# Full System Crash, Sound Loops



## Proprius (Jun 26, 2008)

Thus far, I have only gotten this crash when playing games. The past half-second or so of sound will loop and everything freezes, including the normal fall backs. I reset power to my computer to get things going again.

I've searched both this forum and others and have seen this problem a fair amount, but I also haven't found any strong consistencies between my system/the context in which my computer crashes and those of other people.

Attached is my dxdiag information, if it would help, but here are my less formal system specifications:

GeForce 9800 GTX (2)
Intel E8400 (Dual Core, 3.0 GHz)
4GB of DDR3 1333 Ram
XFX nForce 790i Motherboard
750W Power Supply

And here's some more anecdotal information about the crashing:

Some games seem to crash more than others, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the graphical fanciness of the game in question. (Company of Heroes crashes much more frequently than Age of Conan)

I read somewhere that it might be my memory and paging file maxing out, that my antivirus (ESET NOD32) takes up a rather large amount of the paging file. I've tried closing every non-essential process without any apparent affect.

When I manually turn down my fan speed, it seems to happen more often, but will still happen if they're at full blast (Fans are SilverStone 120mm with 110Cubic Feet/Minute, according to the box, and I have three of them in there, which I figure would be enough cooling.. it doesn't feel very hot from the outside, anyway.)

Power Supply might also be a bit low, but I'm not sure how that problem might manifest itself. 

The crash has happened once when I wasn't running any games at all.

The crashing seemed to occur more frequently after I made some modifications, but I made several over the course of a few days and it's infrequent enough that I'm not positive which modification caused it. These modifications include swapping out a Wireless LAN card for a sound card, switching from the Intel stock cooler to an aftermarket cooler, getting a new iPod, getting a new drawing tablet, and installing manual speed controls for the fan.


And that's it. I tried to include as much information I could think of that might be useful. Thanks in advance for any help/time offered, and please ask if there's any other information that might help solve this.. I was putting up with it for awhile but it's gotten to be too much.


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## manic (Aug 2, 2005)

What brand power supply? I would run a temp monitor, something
like speedfan. When you changed out the hsf, did you make sure
clean cpu, real well, and apply thermal compound as per instructions.
Did you insure you had a good tight bond to cpu with the hsf?
When you changed out cards, did you somehow change air flow..
Have you ran memtest? A flakey ram stick will act like this..
But to me it sounds like heat. A cheapo psu will make a system heat
up...You didnt get sucked into the $29.99 750watt piece o junk psu
did you? lol


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## Proprius (Jun 26, 2008)

I cleaned it quite well I think, used a full tube of Arctic Silver, and.. I think it's well-attached. It's a pretty bulky cooler, I think it would fall out if poorly attached.

I doubt the card change changed airflow, given where things are in the case.

Power Supply is made by Corsair - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139006
And I built this in a Lian-Li case that has the PSU pretty far from the motherboard and everything attached to it.

And I'll download and run memtest and speedfan, posting results after I've had enough time.

The reason I'm less sure it's heat is that I've talked to at least three other people who have had this problem, and read several other threads, and Windows Vista seems to be the common link. One of the people I talked to told me he switched back to XP and everything ran fine.


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## Proprius (Jun 26, 2008)

Alright. I just played Call of Duty 4 for awhile, the game that tends to crash the least. 

I'm not sure I trust this speedfan program entirely, though: the 'System' temperature has been locked at 119*C since I started running the program.

My CPU seems to idle at 40*C, 50*C at peak.

The 'Temp' column stays around 60*C.. It might be my video cards, but I have no idea.


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## jcgriff2 (Sep 30, 2007)

I don't see any way that you are "paging out" considering you have 2.5gb installed RAM and a page file allocated max of 6gb, with only 1gb in use at the time of the dxdiag report. Is your page file system managed, or do you override the settings with mix/max for each drive? Your page file really should not be more than 3.75gb - and the max would be 4gb. As a test on a BSOD case, I pushed my 2gb DDR2 system to the 4gb page file max - system set - and it started closing programs on me under DEP, while installed RAM sat just under 2GB in use (so, virtual memory hit the 6gb max for my system).

