At first it was "merely" tonelock; a problem which a few thousand users of Creative's Audigy 2 ZS seem to be experiencing. Guess what sound card I have? So I removed the sound card, did a cleansweep of all the Creative clutter on my system and rebooted. It ran like a dream for a few hours with onboard sound. And then... It crashed in the same fashion, just without the "squeal of death". And then... The BSOD's started. I've gotten numerous error codes with them: 000000c2, 1000008e, and most recently, 0x000000A "IRQL_not_less_than_or_equal". I've tried every suggestion given to me, at least once. Running memtest86+ for 24 hours, swapping out ram, swapping out CPUs, swapping out power supplies, installing new fans and heatsinks. I've done so much swapping, almost all the parts in my system are NEW. Originally, the problem(s?) would only crop up when I was running a high-end game like Doom 3 (Oddly, Half-Life 2 never had any problems...), Quake 4, etc. Now it seems everytime I look at the system sideways, it crashes. Even if it means a format and reinstall, or RMA-ing a certain part or parts, I just want my system to WORK. And please let me know if I'm not being very clear on things... Thanks.

So, am I down to format and re-install then...?

Hello and welcome to Techspot.

One of your minidumps crashes at your soundmax driver.

The other one crashes at IoloFltr.sys. This is a driver for system mechanic.

Uninstall system mechanic, and see how it goes.

Also try updating your onboard sound drivers.

Regards Howard

Thanks for the greetings.

I have to say, I'm not really surprised about System Mechanic crashing horribly... I installed it to see if it was any better/more stable than the previous versions. Obviously not.

This is going to sound like a stupid question, but is it possible for the SoundMax drivers to affect my system adversly even if I disabled onboard sound? (Like in the case of when I had my Audigy 2 ZS installed and was having the same symptoms...)

Thank you so much for your help. I'll keep you posted.

If you are going to use a separate soundcard, then you should uninstall the soundmax software, and disable the onboard sound in bios.

Regards Howard

Which is what I had done originally when I first bought my sound card... I'll run like this for a bit and see if it stays stable, and if so, I'll try re-installing my Audigy and hopefully IT stays stable as well. If not, I'll be back with more minidumps...

Edit: By "run like this for a bit", I mean with the updated SoundMax drivers. :grinthumb

And, how rude of me, thanks bunches!

I can't figure out for the life of me what the problem is... It locked up again, but this time with no BSOD, so no minidump. Nothing useful in the event viewer, either. Everything is running nice and cool, I alt-tabbed out while my game was running and the cpu was still hovering in the mid-40s. I don't know what my video card temperature is, but it can't get hot enough to cause a system lockup, can it? That's the only other thing I can think of. It's a Radeon 9800 Pro with an upgraded fan and heatsink. The Ati Silencer 1, Rev. 2 from Arctic Cooling. Heeeeeellllp!

Edit: I actually found another minidump from the other day, maybe it will lead some more insight?

Your minidump crashes at IoloFltr.sys. System mechanic again.

What psu do you have, and is it of good quality?

Look HERE at this psu calculator. Remember to add another 30% to whatever figure it gives you.

Check your mobo for bulging, or leaking capacitors. See HERE for further info.

Regards Howard

Yeah, I removed System Mechanic yesterday as per your suggestion... My PSU is an Aspire 520W. Specifically, this one right here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817148008

A quick inspection of my motherboard doesn't reveal much... They all look normal to me. I'll have to take it completely out to get a good look at it though. So many wires obstructing my view!

Do you think re-installing Windows would help at all? Probably not, eh?

Are you still getting bsod`s?

You might try doing a Windows repair as per this thread HERE

Does your original Windows disk contain sp2?

If not, after you have completed the repair, update windows via the Windows update site, but don`t install sp2 to start with.

See how your system runs first, and then install sp2.

Regards Howard