Freezing / locking problems

[dancook]

Running five wow clients, 16gb ram, sandybridge 2600, GTX 480, intel x-25m SSD (also o/s drive),

Now and then my client is locking up, I can switch to the other clients but then they often shortly lock up too. I switch to my o/s, browser etc and that's not working either - like somethings ground to a halt. Sometimes it comes back to life after a minute, or just now I had to hard reset.

Using ISBoxer, 12,34,56,78,34, core setups. Any one had an issue like this?


what i will try now is setting windows 7 to performance mode, which turns off all the fancy interface features.

[dancook]

It just happened again - but this time.

The first one locked, so i switched to another - where I could still run around but as soon as I opened a gui menu either the map or the guild screen or an option off the ESC menu - it froze for 30 seconds.

[Oatboat]

open up task manager and have it running in background visible. When it starts locking up look at see if your CPU or Memory is maxing out.

Could also be an overheating issue on either GPU or CPU. A number of things really ... old drivers on vid/sound cards....

[Ughmahedhurtz]

You might also try running a stress test on your memory to see if a chip has gone bad or is generating errors.

[dancook]

I'll try a memory test.

I was using the windows resource monitor

zero hard faults on memory, cpu usage was fine dropped to 0% during not responding on four clients (wasn't running a fifth), gpu and cpu temp are fine.

When it all came back to normal I had been disconnected from the server! after a minute or so.

[Oatboat]

Sounds like either
A. Driver error on Sound or Video card.
B. Your accounts are fighting for the same file. Depending on which program you use Isboxer or Keyclone.

I know Isboxer uses virtual files so it shouldnt happen if you use it.
Keyclone you might have to make seperate folders to launch the game from.

Try disabling sound on your 2-5 accounts and just play sounds on main account see if that helps.

Edit: I dont disagree with testing your memory... but usually if its memory it wont lock up it will just dump to a reboot. If its just locking up i wouldnt think memory just yet.

[dancook]

I only had sound enabled on one client, and it hung - just as i killed the last boss in an instance - phew!

using ISboxer btw.

[dancook]

Memory test ok as well, will look for newer nvidia drivers.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Memory test ok as well, will look for newer nvidia drivers.

The default memory check/diagnostic on a Windows OS CD or in an Intel BIOS isn't what I was referring to. I mean, go grab Prime95 4-core version, put it in Torture Test mode and let it run overnight. If you don't have any errors in the morning, it's not RAM/CPU.

[dancook]

The default memory check/diagnostic on a Windows OS CD or in an Intel BIOS isn't what I was referring to. I mean, go grab Prime95 4-core version, put it in Torture Test mode and let it run overnight. If you don't have any errors in the morning, it's not RAM/CPU.

cheers, I'll do that.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

It isn't critical to test that but if you run the overnight torture test and end up with no errors and your CPU doesn't melt, you're guarandamnteed not to have any RAM or CPU-related problems. Then it's down to disc/graphics/network/etc. ;)

[MiRai]

Intel Burn Test (http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?197835-IntelBurnTest-The-new-stress-testing-program) is an amazing torture program that tests your system for stability. That post is from 2008 but it
was last updated Aug 2011. AgentGod is the author of the program. If your system passes the Maximum
stress level with just the default 5 passes... you should most definitely be good on CPU/RAM. To further test
your RAM you want Memtest86 (http://www.memtest86.com/) and you'll need to put that on a bootable USB stick or burn the ISO so that you
can test your memory for hours on end. I tend to skip Memtest unless I'm really out of all other options
because Memtest takes hours and hours and hours to run. Finally, move onto Unigine Heaven (http://unigine.com/products/heaven/download/) which is a free
benchmark to stress test your video card. I recommend on every benchmark to let it run for multiple passes.

If all of these pass then it's time to start looking at your config of the game or ISBoxer.

[dancook]

I left Prime95 running overnight, with no errors.

I'll try the graphics benchmark tonight.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Cool. Having to diagnose memory/CPU/ICH issues is a pure PITA.

[Tsumi]

I recently had a similar issue and tried everything to fix it. It ended up being directX 11 crashing my wows. All I did was enable 9 and problems went away. I also have as similar computer setup as you so this may be your problem.

[dancook]

I recently had a similar issue and tried everything to fix it. It ended up being directX 11 crashing my wows. All I did was enable 9 and problems went away. I also have as similar computer setup as you so this may be your problem.

Thanks, is that a setting in ISBoxer?

[MiRai]

Thanks, is that a setting in ISBoxer?
It's a setting in the game.

For some reason I thought you had a GTX 580, not a 480. The 480's run real hot and are notorious for
overheating. If you have inadequate cooling for that card or bad airflow in your case you might be pushing the
thermal limits. Also, depending on your video settings you might be on the border of your 1.5GB VRAM usage
while in DX11. Switching to DX9 might actually fix your problem (if you're not already in DX9).

[dancook]

I just this moment took my pc apart to fit a different graphics card - and older ATI - but still good.

Actually I was going to have both vcards at once :) but it didn't come to that, my realisations after last time I did that - the only place for my sound card was in between them!.. and so it was still right next to my GTX480...

I THINK.. the GTX480 - being only millimetres from the sound card was overheating it :) .... time for the test.

[dancook]

argh.....i wish that was the fix. maybe it's still hot - i'll continue this line of enquiry.

ok not only did i blow out my nvidia - i put the ati in to take some load off the card.. will see what happens.

[dancook]

Ok what has happened now.

Before - Single Nvidia card - periodic freezing of active WOW clients - ie. if I'm running 4 dks in BG and the Paladin is standing stormwind - the Paladin doesn't freeze - until I switch and try to do something significant (like open the map!).

Now - Nvidia Card primary and ATI card secondary. The primary screen goes blank periodically, I can still control the character and the slaves are still moving.

The first time the screen went blank it came back after 40 seconds or so. The second time it didn't come back, after a couple of minutes I forced wow to quit, and when on the desktop the screen came back in about 20 seconds.


The Nvidia graphics card was sitting at 76 Celsius at this time... the ATI runs constant at 78 C.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm any thoughts?

[dancook]

I formatted the o/s and install the bare minimum, bare drivers etc - and it's still acting in the same way.

I'm running the ATITool which is used to stress the graphic card, when it gets to about 4 mins of stressing - my browser stops responding, for 30-40 seconds.

This is the same as when I play wow.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Sounds like either a graphics problem (hardware) or a slot problem on your motherboard. I'm just guessing, of course. Unfortunately, diagnostics past this point start getting expensive. :p

[Oatboat]

if you have any kind of support linked to your system i would start there.

If not you might try updating your bios... might be a bad pci-e slot

[dancook]

I'll try another slot for it if it fails this time round

i have sent a ticket to ASUS about the v/card

[Oatboat]

What size power supply do you have?

[dancook]

What size power supply do you have?

850W - but I have been considering it might need replacing...

fails to work properly in the other pci-e slot as well.

[dancook]

For the record, the issue was my SSD failing.

It is no longer detected, I have since installed o/s on a mechanical drive and it's all ok!

However I did have a bit of an added confusion - when I reset my bios defaults, the memory was giving errors during memtest68 - after testing 2 sticks at a time and seeing nothing was wrong - I realised it was the voltage had been reset in the bios! So I pumped it back up and it's stable again with memory.