CoH causing forced reboot
By
Eva Destruction,
Posted on: 2010-05-05 07:02 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
It sounds more like there is a hardware issue with the graphics card - maybe due to overheating, especially if this is happening on a clean install.
http://www.scene-and-heard.com/cov/covsig.jpg
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Agreed.
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Originally Posted by Scene_EU
It sounds more like there is a hardware issue with the graphics card - maybe due to overheating, especially if this is happening on a clean install.
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Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
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That is what we were afraid of...|
Originally Posted by Scene_EU
It sounds more like there is a hardware issue with the graphics card - maybe due to overheating, especially if this is happening on a clean install.
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Are we screwed?
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
It may just be a case of cleaning out the fans, checking that they are working, adding more chassis fans in. Worst case is you'd have to get a new card - I'm guessing AGP from the model currently being used
http://www.scene-and-heard.com/cov/covsig.jpg
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Everything has been taken apart, cleaned, and put back together. He also tried opening it up and pointing a floor fan at it. Didn't really help.
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Originally Posted by Scene_EU
It may just be a case of cleaning out the fans, checking that they are working, adding more chassis fans in. Worst case is you'd have to get a new card - I'm guessing AGP from the model currently being used
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Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
Download a tool that can monitor your GPU and CPU temperatures.
Download furmark and see if it is GPU temperature related.
Card could be failing or maybe it can be saved by a new fan or reseating the heatsink or new thermal paste.
Download Prime95 to see if it is CPU/mem heat related.
Usually one of the two are the problem.
Oh yeah, forgot a common culprit, could the Power Supply going bad. Blow it out, don't open it because there are lots of little doodads in there that can give you an instant perm if not kill you outright.
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I think he tried something like that, the problem was he has no idea what is supposed to be normal.|
Originally Posted by PumBumbler
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Quote:
| Oh yeah, forgot a common culprit, could the Power Supply going bad. Blow it out, don't open it because there are lots of little doodads in there that can give you an instant perm if not kill you outright. |
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
That is what we were afraid of...
Are we screwed? |
Don't look at it as being screwed. Look at it as being involuntarily sexually satiated.
When was the last time you took a nice big can of compressed air and blew the crap out of the machine?
Also, if this is a commodity desktop machine (usually not a name brand), you may be able to get by with adding another fan to the setup if you can get one to blow directly onto the card.
What are the make/model/specs of your machine? We might be able to come up with something sneaky/clever to help fix this.
***ADDENDUM***
Got to read the rest of the thread and figured you already answered it.
What may have happened is that the thermal interface material (TIM) between the chip and the heatsink has gotten old and isn't functioning properly anymore.
It's possible to pull the heatsink assembly off, clean off the TIM (usually some kind of adhesive pad), and reassemble it with a fresh application of thermal compound (or thermal adhesive). But this all depends on your personal comfort level with doing this and how much the time is worth to you to actually do this..
If you're not comfortable with that, a replacement of the same type of card from Newegg will be about $40-50.
However, keep in mind that a GeForce 7300 (assuming your card is AGP) would be between $5 and $10 more.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
Definately sounds like overheating, back with my old desktop I had the exact same issue whenever I turned the graphics settings up.
After taking stuff apart there was a wall of dust on it, which I cleaned and it still did it so I ended up getting a new fan installed which was fairly cheap and sorted the problem out.
I dont recommend taking your case off though to let air get to it. As someone explained in an earlier thread, think of your case as a wind tunnel, it concentrates the air where it needs to go (to cool stuff down), it you take away the walls (casing) you end up losing a lot of the concentration making it less effective.
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So, how hot is it?|
Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
I think he tried something like that, the problem was he has no idea what is supposed to be normal.
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Also...
Check out these threads:
Then post the results of these two programs:
- CoH Helper - it will show us basic computer settings and your CoH configuration.
- HijackThis - it will show us what's running on your computer concurrently with CoH. Click on "Do a system Scan and save a logfile." It will automatically open up Notepad and put the info there. Make sure Wordwrap is off in Notepad (Format > Wordwrap unchecked) before you cut and paste here.
Speeding Through New DA Repeatables || Spreadsheet o' Enhancements || Zombie Skins: better skins for these forums || Guide to Guides
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Yeah, now we're getting into stuff that neither of us has any idea how to do, we'll probably destroy the card trying, and will cost money to do anyway. Which leads to.....|
Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
What may have happened is that the thermal interface material (TIM) between the chip and the heatsink has gotten old and isn't functioning properly anymore.
It's possible to pull the heatsink assembly off, clean off the TIM (usually some kind of adhesive pad), and reassemble it with a fresh application of thermal compound (or thermal adhesive). But this all depends on your personal comfort level with doing this and how much the time is worth to you to actually do this.. |
Quote:
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If you're not comfortable with that, a replacement of the same type of card from Newegg will be about $40-50. However, keep in mind that a GeForce 7300 (assuming your card is AGP) would be between $5 and $10 more. |
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
Quote:
You talk sense!|
Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
Yeah, now we're getting into stuff that neither of us has any idea how to do, we'll probably destroy the card trying, and will cost money to do anyway. Which leads to.....
^^This. They're about $50 here too. Might as well get a new one, which will fix the problem, than throw money at breaking the old one worse. |
I mistrust this!
One other thing. Strip out your graphics drivers BEFORE adding the new card.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
You guys wanna hear something funny?
It wasn't the video card. It was a bad RAM stick. The supposedly "fried" video card is sitting in my computer right now, saying "you can turn on Ultra Mode now...you can't play with it on but you can look at passing cars reflecting off your butt."
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
That is a bit odd. Bad RAM tends to blow you up pretty fast - like within the first 15 minutes of play. Plus it tends to give you random modules causing the problem on the blue screen instead of just one all the time.
Ah well, if it works, it works.
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It did usually...like on the first load in. At one point it let him play all day though.|
Originally Posted by Zloth
That is a bit odd. Bad RAM tends to blow you up pretty fast - like within the first 15 minutes of play. Plus it tends to give you random modules causing the problem on the blue screen instead of just one all the time.
Ah well, if it works, it works. |
Well he hasn't crashed since that last post. Neither have I. And he learned a valuable lesson: no matter how many diagnostic programs tell you it is fine, pop the ***** chips out to make sure. And then I hit him.
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
Quote:
Nice catch!|
Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
It did usually...like on the first load in. At one point it let him play all day though.
Well he hasn't crashed since that last post. Neither have I. And he learned a valuable lesson: no matter how many diagnostic programs tell you it is fine, pop the ***** chips out to make sure. And then I hit him. |
Just goes to show that even people who usually know what they're talking about occasionally yap from a nether oriface.
Question, did he run a long-term memtest? Or did he just run one of there programs that does a couple writes to check the memory out?
A stress test like memtest will usually let you know (sooner or later) if it's bad.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
My husband has a problem, new to i17. CoH is causing his computer to reboot spontaneously. It happens more frequently when he's teamed or otherwise has a lot going on (opening contact tabs for instance), but can also happen when he's just running around a zone.
He's thinking it may be related to his graphics card somehow. He has a Nvidia 6200, and he's running Windows XP Pro. He's updated XP and his video drivers, he's tried rolling back his drivers, and yesterday he reinstalled Windows. It's still happening. He's set his in-game graphics settings to be lower than they were before i17.
On the rare occasions he gets a bluescreen, the error "nv4_disp" comes up.
Any ideas?
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World