Video driver crashing continuosly and recovering

[Webslinger]

However, you freaks want the best of everything which is understandable.

For the case, I really just wanted toolless HDD and ODD installtion. The toolless design, in particular, for the HDDs in some of the Zalman cases is just absolutely amazing. But yeah, my case wasn't cheap, especially for a mid-tower.

 

[DrinkLyeAndDie]

Both Drinklyeanddie and myself have received cases from Lian-Li and Zalman, respectively that came with screws that were tightened far too tightly at the factory. The first one that I received, I couldn't remove the 3.5" bay panel due to stripping screws.

I couldn't be happier with the midtower Zalman I have now, but that was a PITA at first, yes.

And of course the protective sheet over the clear panel that was under the screws.

 

[SamuriHL]

For the case, I really just wanted toolless HDD and ODD installtion. The toolless design, in particular, for the HDDs in some of the Zalman cases is just absolutely amazing. But yeah, my case wasn't cheap, especially for a mid-tower.

Given what you do with your system, I don't blame you at all. My antec cases aren't entirely toolless but they are easily snapped out. Basically you screw the drives into cages that slide in and lock in place. That design was SO nice when I first got it. I know cases are much improved now, especially on the higher end ones, but, I don't consider that a priority. Once I put it together, I'm not going to touch it for months at a time. So if it's slightly inconvenient to work on, oh well.

 

[Webslinger]

And of course the protective sheet over the clear panel that was under the screws.

Yeah, that was freaking insane. Just adds extra work for the consumer to remove the protective plastic. I still don't understand the reasoning for that. I'm getting angry again just thinking about it. In the end, the annoyances paid off though. Plopping in or removing a hard drive takes literally 3 seconds now. I'm usually doing a lot of stuff in my case, so the case I have is great for me.

 

[gnollo]

Well, it was a 300W power supply.
And no, installing a 450W power supply I had in another PC didn't do much good either.
Played the Pirates of the Caribbean 1 and video drivers crashed 7 times in over two hours.
System seemed to respond better, but does not seem fixed at all.
So it is videocard or motherboard. I am buying a 9500 then, unless you have any suggestions.

 

[SamuriHL]

What's the system temp on this machine of yours? We've been helping another person in another thread where we seemed to have narrowed it down to a heat issue. Did we have you check that already? If not, you might wanna look. Otherwise I'm not really sure what could be going on with that thing. These kinds of problems can be a pain to troubleshoot.

 

[Webslinger]

Well, it was a 300W power supply.
And no, installing a 450W power supply I had in another PC didn't do much good either.
Played the Pirates of the Caribbean 1 and video drivers crashed 7 times in over two hours.
System seemed to respond better, but does not seem fixed at all.
So it is videocard or motherboard. I am buying a 9500 then, unless you have any suggestions.

Can't you get someone to test the videocard for you? Doesn't make much sense to be ordering other parts if they work fine.

 

[DrinkLyeAndDie]

I have to agree with both SamuriHL and Webslinger here.

Try opening your case and making sure it's getting ventilation. If the problems still occur even when the case's side is removed and the room isn't insanely hot then it isn't an airflow/ventilation issue. It could still be a heat issue which you should be able to check with hardware monitoring software like CoreTemp, Lavalys Everest, etc.

As far as troubleshooting the hardware I would definitely recommend trying to get someone to test the part for you. Heck, I'd pay a repair shop to quickly test my video card before I'd go buy a new one without even knowing if that was the problem. Better yet have a friend check it out in their system if they can.

I nearly went crazy trying to pin down the IRQ issue I had with my motherboard. It could have been a video card or memory problem from the symptoms but it was neither. It also could have been a bad motherboard. It did turn out to be an issue with the motherboard but it's more of a design issue than defect.

Anyway, try to minimize the possible causes before spending the money elsewhere.

 

[SamuriHL]

Yup, always start with the simple things first. Troubleshooting should go from easy "common senese" things to the much harder things down the road. As they said, don't be replacing hardware without first getting independant verification that it is indeed defective. Very good advice.

 

[gnollo]

Can't you get someone to test the videocard for you? Doesn't make much sense to be ordering other parts if they work fine.

To be honest with you, I have been in computer shops like PCWorld, and they know less than you guys do about computers. I hate to generalise, but I think that HTPC appasionate like we are, are more knowledgeable about hardware than the generic "PC" person. I work in a company with an IT department, and they come to me to ask me what hardware they should buy.

I build PCs, they just buy them off Dell....

In terms of Temps, coretemp reports 48C on CPUs when idle, and 50 when playing a BlueRay disc.

I think it will be cheaper for me to buy a card for 60£, than to take my videocard to be tested by someone that might not even have a Blue Ray drive to use in the shop. Plus I have always another PC being built in the house (that is the one I cannibalised for the Power Supply yesterday night). I am running a Lan with 3 HTPC at the moment, going for 5 eventually when the loft conversion is done (3 in the bedrooms, 1 powering up plasma in front room and lcd in the kitchen) and one for the loft conversion).

I have changed
- memory stick
- power supply
I will change
- videocard
I mean, if it doesn't work, it HAS GOT to be the motherboard, doesn't it?
I cannot be the CPU as it never really goes above 40% usage when playing a Blue Ray disc.
As for temps, my case Dign 3se has
- a decent airflow (two panaflo fans at the back)
- a gap of 1cm running under the front plate all along the case for front air intake
- is at the bottom of the av rack so there is nothing underneath it (I tested my hard disk temps when sitting on top of the amp and it was getting quite hot..)
- is made of metal and it is always cool to the touch

pic below

 

[gnollo]

Well, it seems that in the UK there are no single slot silent 9500 GT.
They all use two slots. Brilliant.
So I am now getting a friend in the US to order me a MSI N9500GT MD512Z GeForce 9500 GT 512MB from Newegg. My boss is in the US next week, should be able to pick it up for me.

