Guys.. how exactly can crashes damage a computer? [Archive]

CMaster

26-06-06, 00:01

Well, theres a few ways sudden resets can fuck up at least the data on the HDD. Sudden power outages can mes up a qhole host of things.
One thing I would suggest you look at Heavy, is get a memory test program - it does sound like your memory could have errors.

Oh and Dave, a lot of TFT screens are vulnerable to screenburn as well, (although obviously the process is different).

Apocalypsox

26-06-06, 00:03

Oh and Dave, a lot of TFT screens are vulnerable to screenburn as well, (although obviously the process is different).

heh...my old POS monitor does have synchronizing burnt into it if you look hard enough. kinda scary O_o

Rachius

26-06-06, 00:32

heh...my old POS monitor does have synchronizing burnt into it if you look hard enough. kinda scary O_o

Not scary, just expected and inevitable. Hell, I had "SYNCHRONIZING..." burnt into my retinas for about six months towards the end of beta and the start of retail.

Mostly at the start of retail.

Heavyporker

26-06-06, 01:01

Alright. Right now I'm looking at memory testing programs. Free ones only for now, of course. I didn't know Microsoft had one too.

Guys, does memory tests only test motherboard RAM, or can you tell it to test video card memory, too?

edit: reason I ask is because on this computer...it pretty much bluescreens ONLY in regards to neocron.. oh, and that Neocron Arcade game which I simply cannot get to run.

Scanner Darkly

26-06-06, 01:03

I don't know guys, I'm pretty sure NC(1) killed my laptop's original hard drive. Then again it was an IBM Deathstar...

But like others have said Porky, you need to run some tests. Is there anyway you could get hold of some other bits of hardware (RAM, mobo) from a friend and do some testing that way? If it's not dodgy RAM, Mobo or power supply would be my next guess

Heavyporker

26-06-06, 01:05

Oh - and someone in Neocron said that I needed to run memory tests continously for 20 hours. Is this correct? All the memory tests I'm looking at say that they loop.. and loop... and loop..

How exactly does this work to bring out memory problems?

Scanner Darkly

26-06-06, 01:08

RTFM? What kind of software are you using for testin'?

Corny

26-06-06, 10:00

You should post the essential Details of the BlueScreens you get.
If its always the same one we can narrow the problem down, if not we will have to investigate further ;)

On a sidenote: 3 days ago I had random BSODs(pagefile error, unknown error, IRQ error, etc.), reason: one of my HDs(of course IBM) decided to die 8|

Heavyporker

26-06-06, 10:33

Right now, still problems with bluescreens but it's been narrowed down. The memory test is microsoft's and the instructions says each memory test takes about 5 minutes or something on a computer this powerful. My question was *why* I would have to continually loop the program for 20-odd hours.

Brammers

26-06-06, 11:13

rob444

26-06-06, 11:19

Take a closer look on what the blue screen says next time on top, it's useful information.

The error itself doesn't sound like memory errors from my own experience (hell, I got a bluescreen as soon as I tried to start windows), only random weird errors in Windows, like programs crashing all the time and other odd behaviors.

I guess as someone have already mentioned, it could be the harddrive taking it's last breaths - you should try a harddrive test as well ;).

Could also be because of a damaged GFX card.

But next time you get a blue screen, write down what it says somewhere on the top - it's usually in CAPS.

RogerRamjet

26-06-06, 11:36

Not scary, just expected and inevitable. Hell, I had "SYNCHRONIZING..." burnt into my retinas for about six months towards the end of beta and the start of retail.

Mostly at the start of retail.

It was one of the signs youd been playing NC2 too much when that happened. :p

Happened to me too, lol.

Scanner Darkly

26-06-06, 11:40

If you haven't already, check that all the components are properly seated in their slots - ram, cpu, exp cards, etc. Canned air is fun - and as a bonus gets rid of dust and any other crap...

It's a long shot, but do it anyway...

Heavyporker

26-06-06, 12:24

Actually, Brammers, that was one of my concerns, but I don't really know enough about the power draw of the various components.

You know, cpu, vid card, hard drive. These are the only major power-suckers that I can think of.

Brammers

26-06-06, 12:49

Heavyporker

26-06-06, 12:56

Athon 64 2800+... Radeon ATI 128MB graphics card (System Info says its Radeon 9600 but that's obviously erroneous, I think. I can't find the packaging info, so..) and power supply's 380 watts (it came with the Antec Sonata mini tower case)

Scanner Darkly

26-06-06, 13:09

Which should be enough, assuming you don't have stacks of hdds attached.

Brammers

26-06-06, 13:30

Which should be enough, assuming you don't have stacks of hdds attached.

Hmm... 380 watts, not 100% sure but I think that's pushing it, but Antec's are usually good solid PSU's, and ATI's are don't consume so much power as Geforce cards.

For reference I have a AMD Athlon 64 3500+ and a Geforce 7800GT, powered by a Antec TruePower 550W PSU.

Pantho

26-06-06, 13:47

an idiotic freind of mine had a shit load of lights, including on his monitor and Keyboard, al blue, very shiny....

ofc on a 180 watt PSU, Anyways whenever he plugged his USB Flash drive in, it just nudge it to reboot, :).

yuuki

26-06-06, 14:07

but 380 watt is enuff for such a system, nvidia recommends 350 watts for a 6600gt sli system driven by the same processor.
i doubt your system consumes more than 200 watt tbh.
but as your grafics card is quite old it might be the problem, so try some graphics benchmarjks and see what happens :D

Spermy

26-06-06, 15:43

Unfortunately, it could also be a case of flogging a dead horse. :(

Scanner Darkly

26-06-06, 20:31

I run my lounge PC on 250W: Athlon 3200, 2 HDDs, nForce2 onboard graphics - seems to have more than enough jouice even at 100% load. So 350W+ should be plenty for such a low spec system... Redundancy is never a bad thing.

