Jagdwyrm Posted July 21, 2002 Share Posted July 21, 2002 I know this may not be right place for this, but there may be someone here who can help. System is AMD Athlon XP 1700+ 1.5 ghz...Asus A7V266-E Mobo...Maxtor 7200 rpm 40 gb HD...Soundblaster Audigy Gamer...Visiontek Nvidia Geforce3. I had previously been using Nvidias beta drivers to get CM to work, after having some serious errors that pointed to Nvidia drivers I learned there were new ones available for XP. I downloaded the new ones and had some serious problems, computer was rebooting itself constantly with serious error messages. I decided to reinstall windows. I have now done this 4 times. The last time on a new HD thinking that may be my problem...eventually my registry gets damaged I believe. I will get the error at startup sayin Windows\System32\Config\System file is missing or corrupt. Thats it then I can no longer log into windows. I run CHKDSK and it says it has found one or more errors...I tried using CHKDSK /R but they remain. Was wondering, my XP CD is scratched could that cause a bad install of XP?? Anyway thanks for any help in advance. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted July 21, 2002 Share Posted July 21, 2002 I assume that if your CD was scratched bad enough to cause a bad install, then you would get a read error during the installation process. If you don't get such an error, then I would assume that the scratch isn't bad enough to affect the installation. Are you installing the VIA 4-in-1 drivers ? I highly suggest installing these before you install your video drivers. I know certain NVidia drivers had problems with the newer VIA chipsets with a 'constant reboot/Blue Screen of Death' problem (though that probably isn't what you're experiencing). I'm not sure what the /R switch does, but I usually use the /F switch to fix file systems with CHKDSK. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WWB Posted July 21, 2002 Share Posted July 21, 2002 SB drivers could also be to blame. They really dont get along with VIA chipsets. WWB 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jagdwyrm Posted July 22, 2002 Author Share Posted July 22, 2002 I did get read errors....I kept hitting 'retry' until it ran it through. Right now on this install I don't even have the SB installed yet. BTW thanks for the replies. [ July 21, 2002, 06:23 PM: Message edited by: Jagdwyrm ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barrett's Privateer Posted July 22, 2002 Share Posted July 22, 2002 I had an INCREDIBLY similar experience but unfortunately I don't have any advice to offer, only more questions. My situation: Bought a computer- Celeron 1.2 GHz, 256 Ram, Pine GeForce2 64Mb, Soundblaster live!Value, AsusTua266 Mobo, Windows XP and thank goodness a full warranty! It seemed OK for a few days. A little prone to lock ups but I assumed they were the normal. I eventually updated drivers including Soundblaster and Nvidia Detonator, installed games and generally made myself at home. Overtime the Computer begain randomly and completely locking up, especially during CM, more and more and more. Then came corrupted files- user profiles once , then registry files and then once in a while, XP would stop booting altogether. Overtime this forced multiple repair reloads and several complete reformats when the reloads wouldn't take. I stopped installing the driver patches on reload. No go. I tried every software solution: New patches-old patches, no patches-all patches. Nothing kept it from locking up. Then C: drive stopped taking reformats. I had the hard drive replaced under warranty. In less than a day the crash errors reappeared. I brought it to back to the place of purchase and demonstrated the lock up errors. They were stumped! Over a week they tested and retested everything- every single piece of hardware and software and still- they couldn't find a problem!!! They suspected the CM disk of being too scratched but the lockups kept occuring without it- even while they tried running benchmarks! Finally they decided it had to be the motherboard and replaced it with a Aopen one. I took my system home but- I lost C: drive again within a day! Finally the company had had enough and they completely rebuilt my system under warranty. That was a week ago. But I've burned so many times in the last month I'm now gunshy of my computer. I've only installed two games: Freedom Force (which runs great) and Starfleet Command 2 which has crashed several times but I read that it's terribly buggy. Frankly I'm not sure I've got the nerves left to try installing CM. I miss it but I can't help but mistrust it. Maybe I'll just wait for Beyond Berlin... At the point I'm at now I've stopped asking why and am now trying hard to forget it ever happened. I really don't have a clue what happened but I can say this: Whatever the software/hardware combo that occured- it was capable of completely destroying muliple elements of not just software but hardware. --Dave 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted July 23, 2002 Share Posted July 23, 2002 Did they ever replace your memory or change the memory timings in the CMOS/BIOS ? Have they checked for heat-build up in the case or the CPU (improper mounting of the heatsink, etc.)- although Celerons aren't known to get very hot. I wouldn't say that there is anything inherently unstable about running CM on your system. It may push your video card harder than a number of games and cause it to heatup more (which should be within its tolerances). Can you run those benchmarks without locking up ? I'm not sure what your shop was running, but you can get some from Guru 3D (under Benchmarks & Demos > 3DMark 2001 is a good one to try). Sometimes benchmarks will lockup or not complete because of certain driver incompatibilities. