System hanging with irritating continuous high pitch tone...

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lokem

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Hi all,

I was playing GTA3 and V8 Challenge yesterday and my PC starting to hang on me. It hung with a very high pitch tone emitting from the speakers while playing the aforementioned games. It ranges from 10-15mins (V8) into the game to 1-2hours (GTA3). I've tried Quake3 as well, but it hasn't crashed on me.. YET.

I'm not sure why this is happening and this hasn't happened b4. I guess it all started after I had the awful UMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME error which hit my hard disk. I had since reformatted my system then (didn't know a quick chkdsk command could fix it).

Anyone has any idea what's going on?

Below are my system specs:

Windows XP - with the patch to make GTA3 work fine with WinXP
AXP1600+ (not O/C)
256MB PC2400 DDR RAM
EPOX 8KHA+ (forgot which BIOS, but it's quite recent)
Creative SBAudioPCI - using Creative's drivers
40GB Maxtor hard drive
Sony CRX-140E CD writer
 
I have seen this caused by the following, general devices
  • Disk controller
  • Sound card

Now, in either case, the solution has been:
  • Drivers
  • BIOS flash

So from my experience (Which is narrow since I only work with so many computers), drivers are the most likely cause.

Turn off EAX or any fancy hardware-accelerated stuff. Stick with basic, 2-D positional audio. If it still does it, update your sound card drivers. If you have already done this, update your chipset/disk controller drivers if you have an UDMA 66 (or better) controller.

If it persists, download any new updates or patches available for the game.

If it still does it, try toggling PnP or ACPI on/off in the BIOS.

If it still continues, try flashing your BIOS with the newest update for it.

Beyond that, I have very few worthwhile suggestions.
 
I did install Creative's own drivers after a new OS installation. Perhaps that could be the one causing it. Any idea on how I can uninstall it and use WinXP native drivers?
 
Originally posted by lokem
I did install Creative's own drivers after a new OS installation. Perhaps that could be the one causing it. Any idea on how I can uninstall it and use WinXP native drivers?
Click to expand...

I recommend against using the standard drivers, but in this case, I'll make an exception and suggest you try it out.

You should be able to do it in Device Manager (Right click on My Computer and choose Properties. Then select the Hardware tab).

Choose your sound card in "Sound, video and game controllers" and dobule click on it. Select driver and "Roll back driver". It may not work, so do the same thing again, only click on Update Driver instead. Choose "Install from list or specific location" and then select, "Don't search. I will choose what driver to install" or something or rather. YOu should be able to pick one of the drivers currently installed on your system, including the default. The default driver usuall is denoted by having (microsoft) at the end of the name.

If all else fails, try a system restore to a point before you installed the Creative drivers.
 
Thanks for the tip. I'll try Rollback Drivers first. System Restore isn't an option since I've disabled it {g}
 
Originally posted by Rick
Oh sure.. You might be grinning now.... :eek:
Click to expand...

Heh... Trade off for performance :D Anyway, the problem is gone now; for some strange reason. I guess it must be my 2nd hard disk which has Linux on it. It always goes to sleep and somehow WinXP isn't able to wake it up again. It could also be because I rolled back the installation of Creative drivers. Strange stuff I tell you...
 
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