First of all, my disclaimer: I’ve checked for virii, trojans, spyware, adware, etc., and I’ve defragmented my hard drive. I have updated all of my drivers. My system is running as smoothly and as stable as it ever has. The problem is that it’s still not stable enough. When playing Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike:Source, or SimCity 4, my computer will occasionally freeze up. This is usually after an extended play session (about an hour) and always demonstrates the same symptoms: the graphics freeze up, and the sound card makes a repeated stuttering noise, playing back the last quarter-second of sound. The error is unrecoverable and the machine must be rebooted.
I have a Shuttle AK35GT/R (the KT266 version, not the KT333) with an AMD AthlonXP-M 2400+ running at its stock speed of 1.8GHz (133 x 13.5). I have 1GB (2x512MB) of matched PC2100 RAM. My video card is a recently-purchased XFX GeForce 6600GT (AGP); however, I also experienced the same problem with the old Chaintech GeForce Ti4200. My audio comes from the CMedia chip embedded on the motherboard.
I suspect that my problem stems from one of the following sources (with my rationale against in italics afterward, if I have evidence):
- Overheating - CPU temp remains in the 40C range even under heavy benchmarking
- Video drivers - multiple versions of nVidia’s drivers across two different chipsets have caused this error
2b) Half-Life simply “too much” for graphics card to handle - ? - Sound driver - two sound driver updates have failed to chase away this problem
- Motherboard chipset driver - I don’t know enough about ViA’s 4in1 chipsets to know what I should and shouldn’t be trusting here, but I know I have updated these drivers.
- RAM timings too “aggressive” - I understand that this can cause crashes, but I’m not sure which timings in the BIOS I can dial back to test this. I understand RAM and CAS latency only on the surface and by analogy.
- Insufficient power - I replaced my PSU when it failed with a 350W PSU, which is more than adequate for my system’s needs.
- Gremlins - I do not feed my machine after midnight.
Ideally, an answer would come in the form of “Here are a list of things to try, and the best order to try them in.” I’m looking for some good general hints for solving this form of random crashes, but posts like
and
have discouraged me from trying to solve this on a more computer-centered board. I appreciate in advance any help you can give me on this!