f13.net

I think this is #3 for me here now. Sorry about this. You folks are just too smart to not ask though :)

The last two weeks have been painful.

Had to replace my HD drive. That all went well. I think. Reinstalled old WinXP, patched, reinstalled WoW, patch, reinstalled BC, patched, all that good stuff.

My external HD was giving me problems with data corruption and general slowness. After some testing, I realized it was because it wants USB 2.0. My motherboard (a7n266-c) would only support it if I upgraded the BIOS. So I think I did the right thing by upgrading from 1.0.0.1d to 1.0.0.4. Got it from the ASUS site and all. My external HD runs like a charm now.

Also, updated my Catalyst drivers (for my Radeon 9800pro card) to 6.10.

Almost everything is working well.

Unfortunately, the one thing that isn't is WoW. I can't play for any more than 4-8 minutes before I get a complete hard lock. Lock up is in two flavors: either the computer just hard locks, or it restarts. I imagine this would be the case with any 3D-intensive game I've run, based on what I've read about similar accounts. There seems no clear resolution though.

• I thought this was because of the Catalyst drivers (it's been an issue for a few revs that WoW would lock up). I tried 6.9 and 6.8 to no avail. Going to try the 5.x series. Can't remember what I had before this major purge.
• Defragged the drive
• Ran the WoW Repair program
• CPU temperature is fine, not sure about graphics board (there a way to read that?)
• Ran WoW at minimum settings (including in forced-OpenGL mode), nuthin.

Am thinking maybe I should just reinstall the whole thing. I can't figure how that'd be the problem though.

Also, trouble is that I've changed so much in a week, it could be anything. And because my old drive is dead, a full reversion is not an option.

But before I do any of this (which'll now be tomorrow night's goal), anyone have any thoughts? Could it be the USB 2.0 board? Some Catalyst setting?

OK, first of all, the "D" in HD is drive. It's not a HD Drive ;) _{This message pwned by schild.}

Second, you use an external HD w/ USB 2.0? You used it "fine" without 2.0? My god man. OK, on to the testing.

The first thing you need to do is get another FPS and play it and see if you can reproduce the lockup. Use a 3D benchmarking program if you have to, or that little demo that came with your 3d card.

If you CAN reproduce the lockup, try varying some parameters -- if you're overlclocking, don't. Set your bios to "use safe parameters". If everything else is lost, force your USB speed back down in the bios or borrow a internal HD from a geeky friend (try your IT staff at work).


Before you do all that, though, this is likely your problem:

It's fairly common (especially among ASUS for some reason -- ugh) for the shitty-ass built in sound card to interfere and fuck with the computer in general. Also, USB is notoriously picky about interference, I've had simple things such as my friend's machine reboot because of wire interference with other electronics. On many ASUS boards, If you have onboard sound, you get random lockups in WoW. Try disabling the sound card in the BIOS.

It's probably your sound card. On-board sound is garbage. Disable it.

Eh, HDD is Hard Disk Drive. HD is Hard Disk.... DRIVE?

When did HD become hard drive?

Or was it High Density Drive? Whatever, pretty sure HD Drive is a fine use.\

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hdd

Zing.

Er, you might be right? It's always been Hard Drive to me. I guess it has a disk in it. Hard Drive or Disk Drive.

Edit: Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Drive) says you're right, but Hard Drive redirects.

That's because Hard Drive is missing a word.

duly edited.

No, it's not.

I always thought the thinking behind Hard Drive was because the A: was a floppy drive.

Meanwhile, Darniaq drowns in rage, unable to get his computer to boot up so he can call you all fucksticks.

Check the fan on the 9800. Does it spin?

Darnaiq, this sounds much like the problem I am having with NWN2, haven't had enough time to try a different game on it.

I have a sneaky suspicion its: (1) Onboard sound, the shit freezes like it's 1997, (2) Overheating problem, (3) PSU (god I hope it's not the PSU) a power surge couldn've fucked something up in there.

I'll let you know when I know.

