The Unsolvable Lock Up

[supermortalhuman]

Refer the first few posts here http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=416994

to see what I'm on about in the beginning here.

 

Not to thread jack (it appears solved, and an issue I face is *sorta* related due to comments by slamman)

 

Is that really true? About changing what you're using?

 

When GTA IV came out, I had gotten a new card for it. I still had a single core processor, but I thought it would be funny to run it on that while I also awaited my sound card and new cpu.

 

I put in the card - an ati 3800 series sapphire was the make. I ran some of my games and maxed them out as I was graduating from an fx5200, and my processor was kinda good as a celeron d (only good ones ever imo) 3.33ghz (the bottom of the good ones imo) so it was still cool to try it out.

 

Wouldn't you know, every single one of my games ran like a dream. I didn't play them much, I was busy, I knew I was allotting a large amount of time to GTA IV in the coming few days toward release, and I knew I just didn't have time to waste since I was going to vegetate like that in Liberty City. I was more excited about going dual core (I really love it - not heaps faster than my old processor clocking at 1.86ghz per, but the dual action really shows and it has a huge cache) and having a good enough machine to play GTA IV. Dreaming was enough for the time being.

 

GTA IV came out, I ran it as I mentioned above, and though it was beautiful, it really was a slideshow. I was able to get up to maybe 12 or 13 FPS, unstable. My new CPU was on the way, I was pleased to see this one actually started up. I wasn't in for long at all, and was about to turn it off when my computer froze and started clicking. The speakers were doing it. It was like the last .5 seconds of sound that just kept in a loop - I had no control over the machine at all, and I have come to this day to believe it was the "squeel of death", famous from ATi cards and Creative SoundBlasters. Anyway, prior to months upon months (still ongoing) research, I simply decided that my processor was junky for the game and it halted by getting stuck - the minimum reqs were the dual core, after all. I had already had the sound card in at the time.

 

I got and popped in my new CPU and was amazed at how well GTA IV was running. I had the minimum specs, and it was ran like a breeze. But again, the lock up. Now I'm freaking out "damn, it's this video card...". Nothing I did helped it, and I destroyed that thing in the end with a bios update, threw it away; "F**k ATi, I will never buy another of their cards again." - and I doubt I ever will. This was after months of searching for an answer, empty handed, and finding that the issue occurs when I watch YouTube in HD, or watch "too many" YouTube videos without - yes - a full reboot. Leading up to scrapping the card I had wondered about the ram - MemTest86 OK! Various in-os tests OK!

 

Still every time I tried to benchmark, it would freeze my box. Every time I played games too many minutes without self rebooting. Every time I watched youtube. During certain functions in paint (move a pasted screenshot to crop before it sets to the canvas, freeze).

 

It still goes on to this day. The sound card sits on my desk, the ATi card is in the trash, the CPU came after the freeze, and I'm not going back to a single core, and the power block has been replaced with a decent Rose will, make escapes me, but it's not even powering a card anymore directly. I went back further a step in cards as I had given my fx5200 to my stinge ass cousin whose computer is dead and won't give it back to a no pixel shader having mx420.

 

Stripped back down to worse than what I started with, the issue still occurs. My ram came with a lifetime warranty, is that bad? Every now and then I hear my computer make a scraping type sound - not a physical scrape, more like a scraping screech from inside of a component, not a moving part, that makes my head tell me "My ram is messed up". But memtests are perfect! Did I switch the sticks out? No. I did flip them and re-seat them though. I have some around, I guess I can try, but then I lose a whole lot of ram too. lol. And I've read countless posts about how even this didn't help people who came upon this problem.

 

Nothing I read taught me anything new, either. It makes me confident in my knowledge that everything I tried, everything I found advised in forums through endless hours (at times) of wading through the blue vines and murky black waters of google back indexes, were things I had already went through on my own.

 

A while back, I noticed at the end of a pronno tube video I was watching, the sound played. I was like Huh? A sploit? The whole time, it was a sploit? How? I knew I had watched movies previously, could this be some kind of crazy ass world prank to have millions of posts about the problem and never find the answer because no one ever put 2 and 2 together that the sound was at the end of pron clips, or be so nerd they can't mention it in their posts like a man? "Free? My ass. I guess saving bandwidth comes with a cost."

