[puters r a pain]

I recently built my computer about 2 weeks ago and have been running it fine with occasional freezes. It only froze when I played Guild Wars randomly anywhere from 15 seconds or playtime or 3 hours of playing. Sometimes instead of freezing the screen just turned completely blue or orange. This usually occured when I alt+tab from Guild Wars to Mozilla Firefox and back. Then today it froze after about 10 minutes and when i restarted it nothing came up. My computer had power and seemed to be running just like normal but the monitor light was flashing as if the computer wasnt on and nothing appeared on the screen and there was no sound in the background saying that Windows XP was loading. My system specs are:

ABIT KN9 SLI Mobo
Nvidia Geforce 7900gt
maxtor 300 gb sata 150 hdd in 100 170 and 30 gb partitions (i partitioned w/ hdd software not xp)
2x 1gb ddr2 patriot ram
52x memorex cd burner
500w power supply
AMD Athalon 64 3600+
Windows XP Professional

Edited by puters r a pain, 27 August 2006 - 03:20 PM.

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Hi there,

Quick question - what was the partitioning software that you used? - do you show any issues in device manager? (don't wanna be patronising here - I know that you built the system so can only assume that you are fairly well versed in the hardware side of things) look for question marks which denote system issues.

Please don't think I am trying to over simplify - I am merely trying to rule out possibilities which will let me hone in on the actual issue...

Keep smiling


Steve

PS - do you have freeze or crash issues identifiable with other programs. One more (perhaps random) question - can you describe the orange crash screen for me? - does it have any error messages attached? - is it a microsoft crash or is it to do with the game itself? - either way, any error message number will be useful in finding a fix for your particular issue

[exparisstevie]

Hi there,

Quick question - what was the partitioning software that you used? - do you show any issues in device manager? (don't wanna be patronising here - I know that you built the system so can only assume that you are fairly well versed in the hardware side of things) look for question marks which denote system issues.

Please don't think I am trying to over simplify - I am merely trying to rule out possibilities which will let me hone in on the actual issue...

Keep smiling


Steve

PS - do you have freeze or crash issues identifiable with other programs. One more (perhaps random) question - can you describe the orange crash screen for me? - does it have any error messages attached? - is it a microsoft crash or is it to do with the game itself? - either way, any error message number will be useful in finding a fix for your particular issue

[puters r a pain]

The software I used to partition was the Maxtor Harddrive discs that came with the harddrive. And I didnt show any errors in the device manager but if there are any now then I cant even get my computer on to check. There shouldnt be any changes tho.

O yea, i forgot. I hadnt had problems with any other programs till yesterday when Firefox froze. It froze twice in 1 day. That didnt bring up the blue and orange screen tho. Just froze. There is no stop error it just looks like the black and white fuzzy on a TV when theres no reception heh, except orange or blue. So that screen is probably associated with the game itself.

Another thing that might be helpful is that when I installed the most updated Verto graphics card drivers that came with my graphics card my computer froze the second I turned it on before I could even open the Start Menu. So we uninstalled those and installed all the updated Abit motherboard drivers from their website so I could get my widescreen resolution and I never had that problem again.

[exparisstevie]

Hi again,

I'm sorry that I seem to have only partially listened to your last post (it's no excuse but i'm involved in lots of posts at the same time)

It seems to me that it's a graphics card issue. Since you seem very well versed in hardware - I want you to try this route first. Can you safely shut down the pc and follow all safety precations that you normally would prior to opening up the box. I want you to remove and reseat the graphics card for me. As you are here anyway, i'd like you reseat all hardware components that are reseatable (ie not fixed components)

This may seem like i'm questioning your previous install steps but this is not the case - these things can become loose, it's a fact of life. If you do this and you find the same issues - I want you to consider a possible software problem which may require a re-install, I know this seems drastic, but it may be that due to previous install problems for the graphics card software we have an issue that is unrecoverable without a reinstall - but that's in the future and ONLY AS A LAST RESORT, I only want to prepare you for this eventauality (the reason this is SUCH AN ISSUE FOR ME IS THAT YOU CANNOT BACK UP AT THIS POINT AS YOU CANNOT SEE YOUR SYSTEM TO BACK IT UP)

Before any of these drastic measures I would recommend unplugging all devices and restarting your machine again. (**this is to eliminate conflicts - THESE ARE COMMON - eg you could find that your printer drivers prevent your new graphics drivers from running)

An additional thought here - do you have a spare VDU that you can replace? - It would just narrow the issue for troubleshooting purposes. Don't worry if not (i don't think this is the issue, but you never know!)

You maybe able to save time in the long run by (temporarily) changing the graphics card - I think this is the route of your issues (not the card itself but the software that it's trying to use to access it)

Try my steps - let me know how it went

Good luck - Wish you well


Steve

[puters r a pain]

Hey man thanks a lot for the advice. Just got back from work. Ill try all of these things and message back w/ the results. Hopefully soon .