dark Raider mobo, i flashed the bios to the latest version as soon as installed as I had read about problem with this board and a large amount of RAM.

The RAM is:- 2GB (2x1GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), 240 Pins, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 4-4-4-12 although im now down to running on 2Gb after RMA two sticks which seemed to be faulty.

All voltages are at stock as setting the RAM timings to those on the sticker (above) just caused more instability.

Looking at the Abit flash menu is 14 and as when I flashed the BIOS update only went to this, I assume it is the latest version of the BIOS.

Thanks for the help

[Splash]

I found that not putting 2.1V through my 4x1Gb XMS2 4-4-4-12 caused instability. If you're finding that you have stability issues at the vendor rating then I'd say that an RMA is a good start.

Let's see what the STOP code is, that might give us some ideas.

[Disturbedguy]

STOP code, am assuming you mean from a Blue Screen, if that is the case ill have to wait until it blue screens again, next time I get a crash or restart ill up the voltage on the ram and see if that helps.

[Splash]

Yep, STOP code should be on the BSOD. I just realised that you have the same RAM as me, so 2.1V may well help (even if you run it at auto timings, though I have mine manually set.)

[Disturbedguy]

what do you have your ram set to?

[Splash]

4-4-4-12 2.1V

If you leave it at Auto it should run as default at 5-5-5-18, but with less juice.

[staffsMike]

Yep as above, auto will make them 1.8v and corsair won't do that even on it's auto timings usually.

[Splash]

Out of interest what are the specs of the rest of your system (in particular the PSU)?

[staffsMike]

From "My System" it's a corsair 520w HX

[Splash]

Well spotted. I never check My System (and I know I really should, it's me being lazy) for the simple reason that I forget to update it when I upgrade my boxes.

[Disturbedguy]

Yeah its the spec in my system mate..

So am pretty confident I have enough juice, which is why am confused as to what the problem could be.

For example, again today, ive had the system running all day, running various apps and games and it hasnt crashed, its as if it crashes just to make me go bed

[Splash]

Have you considered that your girlfriend might have installed something to call you to bed?

Seriously though, if running at full load doesn't cause the issue and it's not easy to replicate the issue I'm looking at the RAM. Or the HDD (unlikely, but run chkdsk just to be on the safe side)

[Disturbedguy]

Hehe dont live with the gf :'(

Well I thought it was the RAM as you have said, I tested my sticks to find only one tested faulty in memtest, so i returned the faulty stick and another stick back to SCAN this week and am now waiting to here from them on this.

I will change the voltage to see what it does and then run chkdsk, ermm how do i do that?

Am assuming its done from command line?

And Mike, how the stuffing hell you got so many posts in a year

Again thanks for the help Splash and Mike.