ATITOOL 0.24 - system now boots to BSOD

[Zforgetaboutit]

Hi

This is how I got to this state:

My room was really cold from having the window open and sub 0C air rushing in. The PC case temp was 12 degrees cooler than normal.

I decided to try a bigger Radeon X850XT overclock than usual since there was so much natural cooling available.

I chose 600/600 for GPU/RAM and started 3DMark06. I left before the bench finished.

I returned 20 minutes later to see the PC rebooting to Windows XP Pro login.

I login. 5 seconds later : BSOD "Machine Check Exception - 0x9. Sometimes during a boot it gets the BSOD even before login. I'm able to run Knoppix withour problems. I could run Memtest on 2 GB ram (in DFI Ultra-D Lanparty BIOS).

My first question is: is my Radeon still set to 600/600, which is maybe too high even for a very cold room?

If so, what can I do to reset it back to defaults if XP isn't bootable? I can't reach Safe Mode either because of the BSOD. My boot disk is a mirrored Sata raid disk (nForce 4).

I was hoping there would be a floppy-based version of AtiTool I could use to check things out or reset the Radeon's clocks.

 

[grazzhoppa]

as far as I know, once Windows shuts down (either crash or proper shut down), ATItool becomes defunct and your video card goes back to the clocks set in its bios.

I just tested it. I left ATItool running and set it to my overclock speeds, then restarted Windows, and when it booted back up the vid card was set to its default clocks. I don't have ATItool start up with Windows though.

Do you have ATItool starting with Windows and loading the 600/600 profile on startup? maybe that's the problem.

you may have just damaged the card or maybe the power supply couldn't put out the extra juice for the overlocked card and something went awry.

 

[Zforgetaboutit]

Thanks for the test. That's useful to know.

I wasn't expecting the card to go nuts because of the alleged overclock protection from ATI.

The p/s is a Powerstream 520, but anything is possible.

I'll try the card out in a distant friend's PC this weekend. I don't know anybody local with a PCI-X slot.

 

[Zforgetaboutit]

as far as I know, once Windows shuts down (either crash or proper shut down), ATItool becomes defunct and your video card goes back to the clocks set in its bios.

I just tested it. I left ATItool running and set it to my overclock speeds, then restarted Windows, and when it booted back up the vid card was set to its default clocks. I don't have ATItool start up with Windows though.

Do you have ATItool starting with Windows and loading the 600/600 profile on startup? maybe that's the problem.

I'm not aware of telling it to do that, but maybe that's a default config or the way it existed. In the event that is causing the continuing problem, I wish I had a way to get at that setting to reset it back to default clocks.

 

[Zforgetaboutit]

I remembered to try a PCI vid card. Same problem.

I think I can eliminate the X850XT.

I imagine I'll have to reduce hardware components next to a bare minimum. Failing that I'll try reintegrating the motherboard.

 

[Zforgetaboutit]

I remembered to try a PCI vid card. Same problem.

I think I can eliminate the X850XT.

I imagine I'll have to reduce hardware components next to a bare minimum. Failing that I'll try reintegrating the motherboard.

I solved it.

I changed 1 stick of ram to explicit factory timings, instead of auto.

Then I could only get into Safe Mode, but better than before!

I System Restored to just before the latest Catalyst driver (6.1) and everything works again. I'm back to my previous OC timings, except for vid card. I'll stay away from that for a while.

About the message, I didn't know about the "don't boot on error" setting so I only saw the messages for < 1 second - too little time.

It looked like a generic explanation, and except for the code was a full screen in length.

CPU : AMD 3200+ Venice S939 @ 1.4V, mult 10, HTT 260, LDT 3
MoBo : DFI LanParty NF4 Ultra-D, Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG 3/10/2005-NF-CK804-6A61FD49C-00
Video : Saphhire Radeon X850 XT, BIOS 113-A47413-100, Driver Catalyst 6.14.10.6546
Ram : 4 x 512 MB OCZ Premier OCZ4001024PDC-K, 2.5-3-3-8 2T @ 185 MHz, 2.6V
Hard Drive : 1 X 250 GB Hitachi DeskStar 7K250 PATA, 2 x 250 GB Seagate 7200.8 SATA (Raid 1 Mirrored)
Case : Antec P160
nForce 4 BIOS : 6.53
DirectX : 9.0C
Power : OCZ Powerstream 520
Cooling : all stock