Frustrating Crashes...

[HogZlla]

Eeeek!

[MrMxyzptlk]

...But did you clean the SLOT in which the GA was plugged (blow VERY hard! ), and it's little "fingers?" (Rub them LIGHTLY, from top of contact gold toward outside of board/edge.)

Cuz you've still got GA prob's, that look like either bad GA memory (dying GA....), or bad connectivity....  (Hence cleaning the slot & fingers....)

[ToMaHaWk]

...But did you clean the SLOT in which the GA was plugged (blow VERY hard! ), and it's little "fingers?" (Rub them LIGHTLY, from top of contact gold toward outside of board/edge.)

Cuz you've still got GA prob's, that look like either bad GA memory (dying GA....), or bad connectivity....  (Hence cleaning the slot & fingers....)

Ahh, in my bit of frustration I never thought to clean the connectors and the AGP slot. Will get on that by the end of the night hopefully.

[HogZlla]

Poor hawk...

[ToMaHaWk]

Well, I hope that the canned air did the trick. I got most of the dust out of the GA fan just from taking it out and blowing on it last night. I didn't think to rub the contacts so I did that this afternoon. I used the canned air to blow out the rest of the dust from the case, especially the CPU fan. It's truly amazing the places that dust like to inhabit...

After plugging everything back in and putting it all back together, I booted up my computer and then pulled up Halo and it didn't crash on the first try (definitely a good sign in my book!). Hopefully this bit of good luck will last and that all I needed was a fresh cleaning of the insides of my computer.

I'll keep you guys posted as the days progress, especially Friday and Saturday for when it's quite pivotal for my computer to work effectively. It's the playoffs!

Thanks again all for the help and bits of advice.

[Chef]

Well, I hope that the canned air did the trick. I got most of the dust out of the GA fan just from taking it out and blowing on it last night. I didn't think to rub the contacts so I did that this afternoon. I used the canned air to blow out the rest of the dust from the case, especially the CPU fan. It's truly amazing the places that dust like to inhabit...

After plugging everything back in and putting it all back together, I booted up my computer and then pulled up Halo and it didn't crash on the first try (definitely a good sign in my book!). Hopefully this bit of good luck will last and that all I needed was a fresh cleaning of the insides of my computer.

I'll keep you guys posted as the days progress, especially Friday and Saturday for when it's quite pivotal for my computer to work effectively. It's the playoffs!

Thanks again all for the help and bits of advice.

hey u semmed to be doing ok today when we where racing ..

[ToMaHaWk]

Well, I hope that the canned air did the trick. I got most of the dust out of the GA fan just from taking it out and blowing on it last night. I didn't think to rub the contacts so I did that this afternoon. I used the canned air to blow out the rest of the dust from the case, especially the CPU fan. It's truly amazing the places that dust like to inhabit...

After plugging everything back in and putting it all back together, I booted up my computer and then pulled up Halo and it didn't crash on the first try (definitely a good sign in my book!). Hopefully this bit of good luck will last and that all I needed was a fresh cleaning of the insides of my computer.

I'll keep you guys posted as the days progress, especially Friday and Saturday for when it's quite pivotal for my computer to work effectively. It's the playoffs!

Thanks again all for the help and bits of advice.

hey u semmed to be doing ok today when we where racing ..

Yeah, if I can get into a server and can survive the first few maps or so, I'm fine. However, it's getting past the whole start up, main menu, and multiplayer menu bit that's the toughest. So far it's looking very promising.

Update: Well I've had only two crashes in the past 4-5 times I've loaded Halo so I think that dusting it off definitely helped. More updates will come in the future.

[ToMaHaWk]

Giving this thread a friendly bump with new updates.

It seems like I still get crashes every now and then. It's nowhere near as prevalent as before, however, the problem still obviously persists even after giving it a thorough cleaning.

Is there any way that I can determine if my GA memory is on it's decline? Or will I just have to ride it out until it finally meets its time?

[Rypto]

Might be time for a new wireless adapter.

[ToMaHaWk]

Might be time for a new wireless adapter.

Err, I doubt that is the caused of my crashes. I'm pretty confident it's video related, not network related. Plus the wireless adapter is less than a year old.

