MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION woes

[HangTime]

Bit of a weird one here. My machine keeps crashing when the action is very intensive in games, usually after a couple of minutes of play. It does the in Outrun 2006, did it a couple of times in a particular section of Prey, and is doing it LOADS in Bet on Soldier which I have just started.

What happens is, the game doesn't suddenly crash, it suddenly goes very slow (say 5fps) and then a few sections later freezes completely with looping/screeching sounds. In then bluescreens with a MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION error, and automatically restarts (despite automatic restarts being disabled).

Now, in order to try and diagnose the problem I have:

-Set cpu, memory and gpu to run at stock speeds
-Pointed a big desk fan at the inside of my case
-Gone back to older Nforce 4 drivers and tried without the SW IDE driver
-Gone back to older forceware drivers

Spec is:

OCZ Powerstream 470W PSU
DFI NF4 Ultra-D
Venice 3000+ w/ arctic freezer 64
2*512 Twinmos PC3200
300gig ATA133 16meg Maxtor
300gig SATA 16meg Maxtor
2*160gig SATA 8meg Maxtor
LG 16x DVD-RW
Audigy 2
Leadtek 6800GT

My system was running fine (overclocked) for many months, so I'm at a bit of a loss. I thought it might have been down to updating my video card drivers to 91.31, as I think that was the only driver I changed recently before the problem started, but I've tried a different version without any joy. My other theory was the hot weather (my case is appallingly untidy/poor airflow as I have so many cables in there), hence the big desk fan blowing in the case.

I don't think it's down to the cpu as prime95 can run a lot longer than games. I'm thinking it might be down to the GPU possibly as I was overvolting+overclocking it slightly, maybe I've damaged it somehow(?). As I say, I only get the problem when playing intensive 3d games.

I suppose if someone else had this problem, I would suggest trying a re-install of windows; I had planned to put Vista on as a test but MS are no longer giving out keys. I've got all the windows updates by the way.

So, anyone had much experience with these type of errors?

 

[acharris]

Hi, have you ran memtest or tried running the rig with one stick of RAM individually in case it is faulty memory, as this would give the irq_not_less_than_equal_to or something along thoses line of BSOD.

Also if it is a Machine Check Exception with a 9c code then it could be your hard drive is failing. Run the powermax diagnostic software on the drives to check the health of all of them, as Maxtor are not the most reliable, as I have gone through 3 in the last 6 months and now have a barracuda Seagate and no problems with it.

Try the above first, and also worth checking the PSU, but most like caused by one of the above problems and not the PSU.

Anthony

 

[HangTime]

As a last resort I've tried an older Nvidia driver, this time running driver cleaner before installing it, and this is one which I know worked fine before....

So far so good! Will have to see how it goes for the rest of the week but it looks like my BIOS re-flashing, chipset driver changes etc were all a waste of time, ho-hum.

To be honest I'm suprised to see such an issue from an official driver release... it doesn't appear to be a known issue either. Maybe that driver cleaner did the trick afterall. All my googling was pointing towards a HD or Controller issue.