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Crashing randomly


doveman

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Just today I've been trying to play Arma3 and at random times, sometimes when I've alt-tabbed out of the game, my screen goes into standby as if there's no signal coming from the PC. I can still hear people talking on Teamspeak but wierd artificats happen to their speech and they can't hear me. Hard-rebooting doesn't work and the screen doesn't come on at POST, even turning it off and on again with the motherboard switch doesn't help, only turning off and on the PSU gets it working again.

I used to use Razer Surround fine but now when I install it, I cannot hear anyone in TeamSpeak3. Sometimes the Razer Surround calibration/test program doesn't even produce any soon. So I set the default devices back to the onboard Realtek and was at least able to play Arma3 and use TS3 but I've been getting these crashes.

They may not be caused by Razer Surround but I've found these errors in the logs:

Faulting application name: RzMaelstromVADStreamingService.exe, version: 1.1.49.1641, time stamp: 0x528dd945

Faulting module name: RzMaelstromVADStreamingService.exe, version: 1.1.49.1641, time stamp: 0x528dd945

Exception code: 0xc0000417

Fault offset: 0x00000000002ec80c

Faulting process id: 0xbe8

Faulting application start time: 0x01cf0d8647fbda55

Faulting application path: C:\ProgramData\Razer\Synapse\Devices\Razer Surround\Driver\RzMaelstromVADStreamingService.exe

Faulting module path: C:\ProgramData\Razer\Synapse\Devices\Razer Surround\Driver\RzMaelstromVADStreamingService.exe

Report Id: dcac7e10-7979-11e3-b2d7-8c89a563ffda

Faulting application name: RzSynapse.exe, version: 1.16.6.17931, time stamp: 0x52899215

Faulting module name: RazerConfigNative.dll, version: 2.20.28.0, time stamp: 0x52aee07c

Exception code: 0xc0000005

Fault offset: 0x001c0252

Faulting process id: 0x470

Faulting application start time: 0x01cf0d86480cf163

Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Razer\Synapse\RzSynapse.exe

Faulting module path: C:\ProgramData\Razer\Synapse\Devices\RazerConfigNative.dll

Report Id: 8cd8252f-7979-11e3-b2d7-8c89a563ffda

Application: RzSynapse.exe

Framework Version: v4.0.30319

Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception.

Exception Info: System.AccessViolationException

Stack:

at MS.Win32.UnsafeNativeMethods.DispatchMessage(System.Windows.Interop.MSG ByRef)

at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.PushFrameImpl(System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherFrame)

at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.PushFrame(System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherFrame)

at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.Run()

at System.Windows.Application.RunDispatcher(System.Object)

at System.Windows.Application.RunInternal(System.Windows.Window)

at System.Windows.Application.Run(System.Windows.Window)

at Razer.Emily.UI.SynapseApp.Run()

at Razer.Emily.UI.AppEntryPoint.Main(System.String[])

There's some other unrelated to Razer as well:

Faulting application name: svchost.exe_swprv, version: 6.1.7600.16385, time stamp: 0x4a5bc3c1

Faulting module name: swprv.dll, version: 6.1.7600.16385, time stamp: 0x4a5be06d

Exception code: 0xc0000005

Fault offset: 0x0000000000039fc7

Faulting process id: 0x1494

Faulting application start time: 0x01cf0d86aa2f5b72

Faulting application path: C:\Windows\System32\svchost.exe

Faulting module path: c:\windows\system32\swprv.dll

Report Id: f375ef7f-7979-11e3-b2d7-8c89a563ffda

Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Error calling a routine on a Shadow Copy Provider {b5946137-7b9f-4925-af80-51abd60b20d5}. Routine details EndPrepareSnapshots({71fa97ff-f793-4085-8ec1-f8f9795b8fa0}) [hr = 0x800706be, The remote procedure call failed.

].

Operation:

Executing Asynchronous Operation

Context:

Current State: DoSnapshotSet

Plugin 'InnoDB' init function returned error.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://www.mysql.com.

Plugin 'InnoDB' registration as a STORAGE ENGINE failed.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://www.mysql.com.

Unknown/unsupported storage engine: INNODB

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://www.mysql.com.

The description for Event ID 11 from source RAMDiskVE cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer.

If the event originated on another computer, the display information had to be saved with the event.

The following information was included with the event:

Failed to read configuration information from registry.

I'm also unable to chkdsk my new SSD as when rebooting to do it, it says it can't because of something that was recently installed and I should uninstall it but it doesn't specify what this is and I have no idea (it's not Razer Surround/Synapse as this has happened with it uninstalled).

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Hard-rebooting doesn't work and the screen doesn't come on at POST, even turning it off and on again with the motherboard switch doesn't help, only turning off and on the PSU gets it working again.

