# Freeze/sound loop in games.



## Valerium (Apr 29, 2005)

Greetings recently I have been having problems, with what I can only assume is the videocard.

Its the Nvidia 8800 GTS 320 mb.

When I play a game for a long period of time (Anywhere between 5-11 hours), say, Assasins Creed or World of Warcraft, after 
a certain period of time, the screen will completely freeze, and whatever sound was playing will loop
forever. (no BSOD)The only thing to get rid of it, is to reboot the PC.

Now i've tried hard to figure out what it is, but i'm clueless as to what it could be.

I tried:

1. Format the PC, everything reinstalled from scratch, but didn't help

2. Tried the latest Forceware drivers, both normal, and beta, but no results.

3. Scanned HD for problems, but didn't find any errors

Couldn't run memtest86, because my current PC doesn't have a floppydrive installed, and have no empty CDs at this time.

I read a lot on forums with similiar issues, however I like to point out that they always had it happen instantly after loading
a game, or after like 15 minutes, this only happens for me after many hours, and so far only happend while playing games.
I don't get any screen tearing as some others had, so i really don't know if it's the card or not. Some friends told me if
you don't get screen tearing prior to the crash it won't be the card overheating.

I checked speedfan for my PC temperatures, but it didn't show anything amazing, the only 2 it showed as red were the
motherboard, and the videocard. MB at ~49, GPU ~68 idle. The rest was all relatively low ~25/30 degrees Celsius, but I was told the GPU
temp is appearently normal for 8800 cards.

My system is as follows:

Motherboard: Asus P5N-E SLI
GPU: XTF 8800 GTS 320 Mb
Processor:	Core2Duo 6600 
RAM: 2x 1GB Buffalo I believe
OS: Windows XP Home
Sound: Creative SB Live!
PSU: Zalman 550w

None of it is overclocked, never was, and I've had this PC for over 9 months, these crashes only started happening a few weeks ago
I cleaned the PC completely, but it didn't seem to have helped. (it wasn't that dusty anyway)

I would really like to have this resolved asap, as i'm really used to playing long periods at a time without breaks, and it's 
quite annoying for me. Any information would be GREATLY appreciated.

Thank you.


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## johnhook (Apr 23, 2008)

Valerium,

Does this freezing/audio looping only happen with the game you mentioned? If so, has it always happened with this game? What, if anything, have you changed (installed, upgraded, reconfigured, etc.) before the problem cropped up?

Have you checked the game's support site on the web to see if there are patches? If you PC is running fine otherwise, I would tend to look at the game as the culprit.

Please reply and clarify.

- John


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## Valerium (Apr 29, 2005)

No, its not that game. I used to play WoW for long periods (months) without it ever happening, and it happend in other games as well, like Assasins Creed and Crysis, so it's not limited to just one game.

I didn't change anything either before it started happening, no new hardware, and no new software. Even if it was software the format didn't change anything either.


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## johnhook (Apr 23, 2008)

Valerium,

Looks like you've covered all the obvious bases. After some searching on this issue, it seems as if you're not alone. Check out:

http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/index.php?t37125.html

http://discuss.extremetech.com/forums/thread/1004379431.aspx

Just for grins, try cranking down your video hardware acceleration settings under "advanced", "troubleshooting" in your display adapter settings. Crank it down a notch at a time and see if this eliminates the freezing/crashing.

- John


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## Valerium (Apr 29, 2005)

Will try, also try to increase the fan speed a few notches see if that helps as well


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## Valerium (Apr 29, 2005)

Starting to think it might not be the videocard. It just happend again, and by pressing ctrl alt delete, I managed to get out of the game and in windows, the problem continued though system was unable even in windows and sound was still looping.

upped the fan on the videocard so it was a lot cooler and it didn't work, neither did the hardware acceleration.


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## koala (Mar 27, 2005)

Check your temperatures and PSU voltages with *PC Wizard* at startup with no other programs running. Take with a screenshot from the 'Voltage, Temperature & Fans' window. Then open Task Manager and click the Performance tab. Leave it open on the desktop and take another screenshot of PC Wizard and Task Manager *during gameplay* by pressing ctrl-alt-del to switch back to the desktop. Post back with both screenshots so we can see how your system copes under stress.

Get a blank CD and run memtest on one stick at a time for at least 10 passes each. More than one stick can cause false errors.

If you've updated the graphics driver recently, did you follow the correct procedure and uninstall the old driver first, then install the new one in VGA mode with antivirus disabled?

Have you tried an earlier graphics driver?

Are your chipset drivers up to date?

