Games freeze, sound loops requiring restart

[merc84]

I have a XFX 8800 GTX XXX with the latest drivers(158.22) installed and when I try to play games(HL2:Ep1, Company of Heroes) the application freezes as soon as I hit the menu screens. The sound will start to loop and ctrl-alt-delete won't work, neither will alt-tabbing out of the game. The only thing I can do is hit the restart button. Anyone else have these problems...hopefully a possible solution?

 

[-redundant-]

Not alot of info. Could be any of a number of things, some to examine 1) Update audio drivers 2) Lower OC if Applicable to rule out 3) Memory Test 4) Game patches 5) updates other drivers (RAID, Chipset, etc).

 

[merc84]

Silverstone TJ09B w/window
Asus Striker Extreme
Intel QX6700
Zalman CNPS9700 LED
Corsair Dominator TWIN2X 2048-9136 C5D
XFX 8800 GTX XXX
Plextor 760A/SW-BL
WD Raptor X 150GB
Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic
PC Power & Cooling Turbo Cool 1KW-SR


I have the latest audio drivers installed(released 30 Oct 06).

 

[morerevs]

Do you have the latest bios for your mobo? My board P5n32e-sli plus is based on the striker and had a bios update fixing incompatibility issues with soundblasters x-fi cards. Might be worth looking into on the asus site.
GL

 

[merc84]

hmm, after all that you onl;y went with the x-fi etrememusci :lol:

still, have you checked the ram yet?

i have had a few looping sound crashes recently and it turned out to be my ram. are you running it at default settings or are you psuhing them a bit?

Haha, you noticed that about the sound card eh? I figure why blow more money on software and fatality's name when I can get the same quality chip on a cheaper card.

Anywho, I was cruising some forums and this guy seemed to have the exact same problem I have:

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=36987

It seems he hasn't posted for a few days so maybe putting the sound card in another PCI slot worked for him. When I contacted XFX that's what the tech told me to do, take the bloody card out and reboot. Could be a conflict I guess being that I get that blue screen as well.

I'll try the sound card thing and post if all goes well so it helps other people who may have the same issue.

 

[Laserjet]

Though i'm not as knowledgable as my other friends here but i've encountered this problem too and it was my RAM which was the defaulter.I had a low amount of memeory as well as problems with it.After sorting out RAM,things are fine with me as far as games are concerened.

 

[merc84]

I have 2Gb of RAM and I haven't tinkered with it, everything's default.

 

[betunn]

I had the same problem not too long ago.

It was overheating on the GPU.

 

[spak_man]

I had a similar problem a while back with HL2

try runing DXDIAG go into the sound tab, and put hardware acceleration to none. worked for me, although your problem could be somthing completely different, but no harm in trying my solution

 

[hv43082]

It's actually a combination of X-fi and 8800 series vid card. Something to do with the memory allocation and irq conflict. I am having the same problem w/ BF2142. Although this is partially attributed to the new punkbuster's update.

Copied from another source:

Well after a lot of reading, trying, assembling and disassembling ive come to find the main reason of why we are all seeing BSODS on your cards, the main reason is not one but a combination of many factors which i will explain below, I can almost guarantee you that if you follow the instructions ill post here, you will solve your BSOD problem.

Since I got tired of having to look at a billion pages to find this information i decided to put it all in a nice troubleshooting list for everyone to follow, starting with the most common general problem down to the most specific based on what ive seen here and what ive personally tested.

Nature/Origin of the problem:
Just telling you how to fix it would be pointless, so ill try to dig in more as in why this problem is happening and whats up with the research behind this whole post.

After much testing I've come the same conclusion as a guy named dubbo07 on these forums, that the 8800GTX/GTS does not interface well with any high speed memory that uses the high performance Micron D9 chips and/or similar specs chips. Main reason? Timing and Voltages, not necesarily the Rams, its the entire board's, Graphics applications constantly store and read data from the video memory and system memory, the video driver attempts to access the system memory randomly for what ever reason and does this in a way most ram chips dont like, and BAM, hardware crash "insert 10 diff blue screen errors here" messages, ranging from IRQ, to Page fault and flat out hang.

