TechnoUnion

All fixed now! Used latest beta drivers, played with the RAM timing and changed the 3D quality settings slightly. No more crashes!
Thanks to all who contributed fix suggestions, much appreciated.

Realised I've been talking out my rear end about the SP3 thing, I put that on months before I got this card so that's not the cause (thankfully!)

I've installed tons of stuff in an attempt to solve this problem, new VIA motherboard drivers, usb driver patch, new sound drivers, new bios, 5 different types of nvidia drivers (ran driver sweeper before installing them all), rivatuner, nTune, speedfan, burnintest, refresh force, nothing has helped.

I've tried every resolution and refresh rate and quality setting on the nvidia control panel, overclocked, underclocked, changed fan speeds, force fastwriting off, agp 4x and 8x, the works.

I was running mixed memory and took out the odd stick so I have matched pair in now and have run memtest on them as a pair and individually (3 passes each and 7 passes as a pair).

I've tried powering the video card from it's own lead on the power supply instead of daisy chaining it with one of the hard drives, no difference.

Done that, several times!

Quick update, after a bit more playtesting I did have issues with the ATI card after all. Lots of weird polygon shapes, temporary freezing and colour issues. I had this before and was one of the reasons I wanted to upgrade to the 7950. I could get rid of it running all the graphics settings on low with the ATI card but I want my CoH to be shiny!

The PSU is winpower, not the best I know but the best I could afford at the time. My card is AGP btw, not PCI-E and only has one power socket. There's a load of space round it, except near the bottom at the back where it's really close to my ram slots. I have a slot cooler next to the card to keep it cooler but even with this out or off I get the same effect.

I downloaded rivaTuner and set the AGP speed to 4x but that had no effect.

Re-tested my RAM with memtest86+, did 16 passes overnight and no errors.

I tried loading the BIOS defaults and running in test mode and it still crashed.

Only thing left that I can think of to do is flash the BIOS but I don't want to screw up my PC so I'm leaving that till last.

I'd be happy if I could get even a BSOD or something that tells me what's wrong but there's nothing in event viewer, no bsod or memory dumps, nothing. I turned off autoreboot so it would show the bsod if one happened but no joy, it just locks up.

Put my old 128mb ATI Radeon 9200SE back in today and have no issues whatsoever. :/
So I'd say it's either:
a) faulty card
or
b) The 512mb card is generating too much heat for the rest of the system to cope with. Can't really tell cos speedfan doesn't show half the temps with the ATI card in. The temps it is showing are about the same as before.

Personally I think it's A. I might stick the Geforce back in and try flashing the bios and running with basic bios settings and test mode for CoH.

[ QUOTE ]
I'm afraid I'm kinda out of ideas here guys. A system which freezes up when you place a high graphical load on it but works the rest of the time is often a symptom of:

- insufficient power getting to the gfx card

- overheating as the gfx card puts our more heat under heavy load

- a faulty gfx card

I can't really go much futher. Maybe a trip to your local geek-shop might help?

Drag

[/ QUOTE ]

Put the northbridge fan on and still no difference (apart from things are slightly cooler).

Tried the latest nvidia drivers today, no difference, still locking up.

Speedfan reports my GPU is running at 50 - 58C, my core about the same +/- 2C, hdd0 is 46C and hdd1 is 41C. I've read these are within normal operating temps for an AMD processor and my model of gfx card but they seem hot to me.

Tried swapping the ram out today, no difference.

As I said, the psu is brand new and 600W.

Just tried disabling all non-microsoft services using msconfig and still crashed after 50 mins from a cold start. Will try shutting everything unneccesary down using task manager and then playing later on.

I thought it was a low power supply as I'd updated my card from a crappy ATI Radeon to a GeForce 7950 GT. Put in a 600W power supply and it's made no difference. It ran fine before with a 450W supply before the lock ups started which like I said I think started around the time I installed SP3.

