Random windows crashing

joe360 · Jul 13, 2005, 11:08 PM

So it's about a week after I've freshly re-formatted my computer , and windows seems to crashes randomly, under no particular load. For example, just now I had iTunes, Firefox, MSN running and the screen went totally black...but the music kept on playing for a bit. When I do a restart, no "windows error report" comes up.

-I've updated video drivers (5.6)
-Nothing wrong shows up in memtest-86 v3.2
-Ran Maxtor HD diagnostics, no problems

PC Specs:

A64 3000+ s754
1GB Corsair 2.5-3-3-6
MSI K8T neo
Asus Radeon 9600XT
Maxtor 80GB HD

Any ideas?

Ðamage™ · Jul 13, 2005, 11:42 PM

First.. what type of PSU do you have?
Second.. do you have fastwrites enabled for your 9600XT?
Third.. do you have the correct aperture size for your AGP?
Fourth.. Have you overclocked your computer, ram, or vga card?

joe360 · Jul 14, 2005, 03:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ðamage™

First.. what type of PSU do you have?
Second.. do you have fastwrites enabled for your 9600XT?
Third.. do you have the correct aperture size for your AGP?
Fourth.. Have you overclocked your computer, ram, or vga card?

1)Antec TruePower 380watt

2)Fastwrites are enabled

3)128mb aperture size

4)No overclocking of any kind

Yousaif · Jul 14, 2005, 06:34 AM

Almost sounds like your GPU took a dump. What kind of temps are you getting on your vid card?

Also you mentioned that it happens at random times. So that sounds like there isn't any rhyme or reason to it.

You may want to try backing down to an older driver, like the 5.4 ATI to see if its a driver issue.

joe360 · Jul 14, 2005, 05:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yousaif

Almost sounds like your GPU took a dump. What kind of temps are you getting on your vid card?

Also you mentioned that it happens at random times. So that sounds like there isn't any rhyme or reason to it.

You may want to try backing down to an older driver, like the 5.4 ATI to see if its a driver issue.

lol! it's quite possible...how do you measure the temp of your video card?

Necrosis · Jul 14, 2005, 06:29 PM

Your card should show it, google for a program called ATI Tool.

joe360 · Jul 14, 2005, 07:41 PM

Temperature: GPU: 49.0°C GPU environment: 53.0°C

nitrousoxide52 · Jul 14, 2005, 07:44 PM

That's not bad for summer, try loosening up the timings on your RAM, or lowering the your FSB, just temporarily. If that fixes it you may have some faulty RAM

joe360 · Jul 14, 2005, 07:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nitrousoxide52

That's not bad for summer, try loosening up the timings on your RAM, or lowering the your FSB, just temporarily. If that fixes it you may have some faulty RAM

Hmm yeah, I think tight timings was the problem at first. I had them at 2-3-3-6, and I found alot of errors in memtest. I loosened them to 2.5-3-3-6 and it ran 14 passes with no errors, so I counted out the ram..

Necrosis · Jul 14, 2005, 09:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by joe360

Temperature: GPU: 49.0°C GPU environment: 53.0°C

Hmm compared to my old Ultra that is cool, and my XL a bit warmer. I'm honestly not sure what your temp should be. Hopefully some one will see this, and respond.

joe360 · Jul 15, 2005, 03:19 AM

Just an update:

1)I just updated to Cat 5.7 drivers and I had the usual crash except this message popped up "VPU recover has reset your graphics accelerator as it was no longer responding to graphics drivers commands."

2)Before I reformatted the computer, it also crashed alot and when those windows error reports showed up these were the two files in the "error report"
a)C:\DOCUME~1\username\LOCALS~`\TEMP\WER8466.DIR00 \sysdata.xml
b)C:\DOCUME~1\username\LOCALS~`\TEMP\WER8466.DIR00 \Mini071405-01.dmp
And now with the fresh format, these same files are popping up in error reports.

Any toughts?

Ðamage™ · Jul 15, 2005, 04:35 AM

Ya.. do yourself a huge favor and disable the VPU Recovery options, it is more of a pain then a help.

Ðamage™ · Jul 15, 2005, 04:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by joe360

Just an update:

1)I just updated to Cat 5.7 drivers and I had the usual crash except this message popped up "VPU recover has reset your graphics accelerator as it was no longer responding to graphics drivers commands."

