What's up with my PC?

[furnace]

I'm having problems with my PC, I need to explain everything really so please donate me a few minutes and your opinion!

To start, here's the specs:

(I know the following is a marathon read, but I'm pretty stumped and the simplest of suggestions could help)

ThermalTake Silent PurePower 560w PSU
160GB Western Digital Hard Drive
Sapphire X1950 XT 256mb
Gigabyte DS4
E6300 Core 2 Duo @ stock speeds
1024mb Kingston HyperX CL5 RAM

When building the PC, I put the Hard Drive in the computer etc, and put my windows CD in and booted up. When it got to the stage of Windows setup which did the formatting bit, I tried "Full Format" and got sometime along the lines of "Format failed, the hard disk may be damaged". Then I tried "Quick Format" and got the same message. So I tried it on another SATA socket and the same happened. So I tried with an XP SP2 disk, same happened. SO I tried on a XP SP2 Corporate Professional disk, and the same thing happened.

Well getting a bit frustrated I put the drive in my brothers computer which already has Windows installed, booted up his machine, and formatted it using "Quick Format" (RClick my computer, manage, disk management, right click the unformatted disk, clicked Quick Format) and it did the format with no problems. But it was suspiciously quick, it literally just worked - a split second to quick format the 160GB drive!

So stuck it back into my computer, and installed windows onto the now formatted hard drive. No formatting errors this time as I had already formatted it in my bro's computer.

I installed drivers from the ATI website (6.14's), and then Call of Duty 2, which ran fine on full graphics.

Then I installed Company of Heroes, which also ran fine.

A couple days later I went to run Company of Heroes, and I got an Infinite Loop error... since then it hasn't run.

I tried updating to ATI CCC 7.1, but no difference. I tried all the things suggested in ATI's website, too, and have googles endlessly for a fix for th Infinite Loop error.

I tried DirectX updates, too. And windows updates.

I installed Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike Source. CS:S didn't work, it said "hl2.exe - application error, memory couldn't be read"... But half life 2 works fine on full graphics. Whatever, it's a problem with the game (I thought), but all of SteamPowered.com's suggestions didn't help - nor forum posts that google gave me.

So ok, stuff this, back to Call of Duty 2 - which worked fine for a couple of days, but now since yesterday refuses to load the game. Menu is fine, but it just exits to desktop after clicking join game.

I installed Doom 3 today, it runs fine on high settings even today. So does Half Life 2 (well, haven't tried it today actually, but was fine yesterday) but not CS:S.

I ran memtest86, which passed my memory 5 times now, and the memory's running at 2.0v, 800Mhz, 5-5-5-15 timings.

I've just run Western Digital's diagnostic tools, which passed my hard drive on Quick Test and Extended Test (which scans for bad sectors).

I've run orthos which shows everything as perfectly stable. Intel TAT shows reasonable temps..
EDIT: and S&M passes everything, although first time is crashed on Cache Level 2, but worked after a restart. Also SuperPi doesn't give any errors.

I dunno what to do. I'm going to TRY a reformat... but to be honest, if I manage to reformat without my brothers computer now he's at uni, it probably still won't make much difference. I'll keep you updated on that.

Can anyone help me? What's up? Any suggestions on what you would do under the circumstances?

Running processes are the normal bare minimum with AVG anti-virus and Realtek HD Audio Manager.

 

[drunkenmonkey]

id say its your memory timings!

i had this thing ages ago!

mine had a bug where if you set the memory timings to auto in the bios it set them 2 tight and i had loads of "intermittent problems"

one minute things loaded and installed next it would throw up error messages but never in the same place

but yours could be something completly different!

just my toupee's worth!

 

[J.B]

I agree with above, sounds like a memory problem.

The hard drive formatting quickly is interesting though. If i had to put money on it id say ram

 

[furnace]

Well it did have it set to 5-6-6-18 for some strange reason, but I've set it manually to 5-5-5-15 which is what it's rated at but am still having problems.

I figured that it wasn't the RAM though, as memtest86 passed it..?

Regarding installing Windows:

How do I load up SATA/SATA2 drivers during installation?
I heard that I might need to do that... I didn't load anything off a floppy when trying to install windows. (edit: got some drivers from the gigabyte site now)

Also, how do I load up something during installation that gives it support for drives over 137GB?
Again, when installing windows/formatting I didn't load anything off a floppy.

edit:
Stuff it... I'm going in for a reformat! See you later

 

[drunkenmonkey]

if you had win xp service pack 2 you wouldnt have to bother with that irritating press f6 to load drivers nonsense! that never seemed to work for me!

your motherboard might not be fully compatable with your memory! try slackening off the timings further if that solves it you know its that if it doesnt you can eliminate the memory!

good luck!

