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Serious Problems

ive been getting roughly the same problem as yours since december when i built the pc, but not as many BSOD,s as you though, two to be exact, but the graphics driver stopped working message while playing game (atikmdag.sys problem) or TDR as they call it....anyways ive done a lot of research and veiwed over a thousand posts about this very common problem without finding any real solution, a lot of peeps who have the problem have tried changing gfx cards,memory,psu,s and even operating systems to try and get rid of the problem, but it comes back in different forms i.e more bsods or more crashes,less freezing and so on, but its still frustratingly there:(

The thing that stopped my gfx driver has stopped working message, was the hotfix for the 8.3,s but instead i get system lock-ups or freezing (requiring reboot) tbh i dont know which is worse:(

I generally believe it is a driver issue but im not 100% and the reason im not totally sure is it happens with nvidia aswell as ati and also both xp and vista, so who knows.......google atikmdag.sys and see the amount of poeple that have a similar problem to you and also the amount of time it has been a problem (over a year now) ..... sorry i havent helped much, but i thought i would let you know your not alone with this atikmdag.sys problem, as for me i will keep updating drivers in hope it will sort it (even though i havent tried 8.4,s yet) ill download them tonight, you never know it may fix it!! but i wont hold my breath :(
 
pwillat said:
ive been getting roughly the same problem as yours since december when i built the pc, but not as many BSOD,s as you though, two to be exact, but the graphics driver stopped working message while playing game (atikmdag.sys problem) or TDR as they call it....anyways ive done a lot of research and veiwed over a thousand posts about this very common problem without finding any real solution, a lot of peeps who have the problem have tried changing gfx cards,memory,psu,s and even operating systems to try and get rid of the problem, but it comes back in different forms i.e more bsods or more crashes,less freezing and so on, but its still frustratingly there:(

The thing that stopped my gfx driver has stopped working message, was the hotfix for the 8.3,s but instead i get system lock-ups or freezing (requiring reboot) tbh i dont know which is worse:(

I generally believe it is a driver issue but im not 100% and the reason im not totally sure is it happens with nvidia aswell as ati and also both xp and vista, so who knows.......google atikmdag.sys and see the amount of poeple that have a similar problem to you and also the amount of time it has been a problem (over a year now) ..... sorry i havent helped much, but i thought i would let you know your not alone with this atikmdag.sys problem, as for me i will keep updating drivers in hope it will sort it (even though i havent tried 8.4,s yet) ill download them tonight, you never know it may fix it!! but i wont hold my breath :(
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Hi, thanks a lot for your reply, I'll try it out tonight, cat 8.3 with the hotfix :). The worst thing about it is that it just randomly happened one day. I hope this will sort it out anyway.

Also, just a quick one, plurals don't use commas or apostrophes, so instead of 8.3,s it'll be "8.3s" :) just a friendly comment, I hope you don't take offence to it :) :p.
 
OK, give those drivers a go mate, if that fails, get an RMA out for the card, if not, I'd be willing to bet it's the RAM, do try and run memtest, orthos usually picks up fault ram, but memtest is the real way of telling for sure. It solved MONTHS of rma's etc. with my rig.
 
jambus said:
OK, give those drivers a go mate, if that fails, get an RMA out for the card, if not, I'd be willing to bet it's the RAM, do try and run memtest, orthos usually picks up fault ram, but memtest is the real way of telling for sure. It solved MONTHS of rma's etc. with my rig.
Click to expand...

Exactly where I would place my money.
 
VinceB1 said:
Has already been suggested further up! It's common place these days that boards undervolt the ram.
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My ram's rated at 1.8-2v. i've got it at 2v at the moment, i've tried 1.8-2.1 and it's still the same. My PC now only crashes when I attempt to run a 3D application, CAD or games. I can load up firefox and have it beating the RAM hard, with loads of tabs and so on, sometimes gets into 1GB plus RAM usage, and it's fine with that, as well as orthos. Though I will give memtest a try when I get home from work.
 
Memtest is well worth a go, but have you tried ATiTool - it has a very good test for GFX card stability built in - might be able to nail it to the card with the artifact check?
 
Something's just caught my attention about my problems. I just came to my PC 10 minutes ago, the screen was black, and my X2's fan was on 100%. There was also a lit LED by where the 8pin connector is. Which I know means insufficient power. What are the chances of the 8pin cable being damaged, and also, my surge protector isn't connected directly to the wall. My surger protector is connected to an extention cable with 2 sockets at the end, there's another surge protector on the other socket too. What are the chances that this is causing a lack of power?
 
Ok, I've made some progress, haven't done anything different though. I'm actually able to run games now. The last thing I did was play around with the RAM placement again. I've still only got 2 sticks in, but I took them out and put in the other 2 sticks. Now I can run games, just played HL2:Episode 2 for 20 minutes, no problems. I'll verify by trying the stick I beleive to be devective by putting it back in and seeing if will crash again. Overall, I'm very happy about being able to play games again, my PC was starting to feel like a very expensive paper weight. :D
 
Despite me thinking it was sorted, the problem has come back in a different way. I was playing HL2: Ep 2 again, and it crashed twice after playing for a while, the screen went all funny, like scrambled up, I'll attach a few photos of my screen when it crashed. Another thing that's odd is that games will wortk, or atleast run for a bit, when catalyst AI is turned off. Is it likely that the second GPU, or the second GPU's RAM is messed up or something?

Picture 1

Picture 2
 
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