 

So I reformatted. I had already done so quite a few times, but it was also before I discovered free flash porn while my girl and I were hard over rocks. Still are. Major improvement, though that's really not related to this. Since then, I have gone so far as to block those sites in my hosts file and the problem still persists after a few more reformats. Recently, YouTube videos I have seen have been doing this clicking sound, far be it for me to remember a video and show an example - you KNOW how it gets when you're adventuring in the Related Videos/More From User bars on that site.

 

Some who had this problem blamed firefox, others fixed it with new hardware or ram settings. I turned my ram speed down and it significantly has reduced how often this occurs but I can only watch HD web content in WMV or MOV formats and FLV is almost certain to freeze me up in any comfortably viewable bitrate. WMV is prone to do it if I skip around the video - and as I know Windows Media Player and Paint both work on the same type of funky overlay that I don't quite understand in the windows API, it makes sense to me, since paint only freezes when I am moving an image. Sometimes when pasting. The larger the image, the more detailed it is - basically, the less sh*tty something is on my screen, the more likely my computer is to freeze.

 

It's remarkably frustrating when I am working and fail to do an interval save in recent edits to whatever the project is, and even more so when I can't catch all the way up on gametrailers and my youtube subscriptions. ScrewAttack.com is a lost cause, I can't get 2 minutes into a feature on their player, but I can watch Hard News syndicated at YouTube on their player (SD of course).

 

Sessler's SoapBox got me once. Only once. And I've seen all of his sh*t at this point. And on Gametrailers, back to them, the Bonus Round (must watch for ALL serious gamer minds weekly) will not play in the self contained player without stuttering (this is most certainly due to the MX420) but plays crisp and steady when I watch it full screen, which is probably the only true moments of joy I get in media at the current time until I can start a new build. Because it's the only time I get to watch HD goodness on my 22" monitor - yet another replacement made to single out the problem - full screen and clear, and it has not frozen me once.

 

Memtests check out fine, all the sh*t has been replaced or removed, there are no bulging components, everything seems to check out. There are no dumps possible if I enable them, it's a total lock up - the computer can't make one because the only escape is a 5 second power button (never did that, actually, but it has to work) and a tap of the reset switch. The sound I am hearing - I assume it's the ram, it's definitely not the hard drive, or the rom drives.

 

Wrote a book - if you know what is wrong with my PC, whoever reads this, you are a serious geek, and I bow down to you as my geek king because I've tried "everything" I know of, and appreciate any help you could offer on the issue.

Edited July 4, 2009 by supermortalhuman

[Slamman]

Speaking of Bonus Round/GameTrailers, I saved the round panel on GTA4 prior to it's release. That Michael Pachter, eh? I think he's a zealot of some sort and not one to be advising on the gaming subject. hahaha

 

As for any PSU dying, I've had a few blow their fuse, and with the Dells I bought as the GX series, I've had no life from most of these mobos, and I watch for PSU fans spinning to determine the extent of what is working. Swapping CPUs among them too, as well as memory, There's some risk the board problem could harm the CPU or Ram as far as I'm aware. I commented to the seller (local BoxShop) that some of their liquidated stock DID work, often things like a bad Ram slot still left the board operational (these were $5 cases with the mobo, and the two GX280s I got are from that stock as well, both working with HT3.2Ghz P4s. I can't run a dual core except in the one 939 AMD board I have. As I mentioned, the PSU is 480Watt max, and it does work with what I got there now. I don't have a powerful quad core rig and I am waiting to see the new tech out in the next year. I would not invest in anything out now other then a graphics card, there are very good deals on those compared to when I was shopping. Just wish memory prices dropped like they should

Edited July 4, 2009 by Slamman

[Star-Lord]

Does it do the same in safemode? Is there anyway you can record this sound I would like to hear it, I'm curious.

Are you running Windows XP w/sp3?

Run a live CD like Ubuntu for a couple hours to experiment with the hardware if it doesn't crash then it would be leaning towards the OS If you are running Windows XP w/sp3 then downgrade it to sp2 and let me know what happens.

Edited July 5, 2009 by pcguytech_2005