Comp freezing after about an hour.

[dtac]

Hello there. Sorry for my bad english at beginning :)

I got my new comp today Q9550, 6gb of rams, Asus p5e3 motherboard, i m using my ex 512mb 8800gt, 2 monitors

transferred keyclone, installed xp pro 64 bit, downloaded new drivers etc..

everything was going well, i m boxing 3 accounts same time, fps are good, main window is 45 and slaves are around 25(i limited them)

but after playing about an hour game freezes and i cant do anything, i need to turn off my comp and turn on again to start gaming.

tried it couple of times and it was same everytime, once it freezed after 5 minutes or so.

first i thought it was about cpu affinity thing in keyclone, i first tried 0 - 1 checked for main, 2 for alt1 and 3 for alt2 , this didnt work then i checked everyhing at every single wow.exe in command editor. but it still dont work

comp is only freezing while playing game.

i didnt understand why this is happening. do u have any idea? pls help me

[keyclone]

the whole system freezes? sounds like an overheat problem (although i had a problem like that and it was a cracked mainboard)

check the temperature your cpu is running at

[Gares]

I know on mine if I get even a little bit of dust inside the Video Card fan my system will just shutdown due to overheating.

[Starbuck_Jones]

If you built it yourself, im with keyclone. Its most likely a heat issue, however most system boards will warn you on the next power up that it had a thermal event. The second most likely cause is some sort of incompatability issue. Update any and all firmware for all components including, Hard Drives, Optical Drives, System Board etc. If its not one of those two thing then its anyones guess unless you can get it to BSOD or get a mini-dump of some sort to run through the analizer tool.



If its an OEM box. Call the manufacturer and dont settle for anything less than a new computer or take it back to the store where you bought it if your inside the return period. Set a standard, don't pay money for something that does not work.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

(If you're a PC QA/repair type, ignore this post as you already know what you need to be doing.)

Couple things you can do to see what's going on with the system in general.
Download CoreTemp (just google it). Run that and watch your CPU core temps and make sure they're under 65C under max load. They actually should run around 30-50 depending on how good your heatsink is. ;) Grab a temperature monitoring utility for your graphics card. They're all different depending on the manufacturer and model so just grab one that'll show you. Open up Task Manager (right-click the task bar--> Task manager), go to the Processes tab. Make sure you have "Show processes from all users" checked. Go to the "View" menu and select "Select Columns..." Check the boxes in there for "GDI Objects" and "Handle Count." Then watch those two columns while playing. You shouldn't have anything eating up more than a thousand GDI or Handle counts except for your web browser, your multiboxing app, SVCHOST.EXE (and only one svchost should have that many open) and things like a web server app. If you see something with a bunch (like tens of thousands or more) then you've got a software app that's leaking. If you don't see anything obvious with those, then you've got to look at graphics bugs or BSODs (aka bugchecks).
For graphics bugs, ATI and NVidia make stress test apps you can run to exercise the graphics subsystems. If the system hangs when running those then it's likely not WoW or software and is probably a graphics driver or hardware problem. For system crashes, it gets more complicated. Is your system rebooting on you or just straight shutdown until you push the power button to turn it back on? If it shuts off and stays off, that's 99% guaranteed to be a heat problem. If it just reboots, it _might_ be heat but it is probably something else, like a RAM issue or something more gnarly.
Something else to do now before you start messing with it.
Right-click "My Computer" and select "Properties" Select the "Advanced" tab. In the "Startup and Recovery" section, click Settings. UNCHECK the box for "Automatically restart" and change the "Write debugging information" from "none" or "Small" to "Kernel memory dump."That'll prevent it from automagically rebooting and will let you look at the STOP code when/if it bluescreens on you.

See if any of that helps and then get back to us when you find out more.

Cheers,
Ugh

[RobinGBrown]

I had a similar problem on my old athlon xp machine. After checking temps I found it was that the graphics card was getting up to about 70 degrees, which was filling the case with warm air and thus forcing the cpu temp up. I put a zalman fan on the graphcs card and problem solved.

Simple test is to try running it with the case open, that improves airflow and cooling, if it works with the case open you've got a cooling problem.

Check temps and upgrade cooling as required.

[Nitro]

Start --> Right Click "My Computer" --> Manage --> Event Viewer --> System and/or Application

Another place to look for possible answers

[musixman]

Ya overheating usually is the cause for alot of freezes/resets I start there.

