Random (reboots) BSODs!

Baliame · Post by **Baliame** » August 2nd, 2009, 20:00

Okay, here's the thing, when I play Warcraft III, during a game, the computer randomly locks up for a few seconds and then reboots.

It started to happen two days ago, and didn't at all do it before. Nothing changed on the computer, at all: I didn't change my hardware, I didn't install anything new. I didn't notice any performance changes either. Memtest came up negative, and I played Mass Effect straight for 6 hours without any problems. I also did an extensive stress test on the CPU, it ran flawlessly for a long time without even overheating. GPU temperature is good as well. Finally, I tried reinstalling it on a different drive, it seemed fine for two games but then it happened again. I'm just out of ideas, anyone got any?

Stoat · Post by **Stoat** » August 2nd, 2009, 20:17

Is it a blue-screen jobber? Anything funky turning up in the Event Log?

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » August 2nd, 2009, 20:18

OS?

http://teamtutorials.com/other-tutorial ... en-details

if no BSOD is showing.

Baliame · Post by **Baliame** » August 2nd, 2009, 20:37

XP. Event log is clear, only info entries in the last three months.

I just enabled blue screens though, I'll recreate the error and let you know what I found.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » August 2nd, 2009, 20:40

What drivers are you on? tried newer/older?

friznit · Post by **friznit** » August 2nd, 2009, 20:51

Only time I've experienced random reboots was due to voltage spikes from an aging PSU causing the mobo to shut everything down and restart. BIOS upgrade somtimes fixes the problem too, although fuck knows why it's only WC3 doing it.

Baliame · Post by **Baliame** » August 2nd, 2009, 20:57

Updated all drivers, but only after it started.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » August 2nd, 2009, 21:07

friznit wrote:Only time I've experienced random reboots was due to voltage spikes from an aging PSU causing the mobo to shut everything down and restart. BIOS upgrade somtimes fixes the problem too, although fuck knows why it's only WC3 doing it.

would be my bet for random restarts usually, but the WC3 only thing is odd.

Have you had it running in opengl, or directx? try deleting configs and see if that unfucks it?

Baliame · Post by **Baliame** » August 2nd, 2009, 21:42

It's a BSOD all right, from a source I didn't expect: sound card.

If anyone knows anything about it:

Code: Select all

STOP 0x0000008E (0xC0000005, 0xACD76BEE, 0xA87C370C, 0x00000000)

RtkHDAud.sys

but I'm googling it now as well.

EDIT: According to google, it could be the memory as well, since 8E is related to the memory. In-advance question, if I have an on-board sound card, can I still get another one? I'm not quite comfortable with throwing out the whole mobo if the sound card is spitting BSODs.

buzzmong · Post by **buzzmong** » August 2nd, 2009, 21:49

Baliame wrote:In-advance question, if I have an on-board sound card, can I still get another one? I'm not quite comfortable with throwing out the whole mobo if the sound card is spitting BSODs.

As I answered t'other day. Yes. Buy one, plug in, and make sure you disable the on-board one. Easy.

Stoat · Post by **Stoat** » August 2nd, 2009, 21:50

Realtek HD Audio, how I know thee.

Yes, you can disable your on-board sound via the BIOS and stick a real one in.
Try that before you buy one to see if you still get errors. I was getting 8E errors when my RAM was dying a few months back. If MEMTEST continually checks out OK you should be fine and it's just a borked driver.

edit:
Can anyone shed light on why audio devices cause so much trouble? You'd think it'd be SOUND || NO SOUND, not SOUND || ARMAGEDDON.

Baliame · Post by **Baliame** » August 2nd, 2009, 21:59

A'ight disabling the card, going to see if it spits back BSODs. Will update.

Edit, there's something fishy in my hardware manager, why do I have a driverless "audio device on high definition audio bus"? The on-board sound card is listed as working with the name realtek hd audio.

Post by **HereComesPete** » August 2nd, 2009, 22:59

Stoat wrote:Can anyone shed light on why audio devices cause so much trouble? You'd think it'd be SOUND || NO SOUND, not SOUND || ARMAGEDDON.

There's quite a lot of background interaction with the sound cards, be it discreet or add in, their processes hook into the game to produce the sounds.

I would therefore guess at codez. Most dev's to save time possibly creating a minimum of compatibility with their game, forcing sound card manufacturers to do the work, possibly.

Post by **HereComesPete** » August 2nd, 2009, 23:02

Baliame wrote:A'ight disabling the card, going to see if it spits back BSODs. Will update.

Edit, there's something fishy in my hardware manager, why do I have a driverless "audio device on high definition audio bus"? The on-board sound card is listed as working with the name realtek hd audio.

Disable the question marked driverless thing see what happens. It could be a phantom picked up by windows, like sometimes some windows programs insist I have two gpu's, I don't. It may well have split HD and non-HD function into two separate cards for some random reason.

Driver update for the onboard sound help at all?

Post by **deject** » August 2nd, 2009, 23:06

Are you using an AMD GPU?

Baliame · Post by **Baliame** » August 2nd, 2009, 23:43

I in fact am using an ATI GPU, but it's not the problem deej.

EDIT: In fact, thanks for pointing it out, the yellow question mark device was actually missing an ATI HDMI audio driver.

I updated to the latest driver supplied by realtek, which actually didn't work since god knows what kind of shit is this on my mobo, so I did an uninstall driver and reinstall the newest on from the MSI site. Still BSODing. Then, I disabled the phantom device, which by the way seems to be common with realtek according to google, but still BSODing. I disabled the on-board sound card device and it has been fine so far, which is promising, since every time I tried to play a nice game of Footmen Frenzy, it BSODded out in the first five minutes and for the first time I could play a few whole games of it.

Soooo... any recommendations on the card I should buy? Something that is not realtek, works, and is around 35 pounds, 40 tops? In fact, are there ones with PCI-E x1 connectors, I've only got one x16 slot, occupied by the GPU.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » August 3rd, 2009, 1:33

I don't know of any soundcards that need more than PCI-E 1x, they just don't push enough datas to need it.

In the past there was latency concerns with PCI-E for sound, no idea if that amounted to anything though.

I'd avoid Asus Xonar cards, as while they say they're on some custom asus chip, realtek make it, not sure how involved they are.

As far as what to buy, I'd try to pick up a creative x-fi of some flavour*, or an old audigy 2,

*just try to get one with a hefty looking chip on it (they do processing on card)

Post by **deject** » August 3rd, 2009, 4:00

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:I don't know of any soundcards that need more than PCI-E 1x, they just don't push enough datas to need it.

In the past there was latency concerns with PCI-E for sound, no idea if that amounted to anything though.

I'd avoid Asus Xonar cards, as while they say they're on some custom asus chip, realtek make it, not sure how involved they are.

As far as what to buy, I'd try to pick up a creative x-fi of some flavour*, or an old audigy 2,

*just try to get one with a hefty looking chip on it (they do processing on card)

I thought the Xonar was a C-Media chip.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » August 3rd, 2009, 4:31

deject wrote:I thought the Xonar was a C-Media chip.

You're right actually, I always get them confused