Kame

26-06-06, 21:44

Looks like you have errors on ur HD.

I think crashes will mostly damage information that is/is being saved onto a HD. Obviously it wont damage the video components. If you crash often maybe it damaged ur OS data on the HD. Thats one way crashing could "damage" ur shit. In anyways its not physical so not that bad.
And power doesnt seem to be the issue : he gets bluscreens, not random resets.

Heavyporker

27-06-06, 06:18

Oddly enough, trying to create a boot cd for the memory test seems to crash me. I got more information, though.

1) It's definitely a Radeon ATI 9600 128mb graphics card. Looking it up to find different drivers than the ones from the ATI homepage because that's fucking me up.

2) Three semi-random bluescreens so far:

- Page Fault in Non-Paged Area
- scrolled up before I could read the problem, but the second half of the bluescreen requested driver verification
- Driver IRQL not less or equal, last part mentioned mxnic.sys

Hopefully you guys know what that means. I'm off to try finding different drivers and trying several more attempts to burn a boot cd for the memory test.

rob444

27-06-06, 13:15

Hm sounds more like a memory issue now. If they are failing, you can get about any error msg out there.

PepsiPlayer

27-06-06, 14:19

Porker, dont ever use a mem test program that runs in a Windows evironment due to the obvious fact that it wont be able to test memory that is in use by programs. If you want a decent test program that will test EVERYTHING and is a solid industry development program, PM me your address and i will send you a copy of said diagnostic program, just for referance it uses its own self booting routine that runs at such a low lvl it is capable of doing these tests. The reason would need your address is that windows cant see the contents of the disk, but a blind write of the disk copies the contents fine. BTW i used this program as a professional system engineer for about 5 years and i cant fault it.

I will be away till Sunday or Monday but i will try to log on periodically.

Heavyporker

27-06-06, 18:28

Finally figured out what fucked this computer. Apparently something futzed the display drivers. Deleting the ATI drivers and reinstalled fixed most of the issues. Now I'm able to actually play Neocron.

Still tracking down the memory issues.

boreal

27-06-06, 18:52

my best bet on that one is the way i think to fix it

1. like mention before, run test on your memory and HDD (try your videocard too), all of the test you run must be **stress test** in order to know if one of these component are broken (or are at they last breath)

2. run a scan disk (by pressing F8 when your computer start, running windows in dos mod and type **chkdsk c: /fr**, reboot and wait about a few houres, run a defrag after that.

3. like someone have mention before, get out component 1 by one and place them again in the same place, maybi all these probleme come on 1 item who is just not enought inside is place and move sometime (happen whit me whit my GeForce Nx 6600 250 Mb :P, computer won't start, just reset and suddenldy it work :P)

then if nothing work... i will try to help you find a way to get your driver up to date

p.s. how you instal your driver :D that important because if you don't do it right it can be your probleme :D

landofcake

28-06-06, 12:22

In my experience ...

I've seen many issues over times with many computers i've built that cause random crashes.

The first thing to do in this instance is CHECK THE MEMORY !!! run memtest86 for a few hours perhaps, maybe even less ... if your memory has errors they tend to become apparent very fast when running tests.

PSU has also been an issue for me in the past. My brothers machine had a Q-Tec PSU (for future reference, never buy them). It was 500w i believe (pfft), and survived for a few years then began to die and caused the machine to randomly reboot (however, there were no BSOD's).

Many people say issues like this may be related to CPU's being faulty and not being seated properly, but in my circumstances i've found that that'll cause the PC to not work at all.

That's about all ... first i reccomend you run memtest86. Then if that doesn't show any errors, you can try replacing your RAM with some spare (or, if you've got more than one stick, start swapping them out) to see if that helps the situation.

Then, i suggest you try a spare PSU if you can.

If none of this helps, you can try a reformat ... or you could try this first, depending on how you're inclined, but it could just be a waste of time.

Repairing computers and diagnosing problems is generally about trial and error, and having lots of spare parts to test.

Heavyporker

29-06-06, 10:32

After long last, I think I tracked down what was fucking me up so badly. See, I forced system restore to go back to before I installed Directx 9. Boom!

Practically solved *everything*. Sure, NC goes down on me, but a majority of the times, it's a fatal, not a bluescreen.

I promise you, I never thought I'd be happy when I got fatals.

Anyways, the computer hasn't really bluescreened for anything other than Neocron now, so I think it was all directx9's fault. I don't know why.

The general memory tests *seemed* to come back okay, but it was a brief testing period. I really couldn't sit down and extensively test the memory like you guys so strongly advised me to.

boreal

29-06-06, 13:59

i usualy making these test when i sleep :P and to tell you, if direct X is the probleme, think about a format !!! serious

netster

29-06-06, 14:23

hmmmm my homebox randomly crashes too with a IRQL of various stuffage, all exchanged but the hdd .... time to do that!

- bios updated
- drivers updated+rerolled various version
- 9 times reinstall xp
- my memtest86 ran 5 days without a problem (i was a week out to my gf)
- enermaxx something with rounded wiremesh bullsomething 450watts psu <= exchanged with my routers one (noname 350watts)
- asus k8v <= not exchanged
- amd3200+ 1meg cache <= not exchanged
- 2x 512 infi ram <= single sticks tried, but also crashed
- a 40gig samsung 8megs cache hdd on it <= my next try to exchange

oh and i use the onboard sound+lan, both works fine .... ah and i think i only crash under heavy load, most times with a nvdisp.dll-or-something... got a 6800gt in my babeh, changed that beast with my bubblegum 9600pro, but still didnt helped.

crashes only under DirectX !! :/