Which sound driver version do you have?

Run the tests in Start > Run > dxdiag > Display tab.


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## Valerium (Apr 29, 2005)

No programs loaded



While playing World of Warcraft



Task Manager during WoW

I will try to get some CD-R I have none atm, will post results later.

I doubt very much this is caused by not uninstalling old drivers first, besides I did a full format first and tried latest non-beta drivers of forceware right away. Still happens.

Tried Latest Beta and none Beta drivers, I can try a older version after posting this, will let you know.

Are your chipset drivers up to date?

If you are referring to my motherboard, then no I never updated them, don't even know how.

Using my old Soundblaster Live! I use the last drivers that were released from creative.com they worked fine for the 9 months before it happend. Can't be the sound. Could try onboard sound, but don't think it will make a difference.

Ran the dxdiag tests. They worked fine.


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## koala (Mar 27, 2005)

Your +12V value is outside the accepted +/-5% range (11.4V to 12.6V). This powers the graphics card and could be partly responsible for the crashes.

I noticed your CPU usage during gameplay is only 1%. You might have to play for a bit longer or get some intense action going onscreen to get a more useful set of readings.

Your case fans are spinning at 10rpm. Open the case and make sure they're actually spinning. It could be a false reading though.


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## Valerium (Apr 29, 2005)

the 1% is because the game is alt-tabbed. it should normally be like 50% or so, it's never peaked out if that's what you wanted to know.

the 10 rpm is indeed false reading, same with the GPU fan it's not actually running at 100% but instead at the standard 59%. I checked and they are running.

Anything i can do about the voltage? what does it actually do, i know nothing about it.


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## koala (Mar 27, 2005)

The +12V rail on your PSU powers things like the graphics card and hard drives, so it needs to be within the accepted range for reliability. If this turns out to be the cause of your problem, it's not something you can fix without replacing the PSU.

You would need to use a multimeter on the PSU to get the most accurate readings. System monitoring programs are not always 100% accurate.

Check the +12V reading with another system monitor like *SensorsView* or *SpeedFan* for confirmation. Also, look in BIOS to see the idle readings.


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## Valerium (Apr 29, 2005)

Bios shows similiar readings, 3.3V was around 3.3 in bios no idea its not saying anything on speedfan. PC wizard still shows 13.02


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## koala (Mar 27, 2005)

Your last screenshot shows +12V as 12.29V which is fine. Whenever I get different readings, I check in BIOS and with a multimeter to confirm before replacing the PSU.


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## Valerium (Apr 29, 2005)

I really don't get then what it could be. I was really thinking it was overheating but that doesn't seem to be the case.

trying older forceware drivers right now. hopefully that will be it 158.22 I believe.


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## Valerium (Apr 29, 2005)

Well it's not the drivers either, any suggestions as to what else it could be?

it seems pretty random sometimes by spamming ctrl alt delete i can get in windows (though it's pretty bad there too) and like just now I couldn't do anything at all.


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## johnhook (Apr 23, 2008)

Valerium,

Have you tried cranking down the display properties "hardware acceleration" settings in Windows? Do you have BIOS shadowing enabled in your motherboard's BIOS? 

The other thing that you might want to explore is a potential conflict with your SB Live! card. Try removing that card and the driver and see if this has any effect. I believe your motherboard has imbedded audio hardware (probably NOT as good as the SB Live!). I've run into major problems with Creative Labs Live! drivers on both Win2K and WinXP.

Also - your graphic card might not be overheating - but it could have defective memory. If possible try swapping out your card with a different card. In those threads I posted before - some of the users found that their video card was the issue.

It seems like you've exhausted many possibilities - so I'm just throwing some other things to try out there.

- John


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## Valerium (Apr 29, 2005)

I will look into it.

I updated my bios drivers yesterday used the latest one on the Asus site, i'll see if that makes a difference

I'll be running memtest86 when I go to bed.

Not sure where to find bios shadowing, i'll look into it as well

if it comes to it i'll disable SB Live in hardware, and use onboard sound, but again doubt its the cause it worked fine with that card for over 9 months after all. Just disabling the card in windows should be enough right? I don't have to actually remove it or?


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## johnhook (Apr 23, 2008)

Valerium,

I would try physically removing the SB Live! card. Just disablng the device in Windows doesn't always fix hardware-level IRQ/DMA/IO ADDR conflicts with other PCI or imbedded devices. You can always plug it back in if removing it doesn't fix your problem. Also - I've found, particularly with SB Sound Cards that the PCI slot you've got it plugged into can be an issue as certain slots are hardwired to share resources with other slots/built-in devices.

