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[Astramancer]

If it randomly stabilized, that points to the probabilities of overheating or hard drive failure.

I had a hard drive that was failing, and it would do that - random blue screens, reboots, trouble booting, ect.  The hard drive did eventually die.  2 years later.

[Akura]

It appears I've spoken too soon about it being fixed, it's been crashing nonstop this morning, and I haven't even been on it an hour.

[Medicine Man]

Is everything plugged in properly?

[Akura]

I can only assume so. I haven't moved it or messed with anything inside it.

It crashed a minute ago with black and white square-things going across the top of the screen. I know that another older graphics card I used to have often caused crashes in a similar way, and that one was damaged right out of the box. I doubt it's hardware damage for this one, most likely bad drivers, since it started happening immediately after updating them. I've rolled them back. I just hope that it won't cause a memory leak with Shores of Hazeron again.

EDIT: That did NOT fix the problem. It crashed shortly after posting(which was immediately after rolling back the driver). However, right before it crashed, a notification came up that the graphics driver stopped working but recovered.

[Medicine Man]

Try booting it in safe mode and scanning it.

[Akura]

New issue, and I didn't feel like starting a new thread. Now the internet seems to have slowed down to a crawl. Usually, it hits around 60Kbs(which is probably normal for it), and now, it gets about 500bs. Web pages load normally usually, but images and file downloads take a ridiculous amount of time. Before, there were periods of it slowing down or stopping, but those usually lasted only a minute or two. This has been going on for several days now. Is it a problem with my network device, or is the service provider screwing up somewhere? I've had periods of this before, but like the previous issue, it tends to clear up on its own.

And the crashing has stopped(for now ). Seems like rolling back the drivers did it. The crash right afterwards probably meant I should have restarted the computer for it to take effect .

EDIT: Okaaaay, now the connection status window has stopped completely. Not like a regular freeze, you can still click buttons and stuff. It's just not updating or anything.

EDIT2: Scratch that, restarting the computer fixed it not updating, and seems to a have sped up the connection a bit.

[Nappada]

I have problem not entirely related on topic, but decided not to make whole new thread for it.

About week ago, as always, I started my computer to check B12forums and after loading Windows, note popped on which said something like "graphics driver not found..." and something more too. Worried, I tried to play M2TW, but it didn't start and all my nightmares had come true. My graphic card was probably broken. I tried to fix it by rebooting my comp and behold, it worked.
Everything was fine until yesterday when my comp decided to pop same note. Now it has done it all the time. Games decluding Dwarf Fortress doesn't work.
What's matter with my graphic card.. I unmounted it and mounted it again, but it still popped same note. I uninstalled my drivers and tried to install new drivers, but I couldn't install, because it said something about not finding suitable drivers for my current hardware settings.

If it helps anything

Intel Pentium 4 2,8 GHz
Creative Soundblaster (something) soundcard
Ati Radeon X800 XT PE graphic card

Yeah. That's all I can quickly remember.
Any idea what's wrong?

[Akura]

Sounds like faulty drivers too. Did you try updating them? Downgrading? You may have to download drivers from the manufacturer's site.

For me, downgrading worked, but I couldn't play SoH. Fortunately, a couple weeks ago ATI put out a new driver that's been working perfectly so far.


As for my completely unrelated internet issue, it might be because the wireless adapter is somehow damaged, but I'm not conviced it is. Watching the upload speed, it looks fine, and if it were broken, then both upload and download speeds would be screwed up. Looking at the chat in Illyriad, I've noticed the timestamps show times several minutes between when I sent the message and the time the chat thing receives it(and sometimes a few minutes more before I receive it. It's that bad.), which tells me that somewhere with either the router or service provider it's getting bogged down.

[Puck]

Okay, I read throught the thread quickly, and am not sure whether I missed it, but ffs, did you actually open the case and take a look inside? it COULD be overheating, and from time to time it certainly sounds so (Especially the stuff about the graphics drivers). If it isnt, fuck it, opening the case and cleaning it doesnt take that long. So its a variable which is easy to get out of the equation quickly. Therefore: DEW IT. Get a can of compressed air, and clean that fooker. Even the innards of the PSU, just blow some air in there through the intake and see if a lot of eugh-stuff comes out.

My second guess from all those symptoms would be a PSU which gets old and too weak for your setup. Sometimes a PSU is just too weak because its hella dirty, and cleaning should alleviate the problem a bit, but still its a good sign you can think about getting a new one sooner or later. Dying PSUs leads to all kinds of funky problem, and afaik the PC doesnt really have anything to detect whats happening and no proper error codes to beep to you.

10 Dorfbucks say its a mix of 1 and 2, tbh

edit; small off chance: Did you ever ... apply a lot of pressure to mouse / keyboard / any cable? Sometimes a short circuit in one of those can lead to very eerie things, too.

[Akura]

The Crash hasn't happened for a few weeks now. It stopped when I first rolled back the drivers, and later updated them to newer ones.

So yeah, buggy ATI drivers is the most likely culprit.

[Puck]

So--- you still didnt take a look inside whether or not its dusty as hell?

I dont know where you live, but the ambient temperature over here has dropped a LOT in the recent weeks.

Do it, its no hassle at all. I dont think I ever saw a graphics driver crash in 2d mode, unless something overheats / is damaged.

[Akura]

Wasn't the graphics driver, since it's still been doing it. At first, I thought it was a hard drive issue, so I had CHKDISK run during startup to see if there was any problem with at least the drive surface. It crashed during that, and since(according to what it told me when I tried to run it through Windows) you can't run it while it's in use, I figured it was processor issue.

After thinking "Fuuuuuck!" to myself, I opened the case. Inside the CPU fan was a solid layer of dust about 1-2mm thick, with a little hair mixed in(with no idea how the hell it got there, it was longer than mine), and more in the space between the fan and the part that connects to the CPU. There was even some dust in the processor housing, thankfully the conenctor pins were alright. After spending quite a bit of time digging under the fan blades with a cotton swab, I managed to get at least most of it out and blowing into it cleaned it out some more. Getting the fan back on was a different story. Apparently, when I put the damn thing on the first time, the mounting feet were messed up(crappy Intel parts, I think Intel designed it so you're not supposed to remove it after installing). And after yelling "Fuuuuuck!" quite audibly to myself, several times, I managed to get them back in.

So far, it's running fine. The fan sounds a bit different, but I think removing 2mm of dust from under it will do that.

[Puck]

HA! I knew it

[Akura]

HA! I knew it

Assuming it doesn't start crashing again, which it hasn't yet. I think. I might have dreamed that it crashed last night.