PC crashing with some frequency.

Karl Hungus

Been having a problem now with my PC going +12 blue screen of screaming agony on me, and it's wrecking my head. It only happens when playing a game, it's never happened outside of that. The bluescreens have been flicking up too fast for me to catch what's on them, but I've done a full format and reinstall of Vista, complete reinstall of all apps, and the crashes not only keep on coming, but are in fact getting much more frequent.

Checked the Event Viewer, this what's said:

Event filter with query "SELECT * FROM __InstanceModificationEvent WITHIN 60 WHERE TargetInstance ISA "Win32_Processor" AND TargetInstance.LoadPercentage > 99" could not be reactivated in namespace "//./root/CIMV2" because of error 0x80041003. Events cannot be delivered through this filter until the problem is corrected.

Any help?

Edit: Also ran a memory check, came up fine.

Biggins

If its a physical drive fault...

Have you considered FDISK'ing the drive by any chance? This will strip your drive down to the bare partition and even clear the primary one and then you'd have to Fdisk it again to construct a primary again before its even then formatted.

ONLY - I repeat - ONLY to be done if you know what your doing!

pixbyjohn

Processor overheating. Try blowing out the fins around the heat shield, full of dust and fluff. Just a guess, had it myself.

Overheal

we really need the error code, eg. STOP 0x0000008086 means an exception has occured in the CPU

but if it only happens in the game then your culprit is most likely an overheating CPU/GPU. Possibly faulty ram.

The only BSOD I have had under vista has related to a CPU fault caused by an outdated Intel Matrix Storage Driver

Karl Hungus

Hmm, some googling has come up with this. Is it worth trying?

How do I find the error code?

Overheal

might try checking the problem and solutions app, or the reliability and performance monitor. both are searchable from the startbar

Alternatively, recreate the error in-game. The only line of the BSOD you need is the STOP: 0x000000000

Karl Hungus

Overheal wrote: »

might try checking the problem and solutions app, or the reliability and performance monitor. both are searchable from the startbar

Alternatively, recreate the error in-game. The only line of the BSOD you need is the STOP: 0x000000000

Checked the Problem Reports and Solutions app there, and the last couple of error messages all say Video Hardware Error, and have this to say in the details:

A problem with your video hardware caused Windows to stop working correctly.

This is very worrying.

Overheal

dun dun dun..../

is the driver up to date? any recent changes? Is it a new/old card? Dust Buildup?

Karl Hungus

Whole new PC as of a couple of months ago, latest ATI drivers.

You know, I think I may try reinstalling the drivers from CD, see if that helps, as it was updated more recently.

Could be that the graphics card is overheating (have you OC the card ?), what make is your PC, can you run a full system diagnostics test ?

Overheal

If you download the trial version of everest that has a whole battery of temperature sensors on it. As well as information for everything you never knew about your PC

ooPabsoo

maybe your graphics card is overheating? what temps you getting while in game?

Slow Motion

Is it a specific game, or games in general? I had that usless nvidia 4(something or other) which was compatible with almost nothing, crashed on every second game I bought!:mad: If it is a game have a look round and see if others are having the same problem with it as there might be a patch!

Karl Hungus

Thinking it was definitely a driver issue. I've reinstalled the drivers from the CD, using driver sweeper to clear the old ones, and so far no issues whatsoever. I don't think it was overheating because I was going under the assumption that it was, and underclocked the GPU, yet it was still crashing. It's now clocked normally, with the older drivers installed, and there hasn't been a crash yet today.

The game that was crashing is World of Warcraft, I don't really have anything else installed at the moment, so I don't know if it's games in general or just this one.

Overheal

If the card is in any way up to date I dont see why it wouldnt be able to handle WoW. What card is it? Does googling show up any similar reported problems?

Karl Hungus

It's a 4870 512.

Overheal

google revealeth much on this matter:

http://www.google.com/search?q=4870+WoW+bsod&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

it seems to be a common issue. im too tired at the moment to read through any of it in detail though.

