Friend has wierd restart issues.

[ShogoXT]

So ive been troubleshooting for a friend for a while now on a strange problem that has been happening to his new comp. Every once in a while, sometimes a couple times a day while playing WoW, his computer just reboots, sometimes you see a blue screen first. One time he saw an error that had ati in the name is why im posting here. The new comp is a Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-DS5, Radeon 3870 (i think Sapphire, 2 slot cooler), 2Gb ram G. skill I think, Phenom 9600, cant remember the PSU atm but i think its over 700w. Sorry if some of the info is incomplete as I cant see the comp first hand, helping him over the net. Put in new drivers 8.4, updated the bios and made sure the TLB erratum bugfix was enabled along with defaults loaded, windows up to date (winXP) with all the software stuff, but not the hardware. It still appears to be doing it though. I told him to test some other games, will have to see about that, but it doesnt happen often enough to reproduce easily.

Does something like this sound familiar to anyone? Thanks in advance.

 

[nflesher87]

has he done any overclocking? and what's his airflow and cooling like?
sounds to me like something's just overheating after a while

 

[ShogoXT]

has he done any overclocking? and what's his airflow and cooling like?
sounds to me like something's just overheating after a while

Well I heard some 3870 cards had improper fan bios setups where they would be slower than they should, so are unusually hot. Was thinking of trying to use Riva Tuner to tune it up a bit. As for cooling mostly stock with a Lian-Li PC-7B case. He said it was a 2 slot cooler.

 

[nflesher87]

oh well I mainly meant case cooling, but yeah have him try riva tuner, it's easy as pie to crank up the fan speed, have him at least try that

 

[ShogoXT]

Case cooling working fine. The video card fan is working and we even turned it up pretty loud still doing it. I cant figure this out, gona try a windows error check before im thinking its some sort of hardware problem.

 

[Kovoet]

I reckon it's the PSU as I had the same problem whilst playing Joint Operations after I installed a new 8800GTS 512mb gfx card after using the nVidia 7950 gt extreme. Loaded it up starting to look forward playing the game and boom restart everytime I started to play. Got a decent PSU and have never had the same problem since

 

[ex_reven]

Sounds like a heat/psu issue.

Overclocking instabilities usually yields blue screens. Can anybody verify that?

 

[{JNT}Raptor]

Sporadic reboots are usually a sign of an Underpowered system......the PSU may be 700watts.....but Is It a quality product?........I've seen quality 400watt PSU's outperform no name 700+ watt PSU's before.

Unhook all but the essential hardware and then fire up a game and see If It reboots.....If not.......the problem area Is at least narrowed down.


Hope It helps.

 

[Mussels]

its PSU, or the leads to the video card. Make sure he isnt using molex (4 pin) to PCI-E (6 pin) power adaptors.

 

[HTC]

Well I heard some 3870 cards had improper fan bios setups where they would be slower than they should, so are unusually hot. Was thinking of trying to use Riva Tuner to tune it up a bit. As for cooling mostly stock with a Lian-Li PC-7B case. He said it was a 2 slot cooler.

If it's the fan, you can do this:

- Use GPU-Z to copy the vid card's BIOS to a file
- Use RBE to edit that file and, in the "Fan Settings" section, select "Use transfer function (recommended)"
- Depending on how loud the vid card's fans are, select a value for the "Duty cycle min %" option. As you can see in the pic below, i chose 50
- Save the modded vid card's BIOS in to a DIFFERENT file
- Use ATIWinFlash to flash the modded BIOS in to the vid card

EDIT

WARNING: do this with a stable PC, as in, not overclocked: it might be better to use ATIFlash instead of ATIWinFlash for the flashing of the modded BIOS.

 

[ShogoXT]

Ok turned up the fan speed now it does it more often. Last time I talked to him I told him to do a windows error check. If that doesnt work I have to think its a hardware issue.

 

[Mussels]

Ok turned up the fan speed now it does it more often. Last time I talked to him I told him to do a windows error check. If that doesnt work I have to think its a hardware issue.

windows error check is pretty vague. you can do hard drive checks, reinstalls, system file checks and so on.

