The Pants-station is Sprogged

Post by **Dog Pants** » March 11th, 2010, 17:21

Yesterday Sprog turned my computer off at the mains, and since then I've been having nasty freeze ups complete with horrible electronic noise. A couple have been BSODs, but for the most part it's just stopped responding. I'm recording stuff here firstly to keep track of what I've done, and secondly in the hope someone will spot a problem I haven't. Hopefully one that won't involve hardware replacement.

First up, the BIOS settings were reset. It always was a fucker to get the RAM set up, and I was getting very similar freezes with everything on auto. I've set things back up as close as I remember to how they were pre-Sprog, but I've not managed to find settings that are stable yet.

MOBO: Asus P5E3, flashed to latest BIOS
RAM: OCZ DDR3 Platinum, 2x1GB
- Timing: 7-7-7-20
- Voltage: 1.8-1.95v, currently set at 1.94v. It's never been stable below about 1.88v.

This has stabilised it somewhat, so it boots reliably now, but I'm still getting crashes in game. So, I've gone back to a system restore from pre-Sprog, updated my graphics drivers, run a virus scan, and removes some unused programs. No difference there. Other observations then:

Stops responding after about 10 mins in BACON
Stops responding during load in Stalker
Run perfmon during game, no noticeable cause on CPU or RAM apart from generally higher average.
Tried to replicate with high CPU load by running virus scan, defrag, potatoshop, Minecraft. While perfmon didn't show as high load it was still higher than average and I couldn't find anything else to increase it that wasn't a game. No crashes.
Run memtest, no problems.
Checked mobo voltages, about 0.01v out at worst.
Checked CPU temp, running about 56c.
Cleaned crap out of fans/heatsinks/case to be on the safe side.
Set to not reboot on BSOD in case I catch one again.
Tried running games with minimum other stuff, still crashes.
Nothing in event viewer jumps out as being a consistent cause.

Any other suggestions?

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » March 11th, 2010, 17:25

chkdsk?

spoodie · Post by **spoodie** » March 11th, 2010, 17:29

Relocate you wall sockets to a higher position or handcuff Sporg to a radiator*.

*A radiator that's not next to any wall sockets.

Post by **Dog Pants** » March 11th, 2010, 17:43

Hmm. Ran a quick filesystem checkdisk on my D drives (two spanned), since that's where my games live, and it crashed at the end of the second one. I'm running a full scan on that drive now with perfmon to see if it fixes it, or if it was the load that caused it.

Post by **FatherJack** » March 11th, 2010, 18:03

Disks are usually the only things that care about power cuts if you have a good quality PSU. You can usually get the data off them, format them and use them again.

Do you know/have a backup of all you BIOS settings, as it sounds like you've had trouble in the past? I think I unintentionally tried to overclock my soundcard once.

If you have any spares and can do simple tests that make it crash, then make use of them. Check the RAM by removing alternate sticks, try booting from a http://www.ubcd4win.com/ CD, sometimes you have to actually disconnect things like disks if they're causing the crashes to rule them out definately.

Post by **HereComesPete** » March 11th, 2010, 18:05

I'm imagining you've checked that the ram voltage is around the one ocz recommends.

Have you tried loading the gpu with something like 3d mark? I read and then forgot what you did.

What psu you got?

Post by **Dog Pants** » March 11th, 2010, 18:14

I wrote down the recommended RAM timings and voltages, although not the specific voltage I used to get it working last time. All has been returned to those settings, although I'm pretty sure the voltage was about 1.88 last time rather than the 1.94 I have it on now.

The problem with a lot of tests is that it boots fine, it only crashes in games. So I can't replicate the fault in safe mode, for example, because I can't run games in safe mode.

This disk scan is going to take a long time by the looks of things, but thanks for ther suggestions, I've a few more things to try. One thing I did notice at the start of this scan is a massive amount of page file errors at the beginning, like 80 or 90 per second. Fine now though.