 

[furnace]

Well I reformatted and used the drivers on the floppy, it said Press F6 so I did, about 2 mins later came up with the "Do you want to use a SCSI/RAID driver" screen... Then I chose a driver out of 4 options, cant remember which one now, but it must have been the right one. There were two RAID and two ADAPTI or something like that. Well yeah, I chose the ADAPTI and it said "Are you sure you don't want to use the standard windows driver?" ... yeah f(art) off, that worked well last time But yeah, using gigabytes drivers it did a full format no problems And Company of Heroes seems to be working now, too! Hoorah!

I'm going to install things one by one and keep a little diary of what I've installed, so if it messes up by the time I have my computer the way I want it, I should know which app broke it.

But hopefully it was just the whole stangely fast quick format of the hard drive that messed things up last time... I'll keep you updated

 

[furnace]

GNARGH!!!

I spoke too soon!

I just restarted and thought "right, before I continue I'll make sure it still works..."

Started up Company of Heroes, and ARGH FFS! It doesn't work! The game shows the loading screen, then a lovely black screen. Forever.



Something needs sending back. I have installed:

Windows
Gigabyte Mobo Drivers
Firefox
AVG Free
Windows .net Framework 2.0
ATI Drivers
Company of Heroes

... what can go wrong there?

 

[hashcake]

On a modern motherboard such as a DS4, you don't need to install any sata drivers to install Win XP if it's a single hard drive in a non RAID set up.
This hasn't been the issue for a couple of years as the bus mastering part of the IDE circuit is shared with the sata.

The 137GB clip you are refering to sounds like you are using a copy of Win XP prior to SP1.
Before SP1, XP would not recognise 160GB or above.

Have a look in event viewer/system and see if there are any errors showing.
Let us know what they are if they appear.

It could be a power supply issue but it's a rare occurence on a new power supply.
A 20/24 pin ATX power supply tester would soon let you know and Antec do one for about a tenner.

Although you sucessfully formatted the HHD on your brothers PC, something seems suspicious about the HHD due to the problem you had when you first tried formatting it.
I've worked on plenty of HDDs over the yearst where the manufacuterers diag tool has given it the clean bill of health yet I've proven the drive to be faulty.

Any chance you can beg ,steal or borrow another stick of ram?
Again, as already stated it could be a timing issue whcih memtest wont detect.

I'd be inclined to swap out the HDD then RAM if you possibly can but I understand if you don't have any spare kit.

As a matter of interest, as it's also a gaming box, you would have been better off buying 2 x 512mb ram rather than a 1gb stick.
With one stick it'll be running in single mode 64 bit, with 2 sticks it'd run in dual mode 128bit.
Memory addressing is faster in dual mode.

of course, it could be a faulty motherboard.
Is there a newer BIOS for it?

 

[furnace]

Hey hashcake,

Well the 137gig clip isn't a problem, I just thought it might be. Like you say, I have SP2 so yeah. But the XP Install did need the drivers, though...

The only error in event viewer is this one:

The driver ati2dvag for the display device \Device\Video0 got stuck in an infinite loop. This usually indicates a problem with the device itself or with the device driver programming the hardware incorrectly. Please check with your hardware device vendor for any driver updates.

Which is the same one from a while ago.

The timings on the RAM are exactly how the manufacturer specifies (@2.0v, 5-5-5-15), but I will try loosening them up to 6-6-6-17, then if no difference, 6-7-7-18 and maybe even 7-7-7-19. My rams manu number is KHX6400D2/1G [specs @ 4th result on google, scroll down till you find that number under the 6400 section].

I might be able to get a stick of RAM off the guy I bought some of my components from (he's guy in the trade, not dodgy dealings lol).

The reason I have a 1GB stick is that I'm planning on buying another gig of memory and then running 2gb in dual mode, so was planning to sacrifice the short-term peformance loss for spare slots in the long run

Do you think it could be bad graphics card memory at all?

I have tried F5, F7 and F8 (latest) BIOS.

 

[furnace]

Ooo well it didn't like that, I put the RAM timings to 6-6-6-17 and it wasn't happy. On boot it just went "BEEEEEP" and tuned off, had to reset the bios...

Not sure what to do now..

 

[hashcake]

Hey hashcake,

Well the 137gig clip isn't a problem, I just thought it might be. Like you say, I have SP2 so yeah. But the XP Install did need the drivers, though...

The only error in event viewer is this one:


Which is the same one from a while ago.

The timings on the RAM are exactly how the manufacturer specifies (@2.0v, 5-5-5-15), but I will try loosening them up to 6-6-6-17, then if no difference, 6-7-7-18 and maybe even 7-7-7-19. My rams manu number is KHX6400D2/1G [specs @ 4th result on google, scroll down till you find that number under the 6400 section].

