Deeper levels of troubleshooting

Swi1ch · 29 Jan 2010 at 07:30

Basically, what sort of troubleshooting can I attempt after the usual anti-virus, anti-malware, anti-spyware, defrag, reinstall, reformat, updated drivers, roll back drivers etc?

I'm now trying to play Psychonauts, and once I set it to my default res 1920x1200 and turn vsync off, my computer shuts down. This also happens with STALKER. This also happens with a bunch of other games but I can bypass it by disabling intro videos.

My computer shuts off. No warning, just power off. Selecting to force bluescreen achieves nothing. There's no error messages or anything to indicate the problem. It's getting stressful now.

uv · 29 Jan 2010 at 07:32

What's your computer's spec, and most importantly, what spec/brand is your PSU?

Swi1ch · 29 Jan 2010 at 07:37

uv said:
What's your computer's spec, and most importantly, what spec/brand is your PSU?

Q9550, either 2.83 at stock or 3.4 OC. I've tried both stock and OC on all crashing games.

GTX 280 1GB

8GB Ram

Asus P5Q Pro

Zalman (something) 700w

I initially thought it might be my power supply, but I can run pretty much all top-end games no problem, and crashes only seem to occur when changing resolution to native res, or in the case of pychonauts, turning vsync off, which makes my graphic card squeal literally and then shut off, but it also makes a lot of noise in GTA4 and Crysis and don't have any problems with them.

Edit. Should also mention, certain times when I have games crash on me and shut my box off, other people have reported this happening in the same circumstances, but different outcomes. Usually they report CTD, BSOD or other error messages.

uv · 29 Jan 2010 at 07:52

Have you checked your event logs for an error?

Administrative Tools > Event Viewer

Swi1ch · 29 Jan 2010 at 07:59

uv said:
Have you checked your event logs for an error?

Administrative Tools > Event Viewer

I have had a look, and I can find the many logs that say something like "Computer powered off without being shut down correctly", but nothing to actually specifies why, although that may be because i'm not sure exactly where to look.

I've been through all the logs, and everything that happened right around crashes just comes back with the above error; It rebooted without a clean shutdown.

Schizo · 29 Jan 2010 at 08:13

sounds like a driver issue.

have you tried different drivers ?

Swi1ch · 29 Jan 2010 at 08:24

schizo220168 said:
sounds like a driver issue.

have you tried different drivers ?

I've tried pretty much every archived driver on Nvidias website. This helped once with STALKER, but then it suddenly decided not to work anymore. It's really odd, STALKER can't make it's mind up, when I got my machine in January last year it didn't work, then it did, then it didn't, then it worked for about 6 hours, and now it won't again.

meths · 29 Jan 2010 at 10:04

Have you got an old graphics card to try? An ATI card perhaps to see if it is an issue with the Nvidia drivers.

uv · 29 Jan 2010 at 10:08

Can you monitor your GPU temps whilst running a 3d app like RTHDRIBL or furmark - this will indicate whether or not your GTX280 is overheating.

Swi1ch · 29 Jan 2010 at 11:00

uv said:
Can you monitor your GPU temps whilst running a 3d app like RTHDRIBL or furmark - this will indicate whether or not your GTX280 is overheating.

I tried this, but the problem is I get no warning when my box is going to shut off, so I can't monitor the temps via software.

If you mean in general, then I can, but my temps rarely go above 55, and that's with all my fans on low. Plus, my box is crashing out on things like intro movies and menues, and doesn't crash out if I leave vsync on in some cases.