I would check the temperature of the video card.  If it's nvidia you should be able to see it in display>settings>advanced>nvidia tab>temperature.  I'm sure ati has something similar.  Look at it before playing WoW and then a few minutes after.  Maybe you unplugged the card's fan when you were installing the drive and didn't plug it back in.

Unless the fan's broken, I don't think its a card overheating problem. When video cards fail, in my experience, you don't get lock ups; you get bleeding and graphical distortions. The 9800 is a good solid card. The fan shouldn't have a plug either.

I suspect its the PSU again, I'm sorry to say. This time, wattage probably isn't a concern as long as you have around 300 watts, simply because the 9800 doesn't hog watts like newer cards do. Its more likely a voltage stability failure. Cheaper PSUs fail when they can't stay within the voltage parameters and start giving you 13 volts instead of 12, 2.2 volts in stead of 3, etc. The better the PSU, the more stable the voltages stay at 3, 5 and 12 respectively. The cruddier, the sooner they start to depart from the assigned values. Why would this happen during WoW instead of at any other time? Probably due to the power use increase while playing WoW. All it takes is one power dip or spike and your CMOS just flips the thing off or locks up.

Have you checked Windows's event viewer? Its under Administrative Tools in the program listing, or you can also find it by right clicking on "My Computer" and selecting Manage. Often enough, if the failure is NOT the PSU, you will find a failure report that indicates what's failing.

My second guess is that its your hard drive.

Cheap-o RAM + Too-low CAS, etc setting in BIOS = CTHL

Just something to check.

Besides that, take the advice above and try another high-performance game that will stress your GPU.

Try unplugging the HDD and/or disabling USB 2.0 in BIOS as well.

http://www.memtest86.com/ (http://www.memtest86.com/)

Run this for a few hours. If it doesn't error out, I'd disable on-board sound. Those are likely your two biggest culprits.

A drive is what works the disc.  A hard drive doesn't make much sense unless you imply "drive" is short for "disc drive".  But that discussion is stupid since everyone knows what you are talking about when you say any of those.

There are indeed discs inside a hard disc drive.  I think three platters is the current standard.  Irrelevant.

I'm betting on RAM wackyness due to flashing the BIOS.  Flashing your BIOS is Not A Joke.  I suggest getting a newer mobo, but I like throwing money at problems like USB 2.0 issues.  Alternatively you can dick around with your BIOS settings since they have likely changed to some default value that isn't what you had them set to before.

Try running benchmarks to narrow what causing problem, ideally on a clean install. Can you afford throw-away HDD, something to install clean system on and use it for testing?

To me it sounds like your system is choking under load - this can be caused by faulty drivers, hardware failure or general degradation of your OS.

Benchmarks:
 3DMark  (http://www.futuremark.com/download/3dmark06/)is good for testing GPU
 Memtest  (http://www.memtest.org/) is good for testing memory
 Prime95  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime95) is good for CPU, use it in torture test mode

You should disable on-board sound and get a cheap SB or something out of principle.

Good suggestions, memtest and going over the BIOS with a fine toothed comb to make sure everything is set up properly. I don't bag on onboard sound because I'm still mourning the loss of my onboard Soundstorm chip...but it could be a culprit. Doubt it's a driver issue, but fyi I've been using Omega drivers since I was playing SWG last winter to good effect (when SOE was having issues with ATI drivers in a couple games). Fixed my resolution problem in Civ4 (well, didn't fix it, but allowed it to be playable), solid in other games.

Does it lock in other 3d games?  Are you running WoW from the external drive?

Thank you everyone:

@Bhodi, my external HD was not working well with USB 1.1. It took too long to do things and started causing corrupted data. The reason I think it's USB 1.1 (and thus why I went to USB 2.0) is because when I plugged that drive into a new computer that did have 2.0, everything was fine and smooth. I could even defrag and do low level scans, something that choked my 1.1 computer all over. In your first post, you seemed to imply this was an issue. Can you elaborate? Should I not use the external HD (Maxtor 200gb) on USB at all? Seems to be the only option (other than selling it :) ).

