Is there a windows log file to check after the computer crashes?

quarryman

Having few problems that cause the system to hang in the middle of a game. Pretty random and have ruled out overheating. It will lock up and requires a cold reboot. I have a feeling it is being caused by the graphics card.

Is there anywhere I can go to read a log file showing the last actions being performed and see if there is some pattern. Obviously since its a lockup there are no error messages or warnings.

TIA

q

tman

if you're using windows xp

go into the control panel, administrative tools, computer managment...
erm, its somewhere in there...

quarryman

Originally posted by tman
if you're using windows xp

go into the control panel, administrative tools, computer managment...
erm, its somewhere in there...

using xp alright. right i'll go have a look.......

thanks.

ColmOT [MSFT]

If the machine crashed with a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD),there will be a hexidecimal error code, something like 0x0000007e.

If you want to post that error here I'll tell you what the error means.

Cheers,

Colm.

quarryman

no blue screen.

system locks up so no other option than a reboot using reset.

ColmOT [MSFT]

Ok - that's a dodgy graphics card or gfx driver.

Probably a deadlock in the driver.

C.

quarryman

hopefully its that, and not a hardware problem.

its had weird symptoms. the lockup would randomly occur, during a game usually. i tried lots of drivers and finally found a solution that seemed to work. in the smartgart tool for ATI there is an option for AGP read and AGP write. turning AGP write seemed to solve the problem.

then it started again. according to the card manufacturer from emails it was unlikely it was being caused by overheating as the 9600 pro runs very cool compared to the 9800pro. i've since swapped it into a friend's computer to try it out and see what happens.

if it does start crashing there i was hoping for a log file i could look up to see what the last call was etc and track down the problem.

i'll try the problem mentioned above and see how that goes.

thanks for the advice.

edit: should add that i did a clean install of XP without luck. also I've noticed that the frequency of the crashes are related to the agp speed (x4, x8 etc) and whether agp write was on or off etc as mentioned above.

ColmOT [MSFT]

If your machine is overclocked, that could be the culprit also.
Check your RAM as well if it is overclocked.

quarryman

Originally posted by ColmOT [MSFT]
If your machine is overclocked, that could be the culprit also.
Check your RAM as well if it is overclocked.

well initially it was overclocked

P4 2.6 @ 3.0
cpu:ram 5:4

ram @ 376(188*2)MHz (DRR 3200)

gfx
400 @ 450 clock
600 @ 610 ram

reckoned that might be causing it but when i put everything back to stock it still happened (but less frequently).

edit: ran prime95 for 10 hours with no errors overclocked (and stock speeds i think)

Stephen

A friend of mine had problems with a 9600XT having similar crashes. Disabling 8X AGP and using 4X instead solved it. (He set it to 4X in the ATI drivers and in his BIOS)

ressem

Had the same issue under win2K with an early 9700 PRO, no overclocking.

Resolution turned out to be a mixture of drivers and bios updates for the motherboard and graphics card, which I haven't dared touch for over a year + notching AGP voltage to the card up.

But that was on an early revision of the AGP 8x boards.

Perhaps look up
http://www.rage3d.com/board/index.php
for problematic motherboard / 9600 combinations and relevent bios updates before you start swapping out ram, placing card on it's own PSU connector, disconnecting spare peripherals etc, as I spent uncounted weekends doing.

lemeister

Sorry for hijacking this post a little but.....

Colm,

Would you be able to tell me what this error code is that I got during a BSOD please:

0x0000007E (0xC0000005, 0x00000100, 0xF769DC54, 0xF769D954)

I've had only had my pc about 2 months and I've had about 4 BSOD's already!

Cheers

LM

ColmOT [MSFT]

LeMeister, a 0x7E BSOD more than likely means that there is a dodgy driver somewher ein the system. The Blue screen should identify the offending image. If you don't know what the file does, post the name here and we can investigate further.

Blurb:

Bug Check 0x7E: SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED
The SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED bug check has a value of 0x0000007E. This indicates that a system thread generated an exception which the error handler did not catch.

Parameters
The following parameters are displayed on the blue screen.

Parameter Description
1 The exception code that was not handled
2 The address at which the exception occurred
3 The address of the exception record
4 The address of the context record


Cause
This is a very common bug check. To interpret it, you must identify which exception was generated.

Common exception codes include:

0x80000002: STATUS_DATATYPE_MISALIGNMENT
An unaligned data reference was encountered.

0x80000003: STATUS_BREAKPOINT
A breakpoint or ASSERT was encountered when no kernel debugger was attached to the system.

0xC0000005: STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION
A memory access violation occurred.


basically, it's a kernel mode thing, and updating the driver may solce the problem. It looks like your driver tried to access memory it doesn't have permission to.
If you can boot safely into the OS, go to Start-> Run-> type in EVENTVWR
Click on the System node, and look for an error that occurred about the same time as the BSOD.
It'll give you more information, feel free to paste in in here and I'll look into it further.

radiospan

It could be that the PSU isn't powerful enough. What's the wattage?

lemeister

Colm,

Thanks for your reply.

There were a couple of error's at around the time of the BSOD (22:12) last night but the one highlighted on the attached seems to have occured often in the past

PlazzTT,

The wattage is 250

lemeister

Don't know why the bmp didn't attach last time but the event source of the error which happened just before the BSOD was 'Service Control Manager' and the event was '7023'.

The other error I noticed just before the above was 'System Error' and the event was '1003'.

If this isn't enough info, let me know.

Cheers for the help, much aprreciated.

ColmOT [MSFT]

The SCM (Service Control Manager) gives it away...you've got a dodgy service installed on your machine.

The hard part now is to determine which service is the problem, and then figure out which app installed it.

If you go to a command prompt (start-> run: CMD.exe)
and type:
CD \ [enter]
net start > %systemdrive%\services.txt [enter]

this will list the services that are currently running on your system

Oh, are you running XP Pro? (I hate XP home - it's much more difficult to diagnose!!)
if so, type
wmic service list brief
instead and include the output in your next post.

lemeister

Sorry, it's XP Home!

I listed the services currently running but have no idea where to start looking for the problem! All the diagnostic programs I've run so far have given the all clear, so don't know what to do next!

These Windows services are started:

Automatic Updates
COM+ Event System
Computer Browser
Creative Service for CDROM Access
Cryptographic Services
DHCP Client
Distributed Link Tracking Client
DNS Client
Error Reporting Service
Event Log
Fast User Switching Compatibility
Help and Support
HID Input Service
LexBce Server
McAfee Personal Firewall Service
McAfee.com McShield
McAfee.com VirusScan Online Realtime Engine
Network Connections
Network Location Awareness (NLA)
NVIDIA Driver Helper Service
Plug and Play
Portable Media Serial Number
Print Spooler
Protected Storage
Remote Access Connection Manager
Remote Procedure Call (RPC)
Secondary Logon
Security Accounts Manager
Server
Shell Hardware Detection
SSDP Discovery Service
System Event Notification
System Restore Service
Task Scheduler
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
Telephony
Terminal Services
Themes
Upload Manager
WebClient
Windows Audio
Windows Image Acquisition (WIA)
Windows Management Instrumentation