Sorry I droped out of practice.

[Widowmaker]

I locked up again. It is a problem that has been plaguing me since I got the Geforce4 card. I have tried tones of things to troubleshoot including a couple full formats. I am realy reaching to try not to blame the hardware since it is so random I fear it would be difficult to get a replacement.

The symptoms are that at very random times while playing any game, that is any game I have tried, the machine will lock up. Not just freeze but the screen shuts off and the monitor goes to sleep (orange light blinking). Also a repeated sound comming through the speakers. There is nothing written in any event log and I have to reset the machine by hand. Sometimes it happens multiple times a night sometimes it runs fine for a couple days. Extra venting of the CPU tower seems to make no difference. No IRQ's are shared, I made damn sure of that a while back.

Tonights lockup was no worse than most (and nothing compared to locking up mid fight in EQ) but it frustrated me so I went to look for a different sound card to eliminate the on-board sound that I am using. I had no luck, I know I have something other than ISA soundblasters laying around too but they will turn up. I also want to try dual booting to 98 or 2k to eliminate OS problems. XP service pack one was released the same day I installed the card and I have not tried XP without SP1 yet and I have read where others have had similar issues with Geforce 4 ti46000 cards and XP SP1 (they claim it worked fine before). One difference is my system does not reboot itself and most of the accounts I have read about their systems do automaticaly reboot but they get the same black screen and repeated sounds I do.

Oh well. I'll keep at it and see if I can figgure this out. If I eliminate all else I will then work on getting a replacement card from the manufacturer.

If anyone has any ideas I'd love to hear em. It is not totaly serious and only takes a few minutes to get booted up and back into whatever game I am playing and does not happen every game session but happens often enough that I expect it at least once a night. It gets very troublesome.

[[AK]Gunny Highway]

Have you tried the detonator driver that Zorro posted the link to in performance tuning section? Aslo did you run dxdiag and disable sound acceleration? Those 2 things make a big difference.

[Widowmaker]

I have tried many incarnations of the detonator drivers, this was happening back with the old 30.82 driver set as well. Turning off sound acceleration in direcx does nothing except make my sounds come in about 3 seconds after they should. The sound accel thing is normaly for Soundblaster Live! cards which I do not have. I have the built in C-Media card that came with the mother board. I have also tried many incarnations of the drivers for it as well.

This happens in all games (any 3d application) and not just BF1942.

[Hale]

Verrine got a G4 card that behaved the same way. It also locked up consistently during the 3D Mark test. Does yours do that?

I think he got it replaced and since hasn't had any problems.

Zorro would probably recommend you check your power supply.

[[AK]Gunny Highway]

I am using onboard digital sound on my Asus P4PE board and by disabling the sound acceleration it eliminated my lag. What are your system specs? Do you have the latest drivers for everything?

[Widowmaker]

I have no lag at all. Everything performs smoothly in any game I have at the fullest detail settings including sound even on 50+ player servers and in some of the laggiest zones in Everquest (to be honest framerates drop just below 30 in heavy fighting on the big public servers with 48+ players but even so it is not bad at all). It just randomly locks up to black screen (monitor light blinking like it went to sleep) with repeating sound (whatever sound was played last).

My power supply is a 350 watt supply. I only have one hard drive and the only expantion cards are my 3com NIC and the Geforce 4 video card. I have installed a case fan which did nothing and have since unhooked it to make sure my power draw was not too much. Temp monitors on the motherboard report nice temperatures with very little hike in motherboard temp even at heavy loads (good fan/heatsink on processor).

My system is:
AMD XP2100+ (1.7Ghz)
512Mb DDR 2100 RAM
Visiontek Xtasy 4600 (128Mb) AGP slot set to 4x (changing this does not fix lockups, confirmed)
C-media 8738 sound
Asus A7V 266c (I think, not near the computer right now)
3com 10/100 NIC (no router or firewall of any kind)

All drivers and BIOS version are absolutely up to date with enough experimetation and reformats to eliminate most all problem driver possibilities that I can think of. I do not have access to another video card to try it out and Best Buy will not take it back since it has been so long since I bought it. My only option is fighting the manufacturer to get a replacement (which takes much time that I do not have at the moment during "business hours"). And also if it involves sending the card to them before a replacement comes as most manufacturers handle it I have nothing that I want to use till it comes back so I would be dead in the water for a few days or longer unless I can get my Geforce 2 card back from the friend I gave it to (then I get to deal with everything set to low detail which is UGLY when you are used to high).

The lockups are so random it is hard to determine when it will lock up. I do not recall it ever locking up during the 3dmark tests but as I said sometimes it will go a day or two between lockups and other days it will be a couple times or more a night so I may have just been lucky on 3dmark though I have run 3dmark A LOT while testing some performance and other things. One thing of note is 3dmark has no sound and since the lockups come packaged with a repeating sound I am starting to suspect a sound card problem which is why I want to try out a new sound card... if I can find one.

I am also currious if it would happen with my same setup in Win98 which is why I am considering going dual boot for a while though it would be a pain to set up right now.

Thanks for the suggestions. Keep em comming since I have been beating my head against the wall for a long time now. And I used to think I was a good troubleshooter, this is a shot to my ego

[[AK]Hylander]

Widow,

VIA released some new 4in1s tonday you might want to give a try just for the hell of it...

Via Drivers

Always a good idea to make sure you have the latest Bios and motherboard drivers if you are having problems.

[Widowmaker]

Woot! I always like new 4in1's!

[Widowmaker]

New 4n1's did not help. 20min into my first test session of BF1942 gave me the same damn lockup. Grrr.