@Everyone:

I should have mentioned this earlier:

Computer: Alienware Aurora DDR (April 2002). nForce 415D. Asus A7N266-c (Socket A). 1gb RAM. Soundblaster Audigy sound card. The only things I've done to it in 4.5 years is (in order): replace the video card with the Sapphire Radeon 9800pro I'm using, replace the HD (Seagate ATA100 160gb internal), replace the USB card with this 2.0 one.

Here's something else I forgot: I have on-board USB, which I assume is 1.1. I then have this USB 2.0 PCI card separate. I've got my Logitech keyboard plugged into the 1.1 port and my external Maxtor 200gb drive plugged into that USB 2.0 PCI card (along with a multi-port memory card reader). Is it possible that using both USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 at the same time can cause a problem?

Otherwise, this is a pretty clean install. Brand new drive, brand new install and patch of WinXP, optimized, nothing but MS Office and WoW on it.

Things I'll try tonight:

• Install Catalyst 6.6. No known WoW crash thingy.
• Unplug the USB 2.0 board. Maybe this thing is pushing my voltage needs over the top.
• Find out how to see the temperator on my video card. I have been using Speedfan meanwhile to monitor mobo temp, from the last tech question I had here. Not sure if that can read card, but will check Catalyst as well.
• See if the video card onboard fan is busted.
• Run benchmarks from the list Sinij posted.
• I will try to disable the sound card. Thing's an old beast anyway so I won't cry if I have to replace. Seems strange this would happen now, but I'd just chalk that up to voodoo.

Ultimately, I'm sure as heck learning a lot. Thanks for that all. Next time I just put the new HD in and do rigorous testing.

I just had some hardlocks last week. I had to turn down my cpu and video overclocks.

Why? We got our first good rain since May. At least that's my theory. Denser air or something. It went from me playing gothic3 for 6 hour stents to crashing on any game within 10 minutes of firing it up overnight. No driver changes, nothing wacky in the event viewer, nothing broken. Took my opteron 144 (stock is 1800 mhz) from 2500 to 2400 and the 7800 gs from 490/1350 to 440/1250 to get stability back.

Btw, I don't think we were saying to disable or unplug your sound card, just to disable any onboard sound. As in, the sound 'chip' that is built into your motherboard. On the other hand, your MB is old enough that it may not have integrated sound.

Video gaming is how I learned computers. Some people gripe about all the problems with pc gaming, but I can't really, since it landed me a decent career.

I was implying that since I could barely stand a USB 2.0 external hard drive, as data transfer rates are still inferior to SATA or even EIDE, 1.1 must have been unbearably slow, especially for hard drive heavy games like WoW. I guess my ironforge lag had NOTHING on yours.

Since you've got an external soundcard, just make sure that the onboard one (if there is such a beast) is disabled in the bios. You won't need to remove the audigy, I'd be shocked if that was your problem. The other thing I didn't realize is that you're not using on-board USB, you have an add-on card. I doubt that there'd be a conflict. Generally, the USB<->soundcard  soundcard stability are for on-board USB and sound only.

USB is funky, I don't know if it could cause a problem using both at once, but I personally don't feel it's reliable enough to use as a primary data source. Is there a good reason that you went with an external solution? Having an internal would very likely solve your problem, which is why I suggested borrowing a spare one from a friend. Theoretically, you could also just take apart that external hard drive and see if it's compatible :)

Me too! I have a computer science degree that got me the interview, but my on the job software skills I learned from tech supporting my own computer to try to get some damn computer game or other running. My hardware skills were learned by teaching myself how to upgrade components instead of buying a new computer every 2 years.

hehe, and I wasted all those years on a Mac. To fix those (pre-MacOSX), you just turned off specific Control Panels and Extensions. Ah, the cleanliess of very little third-party hardware :)

@Engels: Ah, now I get it. Now I need to find out if I have one. I imagine that'd show up under Device Manager. If it's there, it'll be disabled.