The ACPI HAL (hardware abstraction layer) in Windows XP tends to steer all or most of the devices the the SAME IRQ - (usually 9), For most devices, sharing the same IRQ is not a big issue - but I've found that SB Sound Cards and some Video Cards don't work well sharing IRQs with other devices (USB, Modems, Network Adapters,etc.). The BIOS on my old ASUS P4 motherboard allowed me to manually assign IRQ's to the PCI slots and reserve other IRQs. I've also run into an issue with a SB Live! Sound Card problem where the only fix was to replace the ACPI HAL with the "Standard PC" HAL - which doesn't force IRQ sharing.

- John


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## Valerium (Apr 29, 2005)

Small update.

Checked bios for bios shadowing, couldn't find it anywhere in bios.

Updated bios to latest ones.

Ran memtest86, it did 14 laps and found nothing.

It is still happening btw.

I will now try to use onboard sound instead, and see if that does the trick.

I would have tried to use a different videocard ages ago, but the problem is that I only have 3 other cards, 2 of them are AGP, which this motherboard doesn't have, and the last one is a old Voodoo 3 card, so I probably won't be able to run anything with that.


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## Valerium (Apr 29, 2005)

Onboard sound wasnt the answer either, and with that I don't know what else to test.

Let me ask this then, even though memtest didn't find anything, could it still be the ram? 

Also, is there anyway to test if indeed the Vram is the cause?

Like I said before the only PCI videocard I have available to me, is the oooooooooold Voodoo 3, and i'm sure it will work, but what can i possibly run with it to see if it still freezes in games. =/

For now the only thing I could do is set the ram timings to 5 5 5 15 according to what this particular ram stick was supposed to be set to. (it was set on auto in bios) Other then that don't know what else to do.


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## johnhook (Apr 23, 2008)

Valerium,

Have you installed the WOW 2.3 patch? If so, this patch might be the problem. I'm seeing LOTS of other folks out there having this EXACT problem with WOW and the same or similar hardware to yours.

One thing to try that I've heard works (although probably NOT an acceptable permanent solution) is to disable the sound. Some WOW users have reported that this freezing goes away under XP when you disable the sound. The other thing I've read is that if you start Windows Media Player BEFORE launching WOW, this can also fix this problem.

Check out this thread:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/t...EBC8A77A79?topicId=2967993245&sid=1&pageNo=35

Have you tried updating your SB Live! drivers? I've had issues in other software with buggy SB Live! drivers - some of which involved having to manually assign an IRQ to the PCI slot where my SB Live! PCI card was located or swapping the SB Live! card into a different slots as PCI slots have hardcoded IRQ and resource sharing with other slots and/or onboard devices. You motherboard manual can give you more details about this.

Have you tried run "dxdiag"? What version of DirectX are you using? DXDiag will perform a battery of tests on your your DirectX devices, drivers, interfaces, etc.

I know you've tried just about everything and this has been a very frustrating problem for you. Unforunately - these random freezing problem, especially with games tend to be tricky to troubleshoot and resolve as there is so many factors (hardware, drivers, motherboard BIOS settings, DirectX issues, potential resource conflicts and bugs in the actual games you're playing). If you look at the history of fixes in most video drivers - they usually involve changes to fix specific game-related problems.

- John


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## Valerium (Apr 29, 2005)

Update.

I took out a 1gb ram stick, and it seems to be gone, it could very well be that one of the sticks was faulty, I don't know. I hope so. I will eventually test the other one to see if it finds errors with memtest, but the fact that it didn't find anything to begin with I won't expect too much.

I was able to play World of Warcraft for the past 3 days without any crashes, and these are long gaming sessions. Sometimes over 12 hours non stop, so that does leave out overheating and most likely videocard, etc entirely, but...today something new happend:

Basically instead of the screen freezing entirely, and the sound looping, the screen turned black, with "no input" on screen, as if PC received no signal, you know? sound did loop, but this time it seems different, I'm sure this has to be videocard. I will continue playing seeing if it happens again. I hope it was just a fluke crash or something, but it worries me. Still can't figure out why sound would be effected by videocard though.


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## Valerium (Apr 29, 2005)

Ok, so It's been almost 6 weeks now since I removed one of the ram sticks, and basically just played the games with 1 stick instead of 2, and It hasn't happend since, there were a few other things that happend rarely, but I'm sure they weren't related.

Basically, does this confirm it was indeed the ram? I bought 2gb of new ram today, but what if it happens with the new ram as well?


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