Nothingbetter2d

Slow Motion wrote: »

Is it a specific game, or games in general? I had that usless nvidia 4(something or other) which was compatible with almost nothing, crashed on every second game I bought!:mad: If it is a game have a look round and see if others are having the same problem with it as there might be a patch!

i too had this problem


nvidia nf4/500 chipset sucks for overheating

caused a multitude of bsod errors and eventually killed the primary partition on my c drive also killed the ram controller and sata controller..... i await my new motherboard

Overheal

Slow Motion wrote: »

Is it a specific game, or games in general? I had that usless nvidia 4(something or other) which was compatible with almost nothing, crashed on every second game I bought!:mad: If it is a game have a look round and see if others are having the same problem with it as there might be a patch!

that old Geforce 4 MX 440? *shudder*

It was a fine card for a while. But the reason it was so incompatible with games by 2004 was because it lacked a Pixel-Shader module.

TerrorFirmer

Is it a specific game, or games in general? I had that usless nvidia 4(something or other) which was compatible with almost nothing, crashed on every second game I bought! If it is a game have a look round and see if others are having the same problem with it as there might be a patch!

Overheal wrote: »

that old Geforce 4 MX 440? *shudder*

It was a fine card for a while. But the reason it was so incompatible with games by 2004 was because it lacked a Pixel-Shader module.

Exactly. It was incompatiable with many, but the first poster suggested that it was wholly unreliable - not true. Anything the Geforce 4MX ran, it ran stably. If it was crashing every 2nd game then that was attributable to something else -a dodgey card, overheating, or something along those lines. I've used about 5 MX's of the various types (420,440 etc) in various machines through the years, including one which featured said card as it's primary gaming card and I actually can, hand on heart, say it was one of the few cards I've ever owned that didn't crash on me once. The reason it was so crap is because it wasn't a real GF4, it was an older variant with some new features. It was more of a Geforce 2 GTX

And it really wasn' that crap at all, except for maybe the lowest model, the MX420. The others one were fast enough and when I got mine (the 440 I think) it ran Unreal Tournament 2004 and Call of Duty - the latest games when I had the card - at high settings perfectly well at normal resolution.

Interestingly according to Wikipedia, there was a PCI-E edition of the GF4 MX 4000 released in 2004! Talk about rare, never heard of that before.

Slow Motion

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Exactly. It was incompatiable with many, but the first poster suggested that it was wholly unreliable - not true. Anything the Geforce 4MX ran, it ran stably. If it was crashing every 2nd game then that was attributable to something else -a dodgey card, overheating, or something along those lines. I've used about 5 MX's of the various types (420,440 etc) in various machines through the years, including one which featured said card as it's primary gaming card and I actually can, hand on heart, say it was one of the few cards I've ever owned that didn't crash on me once. The reason it was so crap is because it wasn't a real GF4, it was an older variant with some new features. It was more of a Geforce 2 GTX

And it really wasn' that crap at all, except for maybe the lowest model, the MX420. The others one were fast enough and when I got mine (the 440 I think) it ran Unreal Tournament 2004 and Call of Duty - the latest games when I had the card - at high settings perfectly well at normal resolution.

Interestingly according to Wikipedia, there was a PCI-E edition of the GF4 MX 4000 released in 2004! Talk about rare, never heard of that before.

Yeah mine was the 440, when it worked it was fine, it just didn't work very often I think mine was probably a bit of a donkey anyway, thankfully it is now a distant memory!

Overheal

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Exactly. It was incompatiable with many, but the first poster suggested that it was wholly unreliable - not true. Anything the Geforce 4MX ran, it ran stably.

Quoted for truth. I ran that card through hell and back before finally resigning to a random 6 series FX I cant even remember the number of. Before it was unplugged for the last time I had it running Doom 3 at, oh, probably 8 frames per second. It would overheat into a cold shutdown within 15 minutes but for those 15 minutes I was a stuttering god :pac:

TerrorFirmer

Overheal wrote: »

Quoted for truth. I ran that card through hell and back before finally resigning to a random 6 series FX I cant even remember the number of. Before it was unplugged for the last time I had it running Doom 3 at, oh, probably 8 frames per second. It would overheat into a cold shutdown within 15 minutes but for those 15 minutes I was a stuttering god :pac:

The MX was so popular that they included it in the supported list for the game. Every other card in there supports PS! The last game I ran with the MX440 was Dawn of War - it ran quite well.