Also, is your system 32 bit (x86) or a 64 bit (x64)? 

As for the sound issue - included in the thread title, I found some old audio drivers cmudax3.sys v5.12.0001.0008 (English) dated 2/2/2007 16:04:52 - Vista was publicly introduced in late January 2007. You should see if updates are available for this driver.

Please be sure to follow the advice of manic, as he is the hardware expert - not me!

Regards. . .

jcgriff2

.


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## manic (Aug 2, 2005)

Your werent serious when you said you used a whole tube of 
artic silver were you..?


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## Proprius (Jun 26, 2008)

Uh.. I was, but the tube was about half the length of a pen and the same width.

System is 32-Bit.

Paging File is capped (not Vista-managed) at the max, right now. I only brought up the memory as a potential 'cause because I'd read it elsewhere.

I'll be looking for replacement drivers for that file.

Thanks to those who helped thus far!


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## manic (Aug 2, 2005)

If its one of those little tubes, a little over a inch long you are referring
to. Thats enough compound for probably ten hsf's. Go to arctic
silvers website and see how they instruct you on how to apply the
paste. To much will cause it to overheat. May or may not be the 
problem. But that can be the problem....How did memtest check out..


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## [email protected] (Apr 23, 2008)

I suspect faulty RAM...


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## jcgriff2 (Sep 30, 2007)

If so, run memtest86+
http://www.memtest.org/

Regards. . .

jcgriff2


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## Proprius (Jun 26, 2008)

Just finished trying memtest. I got a weird 'Unexpected Inte rupt'.. here was the message:

Unexpected Inte rupt - alting

Type: 1x

This was during the Moving Inversions: 32 Bit Pattern test on 128K-2048M of my ram, with the hex 000000F0 , 39% through the test.

I watched the test going on until 10%, then wandered off. When I got back this was the message. Should I just run it again, since the dialogue said it had detected 0 errors with the Memory itself, or does all this mean anything to anyone?

I feel a bit silly about the Arctic Silver thing.


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

with memtest you have to run it on 1 stick at a time
see what tepretures are doing with this app
http://www.download.com/Core-Temp/3000-12565_4-10794077.html
set vista to control virtual memory


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## Proprius (Jun 26, 2008)

I wasn't sure how to do one stick at a time in memtest so I told it to test 0k through 2048m, which had no errors. Then I tried getting it to test 2049m through 4095m, which made memtest go a bit crazy.. so I set it back to the default test range of 0k through 50 thousand something M and tried running the full test again. It returned no errors.

I think that means that my RAM is fine?

I've updated that sound driver; we'll see if that makes things better.

coretemp is giving me the same temperature as speedfan for my cpu.


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## jcgriff2 (Sep 30, 2007)

The test is done on physical memory only - your system has 2.5gb - 2558mb per the dxdiag report. 

.


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## Proprius (Jun 26, 2008)

That's the 32-Bit framework cap, I do believe.


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## jcgriff2 (Sep 30, 2007)

The 2048 or the 4096? 4gb is the 32-bit (x86) cap. But how can you test memory that is not there (i.e., above your installed 2558mb)? Any memory past that would be the page file, which is the HDD pagefile.sys. At least this is how a software person like myself understands it.

I know that pre-SP1 had problems ID'ing above 2048, but the hotfixes now rolled into SP1 recognizes the full 4gb - at least that is how I understand it. Dai or Manic from hardware could tell us for sure.  I would think if you are running memtest on 1 stick at a time - it is just that - whatever memory the stick contains.

jcgriff2


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## Proprius (Jun 26, 2008)

I don't know about all that, but I do know that I put two sticks of 2GB ram inside this thing, unless the packaging was lying.
Regardless, the test came back as a pass, and I don't think testing more RAM than exists would invalidate the test?


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## Proprius (Jun 26, 2008)

I feel like a fool, but I can't find where SpeedFan saves its log files for the life of me.

Also, I think I came off as a bit of a jerk in my last post.. sorry for that.