No need to make things too complicated. I would say this is the priority issue to solve. Once the hardware is working normally, you can focus on the software.

However, by "screen doesn't come on" what does this mean exactly? Does it mean you have no video but the PC does actually boot/POST? Or does this mean the PC does not POST/boot at all?

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No need to make things too complicated. I would say this is the priority issue to solve. Once the hardware is working normally, you can focus on the software.

However, by "screen doesn't come on" what does this mean exactly? Does it mean you have no video but the PC does actually boot/POST? Or does this mean the PC does not POST/boot at all?

Well it's hard to say if it POSTs as there's no signal to the monitor. I do hear the HDDs whirring up but I guess they'd do that even if it wasn't completing POST (I'm booting Windows from a SSD so I can't tell from drive activity if it's booting into Windows).

I've only experienced this problem after the video signal has disappeared and the other problems have happened in Windows when gaming though (not had it happen so far when a game hasn't been loaded, at least in the background) and have found I have to completely turn off the PSU to clear it. I've never had any problems (touch wood) cold booting / restarting otherwise, so it's almost like the crashing sets a state that can only be reset be removing power from the board.

I wondered if it might be a RAM problem, so I loosened the timings from the specced 9-9-9-24 (which I've been running at for several months without problems I should note) to the automatic 11-11-11-29 and then I ran memtest overnight and that had done 2 passes without any errors by the morning, so that seems to be fine, at these timings anyway. If you think it could have been the tighter timings that were the cause, I could just monitor it for a while running at the looser timings and hope it doesn't happen again but if you think that's an unlikely cause, I should continue trying to diagnose the problem.

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Doesn't your mpotherboard "beep"? (or change the fan's speed when booting)

Traditionally (but not necessarily in your case) similar issues (video going out) have two likely culprits:

  • the video card drivers
  • the PSU starting to fail

jaclaz

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Doesn't your mpotherboard "beep"? (or change the fan's speed when booting)

Traditionally (but not necessarily in your case) similar issues (video going out) have two likely culprits:

  • the video card drivers
  • the PSU starting to fail

jaclaz

I don't think my motherboard has the ability to beep, at least I've never heard it do so but it doesn't appear to be doing anything differently (like fans running at full speed which happens if I mess up some BIOS overclock setting and have to clear the CMOS).

Hopefully my PSU is OK, as it's a good quality Antec CP850 which has hardly been stressed running my 300W system (that's probably a generous overestimate) since I bought it.

Regarding the video card drivers, I was playing DCS World for some time the other day with no problems, so it would be rather strange if only ArmA3 (which has been running both times I've had this crash) had an issue with the drivers (Catalyst 13.10 for reference), which I haven't updated recently. I should also mention that it has no problem mining with cgminer, even overclocked to 880/1350 (still at default 1.1v), which I'm sure loads/stresses the GPU far more than ArmA3 does, as that's rather CPU limited and probably only uses about 60% of my GPU (and I tried running ArmA3 at stock 800/1250 after the first time it happened, only for it to happen again about an hour later.

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... so it would be rather strange if only ArmA3 (which has been running both times I've had this crash)...

It might be my simplistic thinking, but if the same app/game is running whenever you have a problem then I would at least consider that it is the app/game that IS the problem. :)

Cheers and Regards

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... so it would be rather strange if only ArmA3 (which has been running both times I've had this crash)...

It might be my simplistic thinking, but if the same app/game is running whenever you have a problem then I would at least consider that it is the app/game that IS the problem. :)

Cheers and Regards

It was my first thought too but it seems hard to see how a game/app could cause the motherboard/GPU to fail to work on rebooting until after cutting the power from the board completely, not to mention that I was playing online wih other people using the same version of the game and apps and none of them experienced any similar problems and if the game had picked up such a serious bug in a recent update, I imagine there would be lots of reports about it :)

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It was my first thought too but it seems hard to see how a game/app could cause the motherboard/GPU to fail to work on rebooting until after cutting the power from the board completely, not to mention that I was playing online wih other people using the same version of the game and apps and none of them experienced any similar problems and if the game had picked up such a serious bug in a recent update, I imagine there would be lots of reports about it :)

Sure, thousands or hundreds of thousands of people play that game on hardware EXACTLY identical to yours, with EXACTLY the same OS (and it's updates and tweaks and EXACTLY the SAME services running in background) using EXACTLY the SAME (outdated) videocard drivers :yes:, it would be very improbable that they don't suffer form EXACTLY the SAME issue. :whistle:

jaclaz

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It was my first thought too but it seems hard to see how a game/app could cause the motherboard/GPU to fail to work on rebooting until after cutting the power from the board completely, not to mention that I was playing online wih other people using the same version of the game and apps and none of them experienced any similar problems and if the game had picked up such a serious bug in a recent update, I imagine there would be lots of reports about it :)

