Oh the Horror!!

DethAdder · Posted: Tue Dec 22, 2009 3:54 pm Post subject: Oh the Horror!!

I started getting some graphics issues about a week or so ago. Stuff that could go from mild artifacting in games to both my monitors "flickering" on occasion to total freezes. All of it seemed graphics based though driver updates and stripping any shell programs(like windowblinds) didn't help. It finally got to the point of Stalker and Sins being unplayable(my current obsessions).

So what else to do but reinstall windows. It was needed anyways. Well, that's when the real problems began. First the XPs setup is seeing two install partitions of 137GB( I only had one). So I am afraid to format for fear of being the wrong one and screwing with data on the other section of the HD. Well needless to say it didn't matter, wherever I installed windows(three times btw) it would coem up with Internal System Disk error when it came time to boot back off the HD. If I kept it booting from CD even after Win was installed it came up though. Turns out I have to have my other storage drive unplugged to get it to boot. WHy? WHo the fuck knows, but I still can't plug it back in. It won't even let me get to the BIOS to see if it sees it while it's hooked up. Endless Splash screen saying "Entering Setup" is all I get.

Now I'm stuck with one 500GB HD and my Storage HD(totally full of stuff) can't be plugged back in for some reason. And that's not the worst part...
That would be the fact the the same issue with the graphics is still happening(though not to unplayable proportions yet). I did get it to tell my that there was an NV4something,something.DLL error and recovery during a normal exit from Stalker, but have yet to find out exactly why. I've tried different drivers and such with same results. One weird thing is it seems to be 3D issue only. I have also been playing Jets'n'Guns, a 2d side scrolling shooter(newer Gfx, but still 2D) and it has run flawlessly.

Guess I'll try to get the exact error, either from the event viewer or wait for ti again and see if I can't track it down, but this is really becoming a pain in the ass.

Edit:OOOOO and on top of it this forum is giving me a hell of a time. For some reason had to login twice to post, just one of those weeks I guess lol

Re-edit:See if anyone has any ideas this is from the event viewer. It was a normal exit, no crash and PC seemed fine afterwards though I did restart to make sure.

"The driver nv4_disp for the display device \Device\Video1 got stuck in an infinite loop. This usually indicates a problem with the device itself or with the device driver programming the hardware incorrectly. Please check with your hardware device vendor for any driver updates."

not much to go on I know

.

dystopic · Posted: Tue Dec 22, 2009 5:40 pm Post subject:

sounds like santa left a lump of coal up your computer's ass.

this is a very big, um, mess. i have some thoughts but it's also so vague and general. keep researching and tells us if you find anything more. i know there's some small percentage of people who have horrible driver problems with nvidia (likewise with ATI, so that's not a dig against either team).

use Riva Tuner or something like it to make sure the fan on the graphics card is working as it should (getting the right RPMs it's supposed to, and try manually turning them up a bit anyway).

FWIW the hard drive issues sound like they could possibly be unrelated to the 3D issues. did you update either of your OSs recently? i bet if you did it caused a driver conflict with that damnable SCSI adapter you use

dystopic · Posted: Tue Dec 22, 2009 5:41 pm Post subject:

PS: nvidia motherboards also have hard drive controller issues, though usually only when working in RAID, but some of the chipsets at least had major problems with data corruption. you have what, a 780a chipset?

DethAdder · Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2009 6:34 am Post subject:

Well, I'm still working on the Gfx issue and haven't even gotten around to the HD thing yet. Seems there has been this nv4_disp infinite loop issue for a lot people, but mostly seem to be with older AGP setups. There also seems to be a general consensus that the 19x.xx series of nvidia drivers bite and the problem did show up not a week or two after updating mine to 195.62. I had 191.xx before, but just to try make sure that either is or isn't it I went all the way back to June's 186.xx drivers. Now i just have to play my games to see if the problem arises again.

Bad thing is it could take hours to find out. The last iteration I played Stalker for two hours then Sins for for a while and only found the issue still present after leaving Sins paused and going to watch TV for a while. When I came back the Gfx were screwed again and then I had Stalker freeze again after that. So if I don't see a prob before I am ready to quit for a while I may just do the Sins pause thing again while I sleep as a test.

For the HD issue I am going to run back to Asus site and see if there is newer mobo drivers for the chipset and such(I can't recall if I had to update them before or not as I just installed them of the disc) and see if maybe that helps get my HD recognized again. If I could get another SATA drive right about now I would dump this last IDE drive with a quickness. IDE and this Mobo have not gotten along too well since the beginning.