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

you test as i said above with only 1 stick at a time in,or the results are unreliable


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## jcgriff2 (Sep 30, 2007)

My Apologies. . .

I was looking at your RAM amount from the dxdiag report. I just went back through all of the posts and noticed that your initial post stated 4gb RAM installed. I missed that part - again, I just looked at dxdiag.

I can tell you that the page file basically contains memory addresses - both virtual and physical - for translation purposes. The page file is mapped at the time of the OS installation or when a change is made to its settings. I doubt that your system problem involves "paging out" whatsoever. You can easily monitor memory and page file activity with either the Task Manager or the Performance monitor (START | type perfmon into the start search box). From there you can generate a system health report or click on disk and watch the number of times the the page file is accessed.

It has simply been my experience that the max on reports such as dxdiag has been 2gb for x86 systems - pre SP1 - and may have made incorrect assumptions based on various items that I have read. I honestly have not reviewed any dxdiag reports for systems with >2g post SP1. However, in hundreds pre-SP1 dxdiag reports that I have reviewed on systems with >2gb installed RAM, I have never seen an "odd" amount of 2.5gb. But I cannot say it cannot happen.

What then was so different about testing the 1st stick of 2gb DDR4 vs. the second? 

I would suggest that you also check the following areas of VISTA reporting out:

• The Event Viewer - 
START | type eventvwr into the Start Search box | right-click on eventvwr.exe that appears up top | select Run as Administrator | view the various logs starting with the Administrative logs.

• Problem Reports and Solutions:
START | type wercon.exe into the Start Search box | right-click on wercon.exe that appears up top | select Run as Administrator | view "See Problems to Check'.

Regards. . .

jcgriff2


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## Proprius (Jun 26, 2008)

I ran memtest with each stick in turn as per you guys' instructions, and returned no errors.

Neither of those two dialogues you linked have any errors or events or.. anything at the time of my last crash, nor before it for a good awhile. 

If I can find the speedfan log, I can look and see if temperature increased just prior to the crash, I suppose.

Any other suggestions/things to test?


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## jcgriff2 (Sep 30, 2007)

I downloaded, installed and ran Speedfan to find the log. It can be found in the Program Files folder and will have a name similar to:
C:\Program Files\SpeedFan\SFLog20080627.csv

It is in Excel format.

To enable the log - see the following screenshot:










As far as the configuration of what is included in the log, I will leave for the hardware experts like dai and manic, as my csv file contained just one column of numbers.

Regards. . .

jcgriff2


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

are your drives ide or sata
check the voltage range for the ram on hte manufacturers site


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## Proprius (Jun 26, 2008)

Drives are SATA in a RAID 0 Configuration

I just see Voltage at 1.75V , no range. Is that the right number or not?

I have Speedfan configured as you do, but I don't have that .csv file where you have it. Not sure what's up there.


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

is that what you see in the bios or on the the manufacturers site
are your dvd drives also sata


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## Proprius (Jun 26, 2008)

DVD Drives (2) are IDE

The voltage is from manufacturer site. I can provide a link if you would like.


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

yes a link would be handy
check the dvd drives are running in dma mode and have not dropped back to pio mode


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## Proprius (Jun 26, 2008)

http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/memory/ocz_pc3_10666_reaper_hpc
or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227293

Where will the info on the drives be? BIOS?


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

in the device manager click on the ide listing and go into properties


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

which one of these is yours
http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/ddr3/reaper_hpc_series


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## Proprius (Jun 26, 2008)

The Properties window appears to be blank.

OCZ DDR3 PC3-10666 / 1333 MHz / Reaper HPC Edition / 4GB / Dual Channel


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

this is what you are looking for


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## Proprius (Jun 26, 2008)

Ah, thank you. It says "Ultra DMA Mode 4" for both.


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

run these and see what the temps are like as you are gaming
http://www.download.com/Core-Temp/3000-12565_4-10794077.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1077/mirrors.php
check the event viewer and see if anything is listed at the time of the problem occuring


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## Proprius (Jun 26, 2008)

Programs are running.