So after reading a bit people had no clue WTF was causing this i decided to grab the 10 8800GTX Cards i had here from BFG. XFX. EVGA you name it, Air cooled, water cooled, overclocked, stock etc. and give them a spin, to try to find out what in hell is causing this, i was using cloned windows installations, so to avoid actual drivers being the cause.

The 10 test systems were as follows:

Intel D975XBX2 Bad Axe 2 Motherboards
8800GTX 768MB Random Brands and Cooling Systems but same overall card chip
E6600 Conroes 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo Retail
1,2,4 GB Ram Configs using Kingston PC6400 DDR2 HyperX Ram in 1 2 4 stick configs
Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty Pro Gamer Series Audio and onboard Sygmatel Audio
Hiper Type R 580W Modular PSU - $85 buck PSU (which isnt very uber, if this thing could run it any can)

I tried every single config I could, and I came up with This troubleshooting list on some machines some points fixed some of the bsods, on others the others fixed it, eventually they all got fixed, it wasnt one thing but multiple things that were causing the bsods.

Heres the list be sure to try it from top to bottom.

1: Heat
Cause:
Nvidia "Nerfed" the fan control speed and its now SET at 60% fixed speed and WILL NOT MOVE
How to fix?:
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=163
Download Rivatuner from guru3d.com and hard overide the NVidia fan control to set it to 100% at all times, yes its noisy but even at 100% damn thing wont go under 65c IMHO still to hot but def better than 100+ water boiling.
Extra info on the problem:
Nvidia says the GPU is fine up to 147celcius, IMHO, i dont care what Nvidia says, if i cant handle it with my hands, i dont want it inside my case, and since they "decided" to "nerf" the fan controller the card runs hotter than ever, this is usually the most common cause for the "it hangs every 30 mins or so of gaming" problem, if its not the actual nvidia card overheating thats causing the hang its somethign else in your board locking up due to the nvidia card overheating it way over its intended heat range, namely your PCI-E controller, chipset or some other circuit getting 100c air being blown direcly over itand making IT lock up.

2SU Wiring
Cause:
Massive flat out raw power draw from this card under heavy load
How to fix?:
Give Your Majesty its own personal rails for its sole and exclusive use, do not let any other "peasants" get near its personal rails.
Extra info on the problem:
This card is insane, it REQUIRES 2 full rails ONLY for itself. so make sure the 2 rails you are connecting to the cards power plugs are 100% independent of each other and do NOT use rails with other devices in them, the cables have to be straight PSU to Vid card and thats it nothing else, i put 3 rails SPECIFICALLY for the card on mine and works fine.

3river
Cause:
Nvidia needs to learn to play and learn to code when it comes to drivers
How to fix?:
Get the new beta driver
ForceWare 160.03 (Yes 160.03)
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1633
Extra info on the problem:
Nvidia loves to keep good stuff unavailable and make us hate it even more, somehow guru3d got a hold of the 160.03 leaked beta drivers and modded them SPECIFICALLY to fix most BSODS, by changing the way it reads and writes to system memory, install these and be happy ever after, no more BSODS.

4: Windows Settings
Multisampling off
Cause:
No idea, im guessing its related to how system memory is read when this setting is on.
How to fix:
Turn off Multisampling, it is said BSODs stop in most situations when this is turned off

5: IRQ Conflicts
Cause:
Windows is retarded, Plug and Play Bios are retarded, and seems none of them can figure out that putting a MONSTER in a jail cell with a puny man both sharing the same toilet, wont end up nicely.
How to fix":
1:Reset your BIOS to clear the PnP PCI IRQ assignment tables and force it to reassign new ones.
2:Change the "Offending" card from slot and pray it gets assigned a new IRQ (im saying offending because HOW DARE HE use up the 8800's personal IRQ, its blasphemy)
3:Slap it into the last PCI slot, with luck your board is one of those "Last PCI slot has no IRQ set or will get a personal IRQ" and youll be in buisness.
3isable it. Give up, The 8800 is to powerfull, what ever is sharing the interrupt with the 8800 has to die, Disable it and let Ms 8800 have its own IRQ at the cost of killing what ever else was there in the first place, if you dont like this you can thank Mr Bill Gates for it.
Extra info on the Problem:
I wonder when SOMEONE will come up with a MANUAL way to set interrupts instead of this Jack-in-the-Box rat suprize way of doing it. (NO, the "Properties" way of doing it stopped working back in 1998 and ISA card slots, in case you hadnt noticed so please stop saying theres a "way" to manually set interrupts when there CLEARLY isnt, if there was one i think wed know about it already and wouldnt be asking for one)

