Freshly built system: Freezing Problem

[Black Hades]

I've recently built this system for myself. And I am being plagued by in game and desktop freezing.
Any help would be more than welcome as I tried troubleshooting it with partial (and boggling) results.
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Intel Pentium E8400 3.00Ghz
Gigabyte GA-EX38-DS5 (F2 BIOS)
Zerotherm Nirvana NV120 Premium
Mushkin XP2-8500 2x1Gb RAM 1066Mhz (dual channel)
Saphire ATi Radeon HD 2600 512Mb (OLD)
Maxtor 160Gb | WD Caviar 400Gb | WD Caviar 500Gb (All OLD)
ASUS DRW-1814BL DVD unit
Audigy 1 24bit SB (OLD)
AntecNeo HE 550W EC
EnGenius EUB-862 usb wireless dongle for internet (Aetheros chipset)
Windows XP SP3
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Notes:
OLD hardware worked fine with a previous built
I flashed my bios from F1 to F2 using Gigabytes @bios (using offline method because it's safer)
Bios is set to Optimal settings except for ram speed set from 1066 to 667 (for 1:1 ratio),
disabled boot logo (I like seeing the post ), and disabled serial and printer ports (on-board, needs auxiliary bracket to use, I never use it anyway);

Symptoms

I. PC freezes while playing many hardware intensive games; Most noticeably Unreal Tournament 3 (UT3) (1280x960 everything else on max settings)
II. Seemingly random freezes on desktop while noticeably more frequent while using uTorrent
III. I connect through my wireless internet using PPPoE. If I shutdown or reboot while the PPPoE is active it ALWAYS freezes. (If I disconnect from the PPPoE it shuts down (or reboots) normaly 100%of times)

Troubleshooting.

1. Ran Orthos to check if my CPU and/or RAM is faulting and/or overheating. Using Everest,
CoreTemp, RealTemp, SpeedFan and CPU-Z for monitoring temps and harware.
After ~4hours of runing Orthos on priority level 7 I checked my temps: Ambient temp 25-26C, Motherboard 36C,
All HDD's bellow 36C (using 120mm fan + cage), CPU 48C (each program reported something
else, Everest and CoreTemp agreed on 48C, others were +/-3C or -10C from the 48C)
Test was still running fine, no freezing;

2. Reseated my video card several times, checked it's temps while running UT3, never got above 56-58C. Freezing still occurs within 1-3Min of playing, depending on map size and detail settings (higher the details, shorter time til freezing occurs).

3. Swapped & reseated both ram modules. no improvement;

4. Ran Msconfig and disabled all non-microsoft services and startups. and it worked! somewhat.. and for a while..
4a. Running UT3 normally with all services enabled always freezes my pc, sometimes I can ctrl+alt+del and close it, most of the times not that "lucky";
4b. Disabled all non-microsoft stuff worked, I played indefinitely, then once every 3-8 reboots it still freezes on same settings (probably my printer service...strangely runs on ocasion even if disabled);
4c. Tried to enable 3rd party services one by one to see if one of them was responsable, to my surprise it wasnt any particular service.. enabling either of them one by one yielded freezes though after longer period of gameplay;

5. Ran massive in depth antivirus/trojan/rootkit scans. System was pristine

6. Uninstalled my ATi 8.4 drivers (antivirus resident off so as to not potentially cause problems), reboot, installed 8.5 (freshly uploaded), reboot, same problems.

7. Reinstaled my 3rd party drivers including the WLAN one, no improvement.

8. Defragged with PerfectDisk the system & games partitions. Including offline (Pagefile=3GB,separate drive from windows & games partitions);

9. Ran dxdiag to check for any errors, no problems detected, everything was up to date.

10. Carefully performed several desperate voodoo like myth tests (frequently detailed on dodgy forums).

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PROBLEM SOLVED:

Additional steps:
- checked PSU parameters and RAM voltage, all was ok;
- uninstalled applications one in the hope of finding the issue;

The problem was a bad .NET 3.5 install. Uninstalled all .NET frameworks (2, 3, 3.5) and did a fresh install of .NET 2.0

All went fine, system is now stable.
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[jbunch07]

seems like you have tried allot of things...maybe try a fresh install of windows?

edit: might be power supply, i believe your psu has 3 12v rails...maybe one is going bad. have you tested your psu?

 

[Black Hades]

seems like you have tried allot of things...maybe try a fresh install of windows?

edit: might be power supply, i believe your psu has 3 12v rails...maybe one is going bad. have you tested your psu?

I've spent so much money on that damn PSU, I didnt even think that it would be the issue, but, I'll test and post some screenshots today (not home right now).
I've looked over the voltages, the 5v seems a bit off, and the cpu is getting 1.32something. I'll post acurate numbers a bit later when I re-check.

The PSU was factory sealed, fresh draft, QC test passed, but who knows.
Shouldnt a PSU problem be obvious or manifest itself during stress testing like I did with orthos?
Also that doesnt explain the desktop crashes...

thx for the quick reply btw

Edit: I dont know why but I've avoided reinstalling windows for some reason... that was my 1st thought realy but i've used that install disk for countless systems (VLK)..
Maybe it's the gigabyte motherboard.. it changes it's clocks and voltages even when the DES is off
I think that is the Intel EIST function in bios...

