Windows XP - crash!

30-08-2007, 22:36

Hi,

Right - bit a of a long shot for you PC dudes!

My other PC has a weird issue - intermittently it'll just crash with a white screen - with some occasional black lines across it.

No warning - nothing - just crash.

It's a fresh install of XP Pro + all available updates.

Possibly hardware related - but where do I start in order to troubleshoot?

It can hang when it's been on for 10 mins or hours - temperature perhaps?

30-08-2007, 22:47

gfx card would be my first port of call. Clean everything reseat hsf with some new past. Try some thermal monitoring tool to see if its hot before the crash but to me it sound gfx related. Anything in event viewer?

31-08-2007, 08:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by zinglebarb

gfx card would be my first port of call. Clean everything reseat hsf with some new past. Try some thermal monitoring tool to see if its hot before the crash but to me it sound gfx related. Anything in event viewer?

Will check event logs...

The graphics card is onboard - the board is a MSI RS480M2 (ATI Radeon).

Graham M · 31-08-2007, 08:46

Oh dear, as Zingle says, the first port of call would be graphics card, if, as you say its an onboard job then does the motherboard have an AGP/PCI-E slot, if so do you have another graphics card you could try in it?

31-08-2007, 09:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zeph

Oh dear, as Zingle says, the first port of call would be graphics card, if, as you say its an onboard job then does the motherboard have an AGP/PCI-E slot, if so do you have another graphics card you could try in it?

Yep - it has a PCI-Express x16 slot...Suppose I could try my graphics card in there - the Asus EN7200GS I got last week.

I've also just changed the CPU fan settings for low / med / high so it might cool the CPU if it goes over one of the thresholds. CPU temp is around 38 degrees.

I've also swapped the memory around.

31-08-2007, 09:08

and does it still crash? the problem with doing it all at once means you still will not know what caused it. Do not try the gfx untill you have given it test time

31-08-2007, 09:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by zinglebarb

and does it still crash? the problem with doing it all at once means you still will not know what caused it. Do not try the gfx untill you have given it test time

As I said - it's intermittent so you know what that means - a wait of <insert length here>.

Will fire up a few apps and put some load onto it...

31-08-2007, 09:42

yeah but its not like its someone elses machine so the wait does not matter. The thing with fault finding is you have to be methodical change all the possible parts together and you still do not know what is causing the crash

31-08-2007, 16:10

Well - it's done it once since swapping RAM around - this is an example of what happens:

...and this one was was taken before swapping RAM etc this morning...

Still graphics card we think??

31-08-2007, 16:13

yes. although never seen that before

anything in event viewer?

31-08-2007, 18:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by zinglebarb

yes. although never seen that before

anything in event viewer?

Not a sausage!

---------- Post added at 16:24 ---------- Previous post was at 16:03 ----------

Hmmmm.....just fired up safe mode - runs sweet as a nut so I think it's possibly driver related...now - to find the offending driver - first up I suppose is the video driver!

---------- Post added at 17:19 ---------- Previous post was at 16:24 ----------

Update - changed the ATI Radeon driver for the MSI Radeon driver....and disabled all hardware graphics acceleration...

bonzoe · 31-08-2007, 20:52

Is the graphics sharing your RAM? Seen faulty graphics memory cause the vertiacl lines

31-08-2007, 21:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by bonzoe

Is the graphics sharing your RAM? Seen faulty graphics memory cause the vertiacl lines

Think there's 256MB dedicated - will check though!

06-09-2007, 22:08

Purchased another graphics adapter - installed and working for the moment...

Now it's just a waiting game to see if it really was the on-board graphics...

....or something more serious...

08-09-2007, 08:44

*Bump*

Just to update - it's done the white screen thing once since the new graphics adapter was installed.

Found a hardware monitor app and found this:

Does this indicate the +12 line is low??

On my PC, it's around 11.3v

I have a spare PSU so I can try that...