I have another update, however.. I refused the flow direction of one of my fans, which decreased the CPU temp by a good 10* Celsius. I haven't had a crash since doing this, but I'm not positive this indicates a fix, given the randomness of occurence. I'll update if I get another crash. 
Also.. here is an ugly diagram for the airflow in my PC right now. The green arrow is airflow of CPU cooler, red is airflow of case fans. 
Previously, the case fan by the CPU was blowing the opposite direction.
The case fan over the PCI slots is sucking air from the outside and blowing on to the cards.


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

the fans on the front should suck air in
the ones on the rear exhaust the hot air
the cpu and gpu blow down onto the chips
the in out ratio needs to be about equal
this creates a cool flow of air from front to rear across the components


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## Proprius (Jun 26, 2008)

That's about what's happening, except that the cpu fan blows towards the rear of the case, over its heatsink.

CPU Temp dances at 51*C under load, maybe a degree higher or lower.

GPUs are both at about 62*C under the same conditions.


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

what does the bios list the voltages as


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## Proprius (Jun 26, 2008)

I put Crysis in my computer and that pushed the temperatures to 58 cap for the CPU and 70 cap for the GPU.

Voltages as listed in the BIOS:

CPU Core: 1.19V
CPU FSB: 1.1V
Memory: 1.5V
nForce SPP: 1.3V
nForce MCP: 1.5V


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## Proprius (Jun 26, 2008)

Since I can't edit and forgot to add this, my computer did crash in the same way after running Crysis for about an hour, perhaps more like 90-120 minutes.
CoreTemp log has no temperature spike just before/at time of crash, but that's just the CPU.


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

do you have a link to your ram


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## Proprius (Jun 26, 2008)

http://www.ocztechnology.com/product...666_reaper_hpc
or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820227293


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

the newegg does not work and there is more than on variant listed
http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/ddr3/reaper_hpc_series


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## Proprius (Jun 26, 2008)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227293

I put a space to circumvent the shortening. ><


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

access denied
in the bios lift the ram voltage to 1.8v it's within the manufacturers specs for the lower grade version of the ram
the better quality has a 1.9v upper end
see if that makes a difference


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## Proprius (Jun 26, 2008)

Listed specifications on the site are 1.75V , with timing 6 - 6 - 6 - 18 .
BIOS was defaulted at 1.5V with timings 6 - 6 - 6 - 20.

I tried 1.8V and Vista wouldn't boot. Ditto for 1.75V. Then I changed timing in BIOS to 6-6-6-18, and tried 1.75V, still crashed Vista. I lowered voltage in increments of .5V until it worked, at 1.65V.

This is taken from a review on newegg: "
Cons: This memory will not work without manually tweaking your BIOS. I spend a couple days tinkering with settings before getting to stay stable for about 5 hours at a stretch. Finally I called OCZ about the issues I was having. They gave me this advice which solved the problems and the system has been totally stable since (3 weeks of testing before writing this review) Try 6-6-6-18 with memory voltage at 1.8V. Make sure CMD is at 2T. Also increase the nForce SPP voltage to 1.4V. If you're not overclocking the CPU, run the memory linked and synched to the FSB."


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## Proprius (Jun 26, 2008)

Followed the instructions in that newegg review and system booted. Changed the following additional settings in BIOS:

CMD from 1T to 2T
Voltage back up to 1.8V
nForce SPP up to 1.4V
Linked and Synced Memory to FSB

Will inform if I still crash.


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## Proprius (Jun 26, 2008)

Problem reoccured, though not during a game - I was installing a program at the time, as well as browsing the internet.


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

anything in the event viewer this time


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## Proprius (Jun 26, 2008)

Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Unexpected error querying for the IVssWriterCallback interface. hr = 0x80070005. This is often caused by incorrect security settings in either the writer or requestor process. 

Operation:
Gathering Writer Data

Context:
Writer Class Id: {e8132975-6f93-4464-a53e-1050253ae220}
Writer Name: System Writer
Writer Instance ID: {9b1a28d8-fab9-4f4b-969f-a934a87fef01}

and

Failed to create restore point on volume (Process = C:\Users\John\AppData\Local\Temp\6406d0375d524ca08837a28f799c0c2e\00000000_TEMP\dxsetup.exe /silent; Descripton = ôÜu; Hr = 0x80070057).

