I hate my computer

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[salan]

And so .. I have destroyed my computer!

In a final fit of utter rage at crashing twice in the ONLY 4 v 4 I have attempted since this war started I have done what I can to fix it.

I use a dual core D 3ghz intel chip, 7900gt nvidia, asus p5ld2 motherboard, 2 gigs of ddr 2 ram and enough hard drive space to drown quebec.

Lately I have noticed graphical problems with this game, more and more it has crashed.  I have an older computer.

AMD athlon 2.5 gigs, 2 gigs  ram, with an older ATI x800 video card ... At first I decided to rip out the two video cards and swap them, to see if this would fix the issue.  But they don't fit the other motherboards, pci > agp? hmmmmmmmmmm  grr

next, I ripped out my dvd rom out of my good computer and put it into the older one, at first this kept secondary slave failing, so I again had to rip the cd rom out of that computer and run just the dvd rom.. grr

now im installing, and while this computer will surely work on absolutely absurdly low settings, I am most frusterated with the other one.

WHAT WAS HAPPENING.  First i would get graphical distortions once in a while.  A crater would form a gigantic line across the screen, or the UI would blink and flitter.  tabbing out fixed either.
Then it would just lock up, sometimes it would allow me to gfet back to desktop, usually it was a reboot to fix, once in arare while it would reboot itself.


if I started a game and had that happen i was 100% sure it would crash.  If it did not happen, I would usually 100% not crash.  This changed in teh last few days, these last crashes were sudden with no warning.

My computer WAS running at over 80celcious for a while, I got it back down to 55celcious where the specs, and other EIR members who run the same D duel core say their temps are at..


from everytthing I know its graphic related, I am posting this her if anyone has any experience with ths from the symptoms I am explaining, would this be potentially CPU/motherboard or memory, or are we looking squarely at the video card?

[scrapking2]

The symptoms are commonly associated with overheating / cooked pc.  I know you've had overheating issues before, over time these can cause permanent damage to any number of things.

Most likely culprits are video card and cpu, they are the most likely to suffer from overheating.  It is possibly the motherboard, but that is not as likely as the former two.

[salan]

well we'll just have to see if this older computer will run the game or not... im tired of crashing.

[scrapking2]

1)  Make sure that you are using all the latest and correct drivers for your video card, motherboard, sound card.  Download all critical updates from Microsoft.  Using crtl-alt-delete make sure that nothing is running that does not say "SYSTEM" next to user.  If there is, and you are not intentionally running it, kill the process.  Run an updated version of an effective anti-virus program.  Do a disk defrag.

2)  Verify that all the fans are working.  Verify that the CPU fan is attached to the heat sink correctly, verify that the heat sink is correctly attached to the CPU, ideally with a heat transisting compound.  If all of the above are correct, get more cooling for the computer.  Make sure to do this before moving on to any other steps.

3)  To determine if it is either specific part (of video card or cpu), you need to be able to swap it with a known functioning replacement.  This is not likely to be possible for most people.  But swapping out the video card, and seeing if the issue goes away, and if it does not, then swapping out the CPU, would be the route I would take.

4)  If the above 2 do not solve the problem, its looking like RAM and or Motherboard.  RAM is a little easier to troubleshoot.  You will likely have between 2 and 4 chips currently being used.  Cycle through all of them, only using 1 at a time, each time, until ideally you isolate which chip, or chips do not work.  If it appears that the problem still has not gone away, you are now looking at a motherboard issue.

If this feels like too much for you, or replacing parts as part of the troubleshooting process is not possible, this is why there are professionals who do this sort of thing for money.  Probably $50 per hour and up, and probably a 2 hour job.

[AmPM]

The x800 is a fantastic card, I was running CoH on the same settings I am now, just some other games I play on higher settings suffered some FPS lost.

Is the x800 a PCI-E or standard PCI.

All in all it still sounds mostly like a vid card issue. Possible overheat, or the RAM on the card is bad and its causing it to artifact under stress, which would over periods of gaming cause it to crash.

[Draygon]

Ive had similar problems before Salan.  As some have posted here, and IMO its your graphics card.  I had it happening to me, replaced the card and it works great.  If you spent any time (and it sounds like you did) overheating your computer or GFX card, you could well have cooked something on it.  New card should fix the problem.

[BLACKDONG]

ISNT 100 c boiling?
still seems like a warm pc

[scrapking]

ISNT 100 c boiling?

Yes.  For water.

The boiling point of silicon is significantly higher. 

[|-|Cozmo|-|]

melting point of silicone 1687 K (1414°C or 2577°F)

[salan]

id say its 100% the video card, it started to flash and lock up in windows itself.  now when I turn the computer on it will get to the point where the windows will start to draw, and shutter and reboot.

vid card kerplow!

I need to get a real good one for the videocasts!

[Kolath]

Okay additional troubleshooting options:

1) Diagnose the RAM. Download a copy of Memtest+86 from here and burn it to CD.  You can do this from another comp that is working.  Make sure you finalize the CD when you make it.  Start the trouble comp and tell it to boot from CD in the BIOS.  Try to run at least 5 passes of tests #3 and 5 and one pass of #8.  You can select individual tests by using the menu.  If you pass this, your RAM is probably good.

2) Diagnose the CPU/RAM. It sounds like a video card issue, but to be safe you could download a copy of Prime95 here.  Also download a temperature sensing utility like coretemp, everest, or speedfan.  Try to run a torture test of Prime95 for at least 2 hours on the blended test.  If that works, your CPU/RAM combo are probably alright.  If Prime fails, check your CPU temps, they may be too high.

3) Diagnose the Video Card. Probably the most likely culprit.  For the ATI card, I would download a copy of ATI tool and have it stress test itself, if it gets problems at stock settings, your GPU has problems.  Also try other games stress tests, 3DMark, or other 3D program.

That's my advice.  Or upgrade your GPU if you have the money.  I would recommend a GeForce 8800 GT 512 MB if you can afford it.  I upgraded from the Radeon x800 XL to the Geforce and went from low/med CoH settings to high.  After my CPU upgrade from an Athlon64 at 2.6 GHz to an Intel Q6600 at 3.3GHz I can play on max coh settings.