Win2K is Being Dumb.

JengoJengo Pasco, WA | USA
edited March 2004 in Science & Tech
well, if you guys havent noticed i have mainly been using Mandrake linux for last couple of weeks to do everything except gaming. that is the only reason i still have a windows OS on my pc.

anyways. My friend has halo. i wanted to try it out so he let me borrow it. install went fine. i started to play. everything went fine. then i realized i was getting teh crap FPS. so i went to the Halo settings. i maxed everything out. (cept resolution i put that at 1024 x 768) well it started to change the settings. then it said "gathering exception data" then the PC just hard reboots on his own now the crappy part about this is that. now it does it constantly. i do anything in windows and the PC just reboots on its own it doesnt even have the shutdown screen it just hard reboots. i dont think its the PSU cause i run linux fine. i dont have any probs in linux. this is a windows only deal here. i kinda dont wanna re-install win2k cause i have some music and software that i hate finding/re-installing but if its a must i will. oh and i forgot to mention. not only does it hard reboot alot. i keep getting Memory BSD's (blue screen of death) they go: "some memory someting starting physical memory dump" man.... it cant be my memory. everything works fine in linux. so?

thanks for any help guys.
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Comments

  • Omatic810Omatic810 Gainesville, FL
    edited March 2004
    I've had so many probs with Windows 2k that i cant even count. I've even gotten used to them. Anyway, u should reinstall, b/c it won't override your settings, it will just renew the windows system files and it will be like new, but with your old icons and everything. That's how I usually fix problems, even though they may not stay gone long.
  • GobblesGobbles Ventura California
    edited March 2004
    run a windows repair.

    save your memory.dmp files. goto AOAForums, in there is a detailed instruction on how to use win debbuger to find out what exactly is causing the issue.

    Gobbles
  • BlackHawkBlackHawk Bible music connoisseur There's no place like 127.0.0.1 Icrontian
    edited March 2004
    I would do a repair installation, backup your stuff, format, repartition (add another partition) and install.
  • hypermoodhypermood Smyrna, GA New
    edited March 2004
    I'd run memtest86 just to be sure (even if you don't have problems in linux). If that comes back clean, I think a repair install is your only choice.
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited March 2004
    Since the problem started while you were trying to adjust video settings in Halo, I would start by uninstalling Halo, then reinstalling your video drivers and DirectX. You could then give Halo another shot (assuming the other stuff helped!).
  • JengoJengo Pasco, WA | USA
    edited March 2004
    Hmmm.... is there any ways to check if your PSU is dying? any ways?
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited March 2004
    There are test devices you can buy, but be careful - many of them aren't worth the time and money.

    The easiest thing to do is swap it out with one you trust.
  • JengoJengo Pasco, WA | USA
    edited March 2004
    all i have is this 350 and another 250... i dont think i will be able to swap it...

    are there any simptoms of a dying PSU?
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited March 2004
    See what all of your voltages look like. MBM5 will tell you what each is doing individually. If one (or more) is way out of spec it may be time to replace it.
  • JengoJengo Pasco, WA | USA
    edited March 2004
    well, i ran memtest, everything came out successful

    next up mobo monitor.
  • JengoJengo Pasco, WA | USA
    edited March 2004
    everything looks as it should be...

    i dont know what the heck is going on...
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited March 2004
    Did you try the drivers & DirectX?
  • JengoJengo Pasco, WA | USA
    edited March 2004
    yes
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited March 2004
    Well, one idea was to uninstall halo. try booting, tapping F5 until you get the menu, choose safe mode, and uninstall halo from there.

    Halo plays with resolution (you set that, it played with color depth and refresh rates and that is probably when things went screwy, right?) so try pulling it in safe mode when you have a basic video setting imposed.

    Then try restarting, see if the thing coems up into windows, set things back to normal for video. Restart, see if windows is stable. No, probbaly not normal mainboard RAM that Halo is talking about-- could be VIDEO CARD RAM as Halo probbaly tried to set up for nearest card it knew to yours and then proceeded to essentially OC the card. When video cards go unstable with Win2K all holy heck breaks loose. So, best to pull Halo. Then see if more conservative settings on video card make Win2K stable again.

    Oh, ATI likes to custom tweak the directx with its cards, possible that reloading Directx from the ATI driver CD (not a stock Microsoft Directx) will help fix some also if things are only partly fixed. I HAVE done that before and had it help, some.... With both NVidia and ATI cards, but especially ATI cards.

    John D.
  • JengoJengo Pasco, WA | USA
    edited March 2004
    well, i uninstalled halo, left it uninstalled.