BMF · Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2009 7:55 am Post subject:

Shit...sounds like fubar mate. I had a similiar issue some time ago, and i dont think this is it for you, but i had bumped the gpu power plug and it was not connecting right. The gpu worked fine for shorter periods but if i had some marathon sessions of gaming..it would freeze and such, and give me a similar error you got, i think anyways.

I plugged in a different gpu power plug and the issue went away.
If not that, maybe a psu issue? I tend to find that a small power loss is usually first felt after heavy gpu use.......maybe your taxing you PSU too much...Nik, any good tests for that?

just some random thoughts mate.

Oh..btw Nik, "santa left a lump of coal up your computer's ass"..........nice! LOL

DethAdder · Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2009 9:07 am Post subject:

Thanks for the suggestions. The Vid Card plugs are right there in about the worst spot for getting bumped if your in the PC a lot, but from I can tell they seem secure. I have a 1000w Antec PSU so unless it is having issues there should be no way I am low on power, plus I keep the monitor with temps and voltages up all the time and had no fluctuations. If worse comes to worse though i can change the Vid card's plugs with the other set on the PSU.

I went and grabbed the latest nforce drivers from Nvidia since they had newer ones for my Mobo than Asus. Haven't tried the HD yet cause I want to get a conclusion on the other prob first and there is nothing imperative on there I need right away.

And yea, the lump of coal comment was great I was just distracted by the issues at the time to appreciate it

dystopic · Posted: Thu Dec 24, 2009 7:37 pm Post subject:

well it does at least sound like it's just drivers and no a pure HW issue (like a wonkey fan). my estimate was about 1 in 25 people with the GTX 200 series have had driver issues at one point or another.

DethAdder · Posted: Thu Dec 24, 2009 11:24 pm Post subject:

Well dammit, It is still doing it! This time I was watching GPU stats through Rivatuner along with my Asus Probe and nothing was out of place. It is so random though I just don't get it. I had Sins running for hours with no issues, then play for fifteen minutes and boom the whole screen gets this weird half transparent greyish shading to it. That was a little different then before where it gives me weird looking and psychedelic colored shapes. Thing is I shut the game down start it right back up without a restart or anything and can play for hours again.

I'm starting to wonder if it just isn't something with Sins cause so far I have had one freeze in Stalker but no graphical anomalies or anything and Stalker has been prone to freeze once in a while from the beginning. Maybe time to try a screenie or two and take them to the sins forum see if anyone else has had this or maybe see if the vanilla game does it(been playing entrenchment)

One other gripe. Why is it you can never get things like they were before when going through a reinstall? Stupid taskbar quicklaunch and tray icons are twice as big as they were before and I've made sure to have small icons set and everything. Oh well, it stays on autohide anyways so if i figure it out good, if not no biggie.

DethAdder · Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 6:36 pm Post subject:

Well, the endless fight may be winding down and it is not looking good. Pulled the Gfx card and ran off the onboard for a bit with absolutely no issues.

So, I decided to stick the card back in to the bottom slot(where i had it for months), make sure it was seated good, all connections in place. Took about ten minutes of Stalker for the graphics to go haywire again. So it's back to onboard for now, seeing as money is not going to allow me another card for the foreseeable future.

Good thing, well at least a fair thing is that the onboard is about the equivalent of a 8400GS. Still seems to play Stalker without the upgraded graphics mod and dynamic lighting fine and i expect most games will run ok with reduced settings.

This leads me to a question though. The onboard is 512MB and I assume shared. Since I have 4GB and XP 32 only sees 3 of it does the shared portion come from part of the RAM that XP already sees or is it/can it use part of the extra GB that XP never uses anyways? I guess it's a long shot to think I might get it to use some of the unused portion of RAM, but it still doesn't effect much either way as any one proggy is only going to be using 2GB anyways.

Seems so far the most limiting thing is being stuck with one monitor again, but I may rig up the old system to use for surfing/chat whilst playing games here. At least it's good for that, so it'd be like having a second.

BMF · Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 11:29 pm Post subject:

Hmmm wouldn't you be able to tell by checking in properties in My Computer? It lists system memory there, and if you were losing 512mb to the GPU, it might show up as you only having 1.5Gb Ram???

I'm doubting that myself but it's 5 seconds of work to check, if you havent already.
Other than that, there must some third party app that would suit your needs....what about Memtest?
It's been a while since i used it i don't recall when exactly it runs, but if it's after the OS is loaded it might tell you how much ram is available.

Just thinking about it, and with nothing to go by, i would think that the GPU takes its ram the moment your PC posts, and then as XP loads it takes it's 2GB from the 3.5 left on offer.
I'd say your long shot might be exactly whats happening...with luck.

Perhaps Nik has more of an insight.