@Bhodi: I went external because I was afraid to try replacing the internal :) I still was running the internal, but since that went wonky, I had to bite the bullet and replace it anyway. I don't run any programs from the external. It's where I have most non-critical documents and MP3s and whatnot. All programs and their related files are on the internal drives.

The worst part here is that without running WoW, the computer is blazing. Doesn't feel 4+ years old at all. I never did a clean install of WinXP before, but the amount of junk no longer bogging things down makes me want to do this during my monthly defrags.

The USB 2.0 upgrade has changed the entire dynamic of my external HD(D). I used to just have it on if I was going to work on something. Now I can actually use it like the internal one. I've only tested a few files, but it copied 40mb almost instantly. I don't know if this is Firewire speed, but it's fast as heck. Not as fast as internal, but I'll continue testing. If I hate it, I'll drop another $50 and get another internal.

aw, the inside of a computer is nothing to be feared. There's really no way to break anything, most stuff is color coded and all the connectors are different. The worst you can do is damage components with static discharge (fairly to incredibly rare) or jostle something so that it doesn't turn on. With hard drives, heck, disconnect the cables, unscrew it, put new one in it's place, connect cables, done :) If a musician mountain man like Sky can get into it, you can too.

I can understand why you wouldn't want to spend more money, and if you're happy with the speed, then hopefully some of the suggestions will help you narrow down your problem. Just so you're aware, though, windows lies to you on that 40mb copy. Well, more accurately, it does caching and background copies your files.. so that 40mb seemed to be instant, but really wasn't. It's not a  huge deal, really. Of course, there are lots of other things that matter, like if you're coping internal to the drive.

Another thing you might want to do is copy something big. Really big. like your WoW directory. See if you can get your computer to lock up doing that.

Same. I started on a 286 with good old Chuck, a Flightstick, Wing Commander 1, and Space Quest... 3 I believe. Between there and when U7: The Black Gate came out you HAD to know your way around a computer just to play games.

Also if you think working on computers is easy now, you should pick up a project car and do automotive stuff. Super easy. Just gotta get over that initial fear. Woodworking is my next future hobby, but it might take a lot more real skill than cars and computers.

Humid air is less dense than dry.  Random scientific fact.

There isn't any real reason you can't run both USB 1.1 and 2.0.  My experience with PCI USB 2.0 cards is basically to not just buy the cheapest one on Newegg.  Problems making it work aside, it blew a port one day and erased my wife's Ipod.  All 3000 songs.  That was an unhappy woman.

Can you think of any reason why I started getting hard locks literally the day it started raining? I mean, it's been pretty normal this summer/fall, I doubt there has been a single day with more than 0.05" of precip since early June.

Was dense not the word I was looking for? It seems when there is higher humidity that the air is thicker, "muggy", or whatever you want to call it. What's that called? "Humid" seems obvious, but dense is the wrong term?

Just be sure you're disabling it in BIOS, not in Windows.

On another note, I really wouldn't recommend running either programs or OS stuff from a USB drive. Its ok for file transfers, but it just can't take the hits an internal hard drive can. Do not be afraid of internal hard drives. They are not that complicate and as bhodi states, if you're just marginally careful you don't stand too big a chance of harming anything in there. Git yer hands durty!

IE.. hit the delete key when it boots up and you get a *gasp* text screen.

3dmark06 is 500mb?! Am I downloading Guild Wars with this at the same time or something?!

Anyway, while that's going on, I saw something odd in the Catalyst Control Center, under Graphics Hardware:

Bus Type: AGP (correct)
Current Bus Setting: AGP Off

Off? That doesn't seem right. And again, getting that crash error when trying to render the 3D test sequence in the control center.

Thoughts? Or just grab 3dmark and let it tell me what's what?

