PC freezes during games

[aengberg]

Hi,

I have recently bought a new motherboard and graphics card. Since then my pc freezes every 1-2 hours, but ONLY when I'm playing games such as Need for Speed Most Wanted or World of Warcraft.

Thinking it was a heat problem I removed the cover, but it didn't help.

I ran Prime95 (torture test) for 8 hours straight, and it didn't freeze at all during that time. Then I loaded up Need for Speed and within 1 hour the pc froze :/

My system is:
CPU: Athlon xp 3000+
Motherboard: Asus K8N4-E deluxe
Graphics card: Nvidia Geforce 6600
2x512 MB Geil RAM

What do you think? Is it the graphics card, RAM, motherboard, cooling, something else?

Any help would be really nice! This is driving me crazy!

[trt]

I had this problem and it came down to needing the newest vid drivers and also a hd driver because i have a sata hd. is yours sata? once I got the hd driver problems solved

[aengberg]

Thanks for the reply.

I am pretty sure I have the newest drivers (v.81.98). And no, my HD is not sata.

Could the problem be overheating? My cpu temp i 38-40 C and system temp is 48 C when a game is running. Is that high?

/Andreas

[trt]

I dont think your overheating. 55-65c is too high. I dont think its a vid card prob because the games your playing are not that demanding. one way to tell if its a heat problem is to take the side cover off so your comp is open and play if that fixes the prob then its probably a heat issue. My hunch is that its a driver issue. I think that it has to do with your motherboard somehow. Changing a motherboard is a major upgrade and there are a lot of things to consider. when you got the mb did you make sure that ram you have is compatible? Did you have to reinstall your os? do you have the current drivers for your mb,vid card,hd (I think you might have to have drivers for your hd even though its not sata.) The last thing I could think of is that your power supply might be going bad. lots to consider.

[smurfy]

Hello aengberg, welcome to CTH's new gaming forum.

Given that the games run OK for a period then hang, heat is still the most likely culprit.
Temperatures vary from CPU to CPU but I'd say even for that CPU your temp is OK. Have you checked your Graphics card temperatures?

As far as drivers go, when you got the new board and graphics card, did you perform a clean Windows install or just let windows install the hardware drivers? Couple of problems with the latter technique - lack of proper uninstall of the previous drivers and normally lack of proper manufacturer drivers for the specific motherboard chipset. This often causes problems with graphics card underperformance.

[aengberg]

The graphics card temperature is 52 C when idle, and 67-68 C when playing games.

I did do a clean windows install after I installed the new motherboard, and downloaded the updated drivers for graphics card and motherboard.

[smurfy]

That is reasonably hot for that GPU but not enough to cause lock ups.

Can you describe the hangs - what do you need to do to recover? Does the whole system need to be rebooted or will the game close down and Windows still works, does the game un-freeze after a while?

Are you playing on-line or just local games? What sort of internet connection do you have?

Can you check Windows XP's Application and System event viewers.

[aengberg]

Thanks for the replies

Description of hangs: Mouse and keyboard stop working, screen freezes, sound loops - only option is to reboot, alt-tab doesn't work, ctrl-alt-del doesn't work. I have tried to wait a while to se if it will recover by itself, but it never does.

Recently I have experienced a new type of crash: Same as above, but after 5seconds a blue screen mentioning nv4_disp.dll drivers.

I have experienced these crashes in online (World of Warcraft) and offline (Need for Speed, Galactic Civ II) games.

I checked the event viewers just after the latest crash and found the following errors:

Application events: The COM+ Event System detected a bad return code during its internal processing. HRESULT was C0000005 from line 44 of d:\qxp_slp\com\com1x\src\events\tier1\eventsystemo bj.cpp.

System events:The machine-default permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID
{BC866CF2-5486-41F7-B46B-9AA49CF3EBB1}
to the user NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE SID (S-1-5-20). This security permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool.

Don't know if it is related. I really really hope you can help me :-)

/Andreas

[Tortanick]

You on windows media center? if not then those drivers are not the latest

I've been googleing nv4_disp.dll looks like its a well known infamous problem, and I've not seen any proven fixes

[aengberg]

I got rid of the nv4_disp.dll blue screen error by cleaning up the nVIDIA drivers and reinstalling.

However the pc still freezes, and I'm all out of ideas

I have replaced the RAM, and placed a new fan right next to the graphics card. It didn't help so now I'm thinking the graphics card itself might be faulty.