I might be able to get a stick of RAM off the guy I bought some of my components from (he's guy in the trade, not dodgy dealings lol).

The reason I have a 1GB stick is that I'm planning on buying another gig of memory and then running 2gb in dual mode, so was planning to sacrifice the short-term peformance loss for spare slots in the long run

Do you think it could be bad graphics card memory at all?

I have tried F5, F7 and F8 (latest) BIOS.

1) The reason you had to use the SATA drivers is because the way you have the HDD set up in the BIOS.
Trust me, I've been dealing with All brands / models of motherboards for years as part of my job as well as for my own interests.

2) It doesn't explain the initial install problem but the error in event viewer points to an issue with your ATI drivers.
My pov on ATI is great graphics cards but s**** driver implimentation, hence I always go with Nvidia.

If you can get the box going, try and get a copy of 3dmark and give it a good thrashing.
This will help indicate if the ram on the graphics card is borked.

 

[furnace]

1) The reason you had to use the SATA drivers is because the way you have the HDD set up in the BIOS.
Trust me, I've been dealing with All brands / models of motherboards for years as part of my job as well as for my own interests.

Ah right, see this is the first computer I've set up that hasn't been IDE... What should I have done in bios?

2) It doesn't explain the initial install problem but the error in event viewer points to an issue with your ATI drivers.
My pov on ATI is great graphics cards but s**** driver implimentation, hence I always go with Nvidia.

Yeah, but it seems that it's only me with the problem! I haven't heard of other people having this problem Others have the same card and drivers, but run okay...

I have done a lot of reading about the error, and a majority of them were nVidia graphics card about 3 years ago, not helpful to me! Most people with the problem seemed to have solved it by moving or replacing ram, though... which is one of the reasons I thought RAM could be the problem. I gotta agree about ATI having naff drivers, I've always thought that too. But I got this card for £140 brand new from the guy I mentioned earlier, so I figured for £140 I won't get better than an X1950 XT!

What's really wierd is that Company of Heroes ran fine straight away, but after a restart it got those symptoms and the infinite loop error occured.

If you can get the box going, try and get a copy of 3dmark and give it a good thrashing.
This will help indicate if the ram on the graphics card is borked.

Before I reformatted, 3DMark06 ran fine despite the fact I was having problems elsewhere... seems pretty hit and miss as to whether gaming applications work or not. Other apps, like Dreamweaver, work fine even after hours of use. I'll go and install 3dMark06 in a bit, and will tell you what happens

Hopefully I might be able to borrow some RAM today, too.

Is there anything else that you would do in this situation?

 

[tommy_knockers]

panic

only joking.

It could be the ram. have you done a chkdsk run on the pc. It could be a ****** up sector

 

[furnace]

I did a chkdsk before I reformatted and it came up with some wierd errors, but that was with that strange quick format... but after a full format it seems fine, chkdsk gives no errors!

 

[tommy_knockers]

. But it was suspiciously quick, it literally just worked - a split second to quick format the 160GB drive!

.

That sounds like the HDD is totally bollocked up.

It seems as though it is skippin chunks of the disc which is why chkdsk is not picking anything up.

Could be wrong but it all seems to be pointing at your HDD.

Best bet is 2 stick a new one in and return the other one. (im assuming the hdd is new, otherwise it just isnt worth it).

 

[furnace]

Well this time when I formatted it properly using gigabyte drivers it worked fine,and took nearly an hour to do a proper format... so I think the HDD is ok?

I just don't want to spend money on P&P just to get it sent back saying "It's fine"...

 

[furnace]

Okay well, half an excuse to bump but here's an update.

I reformatted again and installed with my brothers XP (SP2 'slipstreamed') cd, and the problem's the same.

I've contacted Kingston who also think the problem is wierd, and will replace my memory even if it's not faulty, incase it's just compatibility - although they cant see any problem with my combination of hardware..

Other suspects are the motherboard and graphics card, I think I've ruled out the Hard Drive now.

I need to try Omega drivers next. ATI support are rubbish (7 days, one text-book response within first day, but no response to my reply since) so I'm going to submit a support ticket to Sapphire instead. And I'll probably get on Gigabytes back once I've sorted things with Sapphire and Kingston

Just to note, Kingston technical support is the best support I have ever recieved!

 

[Solari]

Have you tried the memory in a different slot?

Don't suppose you can borrow a different graphics card at all can you to rule that out? Might be able to find someone on here close by maybe (I'm miles away otherwise I'd let you borrow mine!)

It's always disheartening when this sort of stuff happens so best of luck sorting it!