PCA Forums

This one has me stumped. I know this is a shot in the dark, but hey, any help would be welcome.

It's a fairly new Windows XP install, couple months old. I reinstalled when I got my new rig: AMD Athlon 64 3800+ "Venice", ASUS A8V mobo, ATI X800 XT w/5.8's, 2 gigs RAM, SATA HD. It just started out of the blue, and it's totally random. No error message or anything, just a complete hard lock-up and I have to reset. I first thought it was overheating, so I got a temp monitoring app and well, that's not it. I can play a game for hours and it's fine, but leave it on overnight torrenting or something and I come to it locked up. It seems to happen every night now. No virus or spyware that I know of. I really have no idea why it would do this...

might be a power supply that is right at its limits - you might want to monitor that as well as temp - 2 gb ram /hi end vid can strain an older ps

nope, it's about a yr old, 480W I believe. Like I said, I can play a game for hours and it won't do it, and it will do it when it's idle.

My set up is not nearly as nice but I had a similar problem with random lock ups I traced back to the Cat 5.8 video drivers. Funny thing was the lock ups never showed itself during game play for me but usually doing web browsing or other 2D apps, never during a game. Anyway I went back to the Cat 5.6 drivers and the issue disappeared for me, might be worth a try for you. Good luck

google on that mobo & use of 2GB of memory. I have read some folks are having issues with the 2GB of memory in that board.

Blade sorry for posting a link from another board...

http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=397805

It's wierd, this set up ran perfectly fine for 2 months, then it started a few weeks ago, and it's so frickin random it's frustrating trying to figure out the cause.

dadx2mj, thanks, I'll try that, it can't hurt.

DaMaN, wow that link sure has a lot of techo-babble... *shrug*

Shot in the dark, but in case it's registry, software or driver related try rolling back to a restore point a week or more prior to the problems occuring.

tunis5000 - I've been having the same thing occur off and on and are you using Firefox by any chance?

I have FFox installed but I usually use Maxthon. Anyway, I got rid of the cats 3.8 and installed the 3.6's and I haven't had a lockup since. *fingers crossed*

Also look into the screensavers you are running, and if you are folding, disable it's screensaver. Check your power management options too - if you turn off the hard drives, it might lead to a lockup condition.

Hmmm, Cats. been having the same problem but never thought it would be the vid drivers. Think i'll try Omegas cats instead of the 5.8's

thanks for the info dad!

3.6 Cats?!!!! Why so old? That could cause problems. Last rock stable Cats were 5.6. We're up to 5.8 now and they're working fine for me but a few people report issues.

d_b I'd avoid the Omegas. They're hacked drivers and if anything MORE prone to stability issues.

Try the 5.6 Cats. They were solid as a rock. Also avoid the version with the Catalyst Control Center. Get the regular Cats.

Thanks for the advice FP. I'm going to give the omega 5.6's a try...cant be any worse than ati 5.8. I absolutely hate the CCC. The machine I'm using them on is my gaming rig with not much on it so no biggie if it gets fubared.

I think Tunis meant 5.6 not 3.6. I hope so anyway

Cat driver issues???? Thought Nvidia's best driver writer went to ATI.

There's nothing really wrong with the Cat Control Center except that you have to install Net Framework and I see no reason to install a major service like that if it's not strictly necessary. There's nothing the CCC does for you that the regular control panel doesn't. It's just eye candy and code bloat.