6: Audigy X-fi,
Cause:
Theres SOMETHING in the way the X-Fi reads memory that the 8800 doesnt like.. it feels like it has to compete so it constantly takes jabs at the X-fi untill they both crash. add that to the X-fi being just as/or worse than/ the 8800 when it comes to IRQ assignment and you got a helluva mix
How to fix:
Theres 3 ways to fix this:
1: Remove it, unless you REAAAAAALLY need/want your X-fi and are willing to spend the next 3 days making it work then proceed with step 2 otherwise just remove it right now and rid urself of a pain.
2: Change it from PCI Slot untill it hits an IRQ that is not as critical and disable what ever is sharing an IRQ with it.
2: Stick in last slot and pray. it MAY work... if it doesnt, go back to step 1
Extra info on the problem:
Creative is as paranoid as the RIAA with its software and licenses and as bad at making drivers as Nvidia and/or ATI, what do you get when you combine both? you dont wanna know.

7: PCI-E 16x 75w+ power drain
Cause:
your board doesnt support heavy draw cards on its PCI-E Bus
How to fix:
Get a new Board
Extra info on the problem:
Some boards got spare juice connectors on them to power the extra draw some cards generate on the PCI-E slots, if yours has this, use it.

8: Stick of RAM Removal
Cause:
Something with the memory interface doesnt work right with the 8800 drivers
How to Fix:
Remove a stick of ram or move it to the oposite channel to force the computer into Single Channel mode.
Extra info on the problem:
By removing a stick of RAM and "downgrading" the machine to Single channel instead of dual channel, forces the 8800 to "calm down" and "play fair" when it reads the system memory bus so BSODS magially stop when the 8800 stops being a pain with the other peripherals

9: PCI-E Slot
Cause:
The PCI-E Slot you are plugging it in either is not 16X or the board isnt making it work properly
How to fix:
Change the card from slot into a secondary or slave slot and see if it works there.

10: Bios Updates
Cause:
Crappy Bios releases (See Bad Axe 2 Original Bios or Asus Stryker Original Bios) make the computer not know WTF to do with the 8800 or how to even read memory properly
How to fix:
Install your motherboards latest Bios.
Extra info on the problem:
When my board came out the damn thing couldnt even boot up properly, it had all kinds of errors, with the new BIOS its working fine, hell the Asus striker a friend had wouldnt even load up vista because it refused to properly detect the DRAMM Timings of its very expensive ram causing it to lock up so always keep your bios up to date, Motherboard manufacturers, release hardware first and suport later so dont expect stuff to work right out of the box

11: DRAMM Timing/Voltage
Cause:
The 8800 driver has a Paris Hilton complex, in which it believes it owns the computer and all its resources, and it can take what ever it wants without needing to ask.
How to Fix?:
Increase your Dram Voltage to 2.1 Volts and 5-5-5-15 (for DDR2 800) for other RAMs check ur provider, make sure the ram has spare leeway for "accidents" and dont time it too tight, this is to give it a small cushion for when the 8800 draws data from the system ram, when it does this it wreaks havock on the rams timings and voltages, causing ram errors and eventually BSODS
Extra info on the problem:
The 8800 driver design is crap, it basically acts like a 4 year old bully when playing in the motherboard sandbox with other peripherals, when it wants to read the system memory directly from the PCI-E bus it just goes ahead and forcefully takes the data without asking anyone, usually Cheap crappy RAM being the Hobo that it is gets bullied and doesnt complain, but Expensive high performance RAM doesnt like to put up with that kinda crap from anyone, expecially not comming from Ms. 8800 Paris Hilton so whats it do? its tells the 8800 he can go ahead and take its memory "request" and shove it up its.... and well the Mommy windows doesnt like when kids fight so she takes the ball from them both and tells them game is over in the form of a nice BSOD in your face.