Sure, thousands or hundreds of thousands of people play that game on hardware EXACTLY identical to yours, with EXACTLY the same OS (and it's updates and tweaks and EXACTLY the SAME services running in background) using EXACTLY the SAME (outdated) videocard drivers :yes:, it would be very improbable that they don't suffer form EXACTLY the SAME issue. :whistle:

jaclaz

Well EXACTLY ;)

It could be any one of those differences that causes a crash that others don't experience and not the fault of the game or app at all, which is all I said. Besides, there ARE lots of people using the same GPU, same CPU, same OS and updates, so I stand by my point that if there was a serious bug in the game that caused total loss of signal with my graphics card (or drivers), it wouldn't affect only me. It may be that I have a badly written other program/service running that triggers this failure when ArmA3 is running but that's not ArmA3's fault either.

Anyway, what about the point I raised about it being somewhat unlikely that a bug in a game could cause the PC to fail to work after restarting or even a cold boot but only after removing power completely?

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Regardless of whether it is a bug in the game itself, or whether something in the game interacts with some other bug somewhere else in your system, if the only time you have the crash is when playing the game, then in my mind it is either the direct fault of the game, or an indirect fault of the game such as a system setting you use only when playing the game. Why else would you not have a crash at any other time while running the same OS with the same tweaks on the same hardware with the same timings? Do you apply any tweaks at all while running the game that you do not apply at any other time? I know some gamers disable anti-virus, have special network timings, change keyboard response times, plug in unique peripherals, change display settings, etc. I'm just trying to think of anything unique to the circumstances that exist only when you are playing that game.

Cheers and Regards

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I was thinking that maybe ArmA3 just stresses some component more than general apps or even other games such as DCS World but I'm not sure that the RAM would be susceptible to this, maybe just the CPU and GPU.

I do lock the CPU to 3.5Ghz by switching to the High Performance power profile before launching games but that's not peculiar to ArmA3. I also sometimes overclock the GPU from the default 800/1250 to 850/1300 but did seem to have more issues/crashes (not total signal loss though) like that, so I generally play it safe and don't bother anymore when playing ArmA3 online, although I still do overlcok for DCS World which doesn't crash. As I mentioned before, I scrypt-mine at 880/1350 without any problems, so I don't know why 850/1300 should make ArmA3 more likely to crash but it did seem to.

The only thing that's really unique to playing ArmA3 is running TeamSpeak3, with it's plugins and overlay but the other people I'm playing online with all use the exact same plugins and whilst not all of them use the overlay, some do. As TS3 is an audio-related program and the errors I found in the log relate to Razer Surround crashing maybe that's important. Even though I wasn't using Razer as the sound device in TS3 (as I couldn't hear anything when I tried), nor as the default device in Window, so ArmA3 was using the Realtek device, Razer was clearly still running to be able to crash, so I'm wondering if it crashing could have somehow brought down the system, resullting in the loss of video signal and incoming audio breakup and no outgoing audio.

I was happily using Razer until quite recently though, so whether the version I'm trying to use now is newer and has issues or it's the same version but something else has changed which is causing it not to work anymore I don't know but it isn't working for me anymore, so I've uninstalled it as there's no point having it installed and it might be causing problems. I tried to contact support to fix the problem but their stupid website only offers a form with a 500-character limit, which is not enough to describe the problem.

So it may be that uninstalling Razer and/or loosening the RAM timings will stop the problem reoccurring. My group only play ArmA3 on Thursdays, so I can only really recreate the same situation then. I could play online on another server that uses TS3 to test but they won't be using the same TS3 plugins and the signal loss crash only happened after 1-2 hours, so it's not a quick test I can do and whilst it's obviously annoying (for everyone else as well) to have it crash in the middle of a mission, at least I'm having fun with my friends until then and not just spending 2 hours trying to trigger the crash.

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There are other things to check if your computer does not beep on startup.

- You can attempt a blind entering of the BIOS. If the computer does POST but not boot, you should still be able to enter the BIOS. Or if you fear making some accidental change, you could try the boot menu key. Either way, indicator keys on your keyboard will work if the computer is not locked up and has gone past post. Keys include Caps, Scroll and Num Lock.

- Change your boot order to boot off your DVD drive. Then recreate the process so that the reboot would fail as you had seen before. Put a bootable CD into the drive. You should be able to more easily see if the computer is actually booting due to extended disc activity seen when booting off a CD.

If you wanted to test your video card for potential errors, see if it works with OCCT. Its kinda like Memtest but for video cards. If there is a problem, it should detect errors fairly quickly.

http://www.ocbase.com/index.php/download

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