Haruspex

Thanks for the reply. It turns out it was the PSU after all and not the GPU.

Hi, first of all my PC specs MAINBOARD Gigabyte GA-EP43-S3L C.P.U. Intel Core 2 Quad q9400 @ 3,2 Ghz With Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus CPU Cooler G.P.U. MSI GTX 560 Ti Twin Frozr II OC Edition SOUND CARD Realtek ALC 888 RAM Corsair 2x1 GB Kit DDR2 800 5.0-5-5-18 H.D.D. Western Digital SATA2 7200 RPM 16 MB Cache 320 GB (X2) O.D.D. Samsung SH-S203B Serial ATA (X2) P.S.U. Zalman ZM600-HP 600 Watt CASE Thermaltake Soprano With Windows 7 Sp1 x64 Ultimate and with the 270.61 nvidia drivers. So here is my problem. I recently upgrade my gpu from the 9600gt to msi 560 ti twin frozr II oc edition. I booted to windows, run furmark and some games. So far so good. But when i tried crysis warhead i had an instant shutdown of my pc and then it turned on again by itself. The weird thing is that it only does this at the intro logos and the intro movie. Another game that has exactly the same behavior is Crysis 2 and FEAR Combat. Especially the intro movie of Crysis warhead is the movie that shut downs my PC almost all the times when it plays. The funny thing is that i recently finished bad company 2 and crysis warhead without a single shutdown. I've also tried running furmark stability test at xtreme burning mode, unigine, intel burn test, prime95 as well some other games, again no shutdowns or any other problems. Only at the intro movies of these games mentioned above i had PC shutdowns. I've tried various things. - Reinstalling the latest nvidia drivers - Made sure everything inside my PC case is correctly connected. - I've made a system image and formatted and reinstall win 7 from scratch - Reduced my cpu overclocking to default values - Checked my temps. Didn't notice anything alarming. None of those things helped at all. So i was thinking what the problem could be. Maybe something PSU related or possibly a faulty card. Then i tried to underclock my GPU with MSI afterburner and guess what problem solved! I've tried starting crysis warhead and especially playing the intro movie several times and no shutdowns at all. Specifically i reduced the memory from 2100 to 1600, the core from 880 to 700 and the shader from 1760 to 1440. Didn't touch the voltage. So is this a PSU related problem or a faulty GPU card? Sorry for the long post, i tried to be as detailed as possible.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. The drives are completely defragmented and in general the pc is optimized. Also although i never scanned my hard drives because as far as i remember it takes a really long time, i don't think i have bad sectors because 1) i have this problem only in 7 not in XP 2) it happens on both drives. Am i really that unlucky that both my drives have bad sectors? And i need to clarify that i am not getting slow speeds when copying files. When i am copying large files it seems the pc gives all the priority for that operation and it becomes really slow. But the copy process itself is fast. Also when i am doing other multitasking jobs the pc is operating fine. For example i don't have a problem at all if i have megui in background converting a video using x264 (which uses all 4 cores) I further researched the problem and here is what i found using a particular program that scans iso images. (ABGX 360) This program while scans the iso it shows the current read speed of the hard drive In XP ~76 MB second. When i open a program (let's say for example firefox) i can see the read speed dropping (at around 43 mb second) which allows firefox to open and after firefox opens the hard drive read speed in the program reads again ~76 mb second. All that process of course is done almost instantly with only a really small speed penalty which it's totally normal. In 7 Again read speed around 76 mb second. Here is the interesting part. When i try to open firefox (or any other application) the read speed stays at ~76 mb so firefox takes a really long time to execute and the pc in general becomes really slow while the program scans the iso. That behavior when using that program is similar as copying large files but while copying large files things are even worse. I hope all the above makes sense. Sorry English isn't my first language. So in conclusion i think the problem lies that 7 gives all the priority to the hard drive without any throttling at all that's why my pc becomes so slow. As to why 7 behave that way i can think only these different things. 1) Something to do with the intel and/or sata drivers. 2) A bug in 7 that only happens in particular hardware/software configurations. 3) Something is wrong with both my drives. Again if it was a hardware problem why it would be triggered only in 7 and not in XP? Any ideas?

Hi, i have this setup Windows 7 x64 Ultimate (with all the latest updates) Gigabyte GA-EP43-S3L (with the F8 bios) 2GB DDR2 Ram Corsair Intel Core 2 Quad q9400 (stock cooler) 9600GT (260.99) 2x WD 320 GB (WD3200AAKS) Just 2 physical separate drives no partitions Also i have enabled AHCI mode and installed the latest Intel rapid storage drivers. NCQ and disk cache are enabled. Also i tried in regular IDE mode and it didn't help. He are the HDTach tests (i have no idea if the results are normal or not, i just posting them for some one more experienced to see them) Uploaded with ImageShack.us Uploaded with ImageShack.us So to better describe the problem now. When copying large files (it doesn't matter if i copy a large file in the same drive or in the second drive) the pc becomes really slow. For example if i try to open a program like firefox, excel etc. it takes too long. I have similar results when uncompressing large rar files. In XP with the exact same system and setup it was way faster. I don't have anything overclocked and i make sure that i have no apps running in background that can slow down the system. Also with the exception of this problem i don't have any other problem or unusual behavior in 7. I did a google search and although i found people with the exact same problem no one seems to have found a solution. Any thoughts?

Hi, just a quick question. How i can uninstall the Windows Imaging driver? I used the one neo provided in the rapidshare link. I found the wimfltr.sys in the windows/system32/drivers folder, should i delete that and also the entry in autoruns? I am asking just to be sure.

Hi Fernando 1, can you update the intel raid/ahci drivers if you have the time? In case you didn't know Intel recently update them to version 8.2.0.1001

Thanks for the quick reply, will try the second option as the first it's not possible. I think i have an old IDE CD-ROM somewhere... *me searching for old cd-rom drive*

Thanks for the guide Fernando, i was looking for something like this. However i have one question before i start the process. I don't have any IDE devices to my system. I have a Samsung SH-S203B SATA as well a H.D.D. WD SATA2. The question is if i set the SATA Mode to AHCI to enable the AHCI features and of course integrate the Intel SATA/RAID drivers with nLite will it work? I am asking because i did a test with my original XP Installation Disk and it doesn't even detect the SATA DVD (meaning it doesn't even the show the message "Press any key to boot from CD") when i set it to work in AHCI Mode and i don't know if the integration method with nLite going to help on that. Oh and one more question about AHCI in general. I heard that if you enable AHCI and you have the Intel ICH9R controller you can't enable write caching under XP and/or Vista, only if you have a RAID setup you can enable write caching. Did you experience this "problem"?