 

[jbunch07]

I've spent so much money on that damn PSU, I didnt even think that it would be the issue, but, I'll test and post some screenshots today (not home right now).
I've looked over the voltages, the 5v seems a bit off, and the cpu is getting 1.32something. I'll post acurate numbers a bit later when I re-check.

The PSU was factory sealed, fresh draft, QC test passed, but who knows.
Shouldnt a PSU problem be obvious or manifest during stress testing like I did with orthos?

thx for the quick reply btw

well not always if just one of your rails was failing say the one your video card is connected to, when you stress that it might fail...like when your gaming. im not an expert on psu's but im pretty sure thats how it works.

oh and no prob bro.

 

[Black Hades]

well not always if just one of your rails was failing say the one your video card is connected to, when you stress that it might fail...like when your gaming. im not an expert on psu's but im pretty sure thats how it works.

oh and no prob bro.

there is no connector plugged to my video card, it doesnt even have a connector
It's a HD 2600PRO /w 512Mb DDR2 and draws power from the PCI-E socket
from benchmarks I see that this card rarely draws more than 80W even under OC
and the PCI-E slot can provide up to 180W

I'll check the psu later this day, I have a spare

 

[jbunch07]

there is no connector plugged to my video card
It's a HD 2600PRO /w 512Mb DDR2 and draws power from the PCI-E socket
from benchmarks I see that this card rarely draws more than 80W even under OC
and the PCI-E can provide up to 180W

ha oops overlooked that part. my bad.

still wouldn't hurt to test the psu.
and then i guess as a last resort a reinstall of windows. witch i personally dread having to do.
hope it works out for ya though.

 

[Black Hades]

The thing about PC freezing is that it could be any one thing (be it hardware of software) or any possible combination of the things
I am laughing now but belive me this issue stresses me out

 

[tkpenalty]

As jbunch07 said, I would test the PSU as well. You never know, QC is by no means perfect.

 

[Black Hades]

ha oops overlooked that part. my bad.

[...] as a last resort a reinstall of windows. witch i personally dread having to do.
[...]

Tell me about it, takes me about 4 hours to install and optimize windows . And during the 1st week I still find minor things I've forgotten to tweak/setup/install

 

[Black Hades]

Latest Everest reports:
+3.3V: 3.248V
+12V: 12.056V
+5V: StandbyL 5.161V

DIMM: 1.872V

As I write this my pc "idles" at 2000Mhz (333x6)
CPU Core: 1.104V

Started Orthos now 3000Mhz (333x9)
CPU Core: 1.168V


funny thing is yesterday Vcore was 1.33v while running orthos or gaming. Intel EIST maybe?

 

[modder]

Intel EIST,i'm sure!.i have the same problem

 

[Smartbomb]

Dimm 1.872? That kit is rated for 2.2V-2.35V increase your memV to 2.2V dood. Looks like your problems right there. I've had my memory OC'd too much, even though it passed stress testing I was getting game lock-ups, looks like memory issue
EDIT: you have a Giga board... should be +.4V on your memV

 

[Black Hades]

Dimm 1.872? That kit is rated for 2.2V-2.35V increase your memV to 2.2V dood. Looks like your problems right there. I've had my memory OC'd too much, even though it passed stress testing I was getting game lock-ups, looks like memory issue
EDIT: you have a Giga board... should be +.4V on your memV

Does this mean I can set them to 4 4 4 12 now?

 

[jbunch07]

Does this mean I can set them to 4 4 4 12 now?

if you didn't have it set to 2.2 and you were stressing your system i would say that could be your potential problem... but yea set them bad boys to 2.2v and see what happens.

 

[Black Hades]

I cant belive I fell for it... My pc insists that this is a DRAM18V for 18V... on the heatspreaders there is a sticker with 8500, my warranty and receipt say 8500, but Everest and CPU-Z say it's actualy the 6400.. that explains why it runs on 1.8V.. not why it freezes
I've set it for 2.2v but still same errors. I'll RMA the kit

 

[jbunch07]

I cant belive I fell for it... My pc insists that this is a DRAM18V for 18V... on the heatspreaders there is a sticker with 8500, my warranty and receipt say 8500, but Everest and CPU-Z say it's actualy the 6400.. that explains why it runs on 1.8V.. not why it freezes
I've set it for 2.2v but still same errors. I'll RMA the kit

good call.

 

[Black Hades]

Ok, it's not the ram. It is the HP2 8500, it's displayed wrongly because of the bios. I'm not the only one with the problem. Until gigabyte fixes this they have a -1 from me.
Works fine with 4-4-4-12 CR 2T with the +0.4V

But the games still freeze just like before. I'm praying now that this is just a bad windows instalation.

Thx for the help ppl. I'll post something when things change.

 

[jbunch07]

good luck!

 

[Black Hades]

Update:

Problem fixed.
I had a .NET Framework v3.5 corrupt install, removed all versions then everything worked perfectly.
Reinstalled only up to .NET 2.0 for now, just to be on the safe side.

Cant belive it was this simple after all these headaches.

I dont think that .NET was directly making my games freeze, an educated guess would be that it made the kernel unstable in certain conditions.

 

[jbunch07]

glad to see you got it fixed.
hopefully this thread will help someone else with the same problem.

 

[Black Hades]

Added results/conclusion at the end of the 1st post for an easier read.
Hope this is indeed helpful to those with similar problems.
From my behalf thread may be closed.
Thanks