[Moorea]

run memtest overnight yes (can be downloaded from standalone/linux distribs or you can use the option from the vista/windows7 dvd at boot time)

you can also see if a simple load test (like prime95) does produce the same effect (to see if it's memory/Mboard/cpu related or GPU)

[dtac]

i realised that my comp freezes while not playing too.

yesterday night i tested cpu temperature with coretemp. it was around 48-50 degrees when it freezed again. so it wasnt cpu heat problem.

i havent found any program that monitors gfx card temp, so i passed it.

i looked at task manager gdi, handle count etc. only wow.exe ' s around 2500 , keyclone around 1200, and all the others were below 1000. so i passed this too. (it was terrible night for me)

today i borrowed one of my friends gfx card, ati radeon 2600 pro 512mb ram. i tried this and it never freezes (i tried 3 box with keyclone, worked fine) it just restarted for twice after all night. and freezed for once at the end. i think i expected too many from that card :)) so i think i found the problem. gonna get new gfx card. probably gtx275 Amp! edition.

and one of my friend said that, since i have new trend motherboard and proccessor, xp-64 is became old for that hardware. he adviced to me to use windows7 64bit. i know its beta but i ll give it a try. does any of u using that OS?

thx for the help :)

[dtac]

well. i came here back with broken HDD! :)

after installing my friends gfx card radeon 2600 pro, i thought i would never get problems again. but after playing couple of hours, comp freezed again. But that time i was multiboxing with 3 accounts and tried to use ventrilo same time. thought it was cause of ventrilo. i restarted comp, tried to open 3 acc same time with keyclone again, it freezed again.

i touched my hdd drive and gfx card to test its temperature (yes prehistorical method i know but i dont have anything to test them) my hdd was burning like hell. i even didnt touched it over3 secs. and gfx temp was high too.

i played with that hdd and gfx card a week or so, sometimes it was freezing sometimes it does not. but it was freezing at least once or twice per night. during this time i was waiting for my new gfx card. coz i was still thinking that was the problem.

but 2 days ago my comp freezed again, i restarted it, it opened and freezed while starting up, i restarted it and it didnt restart. coz hdd was broken. i opened comp with xp install cd, tried to install xp, but it said there s no hdd on machine. :)



so i understood my hdd is burned :)

now i bought another hdd. after looking at forums again i understood that, having more than one hdd is a must. now i m waiting my 2. hdd with my gfx card. here s question comes.

i m boxing 3 shamans atm. i ll have 2 HDD, i m planning to run main char with the first hdd which is OS installed, and other 2 accounts with second one. i ll have 2 different wow folders on second one. and 2 different wow folders on first one(i m still raiding with my pally. shaman needs another folder tho) is this setup true or do u have other suggestions?

and what is symlink? do i need to do that and if so how can i do it?



editing 3 hours later. comp is freezed again. :( grrrr!!!!

[Sychosys]

I would be very careful. In all honesty when a GPU overheats you generally will not see a freeze you will get maybe some quick beep warning and then POOF, instant shutdown. This is true for most over heating situations, so the extended freeze times you are seeing are worrysome. I would in fact be very concerned that your cpu/gpu are over heating your hard drive and that adding in a second one is only going to give you more heat. Make sure that you have room for the air to blow around the system and that its not confined tightly up against a wall or desk or some such. If need be, since you seem to be fairly comfortable with poking at the innards of your system, consider leaving one of the case sides open and try running like that.

I just hate seeing people buy new hardware when the problem is still lurking to destroy it again.

[dtac]

well, my case's one side is opened all time. its opened side is even looking at roof of the room, not the wall.

[dtac]

Did you test your memory before you started using the box?

i tested my rams with memtest tonight. there was no errors on rams when i tested them one by one.

when i put 2 rams into a2 and b2 slots(manual says it) memtest is starting test, after 5 seconds comp restarts. i tired it millions of time, it was same all time.

[keyclone]

hmmm... could be an issue with one of the slots

[Sychosys]

May seem odd but is the air from the graphics card blowing directly on the hard drives? I have seen some (and owned some) case designs where the placement of the graphics cards could cause a direct flow of air over a sneakily placed hard drive cage.

[dtac]

hmmm... could be an issue with one of the slots


i tried to test the slots i use, there was no problem when i only put 1 ram on system. motherboard manual says

single channel = a2

dual-channel(1) = a2 + b2 slots

dual channel(2) = a2+b2+a1+b1 slots

i tried a1+b1 at same time, memtest said - single channel.

i tried a2+b2 same time, memtest said - dual channel but it restarts just after test begin.