[crandaddy]

I'm about fed up with this stupid machine. I'm having serious problems with locking up / crashing the system when I'm engaged in heavy graphic gaming. Usually within 5 minutes of Freelancer I'm either locked solid or completly rebooted without warning. It does the same thing in Winamp when running the visualizations, except it doesn't lock up, it just reboots. TRON 2.0 is the same way. I've borrowed other video cards (32MB antique AGP card) and it did the same thing, except that I was able to play for about 2 hours before it rebooted this time.

Any thoughts????
I've completely reformatted the hard drive and installed all the latest drivers.
Is it hardware..... software...?
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

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I've completely reformatted the hard drive and installed all the latest drivers.

Sounds like its probably hardware related, try testing your memory with memtest86. Are you overclocking?

Have you installed the latest Hyperion drivers? Also, Driver Cleaner might be worth a shot, just to be sure all old drivers are off your system. Fianlly, are you uninstalling your old ATI drivers before installing the new ones?

[admin]

I've completely reformatted the hard drive and installed all the latest drivers.

Sounds like its probably hardware related, try testing your memory with memtest86. Are you overclocking?

Have you installed the latest Hyperion drivers? Also, Driver Cleaner might be worth a shot, just to be sure all old drivers are off your system. Fianlly, are you uninstalling your old ATI drivers before installing the new ones?

[crandaddy]

Well, I think the problem is that I know just enough about computers to get in trouble. Last night I messed around with the clock speeds in my Omega Control Panel (downloaded the latest Omega drivers for the 9600 PRO). I gave "sync" a try. Now both are running at 398mhz. I got into Freelancer for about 10 to 15 minutes and didn't have any problems. Could that have been a fix? I've been reading that the optimal stable settings should be 400 core / 300 memory, but I was getting desperate and trying anything.

No, I haven't tried any memory testing, but I'll give that a try.

As far as the drivers. I just reformatted the harddrive and wiped out all drivers before running the Omega Driver. I've never tried Hyperion. Is that better than Omega?

Thanks for the help.

[admin]

Since the system was doing the same thing with another card, I doesn't seem likely that clock speeds were the problem.

Hyperion are drivers for your motherboard. AGP driver issues can cause system problems.

[crandaddy]

oh, I see. I'll give the hyperion drivers a try. The board I'm using is a
Biostar - M7NCD - Socket A ATX Motherboard with Audio, AGP8X/4X
which comes with it's own drivers, but I'm sure these are way outdated. I just wonder if it can handle the 9600Pro. I guess my main concern is whether or not there is a problem with my AGP slot?! I don't have another MOBO laying around that I can just stick in there and try.
Are there any tests for the AGP slot that you know of?

Thanks for all the help. I've had this thing since early December and it would be nice to be able to use it trouble free for once.

[admin]

Sorry, I just assumed you had a VIA chipset motherboard. You actually have an nVidia. You'll want to install the latest nforce drivers from http://www.nvidia.co...ers/drivers.asp

Can't really test an AGP slot or chipset, except to swap with a known good board.

[crandaddy]

You know, I have a strange feeling that some of my problem could be in my BIOS settings, where my memory/CPU/Motherboard just are not sync-ing together. Let me give you my specific components and see if there could possible be some hardware conflicts, or BIOS adjustments that I may need to do.
Someone has also put the "CAS Latency" bug in my ear as well as upping my RAM cache. There is also the theory that the Northbridge Chipset could be bad
I'm just throwing it all out there hoping that one of these is going to strike a chord.

Hard Drive:
Western Digital Caviar 80GB / 7200 / 8MB / 8.9 / ATA-100 EIDE Hard Drive (THD-80JB P)

Memory:
Ultra 512MB PC3200 DDR 400MHz Memory (U10-4901)

Video Card:
FIC Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB DDR AGP8X with TV-Out & DVI Video Card (F451-9601)

Processor:
Athlon XP 2400+ Processor (MBM-NF2S-2400) 266MHz FSB

Motherboard:
Biostar - M7NCD - Socket A ATX Motherboard with Audio, AGP8X/4X, S/PDIF, IrDA, USB 2.0, CNR, WOL, and 10/100Mbps Ethernet LAN Support (B450-2022)

Anybody that has any thoughts...please let me know.

Thanks

[crandaddy]

Well...it's fixed. And you're not going to believe what was wrong.
I upped the ram cache to double my ram...and the [bleep] thing works.
That's all it was! It was at 384Mb and once I upped it to 1024Mb I haven't had a lick of problems.
Man, pass on the word to anyone experiencing any sort of problems like this. What a cheap fix.
Thanks for the help.

[admin]

Strange? 1024mb video cache shouldn't ever be required. 64mb is needed for 4X AGP operation, and usually 256mb is the recommended max. It must be a bug in the BIOS.

Thanks for posting your results! It should help others having the same problem.