97.44/97.92 may be causing my BSODs!?

[pcnthuziast]

My new PC is just over a month old and I've had 6 stop errors(BSODs). E6600(9x333) on iBX2 with 2x1gb G.Skill C4 6400 @ 832mhz, X-fi, eVGA 8800gts, Corsair 520w PSU.
4 in 4 minutes on 1/1/07 just after midnight trying to play an mpeg in media player(tried media player 9 twice and 11 twice). All 4x the file never even opened... just a couple sec. pause then BSOD. 2 of the 4 x my CPU was OC'ed to 2.7 with ram @ 900 using media player 9. The other 2x occured even after resetting everything to stock speed and upgrading to media player 11. These 4 crashes occured with my 1st set of ram(Corsair XMS2 C4)which I later swapped for the G.Skill I'm currently runing. All 4 crashes each listed 4 parameters in event viewer, 3 out of the 4 parameters were the same for all 4 with the 3rd parameter of each crash being diff. These crashes occured using
97.44. Yesterday 1 crash and the day before, 1 crash.
Trying to open Acid Pro(music creation software)it appeared as though the video card failed to draw the splash screen as only an outline came up then sys hung for 30 secs. or so then crashed. Trying to launch F.E.A.R. XP yesterday morning crashed my sys before anything appeared on screen. All 6 BSODs were reported(by windows) to have been caused by a driver(video driver). My theories on the cause are:Yet another set of faulty ram(although I'm not so sure there was anything wrong with my 1st set. Faulty motherboard and/or bios issue. Faulty vid card. Faulty PSU. I still have 2 of the mindumps saved, can anyone help me diagnose them/my problem???
If/when I solve the prob, I'll deffinately post my findings to help anyone else!

 

[howard_hopkinso]

Start by reading this thread HERE and see if that helps. The first link in that thread is well worth a read.

Let us know the results please.

Regards Howard

 

[pcnthuziast]

still troubleshooting...

I've done most of that stuff, everything from 1 stick of ram at a time to check disk, etc. Also Norton system works doesn't detect any relevant registry errors. As you probably noticed all the crashes were distinctly related to video operations and more specificly these crashes did not occur in the middle of something but rather upon initiallization of tasks/apps. If it's a driver issue could reinstalling the drivers help? Also could the installation of another program/driver corrupt the video drivers? If so, is there a way to check the file integrity of those drivers?

 

[howard_hopkinso]

1 minidump crashes at your graphics card drivers, the other one crashes at your sound card drivers.

First check for any updated drivers and see if that helps.

If it doesn`t, try temporarily uninstalling the software/drivers for your sound card as there may be a conflict of somekind.

Regards Howard

 

[pcnthuziast]

Sound card drivers huh...

Is the sound driver crash the 1st 1 by date or the second?
Just to be sure, what are the dates of those 2 dump files? Would you reccomend Beta drivers for my X-fi extreme music?


Thanks for helping me, I believe in Karma & will seize any opportunity I get to help someone else if I can!!!

 

[howard_hopkinso]

The graphics driver crash has the following date/time info and was the first one.

Debug session time: Thu Jan 25 18:21:30.640 2007 (GMT+0)

The soundcard crash has this date/time info.

Debug session time: Sat Jan 27 16:50:10.609 2007 (GMT+0)

You can try the beta drives, but please be aware, it would be prudent to create a system restore point, just in case they cause you more problems.

Regards Howard

 

[pcnthuziast]

...

I actually wasn't aware that any of the crashes weren't related to graphics card/drivers, so to find out that 1 was sound driver related only confuses me more. Unfortunately no Beta drivers are available, as a matter of fact there is only 1 version available form creative currently. Do those dumps contain any more useful info as to what my problem is? At what point can I cancel out hardware & write these crashes off to software or vice versa? In your oppinion is hardware most likely the culprit? Also on the 27 my event viewer log has the error/debug sess. at about 8:50a.m., why is the time on the dump file 4:50?

 

[howard_hopkinso]

Please fine attached .txt versions of your minump outputs.

As you can see, they have bugchecks of 8E and D1 respectively.

The meaning of your bugcheck codes are as follows.

0x0000008E: KERNEL_MODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED

A kernel mode program generated an exception which the error handler didn’t catch. These are nearly always hardware compatibility issues (which sometimes means a driver issue or a need for a BIOS upgrade).

0x000000D1: DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

The system attempted to access pageable memory using a kernel process IRQL that was too high. The most typical cause is a bad device driver (one that uses improper addresses). It can also be caused by caused by faulty or mismatched RAM, or a damaged pagefile.

I`m still of the opinion that your problem is driver related at the moment. However, can you supply us with details of your psu, including it`s wattage/brand/amps on the 12v rail?

Post any further minidumps you get.

Regards Howard

 

[pcnthuziast]

PSU=Corsair modular 520w
40a on the 12v rails of which there are either 2 or 3 I believe. A Corsair tech told me that this PSU had been tested with the 8800gts/gtx in a "loaded" system and was shown to be completely adequate to power these cards. I'm only running 1 optical drive & 1 hdd(74gb Raptor).

 

[howard_hopkinso]

Thanks for the info. I guess we can rule out the psu then lol.

Back to a driver problem then. Like I said, try uninstalling your soundcard drivers and see if you still get crashes. I know this`ll leave you with no sound for a while, but at least it`ll show if there`s a problem between your graphics card and sound card.

Another thing you could do is to try using a different pci slot for your sound card.

Regards Howard

 

[pcnthuziast]

...

Just out of curiosity I used msinfo32 to look at IRQ's(I don't know much about them yet, but IRQ seems to be a buzzword/important). My graphics card shares IRQ16 with 2root ports(for the chipset I believe) and a USB controller and my sound card shares IRQ18 with a 1 USB controller and 1 firewire controller. I don't know if that info helps. Also I 've attached the last event viewer log in .txt form for whatever that's worth.

 

[howard_hopkinso]

If you do a Google search for ha20x2k.sys you`ll see that this seems to be a common problem.

I therefore urge you to uninstall the drivers for your soundcard and test your system. See if you still get crashes.

Regards Howard

 

[pcnthuziast]

...

I'll try removing the sound card & uninstalling the drivers later today or tommorrow as that seems like a viable option. Could it be that the crash involving the sound drivers is an entirely different issue from the 1 with graphics driver and subsequently the other 4 crashes I mentioned with media player(wish I still had the logs & dumps from those BSODs)? If it is in fact directly or indirectly related to the other crashes how so? I'm not sold on a bios update yet as the Intel site even states that the bios should only be updated if it will specificly fix a certain issue(s) and the release notes for the 2 bios versions released since mine don't contain anything even remotely pertainging to my situation.