Computer Crashing

[So1dier]

I just bought my computer yesterday and it's worked perfectly up until today. All I have done is updated drivers and downloaded 2 games. Yesterday I tried out Team Fortress 2 and played it for about 2 minutes and it worked perfectly. All I have done today is installed World of Warcraft and after it was done I tried playing that. For 20 minutes it worked perfectly and then it froze. At first I thought it was my video card overheating because this is the first thing I have done besides the short TF2 session that has been graphics intensive. I restarted my computer, logged in, and it froze again. Then after about 15 seconds it started working again and a little alert popped up in the bottom right saying AMD drivers have failed but have been recovered. I didn't really pay attention to that but because it froze so quickly I thought it was just still hot and overheating.

I waited an hour and turned the air conditioning on in my house cause it was about 84 degrees and I thought it might help. I started up windows a few more times and it kept freezing, and giving me that same AMD driver error. So now I called my friend and he said to try doing some memory tests or full system scans but I have no clue where to start. I did try updating my drivers for my RADEON XFX 5870 card from the newest one 10.6 in June to the 10.5 version from May and so far it hasn't crashed, but I am about to start up World of Warcraft in a little bit and see what happens.

Does anyone know what the issue might be?

 

[So1dier]

Alright so I got the 10.5 driver and my computer gave me a weird screen while playing wow. Just striped vertical bars on my monitor but I could still hear the audio of the game.I restarted the computer and in the start up screen there was a box saying that there might be issues with overclocking. It showed a box with my cpu and ram speed. It gave me a solid black screen after that so I restarted. I went into my bios and before I could change the ram setting it gave me a solid blue screen, I restarted and it happened again. I restarted and went into bios and change the ram speed from 1600 back to 1333 and saved and quit before anything bad happened that time. When it tried booting up again I got a weird screen with crazy white pixels and lines flying up the screen. On the next restart nothing happened. I realized I hadn't updated windows yet so I installed all windows 7 updates. After those were installed I restarted and I still got weird visual effects on the start up screens like white pixels and white lines flying from the bottom to the top of the screen. The computer kinda froze a couple time on the log in screen, then resumed after about 15 seconds. I'm not sure what it could be but changing the ram back to the default 1333MHz speed, changing the driver update to my video card from the 10.6 to the 10.5 update, and getting windows updates didn't help, I'm still getting issues.

Does anyone know what's going on?

 

[smarteyeball]

If you are getting these odd lines outside of Windows ie during POST (or any area before Windows starts loading ) it could be an issue with the card itself.

If it's only occurring inside windows - then it may be software, but from the symptoms, it sounds like hardware.


When you say you bought the computer, did you buy a pre-built machine or did you assemble it yourself?

If it was pre-built, was it also sold as 'pre-overclocked' ie the CPU, RAM etc.




For the memory scans, your friend may have been referring to memtest86+ .

This is a stand alone application that you runs outside of Windows and scans for memory errors.

You burn the .iso file to a bootable CD, boot from the disc and just let it run. Usually 8 passes is minimum/recommended to uncover any errors, unless it starts showing errors straight away. If it starts showing errors straight away, then it could be incorrect settings, a bad stick or the mobo itself.

(*NB memtest takes a while to run, so for a 'long run, it's best to do it overnight or while you are away from your PC)

You can use a tool like PowerIso to mount and burn the .iso


If you could fill in the rest of the specs (especially what PSU and model of 5870 you using) that would help us a little too.

 

[So1dier]

I assembled the PC myself, and right now I'm waiting for a friend to bring over memtest86 so I can see if it's bad ram. I'll fill out my specs on my profile.

 

[smarteyeball]

Thanks for filing out the specs.

Fingers crossed it's just some bad RAM settings or a faulty driver installation.

 

[danieladam]

If you have multiple sticks, take one out, start it up, if it happens, take the other out and put the first one back in, etc etc. Thats something to do while you wait. Also, do the same with your integrated video card and Radeon video card...

 

[So1dier]

I ran the memtest86+ and I got 0 errors for memory.