12: Underclocking
Cause:
Nvidia Cannot overclock its own chips for its life.
How to fix?:
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=163
Install Riva Tuner and Software Underclock your Factory overclocked card back to its INTENDED SPEFICICATIONS. and watch as magically the BSODS stop.
Extra info on the problem:
Out of 2 factory overclocked cards (1 EVGA, 1 BFG) both gave me BSODS, i manually Under-Clocked them back to their intended original speed and guess what? no more BSODs.. how strange.... ive read if you overclock the cards yourself is fine but never buy a factory overclocked card, after this im sure as hell learning from my mistakes.

Myths about this card (At least the ones i found)

1: Its NOT your PSU
If you have a decent NEW PSU that says SLI ready and has 480+ Watts your good to go, despite what other people tell you its NOT the PSU, its the 8800 Card.
2: Its NOT your RAM
As long as you got NORMAL, STOCK ram that hasnt been touched by a dirty overclocker, you are fine, DO NOT MESS WITH YOUR RAM, the 8800 is VERY picky when it messes with your ram, if you mess with it and then it messes with it youll have serious BSODS comming up.
3: Its NOT your CPU
Self explaining, as long as you got a 3 year old or less CPU your good to go
4: Its NOT your Motherboard
Unless you have an Nvidia chipset board or some other cheap chinese board, then your problem is your motherboard which isnt compatible even with itself, but thats another story. As a rule of thumb on boards that has yet to fail me, if it costed 150+ bucks, then its good, if it costed less and thats its REAL MSRP price then you have a crap board and I suggest you get a new one.
5: Its NOT your other cards
Unless you got a creative X-fi card, then u got serious issues.;

 

[morerevs]

I don't know about this guy. He seems to be making alot of assumptions based on what? I have an 8800 GTX with (reasonably)tight ram timings 4-4-4-12, an X-Fi soundcard sharing irq 10 with the vid card which is not causing problems, and i have an asus P5N32e-SLI-Plus homemade Nvidia chipset (that apparently isn't compatible with itself :? ) and have had a rocksolid system since i've put it together. I have never had to reinstall XP either, just uninstalled ATI drivers, turned of the system, put my new stuff in (mobo,e6700,G.Skill 2gb ram,8800 GTX,PSU goodness) turned it on and installed chipset and video drivers. Surely something should have gone wrong But it didn't. Oh well... must be really good or really lucky.

PS the hl2 problem was just that... a hl2 problem. Valve had a steam update out later that should have fixed the problem. The disabling hardware acceleration was a temporary fix for some.

 

[merc84]

Well my vid card is on IRQ 16 and X-Fi is on 17. I put the sound card in the lowest PCI because I heard about that association thingy.

Scratch games only, I was watching CNN in their video viewer and the comp locked up! No BSOD, but:

1. First thing I noticed was the mouse cursor froze.

2. Then it became responsive again, clicking on the windows to bring one to the front would not work, seems like I had no ability to input anything into the computer via mouse except moving it around the desktop.
Keyboard doesn't work...alt-tab and ctrl-alt-del doesn't do anything.

3. The entire time the sound is working fine.

4. Now the mouse cursor becomes an hour glass.

5. I reset and then choose to turn off the 'puter at the login screen.

6. Seems to be working fine now.

Browsing is fine but it seems like moving images(games, videos) cause the problems. Hope I'm narrowing this sucker down.

I was able to play a few games of CoH however by turning the 'puter off and then on, no crashes. Wierd, anyone know why that would work?

Nvidia's choice to have the GPU fan at 60% was retarded, maybe if that was the default setting and it went up and down during stress but I never hear it go up or down. Seems like the algorithisms for that don't work/exist. Rivatuner really helped most of the BSOD.

I'll might try that beta driver from Guru. Is there one for XP?

 

[tbiggums]

Ive got the problem in CoH with an x1950xt. Game freezes in loading screen sound is there and have to restart. Lately the temps in chicago have dropped a little, along with the ambient temperature in my room. I dont think i have crashed in about two days. Try maxing the fan and see what happens. Cant help you with the video problem. How high do the temps on ur gtx get when u play these games?

 

[merc84]

It used to get about 80C under load, but I set the fan at 90% and it doesn't seem to get higher than 70C now. That helped a lot but the BSOD has been cropping up lately. Ambient temp is still the same though.

