moooopar

help

First here is my setup:
P4 2.8 skt478 prescott
MB soyo dragon 2 v1.0 865pe/ich5r
ram kingston dual 256 total 512
sapphire ati 9600xt w/256mb
maxtor sata 120gb
wd 27gb ide
xp 2600 oem sp1 w/updates

Now I have had this setup since 8/04.
Used mainly for email and surfing and it does fine. When I try to play games they either just shut off with the computer still on and working fine, or it locks up solid. Recent games: Rome Total War, Stronghold 2, Street Racing Syndicate, NFSU2, Collin Mcrae Rally 2005. Colin Mcrae Rally is the worst for crashing my machine by far. The racing games are the worst and have been a problem since day 1. Here in the past week my dumb ass updated to SP2 then had lots of memory errors and BSOD. So I uninstalled SP2 and the errors continue but not as bad. When I go to shutdown I get memory referenced errors.
I have updated every driver and flashed the bios and nothing seems to help. I have checked compatability on every manufacturers website and everything should work together fine.
I have run benchmark tests with 3dmark and no errors even though it was a little slow. I ram memtest86 and no errors. Tested with sandra and no errors.
WTF is wrong with my computer????!!! I have no idea what to do next besides try a new mobo. Every error seems to be random this or that.

Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated.
Any smart ass comments would be appropriate also cause I need to laugh about this as much as possible to keep me from taking this in the back yard and making swiss cheese out of it with something semi auto.

Thanks
Rob

VanillaThrilla

Can you be more specific about the errors?

I'm confused as to whether it locks up mid-game or immediately when you try to load it.. and what happens when you say it shuts down with the pc still on. That's what stumps me.

94silude

i think he was saying that the game shuts down while the pc is still on...




as for a solution, no clue.

as for a smart ass comment...too tired to think of one. 'night

BananaBroncoII

Maybe your memory has gone bad

If you have SP2, make sure you run ALL the updates. Should correct a lot of the mistakes.

moooopar

Even though the computer seemed to have settled down for the most part I installed sp2 which brought back all the problems I had when I bought it. I uninstalled sp2 the next day. I had all the latest drivers before sp2.
Game shuts down mid game but computer is still on and working ok and sometimes it just locks solid. When I get a BSOD they are never the same twice. I had dual Kingston and removed and replaced with single kingston. Single hasn't given me any errors and it's been in all day. dual=KVR400AK2/512R SINGLE=KVR400X64C3A/256

AMDxp2000

i had a friends cootes which had the same problem..its your PSU unit...you need more wattage or...your ram just sucks....i have a 700watt PSU because i run 4 drive's 1gb of ram and soon to be running and amd64....i recommond if thats the power supply that came with your case...you need a new one......get a 400watt or better...and for your setup i sugest a 500watt...

IF it still does this...it could be your cooling..seeing as i take it your using the stock intel fan....they SUCK..go to www.tigerdirect.com and get there aftermarket fans and if your case only has 1 fan...add another to it...soyo's have a set temp to shutdown to prevent damage...

cootees

It could be your psu but it sounds more like it is a bad video card. My fx5900 ultra 256mb just crapped out on me and was doing the same thing. Video cards can do some wierd stuff. they will run perfectly 99% of the time when you are in windows and once you start playing a game it will just shit on you. My advice.. find another video card, test it out and see if it still does it.

VanillaThrilla

that's what I was originally thinking as well... but not necessarily the card itself, the video RAM...

but he said he did benchmark tests and everything was fine, so that makes me wonder.

AMDxp2000

its the PSU psu's dont show up on system stablity tests.....nor do they fuck up benchmarks...they dont have any internal sensors linked to the motherboard.....i wish they did

moooopar

Psu too hot or just faulty? Reseat in socket? Replace? Can't spend more than $100 although I was expecting around $75.