Weird crash..

[Fourka]

Hello! If anyone has any ideas about the crash that my pc experiences every now and then please let me know!

So, when my pc crashes the monitor shows vertical lines that are white and dark blue. It seems that it mostly happens when I am playing a game in flash, or when I leave my pc on for downloading. Generally it has to be working on something, it never crashes without doing anything.

At first I thought that the power supply was the problem as it provided only 150W. But now that I changed to a 400W power supply it does the same.

Also, some times when I want to reboot otr shut down my pc a blue screen comes up showing some strange numbers and saying something about physical memory dumb.

My OS is Win2000, Graphics card:Radeon 9600 128Mbit, 2.2 GHz Intel Celeron processor, 512MB RAM.

Also, I've got a fan for the processor and two additional fans that are on the box for the whole system so it might not be the heat...or could it?

Sorry for long post:(

[ThRoNkA]

What is your system specs? And you send use a picture of your insides of the whole case? do you have an intake fan?

[Fourka]

Processor: 2.2GHz Celeron Intel
RAM: 512Mb
Graphics card: Radeon 9600 128Mb
Two hardisks:20Gb & 60Gb
CD Drive & DVD-CD Recorder Drive
Floppy Drive that doesn't work at the moment and I haven't figured out why it stopped working.
Motherboard Gigabyte with networking card and sound card on it.

As for the fans I'm not quite sure what an "intake" fan is but there is a fan for the processor (the usual fan), and a fan at the behind of the box and also a fan on the "door" of the box at the side.

I'll see if I can take a photo of the whole case.

[ThRoNkA]

intake fan is a fan on the front that allows cool air in. a nice setup will typically have a intake fan and rear case fan to equilize input and output so the processor does not over heat.

[Shyguy]

Intake fan doesn't neccessarily need to be in the front, some people put them in back also, but a Intake fan is a fan that is oriented to "intake" cooler air than what is inside of your case, to absorb the heat inside the case, & exhaust out of the outtake fans.

I don't know if its a heat issue, but check to make sure that if you do have a front intake fan, make sure the air is being sucked in, & if make sure your rear fan is blowing the hot air out. also if you have both your case fans on the rear, & none in front, as a lot of cheaper cases do these days, make sure they both are drwaing air in the same direction, other wise you'll end up with a circular air effect, that takes in cool air, warms it, & then sucks that warm air back in once its exited the cases, makes you cooling setup far more inefficient, than it could be.

Sometimes its hard to tell what direction the air is flowing on lower CFM fans, I don't know what others here would think of my method, but in the past (haven't done it lately though), I'd take a recently burned/blown out matchstick & put it near the exhaust fan to see what direction the smoke would blow (edit: outside of the case of course, not inside)? But I'm sure there's other ways to do this too?

But it really sound like it may be something else other than a heat issue. It shouldn't be crashing when you play Flash based games, that shouldn't generate that much heat really?

My guess would be your RAM, as the BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death), stated something about your "Physical Memory" (Your RAM), being Dumped?

Are you running it in it default settings if not, try to restore its defaults. I'd get a similar BSOD in XP a couple of years ago, cause I was trying to run my CAS latency 2.5 RAM in 2.0 mode, once I ran it in default settings I never had teh error again.

Could try reseating your RAM sticks & see if that helps.


Anyone got any other suggestions?

[wanderer]

One fan not mentioned is the one on the video card. I would suggest a slot fan next to it.

The dumps can be hardware or software related. I would make sure you are using a W2K certed driver for the 9600 video card. Make sure you are up on all the patches.

See if you can't capture the dump code or perhaps its mentioned in Event Viewer. I believe this is key to figuring out what is wrong with your system.

[Cowboybooter]

Agreed, wanderer! If you can get a fix on the error code generated, it's a good place to start!

:)

Bob

[Fourka]

Thanks for the advice!

I checked the Event Viewer and at the "System" section I found the last crash with the vertical lines that happened earlier today and it is not mentioned as an error but as Information and it sais:

The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x0000009c (0x00000000, 0x15f4ed40, 0xcc0000ff, 0x20040189). Microsoft Windows 2000 [v15.2195]. A dump was saved in: C:\WINNT\Minidump\Mini110804-01.dmp.

I don't have a clue what this is..anyone that does? :)

[Cowboybooter]

This error code is suggesting hardware failure, possibly overclocked CPU or failing Ram / PSU.

It claims to be a difficult one to diagnose.

It might be worth swapping out or reseating the RAM in the first instance!

:)

Bob

[Fourka]

Ok, I will swap my RAM with another and I'll leave it like that for a couple of days. I'll be back with the observations.

Thanks all for your advice!! :)