    Put my cpu at defaults and everything in the bios at default. problem seems to have dissapeard.

    could it be because my PSU doesnt have enough power for my Processor? cause i OCed this Processor hard. maybe the PSU couldnt take it. its a Generic PSU thats why i started leaning toward the PSU. i am gonna have to buy an antec PSU or something. something better then this thing.
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited March 2004
    Try and restore your OC. Sounds to me like something in Halo was the problem. If it doesn't work you can always roll back to a lower speed. :thumbup
  • JengoJengo Pasco, WA | USA
    edited March 2004
    ok im gonna try. thx
  • DexterDexter Vancouver, BC Canada
    edited March 2004
    To stop the rebooting, go to My Computer, right click, bring up Properties, go to Advanced, and check the settings for System Failure. Look to see if "Automatically Reboot" is turned on. If so, disable it. Now when Halo has a problem, rather than rebooting, you will get a blue screen and a memory dump. You will need to take note of the error messages, check which DLL is being referenced, etc.

    Halo is notorious for being a video hog. If you haven't got a good fast AGP card and optimized video settings in your BIOS, Halo will quite probably max out your video memory and cause problems. Check some of the things disccussed in this thread:

    http://www.short-media.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8614

    I was troubleshooting some similar issues on XP for a friend's computer, some of the links I posted there may be helpful.

    Please post your video card specs, as well as your BIOS settings regarding video. Sometimes something as simple as having an AGPx speed which is not compatible with your card, or having a memory hole aperture too big or too small will cause video cards / RAM to have conflicts, causing exactly the problems you are seeing.

    Dexter...
  • JengoJengo Pasco, WA | USA
    edited March 2004
    Well, i dont think it could be my Video card. because when i was running halo it was running around 85fps (my max monitor RR) my video card is an Abit GeForce4 Ti4200 OC'ed, anyways.

    I restored the OC like prof had reccomended, and it restarted again when i went into windows. i dont get it... it doesnt do anything in linux but it does in windows....

    i am starting to lean with the PSU. the voltages and such looked fine when i looked at them. but...??? i dunno... i am confused...

    then after that it refused to post. it would not start up. the machine would turn on. but nothing would be displayed on the screen. man... this sucks...

    i fixed the problem by resetting the bios. but i dunno what cause it not to be able to boot.
  • LincLinc Owner Detroit Icrontian
    edited March 2004
    Forum Rules wrote:
    For all purposes postings in and of this forum are subject to editing and removal based on the prohibited grounds of discrimination [including] sexual orientation
    I've edited the thread title accordingly. "Gay" does not equate to being dumb, idiotic, screwed up, or similar terms while using these forums. Thanks.
  • JengoJengo Pasco, WA | USA
    edited March 2004
    sorry about that keebs

    :thumbsup:
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited March 2004
    This sounds like what happened when my sister's dual Athlon died. Everything looked fine in MBM, but when I pulled out my multimeter and read the actual volts from a molex plug, it read 4.5V on the 5V line. Wayyyy under-volted. One stick of RAM was dead as well, but even with that pulled it didn't want to boot until I replaced the power supply. Check the voltages with a good multimeter and don't trust software readouts.

    Symptoms were random hard reboots with no error screens. It was an enormous pita to troubleshoot.

    -drasnor :fold:
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited March 2004
    Jengo wrote:
    ...i fixed the problem by resetting the bios. but i dunno what cause it not to be able to boot.
    Dexter wrote:
    ...Sometimes something as simple as having an AGPx speed which is not compatible with your card, or having a memory hole aperture too big or too small will cause video cards / RAM to have conflicts, causing exactly the problems you are seeing.

    Dexter...
    Methinks maybe Dexter called it. When you reset your bios it may well have changed the AGPx speed and Aperture settings.

    If you're in the mood to pinpoint the problem you could note what the settings are now, then try fooling around with them and see if the problem recurs.
  • JengoJengo Pasco, WA | USA
    edited March 2004
    but i have never changed those settings before. My Video card AND Mobo only support 4x AGP. im not sure about the aperture size tho. i will check up on that alittle later

    but for now its time for school

    :)
  • DexterDexter Vancouver, BC Canada
    edited March 2004
    Jengo wrote:

    install went fine. i started to play. everything went fine. then i realized i was getting teh crap FPS. so i went to the Halo settings. i maxed everything out. (cept resolution i put that at 1024 x 768) well it started to change the settings. then it said "gathering exception data" then the PC just hard reboots on his own now the crappy part about this is that. now it does it constantly. i do anything in windows and the PC just reboots on its own it doesnt even have the shutdown screen it just hard reboots.

