[Brack]

First of all, im sure everyone is sick of seeing these new member posts, but i have been eyeing the forums for quite some time and i am looking for your guidance.

My problems began with a new pc, my brother wanted to get some 'bonding' time in and wanted to build me a new pc since i was hurting for a new one. Keep in mind that neither of us know much, and my brother has built one before mine.

The Problem....
I am a HUGE fan of World of Warcraft, let alone Blizzard fan in general. But i noticed a problem while running WoW, or for the most part any other program (including one or two incidents with just Firefox and Netscape browsers). Currently while in game, ill get a screen lock, WHILE the BG music is still playing, and the pc then becomes unresponsive. After sitting for a few seconds the pc will then either shutdown all together, or cause the screen to go blank.
---the differance is; 1> a complete shutdown, and 2> the monitor screen goes
---blank as if it shutdown, but the cooling fans are still running... mind boggling
---to me

As i stated before, i have read many forums and took other's advise. Here are a couple of tasks i have done to try and fix...
1> Update BIOS (current Phoenix v.1.60)
2> Update Drivers
3> Rollback Drivers
4> Swap memory locations (causes another error [IRLQ NOT GREATER THAN OR EQUAL], but will not focus on that for this post)
i am sure there are other things i am forgetting currently, but if they come to mind i will post.

One thing to keep in mind is that i am currently using a friends ATI Radeon 9600XT, but by the end of the weekend i will be replacing it with my GeForce 6600GT (had problems in shipping, sending back to me). Specs for pc are down below in sig, thanks to Belarc. And ONLY SP1 for Windows, will not let me get SP2 for some reason even though i am using a legal copy of Windows from home.

So ANY advice will help, and im hoping we can work through this issue... i have seen a lot of faith in posters here, thanks ahead of time.

Edited by Brack, 26 April 2005 - 07:24 PM.

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well, certainly an interesting problem. I have seen video cards with bad memory cause these problems so I am leaning toward your video card having issues. have you cleaned the fan on the video card?

Also, because of the memory issue you mentions please run the memtest from http://www.memtest86.com/. You could have a faulty memory stick that could be contributing to your issues.


Starjax

[starjax]

well, certainly an interesting problem. I have seen video cards with bad memory cause these problems so I am leaning toward your video card having issues. have you cleaned the fan on the video card?

Also, because of the memory issue you mentions please run the memtest from http://www.memtest86.com/. You could have a faulty memory stick that could be contributing to your issues.


Starjax

[Brack]

Alright... im shutting down my pc to run MemTest after this post. I jumped on World of Warcraft earlier today just to see if there were any kinds of descriptions that i missed out on, or even if i could find something out myself.

I was actually capable for playing for almost an hour! this was a break through for me... but of course the inevitable happened. Randomly my pc went to a blank monitor. This time i tried to Alt+Tab to see if just MAYBE it was the program, but as before the whole system was unresponsive... Blank Screen and the Cooling Fan still running... still mind boggled.

Figured i would post this and maybe get some other ideas flowing, ya never know... But i will post the MemTest results asap



Thanks Again,
Brack

[Brack]

Well, i ran MemTest, but no errors occured. I let it run over the course of the whole night, at least 12 hours.



Brack

[starjax]

i'm pretty sure its your video card because the system isn't really fully shutting down as much as it is failing to display info to the monitor. do you vpu recovery enabled?

Starjax

[Brack]

Yes, VPU Recovery is enabled...

I read somewhere that if it wasnt then you could get an infinate-loop problem with booting, not sure if that was true but didnt want to take the risk.



(PS: sure as hope this isnt the card, its not even mine!)


Thanks again
Brack

[starjax]

the only other thing I can think of to check is your power supply. having a bad power rail or cheap power supply can cause lots of wierd issues as well.

Starjax

[Brack]

Alright, here we go with another update...

Received my graphics card in the mail today, and i took out the Radeon 9800 and threw in the GeForve 6600. Loaded nicely, updated the driver on the 6600. So NOW, XP wont even load up to the login screen, just shuts me out and everything goes blank (and the fans still run)

Does this moreover prove that it might be the power supply. I think now is the time to take it to the shop, with what little money i have (leave up to the college students to get ephed in the A)



Brack

[starjax]

well I found this out at work. nvidea and ati graphics don't play nice together. you should be able to boot into safe mode and remove the video drivers. if you still having issues.... well sounds like you have a reasonable course of action

[Brack]

ITS ALIVE!!!!

so far after booting in safe mode and removing all the old ATI drivers (in the process of removing all ATI programs just for safe messure)

Ill post another update after tonight if this actually helped with the World of Warcraft problem. There was one other bit of info that was passed my way with a friend who has the same mobo as i. He asked if i had the Core Center program to OC (not that i am going to attempt that since im only an amature), but he said that it will give read outs on some of the volts, heat, etc produced by the machine... we'll see if this helps.


Thanks a million again Starjax

Brack

[Brack]

Haha, so much for taking all night... took no time at all.

Installing that Core Center did set off an alarm, how serious it is i will leave up to you.

Right away after opening WoW, it minimized my screen and the category labeled "3.3V" was flashing red. It has been stable at 2.97 without any other programs running other than Firefox. When the alarm went off, it was down to about 2.90.

Again, i dont know how serious this may be, but i figured anything to help. Im gonna see if i can get anything off the MSI customer service site, but i have a suspision it will be of little or no help.




Figured i would pass this along, thanks again
Brack

[starjax]

sounds like the 3.3v rail is faulty. Don't known what you have for a power supply. I have always liked the antec trupower powersupplies.

[Brack]

ill be looking into that... but for some reason i got a solid 8 hours of gameplay in last night. Not once did it falter. Couldnt have asked for anything better.

ill still look into the power rail... that beeping sound is getting to me, hehe



Thanks Again,
Brack