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#1
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A7N266-E Crashing during games on XP. Sound card related?
I have an Asus A7N266-E with a 1.4GB Athlon chip, 256MB of Crucial
RAM, BIOS version(ASUS - 42302e31), and a 20GB Hard drive. I use the on-board GeForce2 MX video card (Current driver 4.5.2.3). I'm at the end of my rope but I'll try to keep it short--I'd appreciate any help! - For most of the life of this PC (about 18 months), the PC has been crashing when I play any graphics-intensive game (ex. EA Sports Games, Medal of Honor). It has never crashed when I was doing anything else on the PC. This crash occurs sometimes 30-40 minutes into playing, and sometime mere seconds into playing. There seems to be no pattern. On Win 98, the crash rebooted the PC. On Win XP, it just goes to a black screen and I have to manually reboot by pressing the power button. Recently I've discovered, (and I've got enough test time to state confidently) that the error will not occur if the sound card is removed. Now the troubleshooting: - My intial concern was heat, so I picked up a Thermaltake fan for the video card and a Volcano 7 Processor fan. The Asus monitor shows that there are no heat problems. The crash continues. - I then worried about being underpowered, so I purchased a 430W Antec power supply that was on Athlon's recommended list. The crash continues. - I upgraded OSes from Windows 98 to Windows XP and I have consistantly updated my video drivers. The crash continues. - I have not upgraded the BIOS (which I should do), but I'm reasonably confident that can't be the cause since I have a heavily gaming friend with the same motherboard and no BIOS updates and no reboot problem. - I've swapped out the RAM with known good RAM. No effect. - Once I discovered removing the sound card seemed to stop the crash, I removed the ACR-A6CH Audio card and replaced it with a known good sound card. I put the new card into a different PCI slot. The crash continues. So I'm completely out of ideas. I can now try to replace the video card, but if that was it, I wouldn't expect the crash to stop happening when I take out the sound card. Has anybody seen anything like this? I thank you all in advance for your help. Regards, J. Williams |
#2
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As a follow up, I upgraded to the latest BIOS (A7NE1004.AWD) this
morning. Still crashing. Regards, J. Williams |
#3
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Its not a BIOS problem.... Are you useing the latest drivers for your
sound card? weems wrote: As a follow up, I upgraded to the latest BIOS (A7NE1004.AWD) this morning. Still crashing. Regards, J. Williams |
#4
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Oh, also how hot is your system getting?
weems wrote: As a follow up, I upgraded to the latest BIOS (A7NE1004.AWD) this morning. Still crashing. Regards, J. Williams |
#5
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Chris,
You asked how hot the system gets and whether or not my graphics drivers are up to date. My current driver is 52.16, so it is a little behind 53.03 (I've downloaded that and I'll update it). I'm doubting it is a device driver issue since I have a friend with an identical board, using the on-board video card, and we've had the same level driver and I have the problem and he has never seen anything like it. I'm trying to keep it updated however. As for temperature, the CPU runs at a nearly constant 40 C/104 F and the motherboard stays around 32 C/ 89-90 F. It sounds like heat doesn't it? But I don't understand why it sometimes occurs seconds into playing a game. I think I should have ample cooling at this point, but let me know what you think. I really appreciate your feedback, J. Williams |
#6
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OK, your system is not getting that hot... You might have a bum video
card... Can you try another one? weems wrote: Chris, You asked how hot the system gets and whether or not my graphics drivers are up to date. My current driver is 52.16, so it is a little behind 53.03 (I've downloaded that and I'll update it). I'm doubting it is a device driver issue since I have a friend with an identical board, using the on-board video card, and we've had the same level driver and I have the problem and he has never seen anything like it. I'm trying to keep it updated however. As for temperature, the CPU runs at a nearly constant 40 C/104 F and the motherboard stays around 32 C/ 89-90 F. It sounds like heat doesn't it? But I don't understand why it sometimes occurs seconds into playing a game. I think I should have ample cooling at this point, but let me know what you think. I really appreciate your feedback, J. Williams |
#7
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#9
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Hi,
"weems" wrote in message om... [some of thread deleted] As for temperature, the CPU runs at a nearly constant 40 C/104 F and the motherboard stays around 32 C/ 89-90 F. It sounds like heat doesn't it? But I don't understand why it sometimes occurs seconds into playing a game. I think I should have ample cooling at this point, but let me know what you think. I'm coming into this without seeing your original posting, so I appologise in advance if this has already been convered, however, from what I have read it sounds like your system dies/crashes when anything 3d related happens. If so, does the same thing happen when running dxdiag whilst doing the direct3d tests? It's just that I had an almost identical issue with a MSI K8T Neo motherboard. The thing would work fine normally, but as soon as I tried anything 3d related (and to some extent sound realated) then the system would crash. After many hours of trying different video/sound cards, video card drivers, etc it turned out to be ram related, though not a memory dim as you may have thought. It turned out I had (in my haste) put the ram in dim slots 2 and 3, not 1 and 2. As soon as I put the ram in slots 1 and 2 the thing worked. Perhaps you could check to see if you have populated dim slots 1&2 and not any other cobination. In the end I changed the m/b for an ASUS K8V, which has been running flawlessly although I haven't tried putting the ram in slots 2&3 yet Good Luck and Happy New Year Craig |
#10
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Thanks for your help. Which MB monitor are you speaking of? I was definitely seeing problems on the 12v line with my old power supply (I was using ASUS's monitor--is that OK as a monitor?) but those problems have gone away with the new 430W supply. But I certainly had a flaky 12v line for a while. How did that contribute to your problem. Thanks again, Well random reboots for no apparent reason was the main symptom I saw, regardless of cpu being under load or not. I was getting 4.40v on the 5v rail and 12.7v on the 12v but the psu jumped upto .5v up and down on those rails. Now I've got a new 550w psu its working fine now (touch wood). |
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