Strange crashes

[____]

This is a bit weird, so you'll have to stick through some linear story telling to work out where I'm at :P

 

 

 

Firstly - outlook expressed died in me and I had to reinstall SP2 to get it to work again (just getting the updates wouldn't work since none of them effected IE or OE).

 

 

 

Now - I didn't reboot immediately since I had other stuff to do. And within 24hrs of install SP2 again I got a BSOD with the following error:

 

 

 

BUGCODE_USB_DRIVER 0x000000FE (0x00000005, 0x000000E0, 0x10DE00E7, 0x88892A68)

 

 

 

Doing a bit of digging on the issue - installing the latest security fixes should solve this. But I had never got it while on SP2 before (like I'd install SP2 and leave it at that, no more updates) so I wasn't too concerned about it but I unplugged any non-critical periferals I had just to be safe, but it happened again later that day.

 

 

 

So I got the fistfull of fixes for XP, and since then it's all been good; no more BOSD. Also better mention that it happened roughly 5 minutes into any game I tried to play (important).

 

 

 

Now is where the trouble starts.. now although I do not get BSOD, my entire system just stop responding at around 5 minutes of game time and I'm looking at a blank screen, rebooting is the only solution.

 

 

 

First I figured it might be a driver issue in regards to putting SP2 back on, so I checked all my drivers, and reinstalled them all despite having the latest versions for everything. Tried again, same deal.

 

 

 

I might add that it was initally noticed with bf2, and a reinstall of the 1.41 patch (4 times) resulted in the same result. And two reinstalls of bf2 and the patch has left my unable to get past 51% - geometires - of loading a map. Which has me thinking this is probably a RAM issue but most likely a problem with the video card as the crash only happens in a game.

 

 

 

I have other applications which use my memory on the same level as the games do (if not more) and the system is fine and stable.

 

 

 

 

 

I need to get my hands on a floppy drive before I can try memtest out and see what that turns up, but in the mean time is there anything I may have overlooked?

[the_god_of_soup]

I don't think so, it seems like you did a damn good job of figuring it out, and IMO I think it's your video card drivers too.

[mastermule52]

Not really... but rather than booting from floppy, try burning memtest to a cd and boot from cd. Default drivers will read that.

 

 

 

As much as I hate to recommend this, but did you try doing the "repair windows" option from a windows installation disc? It's been known to fix problems in the past (although it also creates new ones, just different, and sometimes more manageable ones.)

 

 

 

Best of luck to ya.

[____]

Not really... but rather than booting from floppy, try burning memtest to a cd and boot from cd. Default drivers will read that.

 

 

 

As much as I hate to recommend this, but did you try doing the "repair windows" option from a windows installation disc? It's been known to fix problems in the past (although it also creates new ones, just different, and sometimes more manageable ones.)

 

 

 

Best of luck to ya.

memtest is a bit tempremental there, but i'll try and make a boot cd. Last time I did - didn't boot off it, just skipped it and went on to load windows.

 

 

 

repair windows - possibly. If it works I'll be suprised. Actually not quite, I probably should've just gone that route rathan that just put sp2 back on now that I think about it :-k

[Cruiser]

memtest is a bit tempremental there, but i'll try and make a boot cd. Last time I did - didn't boot off it, just skipped it and went on to load windows.

 

 

 

May be a stupid question on my part, but did you check the BIOS boot order to make sure the cd drive was checked before the harddrive?

[____]

memtest is a bit tempremental there, but i'll try and make a boot cd. Last time I did - didn't boot off it, just skipped it and went on to load windows.

 

 

 

May be a stupid question on my part, but did you check the BIOS boot order to make sure the cd drive was checked before the harddrive?

Always has been, floppy, cd, then hdd.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pulled back a few errors with the setup I had...

 

 

 

Tst  Pass  Failing Address         Good      Bad       Err-Bits  Count  Chan

---  ----  ----------------------  --------  --------  --------  -----  ----

 5     0  000766aad28 - 1894.6MB  FEFFFFFF  FEFFFFDF  00000020      1

 5     0  000766ab528 - 1894.6MB  FF7FFFFF  FF7FFFDF  00000020      1

 5     0  000766ab508 - 1910.6MB  FFF7FFFF  FFF7FFDF  00000020      1

 6     0  000766aad2c - 1894.6MB  FFFFF7FF  FFFFF7DF  00000086      1

 

 

 

Funny this is that 4 passes on each stick individually returned no errors. 3 passes on the stick reversed got nothing. But there's a problem somewhere. Possibly with the slot itself? I honestly don't know right now :|

[Collective]

-Snip- hadn't spotted the memtest errors. Old post follows:

 

 

 

[hide]Is/was that error consistent? Google searches show that it's overwhelmingly caused by faulty USB software/drivers. I'd suggest unplugging+disabling all your USB devices/controllers (including any USB PCI cards in your computer) and seeing if the problem still occurs. If it does, then try removing the software/drivers for these items aswell.

 

 

 

As for how this could be triggered by games I'm not sure. Punkbuster runs hardware scans, but I'm not sure how invasive they are. I've known some (crappy) drivers to destabilize during high CPU usage, too.

 

 

 

Running something like ATITool's tests would help confirm whether or not your graphics card is the cause, since they will stress your graphics card whilst leaving your CPU/RAM relatively unscathed.

 

 

 

Finally, it may be worth going back into the BIOS and making sure your RAM/CPU timings/voltages/etc. are set to their defaults. I've had errors that neither memtest nor Windows Memory Diagnostic have picked up on but were still caused by RAM settings.

 

 

 

Edit: A bit more searching indicates that the third parameter of BUGCODE_USB_DRIVER is actually a vendor+product ID. In this case it appears to refer to a "nVidia Corporation CK8S USB Controller", [10de]. If that's correct I'd suggest disabling it.[/hide]

[____]

Sounds like a plan - I'll work on that when I get this router working (yes another problem).

[____]

alright, so ram was being a douche. took out the faulty stick and had a run of oblivion (with some slight hiccups but no freezes like before) tried out some bf2 and it crashed on load again *sigh*

 

 

 

uninstalled bf2 - reinstall and left it at stock install, no patches. will have another run of it today, with any luck it was just a bad patch that was stoping it from loading past 48/51% before.