    OK, so your windows was fine. Install was fine. Halo was fine. You weren't happy with the frame rate, so you changed the VIDEO SETTINGS. Everything goes kablooie. And for some reason you don't think this is a VIDEO problem, you think at first that it is Windows problem but now you think it is a power supply problem?

    So, you reset your BIOS, and everything is fine again. My question to you know is: what in the BIOS changes anything to do with the power supply? Hint: absolutely nothing.

    Next question: what in the BIOS changes anything to do with your video setup? Hint: lots.

    When you maxed the video settings out in HALO, those settings will make adjustments to your DirectX settings and your video driver settings. One of those changes was so severe that your video card stopped responding, because the changes that were made to DirectX and/or video driver settings are beyond the caapability of your video card. This is why the system kept rebooting.

    If you check out the HALO FAQ's and Support Page at Microsoft:
    http://www.microsoft.com/games/halo/support.asp

    Or the tech forum at Gearbox Software:
    http://www.gearboxsoftware.com/forums/postlist.php?Cat=&Board=technical&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=

    You will see that over 85% of rebooting and freezing problems with Halo are due to video configuration problems. Seeing sa how that was what you were adjusting when you experienced the problem, I am pretty confident that yur PSU and your OS are not the problem here.

    So again I ask: what type of video card are you using, brand and model number, what drivers, and what Directx version? There are some known issues with ATI video cards and Halo.

    Also, what chipset is your mobo? There are some known issues with VIA chipsets if you do not have the lastest VIA drivers.

    Dexter...
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited March 2004
    Is it only rebooting while you play Halo or is it all the time? If it's all the time, then forget your Halo settings. Something is wrong with your computer.

    -drasnor :fold:
  • DexterDexter Vancouver, BC Canada
    edited March 2004
    drasnor wrote:
    Is it only rebooting while you play Halo or is it all the time? If it's all the time, then forget your Halo settings. Something is wrong with your computer.

    -drasnor :fold:


    Read the part of his post I quoted above. After changing video settings in HALO, his computer now reboots all the time. The problem originates with HALO changing overall system video settings, and is fixed after he reset the BIOS.

    Dexter...
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited March 2004
    Dexter wrote:
    Read the part of his post I quoted above. After changing video settings in HALO, his computer now reboots all the time. The problem originates with HALO changing overall system video settings, and is fixed after he reset the BIOS.

    Dexter...

    Well, that tells me that oen thing in BIOS might be playing in here.... Look and see if altering the video card polling from PCI to AGP replicates issue, will you??? Leaving that in PCI with an AGP card present typically happens on reset AND uses different settings and Windows will slow things down for a PCI card it thinks it has sometimes, thus remorphing the settings to something managable. Sometimes, after one has then changed it back to AGP, things still work as Windows has fixed video back to default, sometimes the "other possibility" happens and Windows re-adopts the last AGP settings it had and you get to go back to the PCI detect first to get Windows up, then reload AGP drivers, then change BIOS back to AGP first, then please stop playing the misbehaving game. Seen both happen.

    John D.
  • JengoJengo Pasco, WA | USA
    edited March 2004
    I restored the OC (CPU oc not vid card) and it started to reboot again. i dont have halo installed, it cant be that anymore.

    My Video card is an Abit GeForce4 Ti4200.

    i reinstalled DX and the 53.xx drivers.

    this is a Windows problem now. not game. i think it IS the PSU. what else could it be?
  • hypermoodhypermood Smyrna, GA New
    edited March 2004
    Jengo wrote:
    I restored the OC (CPU oc not vid card) and it started to reboot again. i dont have halo installed, it cant be that anymore.

    My Video card is an Abit GeForce4 Ti4200.

    i reinstalled DX and the 53.xx drivers.

    this is a Windows problem now. not game. i think it IS the PSU. what else could it be?

    You restore the CPU overclock and the rebooting returns and you believe it is a Windows problem?

    SOME of the problems associated with overclocking your CPU:
    1) Your CPU may not overclock to the speeds that you want.
    2) You may need to apply more voltage to the CPU.
    3) You may not have sufficient cooling for the CPU.
    4) Your PSU may not be able to handle the extra power required to overclock.
    5) Your FSB may not be stable at overclocked speeds.
    6) Your memory may not be stable at overclocked speeds.

    You mentioned previously that you had run and passed memtest so 5 and 6 are not likely (but still possible under load). The problem is NOT Windows.
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