[Tortanick]

Why not check? take the graphics card out and use the one built into the motherboard.

[aengberg]

The graphics card was indeed the problem!

I replaced it with a Radeon X850XT and everything runs great now.

Thanks to everyone who helped!

[borrence]

Gday, I have the same processor and same nvidia 6600 gt graphics card and same problem!!!

Only difference, mine crashes during installation of games as well as during play. Also when veiwing pictures or other media. When i say crash, I mean it freezes. No blue or black screen, just freezes and nothing responds and have to perform a restart.

Here what ive tried to fix the problem... reinstalled windows, updated all drivers including motherboard and anything else you can think of, disabled sound accellerator, bought new power supply, changed ram, changed dvd drive, changed windows xp disk and reinstalled, updated wndows & changed monitors.
- Only thing i havent done yet is try a different graphics card

Ive just bought the graphics card and had the problems ever since so after reading this am I right in thinking that maybe it is the 6600 card that has a fault in? or perhaps doesn't run too well with nvidias own drivers?

I am concidering returning it but only as a last resort as it was purchaced online and i know how hard it is to return things to an online company

Any reccommendations would be greatly apprieciated

[matt366]

I sent my pc back to the manufacturer and they said they cant find a problem with it. I just got it back yesterday played a game for an hour and it froze up on me again. Nothing works and I need to press reset on my pc.
620W Corsair HX (Dual SLI Compatible) (Silent Edition)
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz (1066MHz FSB) (8MB Cache)
Motherboard: nVidia 680i Core 2 Quad (By: eVGA) (nForce 680i SLI) (A1 Revision)
Memory: 2GB DDR2 Corsair at 1066MHz Dominator (Dual Channel) (Extreme-Performance)
Floppy / Card: Digital Media Card Reader (Black)
Hard Drive 1: 500GB Western Digital (16MB Cache) (7200 RPM) (SATA)
Hard Drive 2: 320GB Western Digital (16MB Cache) (7200 RPM) (SATA)
Raid Option: - No Thanks
Hard Drive 3: - No Thanks
Optical Drive 1: DVD-ROM/CD-ROM (DVD Reader 16x / CD Reader 40x)
Optical Drive 2: DVD±R/RW/CD-R/RW (DVD Writer 20x / CD-Writer 48x) (LightScribe Edition)
Network Card: High Speed Network Port (Supports High-Speed Cable / DSL / Network Connections)
Video Card: nVidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB (By: eVGA) (PCI-Express)
TV Tuner: ATI TV Wonder 650 (HDTV, Video Recording, FM Radio, Video Input and Capture)
Sound Card: Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer (Up to 7.1 Channel
Cooling: Air Cooled Stage 2 (Silent Artic Cooling Heat-sink (Copper Heatpipes)

: curse:

[matt366]

Originally Posted by Tortanick

Why not check? take the graphics card out and use the one built into the motherboard.

I sent my pc back to the manufacturer and they said they cant find a problem with it. I just got it back yesterday played a game for an hour and it froze up on me again. Nothing works and I need to press reset on my pc.
620W Corsair HX (Dual SLI Compatible) (Silent Edition)
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz (1066MHz FSB) (8MB Cache)
Motherboard: nVidia 680i Core 2 Quad (By: eVGA) (nForce 680i SLI) (A1 Revision)
Memory: 2GB DDR2 Corsair at 1066MHz Dominator (Dual Channel) (Extreme-Performance)
Floppy / Card: Digital Media Card Reader (Black)
Hard Drive 1: 500GB Western Digital (16MB Cache) (7200 RPM) (SATA)
Hard Drive 2: 320GB Western Digital (16MB Cache) (7200 RPM) (SATA)
Raid Option: - No Thanks
Hard Drive 3: - No Thanks
Optical Drive 1: DVD-ROM/CD-ROM (DVD Reader 16x / CD Reader 40x)
Optical Drive 2: DVD±R/RW/CD-R/RW (DVD Writer 20x / CD-Writer 48x) (LightScribe Edition)
Network Card: High Speed Network Port (Supports High-Speed Cable / DSL / Network Connections)
Video Card: nVidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB (By: eVGA) (PCI-Express)
TV Tuner: ATI TV Wonder 650 (HDTV, Video Recording, FM Radio, Video Input and Capture)
Sound Card: Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer (Up to 7.1 Channel
Cooling: Air Cooled Stage 2 (Silent Artic Cooling Heat-sink (Copper Heatpipes)