Please dont rule out a format and reinstall as an option, it is possible something is corrupt in software - even tho hardware problems are more likely.

 

[Steevo]

Go to.

Start->Control Panel->Perfromance & Maint.->System->Advanced Tab->Startup and Recovery click the settings button. Under System failure uncheck automatically restart and click OK.


Now it will halt at the BSOD and allow you to read the message you get. Post that.

 

[Namslas90]

Ok turned up the fan speed now it does it more often. Last time I talked to him I told him to do a windows error check. If that doesnt work I have to think its a hardware issue.

Increasing the fan speed increases the power draw on the card, if the problem increases, it implies that your problems is indeed the PSU not having the power necessary for the card.
When dealing with graphics adapters the wattage is not as important as the Amps available on the +12v rails.

What is the Make/Model number of the PSU.

 

[Mussels]

Increasing the fan speed increases the power draw on the card, if the problem increases, it implies that your problems is indeed the PSU not having the power necessary for the card.
When dealing with graphics adapters the wattage is not as important as the Amps available on the +12v rails.

What is the Make/Model number of the PSU.

the fans unlikely to even use 5 watts of power, to be honest. it takes something like a delta to go above that (the 120mm delta that does 200CFM states it uses 30W of power)
While i too think the PSU is a likely candidate, i just think your logic to get there is wrong. Its most likely coincidence that its happening more often now.

 

[Namslas90]

the fans unlikely to even use 5 watts of power, to be honest. it takes something like a delta to go above that (the 120mm delta that does 200CFM states it uses 30W of power)
While i too think the PSU is a likely candidate, i just think your logic to get there is wrong. Its most likely coincidence that its happening more often now.

Not too argue; but, when at its limit even a small increase can cause more problems.

Also a good chance he just needs to clean out those ATI drivers and re-instal new driver set.

Follow instructions on ATI website to properly remove ATI drivers(and dont forget to remove the ATI unistaller tool). Also, Defrag HDD (to remove refference points) before installing new drivers.

 

[Mussels]

i just had restart issues on my housemates PC after installing a 2600xt, turns out the mobo needed a new bios to support the card. System would only boot without drivers installed, or in safe mode until we updated the bios. Unrelated, but it may be worth looking into - this was on an asrock 4core-vista.

I was saying its not possible for PSU, just saying that speeding up a fan for a 1W increase isnt going to do anything... more likely, if somethings failing its just getting worse on its own and the fan change is unrelated.

 

[ShogoXT]

Ok this is weird. He said his PSU is same as mine. PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750W, same as mine. He has a R3870 and I have a HD2900XT and it feeds my beast just fine...

 

[Mussels]

Ok this is weird. He said his PSU is same as mine. PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750W, same as mine. He has a R3870 and I have a HD2900XT and it feeds my beast just fine...

PCP&C 750 is a good PSU. you cant argue that, unless its failing somehow.

Thats more or less knocked PSU out of the equation - you should swap video cards and see if the problem persists on either machine.

 

[ShogoXT]

I dont have a problem with mine. Just saying I have same PSU on my more power hungry card.

 

[Mussels]

I dont have a problem with mine. Just saying I have same PSU on my more power hungry card.

no i mean swap video cards to see if its the video card at fault. if your video card crashes in his rig, its something else.

 

[ShogoXT]

We cant he lives in another state. Im helping him over ventrilo.

 

[ShogoXT]

"Windows has been shut down to prevent serious error"
"Driver_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL"

wind502u.sys or something also mentioned.

Thanks again for the help.

 

[Mussels]

"Driver_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL"

Thats a typical error from unstable ram. The driver .dll file always changes, because it crashes/errors when loading or using that file.

I'd check ram.

 

[ShogoXT]

what software do you recommend to test them, before actually pulling one out and testing the other. Also to his knowledge it usually happens when hes running 2 World of Warcrafts at the same time (lawl he likes to pvp on 2 acounts at the same time).