Update: 3Dmark06 score: 671

That's pretty weird, maybe when you updated the BIOS it reset a bunch of settings.  Somewhere in the BIOS there should be options like bus speed, aperture, etc for the AGP slot.  I have no idea why it would say "off", it should be something like 4X or 8X.

K, that's what I was hoping you'd say. Checking now.

Oh, and check this wierd thing out: apparently, the problem with the Catalys Control Panel (CCC) Preview window is known, and has been around since Catalyst 6.6. Found a thread that discusses (http://www.driverheaven.net/showthread.php?s=365e4dd8535117a702ae758d3815e81b&t=109951&page=3). The recommendation is to replace file "atioglxx.dll" version 6.14.10.5885 with an earlier version (6.14.10.5757) in the System32 folder of OS. The latter earlier version is from Catalyst 6.4. I haven't done this yet (checking into BIOS first), but according to that thread, it fixed the problem.

This is specific to Control Panel preview too. If you direct-access the preview app (Preview_FS) in ATI.ACE folder, the preview works fine. But if you can't access that preview in CCC, then not only will it crash there, there's a good chance your system will continually lock up when using any 3D-intensive program.

ATI is apparently aware of the problem, but have released 4 version upgrades since anyway. Probably doesn't affect enough people or something.

And, this post contains a whole crapload of words I never ever thought I'd even need to learn. GoogleFu++... even if I only understand every third concept :)

Ran Aida32 system tool. Confirmed: Display>3D Accelerator is off.

Also ran DXDIAG: Direct X Features>AGP Texture Acceleration: Not Available.

Also seems to be missing from my BIOS menus. There used to be something in there for AGP. Now there's nothing explicitly AGP. I can set the Aperture size (64mb, 128mb, etc), but that's it. I feel like the card is getting power but not all of the info is being read back from it. It can drive the monitor fine, but it's not pulling down 3D subprocessor stuff for some reason, even though I do now see that pretty like "Preview" thingy in CCC, and 3dmark works.

Maybe it's defaulting to a "software render" mode? 3dmark tests run bad on the monitor but the score isn't terrible. It displays as 0 FPS but seems to be calculating higher. And WoW runs perfectly fine for that 5 minute period before hard lock.

Oh and I confirmed the fan is running fine though still can't tell what the temperature on card is. Can't find anywhere that number is displayed.

Am I hosed? Can I try and reload BIOS 1.0.0.4?

Have you tried resetting the BIOS settings to their defaults? You could try downgrading your BIOS just make sure you aren't using your external hard drive. For the AGP Texture Acceleration part it sounds like your AGP miniport driver isn't being loaded. Try reinstalling your motherboard chipset drivers.

Ya lost me at motherboard chipset drivers :)

I'll take a look. Thanks!

These things:

http://dlsvr01.asus.com/pub/ASUS/misc/utils/nvidia/nvc213_wxp.zip

I think that did it!

Thanks Trippy. Once I installed those, AGP was being used again. WoW moving at a good clip. I'll run 3dmark now but I'm pretty confident all is right in the world.

Thank you all very much. Now I just need to document this so it don't happen again :)

Good point. For shits and giggles I decided to copy over about 400mb of stuff from external to internal drive.

Took 45 seconds. Or, at least, that's what it told me :)

I don't trust external anything to programs or critical data. I have enough room on the internal drive for that stuff.

Awsome bit of troubleshooting! Gotta hate it when a bios flash resets your AGP port in bios!

So, summary of problem and solution?

Computers are not user friendly? The solution is to get a mac.

Switch to consoles?

Actually, for the PC enthusiast/masochist, the lesson is apparently that you should update your mobo chipset drivers if you flash your BIOS.  Ancillary lessons are to avoid USB 1.X and ATi cards.

As for external drives, in hindsight you certainly should have put in an internal one.  Unless you can't tie your own shoes, you should be able to install one yourself.  I have three internals with a total of ~500GB of storage.  That's not even close to a high number for three disks these days.  When I upgrade the mainboard to something that has more than two SATA ports, let's just say that total storage in my chassis has the option to become ridiculous.