 

[So1dier]

System Manufacturer/Model Number
N/A

OS
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

CPU
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz

Motherboard
GIGABYTE GA-790XTA-UD4

Memory
G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 1280

Graphics Card(s)
XFX HD-587X-ZNFV Radeon HD 5870 (Cypress XT)

Sound Card
N/A

Monitor(s) Displays
Acer P235Hbmid Black 23" 5ms HDMI Widescreen LCD Monitor

Screen Resolution
1920x1080

Hard Drives
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5"

PSU
Antec TruePower New TP-750 Blue 750W

Case
Antec Nine Hundred Two

Cooling
4 case fans

Keyboard
Razer Arctosa

Mouse
Razer Imperator

Internet Speed
Cable 10Gbs

Other Info
N/A




I just opened my case and made sure all my pieces were plugged in, I even unplugged my GPU from the pci-e2.0 slot and plugged it back in. And switched my 2 ram sticks from the 2 blue slots closest to the CPU to the 2 white slots farthest away from the CPU. I also am using the second DVI slot on the end of the graphics card instead of the first one in case the first one was bad.

In the bios under PC Heath tab it said my cpu temperature was about 35 degrees celcius. On the desktop it also says my gpu temp is 31 degrees celcius.

 

[So1dier]

 

[CarlTR6]

Try turning off the ATI Overdrive and see if that helps your problem. This solved the problem for another person here recently.

 

[trackrat]

Just a thought, looking at the specifications of your card, it says it needs two six pin connectors to power it, have you got the two connected ? .

 

[So1dier]

Alright well I just played world of warcraft for about 30 minutes, I got one weird screen flash in the game but it hasn't frozen yet. I just alt tabbed out to post on these forums and say everything was working pretty good but I opened the browser and right before I clicked bookmarks the computer flashed weird pixel colors(like blotches of squares throughout the screen), then froze for about 3 seconds, then the screen turned pure white for about 3 seconds. The system sounded like it was about to power down but then it kicked back in and powered up and it started to working again. This is the usual cycle it goes through when it freezes in windows. But when it freezes in games the screen gets all messed up and I haven't waited more then 2 minutes for it to start working again so I would just restart.


While gaming my CPU never went over 40 degrees c and my GPU never went over 50 degrees C.

 

[So1dier]

Just a thought, looking at the specifications of your card, it says it needs two six pin connectors to power it, have you got the two connected ? .

Yes I have 2 connected. If these are the symptoms of only having 1 connected then maybe the wire is bad? My power supply is semi modular and I have an extra PCI-e power cable that I could try swapping between to eliminate the bad cord.

I don't know if that would be the problem though.

 

[So1dier]

Try turning off the ATI Overdrive and see if that helps your problem. This solved the problem for another person here recently.

How do I turn off ATI overdrive? I never thought I turned it on.

 

[So1dier]

Someone told me to get HWMonitor and post a screen shot of my values. He replied circling defective values. Can you guys download this program and post screen shots of your values so I can compare and see if this is the problem.

Thanks
-Josh

 

[trackrat]

My specs are similar to yours and this is the readings I get.

 

[Davidxtux]

XFX HD-587X-ZNFV Radeon HD 5870 (Cypress XT) has known compatibility issues with Windows 7. I know this first hand.. I owned 2 of them already. Whats the problem? When the graphics card drops into 2d mode voltages and clocks drop to low where the system can no longer maintain stability and thus the driver crashes. It really is touch and go and some systems can maintain stability. Here is a possible solution:

1) Open CCC and switch to ATI Overdrive
2) Unlock and enable Overdrive
3) Go to Options/Profiles/Profile Manager and create a new profile called, let's say, STABLE.
4) Save the new profile. But DO NOT ACTIVATE the profile.
5)Now go to C:\Users\{YourUserName}\AppData\Local\ATI\ACE\Profiles folder ( I assume C: is your system drive
Note: You should have " show hidden files " turned on to see the folder.
6)Open the .xml file named STABLE with notepad.
Change the values of the idle Core clock and Memory clock speeds below

Feature name="CoreClockTarget_0"
Property name="Want_0" value="40000" note: previous value should be "15700"

Feature name="MemoryClockTarget_0"
Property name="Want_0" value="90000" note: previous value should be "30000"
Save the file and close it.
Go back to CCC and activate the profile. This will make the card idle at 400 MHz core clock and 900 MHz memory clock.

 

[CarlTR6]

If all solutions fail and you feel you are out of options remember this, a sledge-hammer at Lowe's cost $8.

:roflmao: The final solution!

 

[ttran]

If all solutions fail and you feel you are out of options remember this, a sledge-hammer at Lowe's cost $8.

:roflmao: The final solution!

Sorry I don't understand all American joke, what does that mean?

 

[CarlTR6]

It means that when you have tried everything and are out of options, you can get a sledge hammer and smash it. It is what we are tempted do sometimes when we are extremely frustrated. Don't take that advice seriously!