Kicked Out and BSOD in Games - Not Power Related

[chjade84]

I have a co-worker who has been upgrading his computer that has recently been used for day to day tasks to play some fairly basic games, COD4&5 and Bioshock.

Since he has been using onboard graphics he bought an XFX 9800GTX+. After that was installed he got either a BSOD or kicked back out to windows after about 1 minute of playing games - Windows runs fine. I thought it may be a power supply issue since he only had a 400w and the video card recommended at least 450w. He bought a Corsair 650w and installed that last night, only to have the problems persist. He has tried 3 different drivers including those from nVidia as well as multiple DirectX's.

I'm not sure of the exact specifics of the rest of the computer but it is a dual core with 2GB RAM.

Any thoughts?

 

[arkadi]

Lot's of them, but we will need the specs mate....
For now you cant test few things:
- Make sure the card is mounted well, the power and the slot.
- Check out the temps, 80-85c on full load.
- If it check's out, run systems stress tests...
- memtest, prime, everest has a good one, XXmark etc....
I put my money on the new card...

 

[chjade84]

Ok, I got the specs:

Intel Q6600 @ stock
XFX MG-63MI-7109 MOBO
Corsair 2GB DDR2 800MHz (2x 1GB)
XFX PVT98WYDFU 9800GTX+ 512MB
Corsair CMPSU-650TX 650W

He also said that since the new card has been added it hangs for 5-10 seconds when the computer starts up and it is listing all the hardware, if that helps.

 

[pondlife]

I am having a similar problem with my PC and have tried everything I can think off. OK, I have ruled out Memory, but my card Idles at about 57 Celcius. I am not sure if this is too high or not. I can play most games but after anywhere between 2 mins to 1 hour it Blue screens. I really don't know what to do and it's getting me down. I even paid for someone to take a look but they where a bit unhelpful.
Please help otherwise my pc gameing days are over.

 

[arkadi]

chjade84

What BSOD message you got?
Check out the event viewer as well, just in case.
Run the test's, post temps etc...
If you can backup your system with Acronis or something and do clean install ( it is a long shot)
Try to swap VGA cards (that if you can get second one some ware)

pondlife
you can follow the guidelines i give here, hope it will help. 57 on idle is normal.

 

[coozie7]

A great many problems are just down to the drivers, it's not our fault, they just have poor uninstallers that often leave bits behind that cause an unstable system.
Even if the system was stable before the upgrade and before you start tearing clumps of hair out try these 9 steps (perhaps again).
1: Undo any overclocking and restore the Bios to its factory defaults.
2: Update Windows and DirectX to the latest available.
3: SET A RESTORE POINT here!
4: download the latest sound, video and motherboard drivers.
5: I really mean it about the Restore Point.
6: Download and install Driversweeper or the free version of Driver Cleaner.
7: Uninstall and reinstall your sound and motherboard drivers, restarting as needed.
8: Uninstall the video drivers and when prompted to restart, do so in Safe Mode. Run the driver cleaner but check what it is going to remove, both can take out critical Registry keys, so unselect any items you are unsure of, particularly Registry entries.
9: Install the new video drivers.

 

[pondlife]

Coozie,

I went to the trouble of a full reinstall of windows "twice" and still get the same problem, I bought a new 8800 gts and my mother board is an Asus A8N-sli, both of which I got the drivers from the Nvidia site (Nforce 4 for motherbord) and STILL the problems. The PC works fine all the time, untill I play a game (CoD 4, Crysis wars or Battlefield 2142) at which point it BSOD's saying IRQL Driver-not-less-or-equal. I have looked everywhere for a fix but to no joy. At first I thought it may be a bad mem stick but memtest 86 say otherwise.
I really nearly at the point of throwing my pc out of the window. It worked fine untill I upgraded my card from a 7800 gt to an 8800 gts but this is a new 8800 gts and it still doing it.

 

[pondlife]

arkadi,

I have tried all of that with no joy.

 

[coozie7]

@ pondlife; Sorry about the problems but this one is a real pain to kill.
Which 8800GTS do you have the 320/640 or the 512Mb?
Does it do it with the drivers that came with the card?

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

My old nVidia 320GTS would hang games too. Im thuinking its the drivers. Try older drivers first, before the 174.xx series. nVidia makes bad drivers sometimes too

 

[pondlife]

@ pondlife; Sorry about the problems but this one is a real pain to kill.
Which 8800GTS do you have the 320/640 or the 512Mb?
Does it do it with the drivers that came with the card?

The first one was a 320 and the second one a 640 but they were both second hand and I never got any drivers with them. I downloaded sraight off of Nvidia site.

 

[daship]

Second Hand Nvidia = FAIL

Bump memory voltage up in bios.

 

[pondlife]

How? I am a total noob at all this.

 

[apache_lives]

run all the tests - prime95 and atitool and see what they say first

also try a fresh install of windows

oh and the best bet for any system is to manually set most things in the bios - memory ratio/speed (1:1 for the best results), memory raised to 1.9v (ddr2, and unless your ram is high spec etc), loose timings, and so on - you tell your motherboard what to do, dont let it guess.

 

[chjade84]

Well we tried all this advice and ended up getting nowhere. He decided to just get a new motherboard and see if that helped. Turned out that was the problem?

It all works fine now just by swapping the motherboard. Something about the XFX board and the XFX Geforce 9800GTX+ must not have been getting along.

Beats me. Thanks for the advice though!

 

[coozie7]

Nice to get closure on a thread

 

[lezrun1]

For those that dont want to RMA their board, here is what I did that indefinitely fixed the nvlddmkm.sys error. After updating the bios on my mobo, running memtest for hours, updating drivers over and over, buying a new psu, and adjusting everything I possibly could to get my card to run right and still bsod!!! I was at my wits end, and then one day I heard that if you had a 9800gtx+ you could to a bios update and change it to a gts 250. Now if none of this had happened to me I would definitely advise against doing this, but I was desperate. I flashed my bios and voila! I have not had one bsod since! As I had said before though, I dont recommend this if your worried about losing your card or if you dont have problems already. The guide to doing this can be found here http://www.cpu3d.com/article/7481-2/how-to-turn-your-geforce-9800gtx-into-a-gts-250/flashing-the-vga-bios.html. I hope this helps someone! Good luck!