Both within a minute prior to the crash


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## jcgriff2 (Sep 30, 2007)

0x80070005 is an access-denied error. Do you have any 3rd party backup software installed?

jcgriff2

.


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## Proprius (Jun 26, 2008)

I don't think so, but I'm also not entirely sure what would be 3rd party backup software either.


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## jcgriff2 (Sep 30, 2007)

A third-party backup product would be non-Microsoft software that you are using to completely back up your system onto another hard drive - be it internal or external.

Also, are you maybe using the Windows Backup and Restore facility - here is a screen shot:










Please note that this is NOT the Windows System Restore system.

Regards. . .

jcgriff2


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## Proprius (Jun 26, 2008)

Nope, nothing like that is installed as far as I know. And I've never opened the Windows Backup and Restore facility before, but I still went through and looked for any setting that may have been enabled somehow, and found nothing. 
Perhaps the installation program was trying to make a small restore point or something?


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## jcgriff2 (Sep 30, 2007)

I don't know what that setup program is - Apologies if already suggested, but have you looked at the Event Viewer for any clues?

If you would like, you can zip up the Event Viewer logs and attach to your next post - you may have to split them up attaching several zip files (max 5 per post) as there are 57 of them in my system right now (fresh Vista install only 2 weeks ago) and their aggregate size is over 50mb - and zipped over 4mb. Each attachment has a 1.96mb max.

They are located in C:\Windows\System32\winevt\Logs - but you my have to copy them out to another folder before zipping them as they are "in use" and usually cannot be accessed by Windows Explorer in the above name folder. It will take me a little bit to go through all of them nd of course there is also the possibility that nothing will be readily apparent in them either.

Regards. . .

jcgriff2

.


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## Proprius (Jun 26, 2008)

I wouldn't mind doing all that if I thought it would help, but other than the two events I posted above there have been no events coresponding with the crash thus far, for now four different crashes since I've started checking the event viewer. 

The pattern of things makes me think it must be temperature related - at first the occurence was relatively infrequent, then when I installed the new cooler I also created a bad airflow situation, which caused them to become more frequent. After I fixed the airflow, the crashes have become less frequent.. at least as rare as they were prior to the new cooler, if not rarer.

Do any of the temperatures I've listed seem high? Will the recomended safe ranges for the hardware be listed anywhere? Or have you more knowledgeable folks ruled out overheating for some other reason?


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## jcgriff2 (Sep 30, 2007)

Have you looked through all 50+ of the event logs? Some like hardware and IE are blocked by Vista and do not get written to. And I have found items in some logs that are unexpected - as in I would not think an event would be in certain log. re you simply looking at the admin log? I cn tell you from experience with BSODs that a hardware error can bring a system down so fast that there is no entry recorded in the Event Logs.

I honestly don't know about the temps and again will defer to the hardware experts on this.

Regards. . .

jcgriff2

.


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## Proprius (Jun 26, 2008)

What I did was set up a Filter of all logs from all sources and of all priorites +/- 2 minutes from the time of the crash.

How is the Vista hardware log blocked by Vista?


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## jcgriff2 (Sep 30, 2007)

I am not sure as to why several logs are "blocked" - they never, ever contain ny entries. I started to look into this few months go, but obligations here took over and that was put on the back burner.

Regards. . .

jcgriff2

.


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

post what the bios is listing your tempretures and voltages as now


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## Proprius (Jun 26, 2008)

Hottest temperatures I've seen are 60 for the CPU and 72 for the GPUs, but these are from the temperature monitoring programs you guys have linked - I didn't see any temperatures in my BIOS.

Voltages are as Follows:
CPU Core: 1.19V
CPU FSB: 1.1V
Memory: 1.8V
nForce SPP: 1.4V
nForce MCP: 1.5V


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

60 is right on the upper limit for the cpu it should be in the 30's
redo the paste with some arctic silver
http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_silver_instructions.htm
make sure you follow the instructions and the push pins are locking down


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