Sounds similar to my problem I just started a thread about it. Couple of times I've done missions, got to the Boss at the end and crashed :/

I've recently been experiencing a lot of random freezes when playing. The screen locks up and the sound stutters for a few seconds before that also stops completely. Only a hard reboot gets the PC running again.

I've tried 3 different graphics drivers, 1 made a lot of difference and meant I could play for 20 - 90 mins without freezing. Before it was about 20 seconds.

I've updated my sound card drivers, added extra fans to my case in case it was overheating issues (which it might be, my northbridge seems to get a bit hot after a lot of playing, sometimes (55C +) but I'm adding a fan to that tomorrow). I ran nTune stability test today for an hour and temps got to 58 / 59C without problems though.

I've turned anti-virus software off, uninstalled andre-installed it (avast! in case it helps).

I've changed my wi-fi drivers, that didn't help either.

I think it started to freeze soon after XP service pack 3 was installed but it might be a coincidence.

I've reinstalled windows and City Of Heroes (from DVD then patched straight to issue 14).

I've set my graphics card settings to match those on the US boards for nvidia cards and turned my particle count all the way down. Again no noticible effect apart from the game looks v shiny (apart from flames which look poop with low particle count).

System is solid as a rock doing anything except gaming.

My CoH Helper info is below:

---System information gathered by CoH Helper version 0.1.1.7---

DxDiag gathered at May 29, 2009 20:31 (+01:00)
Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3 (2600.xpsp_sp3_gdr.090206-1234)
System Manufacturer: MSI
System Model: MS-6712
BIOS: Version 07.00T
Central Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2500+, MMX, 3DNow, ~1.8GHz
Memory: 1280MB
.Net Memory Report: 783MB out of 1279MB available
Page File: 3655MB (378MB currently in use)
C Drive: (ST360021A) 18394MB out of 57231MB (32%) free
D Drive: (ST3160212A) 18512MB out of 152625MB (12%) free
E Drive: (LITE-ON COMBO SOHC-5235K) zero-size drive
Windows directory location: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DirectX Diag version: 5.03.2600.5512 (32-bit version)

Display Notes: No problems found.
Sound Notes: No problems found.
Input Notes: No problems found.

Monitor: BENQ V772
Monitor's Max Resolution: 1280,1024
Video Device Name: NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GT
Manufacturer / Chip: NVIDIA / GeForce 7950 GT
Video Memory: 512.0 MB
Driver Version: 6.14.0011.6375
Driver Date: 10/04/2007 17:14:00
Driver Language: English

Sound Device Description: Realtek AC97 Audio
Driver File: ALCXWDM.SYS
Driver Version: 5.10.0000.6300
Driver Date: 01/01/0001 00:00:00


WMI Information
Motherboard Manufacturer: MSI
Motherboard Model: (empty) (It's a KT4AV)
Motherboard Product: MS-6712
Motherboard Version: 1.0
BIOS Manufacturer: American Megatrends Inc.
BIOS Name: Version 07.00T
BIOS Version: AMIINT - 10
BIOS Release: 20010402000000.000000+000

It said my City Of Heroes Registry Information could not be found when I ran CoH helper. I've tried running it with the game running but CoH Helper just times out then.

I've had the same issue with Warhammer Online and Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars.

I'm tearing my hair out here, please help.

Judgment Knight - Lvl 50 Scrapper: Katana/Regeneration

TechnoUnion SG is looking for members. We started originally as a technology origin only SG but we are looking to expand and diversify. We aim to expand the base to cater for all origins once the technology areas are complete.
SG Members get basic access to the base and use of teleporters and med facilities.
Once you've contributed 15,000 Prestige you will be promoted up one level and gain access to the enhancements storage area where we store as many SO's and Invention enhancements as we can.
Further promotions lead to further perks!
We ask that all members place their base salvage in the SG base salvage storage where TechnoUnion or Judgment Knight can collect it and turn it into useful base upgrades.
Anyone wishing to join can send a tell to @Judgment Knight or look out for TechnoUnion, Judgement Knight, Mr. Iron or Dr Gravitas.