Graphics card is restarting my PC.

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BigDave

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Hello TechSpot,

I am currently using an ATI Radeon 9550 gfx card, and whenever I start a graphically powerful game (usually World of Warcraft) it works... for a while, then randomly will restart my PC, with no warning, and brings me back into low reso settings, not fun ! Ive fiddled with a short term fix, if I disable the secondary part of my gfx card and restart it works,.. but again only for a short while :(

In my device manager, it says this is the problem:



I've read around for some fixes and one that looked hopeful was listing my resources by type and looking at the IRQ list, but alas, my card was all on it's own. However, my 'SCSI/RAID Host Controller' and 'Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System' were both on the same number (9). However, I have no idea what either of these do, so was unsure if this had anything to do with my problem :S

Any help is greatly appreciated as I can't go on restarting my PC every 10mins !

Cheers,

Dave
 
Oh ye, I will also mention I tried installing the new drivers recommeded by ATI, only to have that mess things up even more and I had to do my first ever system restore :S
 
I got that very error when trying to install an XFI sound card in my system, and i didnt figgure it out till after i got pissed and sent it back and got an audigy 2zs instead, but i hear the fix is to change the AGP apature to 256 in the bios. not sure if its the same exact problem your having, but it could be worth a shot.

i would also go here, hold your windows key, and hit pause break, click advanced tab, click settings under startup and recovery, and uncheck automatically restart under system failure.

This could possibly lead to it giving you a blue screen error message instead of auto restarting, thereby giving a clue as to whats causing it.
 
What is "pause break" ?! edit: hehe, i see it now.

How does one access the "bios" ?!

And thanks very much for your help, I shall try it soon ! :D
 
CTT brings up a good point, your card could be overheating,

You can access the bios on most machines by pressing f2 or del when you first turn it on, it should tell you press whatever to enter setup. Though i caution you not to change anything without knowing what it does, and remember what you changed, so if you have other problems later you can change it back.
 
Lots of details missing here - not likely you GPU temp anyway - more likely an ACPI related problem in bios since allocation of IRQ's starts there and ACPI is involved.


Get out your manual and READ about the bios ACPI and video settings and do some Googling about acpi and that video card.
 
ok, thanks for your help guys :)

is still restarting even though i unchecked 'automatically restart under system failure' :(
 
Did you do what SultanGris suggested?

What you need to try is go into the BIOS and under Advanced Chipset Features you'll see AGP Aperture size. Set it 256MB.
 
CCT said:
Did you do what SultanGris suggested?

What you need to try is go into the BIOS and under Advanced Chipset Features you'll see AGP Aperture size. Set it 256MB.
Click to expand...
Yeap I tried that, didn't work so I changed it back to 128MB, which is the size of my video card anyway.

And I don't reckon it's my PSU, ive been playing Warcraft for over a year and had no problems with my system until this :(

I rang up a support guy with the warranty on my PC and he told me to unistall un-used programs and do a de-frag :/ I even tried to explain about the IRQ thing but he had no idea. I'll ring them again before I invest in any payed help though.

Any other ideas or info I could give to help ?!
 
PSU's fail - some sooner, some later.

Does your card require 2 separate 12v supply wires through a power supply dongle? Are they separate with nothing else on them?

Can you run Everest with Computer, sensor page selected and minimized, start WoW and run it, then do a ctrl-alt-del and check Everest temps and voltages; press print screen and then open MS word and press ctrl+v and then save that page for reference.
 
Ok, so I ran the trial version of Everest with as many options on the sensor page as I could, this is the before and after result of running WoW:



The three that changed the most are 'Memory Utilisation', 'CPU1 Utilisation' and 'CPU Utilisation'.

The two on the far right are temperature and didn't change, and the -12v and +12v figures only went up 0.1, though by watching them they alter slightly anyway.

So, is it usual for my CPU to increase that much just to run WoW ?!
 
If you have 88% memory use then I guess you have 1 Mb memory (1024).

I don't understand why your cpu core's are running 65% at idle.


If that is what that display means.


??

edit: checked your profile (thanks for filling it in) and see you do have 1024 - BUT, what also would so much of your Ram be in use before WoW (57%) - or am I reading that data wrong (NOT the Everest I have - lol).
 
oki, running Everest again my CPU 'figures' have dropped to between 16-20, and the memory to 45, is this more normal for idle processes ?!

Also, is there anyway I can reset my IRQ list, so windows re-assigns each component ?! I read about this on another forum, but I couldn't find the option they spoke about in my BIOS. Reckon it'd help ?!

Im also considering removing my gfx card, and installing a mates old one to see if it's my card that is buggered, again, do you think this a good idea ?!

Cheers.
 
At idle just looking at this screen, my cpu is 0 with 18% ram use on 2048 installed = 36% roughly if I had 1024.

So 'something' is running on your comp.

Check task manager applications and then processes.
 
Here is a list of my processes:



Also, we just tried my mates card, but no luck, it was still restarting on running WoW. But we thought, at least we now know, it’s not my card that’s the problem, but must be a conflict issue. So, we put my card back in, but the PC is having none of it, won’t even start up. So now I have my mates card in and the PC runs, but still WoW doesn’t. And just a minute ago the PC restarted without me even trying to run WoW. I need help lol :(

Maybe this is gods way of telling me to do some uni work !

Any suggestions on resetting the IRQ list ?!

Cheers.
 
Also, the 'SCSI/RAID Host Controller' has disappeared off my IRQ list, and there are now no conflicts in there :(

Shall I just buy a new PC ?! lol :(
 
What I suggest is you start from scratch (try and save any of your stuff you deem critical) and wipe the drive and reload EVERYTHING!

Good experience for you and your pal AND will likely fix you right up.

:)
 
I was dreading you saying that lol.

But aye I guess that's the best option I have atm. Any pointers on the process ?!

:)
 
yowsa, 59 processes is a little out of hand! I have plenty of crap running myself and have 31 processes, i think a typical new fresh install is around 21-24 processes, i forget, but I would definatly try ending some of those, and see if that helps, but you may be better off doing a fresh install.

You can always type the process name into google to find out what it is, sometimes it takes some digging, as the first couple links usually just try to sell you crap, but you should figgure it out in short order.
 
For anyone who is interested or searches this out on google. The error was with the PSU and upon installing a new one everything is in tip-top working order :D

Thanks :)
 
Thats so awesome you posted a followup. Im fairly computer brilliant, but there are still a few problems ive had that i cant figgure out, and i cant tell you how many times ive googled a problem only to find a multiple threads with the same problem, but no solution at all. Props to you, and its appreciated greatly by many!
 
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