EDIT: PSU is a 520W Corsair.

Post by **FatherJack** » March 11th, 2010, 18:19

Dog Pants wrote:This disk scan is going to take a long time by the looks of things

More time than copying the data off, nuking it from orbit and copying it back? I tend to do that whenever there's even a hint of disk errors, as data > hardware. Also you gain a backup and the ability to test the games running from the second disk.

Post by **Dog Pants** » March 11th, 2010, 18:27

Good question. I had 145GB on it last week (thank you Deej for asking on the disco board!), plus BACON and Stalker is probably more like 150-160 now. So it'd depend on how long it takes to get that data onto another drive. The scan is about half way now, after about an hour and a half, so could I copy that data in that time? Possibly, but for the sake of another hour and a half in which I'll be eating and sorting Sprog out I'll see how it goes. It's another option though, especialy if I do find drive badness.

Luckily none of the data on that drive is essential, which is why I keep my games seperate to my OS.

EDIT: I assume that I can't access the drive because it's being scanned, not because it's borked.

Post by **FatherJack** » March 11th, 2010, 18:38

Might as well let the scan run then, if you're not sitting there waiting for it to finish. You can just copy (or install) a game that crashes to another disk for a quicker test.

Speed-wise, it'd take less than an hour if you can sustain 50MB/s - a typical internal-internal disk copy speed, at least double that to a USB drive.

Post by **Dog Pants** » March 11th, 2010, 18:52

Well it hit a load of empty space and shot through the rest. At the end of the scan if froze again, exactly the same place, but this time I had perfmon running. RAM and CPU weren't under much stress, but disk throughput had hit the roof. So it's looking like it might be the D drive. Hopefully, being my games drive and so potentially the largest, it'll all be on one physical drive. Either way, looks like a backup and format.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » March 11th, 2010, 18:54

Didn't I tell you the HDD was fucked the other day?

Post by **Dog Pants** » March 11th, 2010, 19:04

You did indeed. Hopefully only soft-fucked though, and not new hard drive time.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » March 11th, 2010, 19:06

Yup, I imagine manufactures tools might be useful for giving it a more in depth prod once it's empty

Post by **Dog Pants** » March 11th, 2010, 19:07

Okay, next question then: how the hell do I find out which physical drive a partition is on?

EDIT: Never mind, I'm an utter spaz. It quite clearly shows you in disk management, and yes my D drive is all one physical drive, all one partition.

Post by **tandino** » March 11th, 2010, 19:38

Doggers, is your PC set to create a memory dump on BSoD? In windows 7, the log files (.dmp) are stored in C:\Windows\Minidump. If there's anything in there, you can open the log files with the software suite "Debugging Tools for Windows", available from Microcock's website <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/Devtools/ ... x">here</a>.

It might shed some light on it. Alternatively send the .dmp file to me and I'll look through it and see if it can be narrowed down. The Debugging suite is a bit of a ball-ache to set up and use in honesty.

Post by **Dog Pants** » March 11th, 2010, 19:45

Alas, it's empty. I did start trying to download the debugger, but at 640MB it was going to take me around three hours.

Post by **tandino** » March 11th, 2010, 19:59

Dog Pants wrote:Alas, it's empty. I did start trying to download the debugger, but at 640MB it was going to take me around three hours.

Where did you see 640mb? That seems a tad on the large size, my install is only 65mb. Just be wary in case it's some kind of sneaky malware Haxxing. If it's a typo, please disregard me and all my kind.

/Edit for Great Justice/atrocious spelling.

Post by **Dog Pants** » March 11th, 2010, 20:07

Came from the Microsoft download site. Might have been something different though.

Post by **Dog Pants** » March 11th, 2010, 22:49

Data moved, HDD full formatted, Bacon moved back. Disk now scans without crashing, but BACON wouldn't start. Might have been a product of moving things about, but that's possibly wishful thinking.