0x0A when Direct3D/engines start with 8600GTS

[fujikazu]

Problem:

Every time I do dxdiag Direct3D test, start any game (Civ 4, F.E.A.R., Oblivion, Dungeon Siege 2), or watch vids on the net I get...
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
STOP: 0x0000000A (0x00000016, 0x0000001c, 0x00000000, etc)
I had been playing these same games for nearly a month, no problems, other than a PAGE_FAULT_ERROR or w/e STOP: 0x00000050 on random logins to Windows. I'd rather have the page fault error back... The games either crash my computer when the intro vid should start, Civ 4 tries to initiate "engine", when I try to load a game if it actually makes it to the menu, or once in a blue moon I'm in the game and I alt-tab out (if the game allows it) then try to bring game back up.

Anyway this is my 1st custom build and only thing i did to hardware was set my mem speed to 1066/7mhz mode in BIOS and that was after I started having this problem. I contacted NVIDIA already they say its hardware failure or DirectX file corruption.
I doubt its DirectX curroption cuz I got it from Microsoft.com instead of CD (used CD files 1st) and have uninstalled/reinstalled everything several times. Anyone know of anything it could b besides hardware failure?

My Specs are:

O/S: WinXP Pro (32bit)
MB: ASUS P5K-VM (BIOS vr. 0401)
Mem: Kingston KHX8500D2K2/2G kit HyperX DDR2 1066 DIMM
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 2.33ghz
Graphics Card: ASUS GeForce 8600 GTS 256mb GDDR3 (driver vr 169.21)
HD: Seagate Barracuda 320g 7200.10
PSU: Apevia 500W (came with my mATX case)

 

[Blind Dragon]

First go to control panel -> admin tools -> event viewer and see if you can get us Event ID's with Source This sometimes gives more details about a direct cause

Faulty hardware -> If hardware has been added to the system recently, remove it to see if the error recurs

Buggy system service -> try Last Known Good Configuration option

Antivirus software -> Disable the program and confirm that this resolves the error. If it does, contact the manufacturer of the program about a possible update.

Corrupted NTFS volume -> Run Chkdsk /f /r to detect and repair disk errors. You must restart the system before the disk scan begins on a system partition

 

[fujikazu]

STOP: 0x0A
Source: System Error
Event ID: 1003

Also I noticed this one usually happens after the above and one time appeared alone in the event viewer.

Source: Service Control Manager
Event ID: 7034

Another BSOD error I get after logging in, albeit infrequntly, is...
STOP: 0x00000050
Source: System Error
Event ID: 1003

I tried Last Known Good Configuration at least 3 times I remember and it didn't help. Only thing to come close was lowering hardware acceleration in Display Settings and then resetting to full. It let me start, load, and play games as normal but after restart I had same problem and it hasn't done any good since.

If I remove hardware I won't have Shader 3.0 so the only game I can try is maybe DS2 and Direct3D test, the others won't even start w/o it. Hard to test whether game works or not if onboard graphics cant run it. I'll try it when I get a chance though.

Will try antivirus and disk scan ASAP.
Thx for tips hope 1 works.

 

[fujikazu]

Disabled antivirus then started Oblivion and got a crash so I restarted and tried again and got in the game and ran around no sweat. But I quit and ran dxdiag Direct3D test and got a crash. A game running only for my comp to crash after opening another 3D app has happened a couple other times since this error started.

 

[peterdiva]

Do you have the ASUS enhanced video drivers installed? They're known to cause that bugcheck.

 

[fujikazu]

Pretty sure I don't have ASUS enhanced drivers cuz I d/l mine from NVIDIA. Unless, 169.21 from NVIDIA's website is the ASUS enhanced ? idk Never heard of any enhanced drivers.

 

[peterdiva]

The ASUS drivers come with the video card. Post some recent minidump files from c:\windows\minidump.

 

[fujikazu]

I had a lot of minidumps and I get several messages from microsoft's error report saying quite a few of them have been corrupt recently so I hope these are good. Minidumps dated 1-5-08 are the 0x0A error and the 12-xx-07 are the page fault errors that show up on random logins. These should be from before I got corrupt message and I was usuing NVIDIA driver 169.21.

 

[peterdiva]

The Bugcheck 50 crashes are caused by ASUS Smartdoctor, and the Bugcheck A crashes are caused by the ASUS enhanced video drivers. Both are known problems.

See if you can update ASUS Smartdoctor if you wish to continue using it. You don't need the enhanced drivers, so uninstall them. See POST #6.

BugCheck 10000050, {abac152e, 0, 8052ab28, 0}
Probably caused by : EIO.sys ( EIO+1b6e ) <-- ASUS Smartdoctor.

BugCheck 1000000A, {16, 1c, 0, 80502392}
Probably caused by : atkosdmini.dll ( atkosdmini+1370 ) <-- ASUS enhanced video driver.

 

[fujikazu]

Very interesting. I may be dumb but I have uninstalled my drivers before and only installed NVIDIA 169.21(from NVIDIA website) but still got the error so is there a way to completely get rid of all video drivers I've ever had and start fresh ? It seems when I uninstall drivers they are still there since the problem is enhanced drivers after I install only NVIDIA.

Also, about SmartDoctor, is it the Hyper Drive setting on it that causes the 0x50 error or just SmartDoctor in general ?

Thanks, this is the most information I'v gotten so far that makes sense.

 

[Blind Dragon]

you can't uninstall the enhanced driver through add/remove programs.To remove the enhanced driver-> run the setup program from the driver package again. It'll ask if you want to remove it, just click yes

 

[fujikazu]

Thanks I'll do that.