You also don't need to worry about jumpers with a SATA disk.  So... next time, buy a new mobo.

Avoiding ATI is a dumb lesson. The 9800 is a great card. I'm still using one, and it was playing Oblivion better than a newer AGP nvidia card my friend was using.

Avoiding Catalyst, sure. Omega drivers ftw with ATI.

External drives are great, especially firewire drives. I plan on getting one when I finally get around to digitizing my music collection. Then I can take the full uncompressed collection anywhere (compressed stuff on the ipod I also hope to get soon, do you hear me Santa???).

ATi is unfair to some.

If DQ had a FireWire port on his mobo, I'd like to think this thread would not exist.

Lessons learned:

• USB 2.0 does not work on the a7n266-c board before BIOS rev 1.0.0.1e
• Updating the BIOS requires updating the motherboard drivers
• External USB 2.0 drive works well. Firewire would be better. I got this drive as a gift though from people who wouldn't know Firewire from a Firewall. I have Firewire on the SB Audigy card, and have used with my Video Camera.
  
• Replacing an internal hard drive is extremely easy. As long as you have all of your necessary installation disks.

Biggest lesson learned though: don't flash your BIOS while adding a new card while replacing the hard drive unless you're patient and have some time to troubleshoot.

Very good lesson to learn; there is always the temptation to change a lot of factors at once simply to save time, but that can bite you in the posterior badly if something goes wrong and you have 3 different new variables to contend with.

Also, the video card was fine; the bios AGP settings in the motherboard (Asus) got reset after the flash, and from my understanding, that was 90% of the problem.

When you say "flash", do you mean "update"? I ask because after I did the BIOS update, I got a checksum error in the BIOS window so actually popped the battery off the mobo, moved a jumper to a clear setting, moved it back, put battery back in and then restarted. I actually have no idea if the act of updating the BIOS is what caused the AGP port problem or if it was the act of reseting the mobo. So, does "Flash" = "Update" and I would just say I "reset" the mobo?

Trying to learn the lingo. To sound smart at least :)

The Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) - is essentially a software driver that tells your computer how to boot up.

So by reflashing (updating) it, you could have changed the instructions on how the AGP is accessed, it most certainly did for the USB. But when you cleared it by jumping the pins, you erased the variables stored in it. Which probably defaulted to a non-agp card for graphics.

Ah, perfect. Thanks!

Yep. Whut them other cat person said.

Uhmm - I have no relation to fur. Does that make Angry Bob = cat bob? or would he be a Bobcat.

I think we have official unofficial ban on talking about furries^h^h^h or you-know-who might get unbanned.

OOh! Look over there, a shiny new change of topic!

Just for terminology, flashing refers to updating "software" that is stored on a piece of hardware.  It is actually refered to as firmware in many cases, such as the machinery that I work on.  It's not called BIOS, it's just called "the firmware", but it performs a similar function.  You generally don't want to update firmware of anything unless there is a bug that needs fixing, but in practice it's just one more thing I have to update from time to time.

Taking the battery out was what reset all of your options.  Maybe even your hardware clock, did you check that?

Yea, my hardware clock was reset too.

Thanks for the explanation on terms too. So when a device has "Flash-ROM" that means it can be Flashed (written to)?

I'm a dummy for not mentioning that whole 'removing the battery and jumping it reset your settings' bit. Sorry!

Most electronics have flash memory now (as opposed to non-writeable eeprom), even if flash-rom is a bit of a nonsensical term.

EEPROMs are writeable (Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory).

I'll just shut up now.

Anything that's flash rom basically is coded in assembler so its not like you can whip out some utility and tinker with it. Nowdays you can get BIOS flashing utilities that will run directly from your desktop, so its looks like a simple process, but god help you if half way through your flash it goes wrong somehow.

I thought I'd bump this for the people who are interested in building their own computer but aren't really tech savvy-- tomshardware's got a nice guide (http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/11/20/how_to_build_part_1/).