 

[tamalero]

you got soundblaster audigy series sound cards?

I did get the same error over and over and over until I got angry, searched and found that Audigy as quite a bit of problems about sharing irqs
try changing yours sound card to the lowest PCI slot or the highest slot, any one where you think it wont be shared with strong used stuff such as the videocard or cpu.

 

[Xazax310]

Strange i have the same problem but not quite the same way.

i own a eVGA 8800GTX and when playing games, COH, Supcom, EAW, etc... sometimes the game will freeze and i can hear the sounds being repeated over and over just how you said it but mine is random and happens whenever but not alot.

I play those same games with no problem it just might be windows XP or Vista. do other games load fine? is it only those two?

 

[PCD]

Try change the hardware acceleration for sound, it might help.

You can change it by running dxdiag from Start --> Run, open the Sound pane and there is a slider.

I have a Striker Extreme and X-Fi Fatal1ty Gaming Pro (or what they call it, why those stupidly long names that few can remember?).
I had boot problems until I moved the soundcard to the lowest PCI slot, after that I have no problems, I have hardware accel at full.

Also try disable your antivirus program while gaming, sometimes that can help especially if you use one of the resource hogs like Norton.

 

[merc84]

I use Kaspersky. I'm going to try moving the X-Fi into another slot...must....find...phillips.

 

[Perkone]

Sorry because i start again this old topic but the guy which described this problem long time ago i have it too . It is all the same. Sometimes the picture freeze for a short time, sometimes after 20,30,40min... And sometimes i heard irritating sound something as "tttrrrrr..." . I have somehow to describe

I installed the game and both expansions Opposing fronts and Tales of Valor and update with the lattest patch 2.601. But this is definitely not the problem with the game. It is some incompatibility...


My PC:

OS: Win 7 x64
CPU: Phenom II x4 925
MB: 770-C45
GC: ATI 5770 sapphire
RAM: 4Gb ddr3
...


Please, can someone help me to solve this and to play this great game.

 

[jyr]

Hi, i'm writing here because...
About one year ago i replaced my old computer with new one:

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.00 GHz
Asus P5Q P45/FSB
CORSAIR DDR2 XMS2-8500 4GB DIMM DHX KIT (2x2GB)
ZALMAN 500W PSU
GF 9800GTX+ DK TOP PCIE 512MB DDR3
WD 640GB Black Caviar 32MB SATAII WD6401AALS

OS is WinXP

The only game i play is dota (warcraft III + battle net), but since the beginning i have very similar issues mentioned in this thread. During gameplay very rarely even on the bnet's online menu the computer "freezes" and sound "loops". To reboot the system only reset or hard shutdown (power button depressed 5sec) is needed. I will now try to describe the phenomena more precisely.

During gameplay suddenly i can hear very short "scratch" from the speakers then the display freezes (with last image on the display), the (NORMAL) sound however continues to play as nothing "bad" had happened for about 5-10 seconds, then very (WEIRD) sound also about 5-10 seconds is played but this time it is very weird (hard to describe like some hardcore electro music ), and then the process is repeated by (NORMAL) then by (WEIRD) sound.

Mouse does not respond, keyboard does not respond (i.e. Alt+Tab, Ctrl+Alt+Delete), shortly pressing power button does not respond... but after another "freeze" i started to press Caps Lock on and off and i saw that it worked during (NORMAL) sound and did not work on (WEIRD) sound. Yes, yes this is not a big clue.

Freezing frequency is very unpredictable, sometimes i could play several hours (days) without having any issues, sometimes i get the freeze in first game with "cold" computer. Usually i play not more than four hours on the day i play.

Here are some things i have tried out but without any success
* Tried with drivers from Asus (i have Asus Mobo and Graphics card - on the purpose to minimize possible conflicts - yeah right)
* Tried different nvidia drivers
* Updated directX runtime
* Since i have extra pci lan and sound card from my previous computer i plugged these on (and used these) also disabled onboard sound, but not lan
* raised main memory voltage, reduced clock
* run main memory tests with success
* reduced gpu memory clock
* disable/lower sound acceleration from dxdiag

I will now try to remove one stick of my 2GB of RAM

...if there are anybody with same issues post it here.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey