Blue Screen (not BSOD) and freezes

[SiMoNsAyS]

this happens from months, i have a blue screen (not the common BSOD it's a lighter blue and it don't show adresses etc, it's only blue) when: playing moh spearhead (80%), we7 (10%), exploring my pc (5%) or xvid encoding (5%) (i think when doing intense use of the cpu because they're not common tasks between them). also a screen-freeze can replace the blue screen but that's not habitual. i've tried:

updating all my drivers, updating firmware of motherboard, GPU (tried firmware from gigabyte and from ati) and CDRW (HP9110 -> CRX140E), all the windows update (currently i'm running xp sp1), changing all the bios parameters to default and all the settings, format, change the position of the pci card, changing irqs to auto and assign them ...

all of this did not work. i'll try to explain what i think: it's a hardware problem because format didn't work but in w98se i don't have this problem. i thought it was a problem with the graphic card but catalyst from 3.6 to 4.5 do the same, also tried firmwares from ati and overclock and downclock. next i dowclock the processor and the error disappeared... no it's still there but less frecuently, overclocking the processor (actually fsb:200x11.5 and volt:1.650) it's the same as living it by default (fsb:200x10.5 and volt:1.650). next i thought in a memory problem and memtest shows an error after lot of hours but that's not the problem becase although the memory it's overclocked after 15 min logged in and playing moh, it can happen (note that playing moh multiplies the possibilities of the blue screen). now i don't have any ideas and none can help me. i think i've read a lot of solutions and tried them with no results. finally i can work with the cpu weeks/days and nothing occurs and i can suddendly start an apps and blue screen! see my specs down and thanks for any reply.

ps: i forgot one thing pcmark2004, 3dmark01, 3dmark03, aquamark3 and sandra 2004 finish their benchmarks without errors (only 1% of errors wich i think it's caused by the same that cause the other problems)

[XtremeMaC]

hmm I was going to suggest some things but looking at your pc's specs I can't really say why it'd happen

u say memtest shows an error. best possible reason I'd say is bc of the ram. they are very fragile. if u could test it with another ram it would be good.

and if u only had said u encounter that during the game I'd have thought u have a not legally obtained version of moh or nocd patch ... they sometimes tend to cause problems on some machines...

how's the electricity over there? it might have done something. I mean if there are lots of up's & down's in the voltage somethings might have been corrupt, but I dunno. I'm totally guessing out of the blue

[SiMoNsAyS]

hmm I was going to suggest some things but looking at your pc's specs I can't really say why it'd happen

u say memtest shows an error. best possible reason I'd say is bc of the ram. they are very fragile. if u could test it with another ram it would be good.

and if u only had said u encounter that during the game I'd have thought u have a not legally obtained version of moh or nocd patch ... they sometimes tend to cause problems on some machines...

how's the electricity over there? it might have done something. I mean if there are lots of up's & down's in the voltage somethings might have been corrupt, but I dunno. I'm totally guessing out of the blue

first thanks for your reply, u are trying to help and that it's sufficient for me

for now i think the most suitable reason it's a ram problem but changing the timmings to a more stable configuration doesn't work and RAM tests in PCMark04 are ok (i don't know any other application that can test mems)

i use a nocd .exe in moh and if the problem only appeared in that game i would be happy because the .exe can cause an exception but playing other games like simpsons hit and run, winning eleven... etc sometimes cause too what i would name "the light blue screen" so i think it could be only an opengl problem but the error it's the same in directx games, opengl games and working with xp (this last it's not usual)

electricity?? i haven't think of that but althought i mess with the cpu's voltages, i only take up it to 1.7v and now all the voltages are left by default (minimal). maybe some component is damaged but that suppose expend money and i don't want to trust it . now i have lost any ideas and i wonder what more can i test. i still think that blue screen it's caused by a hardware problem but all the test i have done let me think it's a software problem.

[Alanoll]

i remember when I had a harddrive failing, the system will continually freeze doing average tasks.....

I would say turn off all overclocking you've done and see what happens. If you have multiple ram chips, take one out.

[neosapience]

Overclocking is not something to take lightly. Even the most high-grade hardware can fail if it's overclocked, causing irreparable hardware damage. If you don't have your system cooled properly, it's very easy to overclock your system into oblivion.

