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Hard Locks with [H]oliday System Guide comp

E

el bob

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jun 18, 2001
Messages
1,178
Hey, first off I'm really happy with the hardware recommendations from the Holiday System Guide in a price/performance sense but I'm having just absolutely terrible luck getting the system to play any games for my brother. He's starting to wonder when he's going to get to use his Christmas present! :-D

ASUS A8N-E
XFX 6600GT 128MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16
Antec TRUEPOWERII TPII-550 ATX12V 550W
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ PIB
CORSAIR XMS 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit
NEC Black IDE/ATAPI DVD Burner Model ND-3550A - OEM
Western Digital 800JB 80GB ATA/100 HDD
XION Black XION II XON-103 SECC Steel ATX

(I rebooted after all the installations listed below except for games and normal program installations)

Round #1 - OS, drivers, updates, anti-virus)
I have a legal copy of Windows XP 64 bit through my school that I installed. I first installed the nForce 4 chipset drivers off the CD that the motherboard came with and the video card driver's that came on the XFX CD. I let Windows Update install critical updates and installed avast anti-virus.

Round #2 - first games installed and crashes
I installed Need For Speed Underground 2 and played for four of five minutes and decided that it worked. I then installed Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and the game froze after a couple of seconds at the main menu. The whole system locked up, a true hard crash. When the system hard crashes like this, there are no errors in Win XP's event viewer.

Round #3 - latest internet drivers, bios updates
I downloaded version 6.65 (the latest) of Asus's nForce4 chipset drivers from Asus's website and installed them. I then downloaded Asus's Win XP BIOS BIOS update tool. I downloaded the latest BIOS version 1010 and installed it with Asus's program. I then uninstalled the video card drivers from the XFX cd and downloaded nVidia's latest XP 64 bit GeForce drivers version 81.98 and installed them.

Round #4 - new games and more crashes
I installed the expansion to Warcraft III, The Frozen Throne and hoped that it would work better than Reign of Chaos. I was initially rewarded with a couple minutes of successful gameplay but the system then hard crashed to a STOP screen.

STOP: 0X0000007E (....., ....., .... ,....)
nv4disp.dll - Address .... base at ...., DateStamp ....
Beginning dump of physical memory

This time Event Viewer left a log and pointed me toward a some what generic Microsoft Support Page that covered driver errors in general that cause STOP faults.

I tried Need For Speed Underground 2 again and after playing for more than a few minutes it too crashes. It doesn't seem to depend on time as much as what you are doing with the game. The Frozen Throne and NFSU2 have both frozen on intro movies to gameplay as well as in game .

I also installed Age of Empires III and it froze at the main menu.

Round #5 - confused

Now I've got no idea what's wrong.

Anybody know what's wrong?
 
You didn't need to load the Nforce4 drivers from the motherboard cd, Windows finds all the appropriate drivers for your board. You also need to make sure that all your hardware and software has 64bit support.
 
No no, what are you talking about. ALWAYS install the Nforce 4 drivers from CD. ALWAYS.

Clear CMOS
Install Fresh copy of Windows XP (32 Bit)
Chipset Drivers
BIOS Update if you need it
Video Drivers, Sound Etc....

Will be happy to give you help over phone on this New Years Eve as long as it is before 8 PM EST. PM me.
 
although i have never used the 64bit windows and that could be the issue somehow...is it possible to try different memory?

Also have you checked CPU/GPU temps? I know these games are not killers, but ya never know.

Always check all your hardware first...usually is the problem. If it is software related as already posted try a clean install of 32bit windows
 
No, software is usually the problem. 80% of the time, it is all the softwares fault. I will help you, give me a PM, then a ring.

For the record, if it were CPU and GPU temps, you would have less Hard Crashes and more low FPS, start getting really choppy.
 
STOP: 0X0000007E (....., ....., .... ,....)
nv4disp.dll - Address .... base at ...., DateStamp ....
Beginning dump of physical memory


that sounds like hardware to me...Memory!
 
I forgot to mention I ran the memory through 6 passes of Memtest tests with no errors so I think the memory is alright. I understand that memtest isn't perfect but 6 successfull passes of all 7 or 8 memory test leads me to believe it's probably ok.

iSkylla, I'll take you up on the phone offer. I'd really like to be able to use 64 bit XP though.

NFSU2 and Warcraft III have both been reported to work with 64 bit XP through google searching on forums.

My brother doesn't run any 64 bit dependent applications at the moment but I'm willing to go through some extra legwork for him to have the benefits of XP 64 bit in future game releases.
 
First:- Do a quick check of temps & volts either in the bios or via a monitoring program.
Does everything look ok ?

Second:- Download and run Memtest86+.
Can you run three loops with no errors.

Third:- Prime95 torture test time.
Will it run for 8-24 hours error free ?

Fourth:- Add 3dMark.
Can you loop 3dMark on top of Prime.
Again error free.

If the answers to 1->4 is yes then its probably a software/driver error.

Luck........ :D
 
Sent PM

Voltages are 11.7 on the 12 volt line, 4.97 on the 5 volt line, 3.29 on the 3.3 volt line and 1.39 for vcore. They are stable at these values.

Temps are 30 degrees C processor and motherobard with processor rising to 38 degrees C during gaming. The case has a 120mm front intake, 80mm side intake, 120mm exhaust, 120mm psu fan exhaust, and the stock retail amd heatsink/fan so the machine is well cooled.
 
Stop error refers to a file in the nvidia video drivers.

Download the latest official AMD nForce4 Platform, and video drivers from www.nvidia.com, not Asus's website. The drivers on Asus's website are outdated.
 
Stellar said:
Stop error refers to a file in the nvidia video drivers.

Download the latest official AMD nForce4 Platform and video drivers from www.nvidia.com, not Asus's website. The drivers on Asus's website are outdated.
Click to expand...

Chipset drivers should be installed first before video and sound drivers. Any current chipset, video, and sound drivers should be uninstalled while in Safe Mode before installing any new drivers you've downloaded.
 
Stellar said:
Chipset drivers should be installed first before video and sound drivers. Any current chipset, video, and sound drivers should be uninstalled while in Safe Mode before installing any new drivers you've downloaded.
Click to expand...

Ok I'll try the Safe Mode uninstallation process.

Should I uninstall sound and video drivers before uninstalling chipset drivers (for the purpose of installing newer chipset drivers)?
 
el bob said:
Ok I'll try the Safe Mode uninstallation process.

Should I uninstall sound and video drivers before uninstalling chipset drivers (for the purpose of installing newer chipset drivers)?
Click to expand...

Would be prudent, yes.
 
Ok Stellar. I've done what you said and uninstalled the GeForce driver in safe mode, restarted, uninstalled all nVidia drivers (was an option in add/remove programs), manually uninstalled nvidia chipset drivers in device manager (still in safe mode), restarted, booted to normal windows and installed latest NVIDIA nForce drivers. Restarted and installed latest GeForce driver (all drivers for 64 bit xp pro) and restarted.

I'm now loading up games to see if it crashes.
 
Yes it did work. Many thanks to Stellar and everybody else for all the help.

My brother is a lucky guy. I flew off to school a couple of hours after finishing the driver fixes to his computer. His game list:

Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, The Frozen Throne
Need for Speed Underground II
Civilization IV
Age of Empires III

He's a young civ guy.

Again, many thanks guys! :D :D
 
Awesome el bob... now get your bro World of Warcraft and MS Flight Simulator and let him play some REAL games on that sweet machine :)
 
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