 

[Webslinger]

In terms of Temps, coretemp reports 48C on CPUs when idle, and 50 when playing a BlueRay disc.

You need to be measuring gpu temps as well, and try running 3DMark06:
http://www.futuremark.com/download/3dmark06/

I think it will be cheaper for me to buy a card for 60£, than to take my videocard to be tested by someone that might not even have a Blue Ray drive to use in the shop.

You don't need a blu-ray drive to test a videocard. video playback is not the standard to be testing videocards with. System intensive Dirextx 9 and 10 games in addition to 3Dmark Vantage and 3DMark 06 are far better with respect to determining whether there's an issue with your video card.

I mean, if it doesn't work, it HAS GOT to be the motherboard, doesn't it?

The motherboard could be the issue, but not necessarily.

I cannot be the CPU as it never really goes above 40% usage when playing a Blue Ray disc.

No. That's meaningless. CPU usage is not a direct indication of whether a cpu is faulty. If you want to test your cpu, try a Prime 95 cpu stress test (for 4 hours) or Everest's fpu or cpu stress test (for 4 hours): http://www.lavalys.com

 

[gnollo]

One tooth infection later, gnollo returns to the forum, with a molar less than the last time he visited..
He had time to try, again, to run 3DMark 06, which now loads "please wait while 3DMark scand your system configuration", and then stays there forever.
It has been there for half an hour now, do not think it will go anythere, but I will give it another half an hour...
In terms of running the CPU Stress test, I did, for four hours, find results attached below.
My videocard by the way is a Gigabyte GV-NX85T256H.
Videocard temp whilst idle is 64C, when playing Bluray goes up to 68C, cpu goes between 14 and 25%, with spikes after the video driver crash (every 20 minutes or so).
No signs of temperature increase building to a crash.

 

[Webslinger]

He had time to try, again, to run 3DMark 06, which now loads "please wait while 3DMark scand your system configuration", and then stays there forever.

3dmark06 may hang because of the DLL file that detects 2d/3d clocks. To fix this, navigate to windows/system32/futuremark/MSC, and rename Direcpll.dll to something else. Doing so may allow 3dmark06 to run, without detecting GPU clocks

 

[gnollo]

3dmark06 may hang because of the DLL file that detects 2d/3d clocks. To fix this, navigate to windows/system32/futuremark/MSC and rename Direcpll.dll to something else. Doing so may allow 3dmark06 to run, without detecting GPU clocks

Yup, I did that (read about the issue on their website). Well it turned out that 2 hours later the program actually came to life, and allowed me to run the test. Results saved, now trying to convert them to an xls file.

 

[Webslinger]

Yup, I did that (read about the issue on their website). Well it turned out that 2 hours later the program actually came to life,

After making that change it shouldn't take more than 10 minutes. If it does, then something is wrong.

 

[gnollo]

I think we can safely assume something is wrong.
My system 3dmark score is 2328 3D Marks. I run the test twice the first time it gave me a 2336 result.
http://service.futuremark.com/home.action;jsessionid=6D6D7E78470EA5FC1BDA3B0628F56CF5
I saved the results, but my save to excel option is grayed out (I have excel installed on the PC).

 

[Webslinger]

I think we can safely assume something is wrong.
My system 3dmark score is 2328 3D Marks. I run the test twice the first time it gave me a 2336 result.
http://service.futuremark.com/home.action;jsessionid=6D6D7E78470EA5FC1BDA3B0628F56CF5
I saved the results, but my save to excel option is grayed out (I have excel installed on the PC).

Well, the 8500 isn't exactly speedy, but that's about the score I would expect, really. If 3dmark06 actually ran through its benchmark (and video showed fine), then your graphics card appears to be working. But it definitely shouldn't take 2 hours for 3dMark06 to start running.

I wonder if the stuttering issue during Blu-ray playback isn't just a result of using a low end video card. The 8500 should work in theory, but it's definitely not very powerful. I, personally, wouldn't go slower than a 8800 GT (the 9500GT is slower) or a Radeon 4850, but those cards are slightly more expensive.

 

[gnollo]

Well, the 8500 isn't exactly speedy, but that's about the score I would expect, really. If 3dmark06 actually ran through its benchmark (and video showed fine), then your graphics card appears to be working. But it definitely shouldn't take 2 hours for 3dMark06 to start running.

I wonder if the stuttering issue during Blu-ray playback isn't just a result of using a low end video card. The 8500 should work in theory, but it's definitely not very powerful. I, personally, wouldn't go slower than a 8800 GT (the 9500GT is slower) or a Radeon 4850, but those cards are slightly more expensive.

The reason why I choose the 9500GB is because users reported it as working flawlessly with Blue Ray discs on this forum (see below).

http://forum.slysoft.com/showpost.php?p=128506&postcount=3

Does the 8800 GT come as a fanless or silent fan option?

 

[SamuriHL]

The 8800 GT has a fan?! Weird! I've never hard mine. Actually, it comes on at startup for about 3 seconds. After that, I can run the case with the top off and I still can't hear it. Best video card I've ever owned IMO.