GeForce2 lockup

[Guest]

My system periodically locks up when playing D3D games or running D3D benchmarks. Generally, sound keeps playing (at least the sound effect keeps looping), but it's otherwise a total lockup (the hit-the-reset-button kind). There isn't an obvious pattern to it. In other words, it doesn't happen in the same spot in the game or benchmark. It might as well be random.

Potentially relevant hardware:

Antec PP303X 300W Power Supply
Abit KT7 (non-raid)
AMD Tbird 1GHz
128 MB PC133 RAM (Mushkin)
ELSA Gladiac 32 (GeForce2 GTS)
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz
3Com 10/100 Ethernet (905?)
Adaptec 2940UW SCSI controller
Running WinME

The GeForce has it's own IRQ. The LAN card and the USB controller share another, and the sound card and the SCSI card share yet another.

All of the drivers are up-to-date, including the VIA chipset drivers. The BIOS in the vid card and motherboard look to be up the latest available on the manufacturer's websites, but I haven't tried reflashing.

I noticed an earlier posting with a GeForce2MX board on a KT7 with what sounded like very similar behavior. I'm beginning to wonder if there's a general problem with KT7's and GeForce boards. Has anyone else encountered this? Does anyone have any other ideas how to solve this, maybe some of the BIOS settings?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Guest]

I used to have a Asus P5-A with K6-2 and a tnt (it was ie 3 days after it hit the store). I then got the D3D lock up problem under Half Life.

First I thought it was mobo or graphics card; but later I notice it was the A3D sound card driver - don't know why - anyway, I installed the latest driver and it all fixed.

 

[Ncogneto]

Could be any number of things even the sound card as the last post suggest. Are you running your memory at 133 mhz? If so try running it at 100 to see if this alleviates the problem, if so then the memory is in question. You will need to deduce this step by step and this is only the first step.

 

[Ncogneto]

Next try to get the scsi controller its own irq. Although you did not state I am assuming you ae using a scsi drive as well. Or is this controller for another device such as a scanner? Are you using any usb devices? If not disable the usb in bios freeing up an irq. Also, if you are using a Scsi drive then you can disable your onboard ide controller as well freeing up more resources.

 

[Guest]

I hadn't mentioned it in my first posting, but in the process of updating all of my drivers, stability seemed to improve somewhat after the sound card driver update. Unfortunately, I didn't do extensive testing between driver installs, so I really can't be sure the new sound card driver helped, but it seemed to.

In my search for more info, at another hardware site (sorry I can't remember which) one of the posters suggested that game lockups that occur with the sound still playing are usually caused by the sound card. I'm not sure if that's true, but I could try pulling the sound card (and removing it's drivers) to see if that has any effect.

Thanks for the info.

 

[Guest]

Regarding memory, I'm actually running several cycles of DocMemory (from http://www.simmtester.com) as I type this. So far, all have completed successfully.

I'm also thinking about trying to bump the CL timing from 2 to 3, though my memory is certified CAS-2 (Mushkin Rev 1.5).

 

[Guest]

The SCSI card is there for the hard drive, as well as a CD-ROM and CD-R. Unfortunately, I don't have an IDE disk I can use, so the SCSI card has to stay in place while I'm diagnosing this.

Last time I disabled secondary IDE only, but the BIOS didn't use the freed IRQ for any of the PCI cards. I suppose I should try disabling both channels (I'm currently using neither).

Is there another way to get the BIOS to attempt to use free IRQs for PCI slots other than manually assigning?

Thanks.

 

[Ncogneto]

to reset your irq's try enable reset configuration in biosif this fails remove one of the devices and reinstall it after yo uhave freed up an irq and hopefully it will assume that position. Creative sound cards are notorious for demanding a specific irq ( plug n plaY?)

 

[Guest]

Well, I let the memory tester run through 25 cycles with no failures. However, while it was running, I remembered that, in my rush to get the BIOS back to it's defaults, I hadn't readjusted the memory clock. So, the memory has been running as PC100, not PC133. Oops.

I'll run more cycles with the correct clock speed (as well as a few other memory optimizations) to make sure memory still isn't an issue.

 

[Guest]

I'm having this EXACT same problem! I'm rebuilding my machine tonight and installing only reference drivers. Then I'm going to try the games and one-by-one update them to see where the problem is.

More later..

<font color=blue>Buzz Lightyear's hero,
Erik</font color=blue>