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jagdwyrm Posted July 23, 2002 Author Share Posted July 23, 2002 ok so far so good...Ive been into the BIOS and found some things that were definitely wrong for one I had my onboard sound enabled. My AGP card was set to PCI video. I removed the SB Audigy and my newest CD-RW drive. Did a new install with a clean disk of XP(borrowed from a friend). Am using onboard sound now and going to wait and see if everything is cool. Think I will take it into PC shop and have them double check my BIOS settings to make sure everything is cool. A question about AGP card BIOS setting should the aperture match the memory of the AGP card? I.E. my card is 64mb should the BIOS apeture be set to that? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted July 23, 2002 Share Posted July 23, 2002 A general recommendation for AGP Aperture settings is approximately half of the total of your system memory. So if you have 256Mb of system RAM then set the aperture to 128Mb (which is sometimes the maximum amount). The AGP/PCI video card setting doesn't make too much of a difference. It usually just identifies for the motherboard BIOS on what bus to find the video BIOS. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barrett's Privateer Posted July 23, 2002 Share Posted July 23, 2002 Since my old system has returned back to the parts from whence it came, I can't be sure of any of the settings. I do remember that the shop that built the system said they had flashed the mobo with the latest bios and double checked them. I'm pretty certain the memory chips very checked and the processor was running cool. One thing I did note: At one point early on I wanted to test the GeForce graphics card and I plugged in an old Rage IIC. Even though it had only 4Mb of onboard memory my old system ran perfectly for three days- the only time it did so over the month I used it. In fact I could even muddle through combat mission. Oh, it was slow and ugly but it functioned consistantly- something I could never get it to do with the GeForce2. I don't think CM was too blame, I think it was a litnus test. My gut says the problem was a the interaction of several components, drivers and software. I don't know why but my instincts say it was a coflict between Nvidia detonator and XP drivers. And I'd almost have put money on the XP refresh rate problems being involved too. -Dave 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tracer Posted August 1, 2002 Share Posted August 1, 2002 When ytou reinstall windows on your PC are you starting from scratch {clean hard drive}You know starting with a boot disc and Fdisk the drive{deleting old partions then creating new ones}Then formatting the drive format c:/s with the problems you are having this is what I would do, this will give you a clean install and also let you know if the is any bad spots on your hard drive had the same thing happen to a customer of mine, {he tried all the quick fixes}after I did this he has'nt had any more probs. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jagdwyrm Posted August 2, 2002 Author Share Posted August 2, 2002 Thanks everyone for the help. It was a bad stick of 512 ...oh well you live and you learn. At least it works now and my RAM is being returned to manufacturer for repair/replacement. Got a stick of 256 in the meantime. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobH Posted August 2, 2002 Share Posted August 2, 2002 Privateer - I had similar sort of problem to you with a new PC I built recently. Only thing was my crashes were more serious and I crashed during Windows installs - except I then actually managed an install of the product but had random crashes later on. It turned out my 2 RAM DIMMs, although new and bought from the same place at the same time were incompatible together. If I used just one of them, either of them, I installed Windows fine and had zero crashes. If I put them both on the MB, then I got those random crashes back. To finally test it out, I installed my 2 DIMMs onto a colleague's PC. After 4 attempts with Windows stalling at different places each time at startup, we used just 1 of my DIMMs and perfect. So a possibility is your RAM DIMMs were incompatible together. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted August 3, 2002 Share Posted August 3, 2002 Although TWO DIMMs shouldn't be much of a problem, sometimes three or more can cause instabilities with certain chipsets and/or motherboards. It's an issue of electrical current and memory timings. Often the most stable (and speediest) configuration is a single DIMM (this doesn't apply to chipsets that interleave the memory access for better speed). Almost all motherboards should be able to support a second and possibly a third DIMM (a fourth one is rare unless they're REGISTERED DIMMs). It's possible that your motherobard either isn't very compatible with the particular memory you installed (being fine with one, but crashing when two or more are installed) or the memory timings may be too 'aggressive' for the particular memory you've installed (again, where it may work fine on a single DIMM, but crash with more than one). As a generic (though not absolutely proof-positive) test you can work either DIMM singly and I'd assume that the machine may work fine. If your dealer was accomodating you may find out that by swapping for the same brand and size of memory that the problem still occurs (despite the DIMMs themselves being good). [ August 02, 2002, 10:57 PM: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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