Topic: Random Crashes After Upgrade

[sometimesiforgetmyname]

Hi Guys,

Just upgraded my PC with a new quad core intel, 4gb DDR2 ram and a Geforce 8600 GTS(passively cooled). And ever since I haven't been able to get it working right. Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

Firstly I put everything in, did a fresh install of windows and got my drivers in and thought, first things first lets take a look at bioshock. Looked lovely but after 10 minutes or so game hangs, half a second of blue screen and a restart.

I feel the cooling fins on the gfx card and they feel overly hot, so I fit a cooling fan next to my gfx card (negates passively cooled I knwo but atm I just want it to work). I let everything cool back down and went back into Bioshock to test and same happens again.

I ran the test again with Nvidia Monitor running and the card never got above 43degrees before the crash.

So I assumed my 400W PSU was under powered for the task at hand, so a new 600W PSU later and I'm still getting the same crashes.

Any suggestions??

Did I fry the gfx card by having it run hot first time round?

Is the only way to know to swap and change components, cos I rally don't have the kit to do that.

[Simon]

Hi, and 

It does sound like a heat problem, but I'm no hardware expert, so hopefully someone will be along soon who can be of more help. 

P.S.  A first name would be nice - your user ID is a bit of a challenge to keep typing!   

[sometimesiforgetmyname]

Its Carl by the way.

Temperature doesn't seem to be an issue from all the monitoring I am able to do, gfx card temp is constant, as is case and cpu.

[Simon]

Hi Carl (much better!) 

Have you actually tried removing and reseating the card?  It could just be a symptom of heat expansion causing a poor contact somewhere in the slot.  While you're there, how about getting a smallish soft brush and just brush out the card slot before reinstalling it?  Anything like that is worth a try.

Of course, it could also be poorly seated, or if you're really unlucky, a bad stick of RAM.  Is the RAM one stick, or multiples?  If multiples, try removing one and see if that helps, then swap with the other.  If one stick, do you still have the old one you could try replacing it with, just for elimination purposes?

[sometimesiforgetmyname]

I'm trying to download memtest now to give the ram a going over

[Sandra]

Which OS are you using Carl ?

XP 32 bit may not use 4gig ram, or will not report it accurately.
XP 64 bit and a variants of Vista will run it ok and report it accurately.

If you are using XP 32 bit try dropping 1 gig out, or if running in dual ram mode drop 2 gig out temporarily and see if anything improves.

Also untick the restart after system failure box, at least then the blue screen will stay and give you an error code that you can write down and check what it means before you manually reboot the pc.

Sometimes unchecking that box alone cures the rebooting but wont stop the pc hanging.

[sometimesiforgetmyname]

I still get the same crashes with less RAM in, so the windows xp 32 bit problem isnt the cause of the issue.

I have run RAM diagnostics and everything seems fine and have switched and changed the ram around to no avail so don't think its a ram problem.

Starting tog et suicidal, nothing I do works.

Considering stooping to the lowest of the low and paying sumone to have a look at it

[Sandra]

Did you uncheck the restart after system failure box so that you can see the error message ?