2)Before I reformatted the computer, it also crashed alot and when those windows error reports showed up these were the two files in the "error report"
a)C:\DOCUME~1\username\LOCALS~`\TEMP\WER8466.DIR00 \sysdata.xml
b)C:\DOCUME~1\username\LOCALS~`\TEMP\WER8466.DIR00 \Mini071405-01.dmp
And now with the fresh format, these same files are popping up in error reports.

Any toughts?

This will help hopefully and should always be done when/after installing new drivers.

First go to "My Computer" click tools > Folder Options > View > and enable "show all files and folders" and get into your "[color=royalblue]Documents & Settings > Username > Local Settings > Temp Folder[/color]" and remove everything from inside there. Then go back into C: or whatever primary partition you've named it too and get into your Windows Folder and delete everything in the TEMP folder in there. Always (and this is rule of thumb) do a defrag of all drives after each fresh install of your vga drivers.. that being either Nvidia or ATi.

Yousaif · Jul 15, 2005, 05:02 AM

Are you playing a game when these crashes happen? If so, what game? I know that htere are some Sony MMO's out there that don't work on a 9000 series cards with anything newer than the 5.4 drivers. EQ@ and SWG just to name 2 of em.

joe360 · Jul 15, 2005, 06:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yousaif

Are you playing a game when these crashes happen? If so, what game? I know that htere are some Sony MMO's out there that don't work on a 9000 series cards with anything newer than the 5.4 drivers. EQ@ and SWG just to name 2 of em.

It happens when playing Gunz but it's in Beta, so I can understand that crashing. However most of the time it happens under no particluar reason, It usually crashes when im just surfing the web with firefox, usually have iTunes open, and MSN. I'll just be using it and the screen will suddenly turn black, and I have to push the restart button..

Ðamage™ · Jul 15, 2005, 06:31 PM

Did you do what I mentioned?

joe360 · Jul 15, 2005, 07:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ðamage™

Did you do what I mentioned?

Yep, just finished. Altough I went back to the Omega 5.6.

Just a side note, I dont think this makes any difference, but since I just re-formatted awhile ago, I haven't activated Windows yet..

Ðamage™ · Jul 15, 2005, 10:26 PM

Good luck then.

joe360 · Jul 17, 2005, 02:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ðamage™

Good luck then.

It's been a couple days crash-free, thanks for all the help Damage.

HawgsHead · Jul 17, 2005, 02:59 PM

I know you dont wanna hear this but I would re-install.

joe360 · Jul 17, 2005, 07:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HawgsHead

I know you dont wanna hear this but I would re-install.

Re-install...what?

HawgsHead · Jul 17, 2005, 07:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by joe360

Re-install...what?

Windows.I had something like what youre having happen to me.Zardon suggested re-installing Windows.I did,even though I had just re-installed 2 weeks earlier.That fixed it.

joe360 · Jul 17, 2005, 08:33 PM

Well thanks for the suggestion, I'll keep it in mind if things start going wrong, but it's going good so far

Jul 13, 2005, 11:08 PM	#1
joe360 DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 78 Rep Power: 0	Random windows crashing So it's about a week after I've freshly re-formatted my computer , and windows seems to crashes randomly, under no particular load. For example, just now I had iTunes, Firefox, MSN running and the screen went totally black...but the music kept on playing for a bit. When I do a restart, no "windows error report" comes up. -I've updated video drivers (5.6) -Nothing wrong shows up in memtest-86 v3.2 -Ran Maxtor HD diagnostics, no problems PC Specs: A64 3000+ s754 1GB Corsair 2.5-3-3-6 MSI K8T neo Asus Radeon 9600XT Maxtor 80GB HD Any ideas?

Jul 13, 2005, 11:42 PM	#2
Ðamage™ DriverHeaven Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Canada Posts: 545 Rep Power: 0	First.. what type of PSU do you have? Second.. do you have fastwrites enabled for your 9600XT? Third.. do you have the correct aperture size for your AGP? Fourth.. Have you overclocked your computer, ram, or vga card? __________________ [COLOR=black][COLOR=red]ATi[/COLOR] Bios Flashing: The Proper Way.[/COLOR][COLOR=red][/COLOR] [COLOR=red]How to properly Install a VGA/CPU Cooler.[/COLOR] [COLOR=black]How to uninstall\install your ATi vga drivers properly[/COLOR] [COLOR=black]*It's not who we are, but what we do in life that defines us.*[/COLOR]

Jul 14, 2005, 06:29 PM	#6
Necrosis HardwareHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: Ohio Posts: 8,838 Rep Power: 131 System Specs	Your card should show it, google for a program called ATI Tool. Last edited by Necrosis; Jul 14, 2005 at 09:55 PM.

