Freezing problem

Ok, so I did that... booted from it and let it run overnight. I looked at the summary and it said I had zero errors in the tests. I'm glad, but still not sure what could be the problem.

99.9% of the time, if Memtest86+ doesn't find anything on the first pass, your RAM is fine.

If it ran overnight your mind can definitely be at ease unless something exceptionally bizarre is going on (there's always a .0001% condition with computers!). But I'd say your mind can be at ease there

Well that's good... so it's narrowed down to the motherboard and video card right? If it is the video card, it is still under a warranty I believe so I could replace it... if it's not I'll probably stick it out for a little longer until UT3 is closer. The motherboard should also be under warranty at the shop I bought it from, but I don't want to be too rash and end up paying a huge bill that may not fix the problem. Anyone know how I may test my video card or motherboard for possible problems?

Well, I found that there was an updated NVidia driver so I installed that... it didn't freeze for two days, but it has started again. My fps, ping, and net stats were all good during those situations and the server wasn't very full. I think after vacation I may take it into the shop again and have them look at my video card a bit more.

Moof: I would agree with your statement, but I had the same thing happen to one of our computers at home. It turned out to be memory even though it passed all tests I could think of, including Memtest. This was frustrating (it would just freeze in the middle of games) and I went through several video cards, sound cards, fans (thinking that it may have been a cooling issue) and all the BIOS and drivers. I then changed the memory (actually upgraded from 512MB to 1GB) and the problem went away.

So, I know it may not be terribly convenient, but it is worth a try.

Edit/add: I did run Memtest86+ overnight as well - several times (this was a long arduous process)

Spike wrote:

Moof: I would agree with your statement, but I had the same thing happen to one of our computers at home. It turned out to be memory even though it passed all tests I could think of, including Memtest. This was frustrating (it would just freeze in the middle of games) and I went through several video cards, sound cards, fans (thinking that it may have been a cooling issue) and all the BIOS and drivers. I then changed the memory (actually upgraded from 512MB to 1GB) and the problem went away.

So, I know it may not be terribly convenient, but it is worth a try.

Edit/add: I did run Memtest86+ overnight as well - several times (this was a long arduous process)

Hmmm, well I'll try switching out some memory when I get home. I have 2 gigs in there right now, but it could be a bad stick. Thanks for the information, I'll be sure to look into this.

Update: I took out my second 1gb stick of ram and only played UT on my first 1gb. The game did its freezing thing not too far in. I then took out that ram stick and swapped it for the other. Played again but with the same freezing results. So unless both my sticks are bad, I'm thinking it's not memory related. I'm planning on bringing it into the shop tomorrow, but at least now I can lead them in the direction towards fixing it.

Did you try using a different slot to test the memory?

ECHO wrote:

Did you try using a different slot to test the memory?

I think I forgot that extra step...

So here's my news... Today I went in to the shop to talk to the techs. I described how I switched out my memory one by one... they readily believe it's the video card, but allowed me to test 2 new GB of their memory. So as of right now I'm using those. So far I've played about 3 hours on DC and have had zero freezes. I'm still holding out for one tonight, but right now it seems like this could be the fix. They said that sometimes certain manufacturer's memory isn't very compatible with certain video cards (or something that's close to that.) So this new manufacturer memory may be working.

I've made it a point to buy matched/paired memory just to reduce the risk of this type of issue - glad it's working out and keep us posted.

I forgot to mention something. When I went into the shop I also asked how I could improve my wireless reception. I ended up buying a larger antennae that now gives great reception. Today I decided to switch out the antennae for the old one and see how it would work. I played UT and it froze again. But here's the odd part, this freezing problem started when I was at school and I was never using wireless there, it was always disabled. So now I'm trying to figure out how this problem is started via connection, but also not. The game it first started on was played offline.

Secondly after I played UT and exited I got this message. "The NV4_DISP display driver has stopped working normally. Have your work saved and reboot the system to restore full display functionality." I did that and it's working again, but I'm not sure if this was part of the problem or is the problem.

Sounds like your nvidia driver got messed up according to that message. If you go on the nvidia site you can try two things. Get the latest unified driver and install and it should fix it. Or, with a little digging, find the version number (or if you have the original install cd you can get it there too) of the driver for your card and dl it and install. That may help you brother.

My next step in this process was to send back my video card since it's under warranty. I'm not sure if they'll fix it or replace it, but we shall see. So right now I'm running on a basic card. I'm going to test a few times on this card to see if it's the other one for sure.

Update: I should have my new video card in a day or two... so hopefully I will be back in business shortly!