Update: Well, when I was trying to play slayer/CTF with Spartan, Halo froze six consecutive times, rendering my computer useless to everything except giving it a hard shut down. Then I decided that I'd shift my focus to a scrim, where it proceeded to pick up the streak where it left off until it finally quit freezing after the 11th time...

[MrMxyzptlk]

Hmmm, sounds like it's happening more frequently the longer your computer's on, no?

A sure indication of heat prob's if that's the case....

As for "testing" GA mem: nope.  PCs - and their innards - are "commodity items" now.  That means "get a new one" if something seems to have gone wrong.  (It ain't worth it to diagnose and/ repair....)

Don't rule out your CPU chip, either, just yet!  (Although the pixelated stuff is a sure-fire GA problem...)


(Do you shut down your computer if you're not using it for long periods?  Does it seem to "be better" for the time right after you fire it up, and "get worse" over time??)

[ToMaHaWk]

Ahh, I figured that'd be the case in regards to checking if the GA memory is failing...

With the pixelated stuff: It only happens in like 1/10 crashes or so. It's not a consistent sort of thing. I only get it when I get the whole "Halo didn't shut down correctly" message where it asks me if I want to "Continue Anyway" or "Continue in Safe Mode." Even then, I only get those messages about 1/2 crashes. So...it's not a persistent problem which is a bit strange to me. I'm thinking that the pixelation may just be due to way that it shut down? I'm not sure though.

As for the duration my computer is left on: I haven't really noticed any correlation between my problems and how long the computer has been left on. I shut my computer down every night (keeps my room cooler and makes it quieter too...). When I start it up after I get home from class ('bout midday), sometimes it'll crash if I load up Halo and sometimes it won't. I don't really play Halo in the afternoon but I guess I should start to see if it has anything to do with my current dilemma...

I'll definitely keep an eye on it, however, to see if there may actually be some relation to the crashes and how long my computer is on...

[Slanzinger]

You say you "upgraded to 1.5GB" of RAM - does that mean you're using 3 sticks? If so, are you sure your motherboard actually supports 3? (I know mine doesn't)

Have you tried running Memtest (http://www.memtest86.com/) to see if there are any RAM problems? I was getting many crashes since getting this computer (2 years ago!), ran that and it found issues, and finally have replaced the RAM so the PC is far more stable now.
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a similar utility for testing VRAM.
Are you able to try that video card in another computer/another video card in this computer?

[ToMaHaWk]

You say you "upgraded to 1.5GB" of RAM - does that mean you're using 3 sticks? If so, are you sure your motherboard actually supports 3? (I know mine doesn't)

Have you tried running Memtest (http://www.memtest86.com/) to see if there are any RAM problems? I was getting many crashes since getting this computer (2 years ago!), ran that and it found issues, and finally have replaced the RAM so the PC is far more stable now.
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a similar utility for testing VRAM.
Are you able to try that video card in another computer/another video card in this computer?

Well, I know my motherboard supports 3 sticks, but I'm actually using one 1 GB stick and a 512 MB stick. I didn't pair them, but that's what you get when the 1 GB stick is given to you as a present...

I'm not quite sure if it's the memory that's causing the problems though. I upgraded it way back in December two years ago? Maybe one, not quite sure. But I hadn't noticed any problems right after the upgrade. I guess it doesn't hurt to test it out and see if that's the case...

As for trying the GA in another computer...the only other computer in the household is too ancient to handle my GA, so that's kinda outta the question. All my friend's computers run PCI-E now too so...yeah.

Update: As per Mxy's suggestion, as soon as I booted up my computer this afternoon, I loaded up Halo. No freezing or anything. I did pulled up Halo again about 10 minutes later, it's fine too. I'm going to go do some things around the house and maybe work on some stuff in Photoshop then I'll try Halo a bit later on at night.

[MrMxyzptlk]

Regardless of the outcome of the "heat-over-time" testing, I suggest that - once you've gotten a few trials that seem to indicate one way or the other if it matters, you pull out the 512MB stick (and move the 1GB stick to Slot 0 if necessary) and run it like that.

Unless you checked your mobo documentation to see that it says so, mixing and matching diff sticks like that might very well be unsupported by your board.  (And if it is, you'd need to have them in a certain configuration....)

'Just another variable to take out of the equation, but don't make the memory change while you're trying the heat-related stuff, or you'll just be wasting your time chasing a multi-variant testing situation!