Jul 14, 2005, 07:44 PM	#8
nitrousoxide52 Driverheaven.com err .net Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 1,719 Rep Power: 0	That's not bad for summer, try loosening up the timings on your RAM, or lowering the your FSB, just temporarily. If that fixes it you may have some faulty RAM __________________ AMD Athlon64 X2 3800+ XFX Geforce 7800GT ABIT AN8-SLI BFG Tech 650w

Jul 15, 2005, 04:35 AM	#12
Ðamage™ DriverHeaven Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Canada Posts: 545 Rep Power: 0	Ya.. do yourself a huge favor and disable the VPU Recovery options, it is more of a pain then a help. __________________ [COLOR=black][COLOR=red]ATi[/COLOR] Bios Flashing: The Proper Way.[/COLOR][COLOR=red][/COLOR] [COLOR=red]How to properly Install a VGA/CPU Cooler.[/COLOR] [COLOR=black]How to uninstall\install your ATi vga drivers properly[/COLOR] [COLOR=black]*It's not who we are, but what we do in life that defines us.*[/COLOR]

Jul 14, 2005, 07:41 PM	Thread Starter #7
joe360 DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 78 Rep Power: 0	Temperature: GPU: 49.0°C GPU environment: 53.0°C

Jul 15, 2005, 03:19 AM	Thread Starter #11
joe360 DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 78 Rep Power: 0	Just an update: 1)I just updated to Cat 5.7 drivers and I had the usual crash except this message popped up "VPU recover has reset your graphics accelerator as it was no longer responding to graphics drivers commands." 2)Before I reformatted the computer, it also crashed alot and when those windows error reports showed up these were the two files in the "error report" a)C:\DOCUME~1\username\LOCALS~`\TEMP\WER8466.DIR00 \sysdata.xml b)C:\DOCUME~1\username\LOCALS~`\TEMP\WER8466.DIR00 \Mini071405-01.dmp And now with the fresh format, these same files are popping up in error reports. Any toughts?

Jul 15, 2005, 06:31 PM	#16
Ðamage™ DriverHeaven Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Canada Posts: 545 Rep Power: 0	Did you do what I mentioned? __________________ [COLOR=black][COLOR=red]ATi[/COLOR] Bios Flashing: The Proper Way.[/COLOR][COLOR=red][/COLOR] [COLOR=red]How to properly Install a VGA/CPU Cooler.[/COLOR] [COLOR=black]How to uninstall\install your ATi vga drivers properly[/COLOR] [COLOR=black]*It's not who we are, but what we do in life that defines us.*[/COLOR]

Jul 15, 2005, 10:26 PM	#18
Ðamage™ DriverHeaven Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Canada Posts: 545 Rep Power: 0	Good luck then. __________________ [COLOR=black][COLOR=red]ATi[/COLOR] Bios Flashing: The Proper Way.[/COLOR][COLOR=red][/COLOR] [COLOR=red]How to properly Install a VGA/CPU Cooler.[/COLOR] [COLOR=black]How to uninstall\install your ATi vga drivers properly[/COLOR] [COLOR=black]*It's not who we are, but what we do in life that defines us.*[/COLOR]

Jul 17, 2005, 02:59 PM	#20
HawgsHead Rest In Peace Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Danville Virginia.The United States of America"In the God of Abraham,Isaac and Jacob We Trust" Posts: 2,012 Rep Power: 0	I know you dont wanna hear this but I would re-install. __________________ Rig specs to the left in the boxes....X-Box 360 w/Hitachi 42" HDTV....If Darwins theory of evolution is true then why are monkeys still monkeys?It takes much more faith to believe in Darwin's theory over the Genesis account of creation.

Jul 17, 2005, 08:33 PM	Thread Starter #23
joe360 DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 78 Rep Power: 0	Well thanks for the suggestion, I'll keep it in mind if things start going wrong, but it's going good so far