The only difference in the amount of errors you get has to do with when, and how, you use your graphics card. Sure, if you dumb down your system speed, it's going to become more stable. But that's just masking the underlying problem, which I think is your graphics card. If I'm not mistaken, MOA uses OpenGL and 3dmark/etc.. use DirectX. The fact that your system crashes a lot during MOA tells me that your graphics card is having stability problems. If you have another card you could swap it out with, you could test my theory.

At any rate, sporadic problems like yours are a REAL pain to figure out.

Best of luck to ya.

[SiMoNsAyS]

another time thanks for your fast replies. i would thought like you if i had the problem from the moment i overclocked something for the first time but it wasn't. i start overclocking to try to solve the blue screen problem (i know it sounds stupid but downclock didn't gave me any result comparing stability/speed). i still think it can be a problem with the GPU or RAM but i don't have any other card/memory module so i can't test it. if u have any idea (ANY STUPID, SIMPLY OR CRAZY IDEA) please let me know.

[tim]

Try giving the memory a good test.

Look here : http://www.memtest.org/

[Tarun]

Check your hard drive. Run Scandisk both thorough and standard, scan the disk surface and everything. Listen with the case open as well for any irregular noises.

I had an old 20GB Western Digital hard drive go bad. It started to make noises and freeze all the time. Until the point where I could barely run the pc for more than 20 minutes without a loud "nails on a chalkboard" skreech. (Resolved this with a new free hard drive since warranty was still in effect)

For some great hard drive diagnostic tools, go here. http://support.wdc.com/download/

Try both the Data Lifeguard and the DLG Diagnostic

[XtremeMaC]

hi I don't want to believe that he's still using that win98 on that machine

there are many other great tools for scanning for harddrive for problems. scandisk most often just finds the problem, not likely to repair it.

and since on 2000 & xp I haven't seen any hdd corruptions in any of my hdd's

first program that pops up in my mind (though I haven't used it much but seen the name of it a lot) would be acronis.com's programs...

[SiMoNsAyS]

more replies well as i said in the first post currently i'm running xp sp1 2600.xpsp2. for now i will discard a HD problem, NTFS it's a good file system and checkdisk has not detected any problem never. i also use diskeeper for defrag jobs and another time it never have found an error. i downloaded the memtest util and i'll post results. thank u all

[Tarun]

Just because there were no reports of errors on the drive, does not mean that it's error free. When I had the hard drive failing, I had no bad clusters or anything. When I used the applications suggested above (I had some on a cd provided from the company I got my pc from) it found errors. Not everything is foolproof, especially with MS products.

[SiMoNsAyS]

imagine the HD it's failing, will that cause that blue screen?? this is curious because it's the first time in 10 years with a pc that i see that lighter blue screen and the sound simply hangs. have anyone found that BS anytime??

[XtremeMaC]

yes it does

it had happened to me.

bc of my sister(by just pressing the switch to close the win98 machine) and lots of power outage my very old hdd was full of bad sectors.

it covered 3 lines in through scandisk.. it was in the middle of the hdd just after 2.2gb

if I try to do anywork after 2.2gb was full I'd get blue screens...

but I don't remember if it was light or dark blue, it could even be green (there is a program to alter the background color of those error texts, no kidding!)

anyways so thats no BS but i haven't seen any bad sectors in anyone's computer that's running xp, unless there is really a physical damage...

[Deezire]

Hey

Do you have a Audigy card in your PC...

If so.. thats the problem.. you get a blue screen.. and sound hanging...

Thats called The Blue screen of death

that is a known problem by creative...

I also had that problem.. i solved it by placing my sound card in the last PCI slot..

Let me know if this helps..

[SiMoNsAyS]

@XtremeMaC ok. i'll try to change the SATA conector or do a more intensive HD check, also i'll try FAT32 for a time if that works.

@Deezire i have heard about that problem with audigy but that only affect audigy 1 player cards and via chipsets. mine it's an audigy 2 player with an nforce2 based chipset (i thought that long time ago and i changed the card from the first pci to the last pci )

thanks both for reply