The Brain on 5/1/2009 at 14:42
Looks like that your hard disk(s) is somehow failing. What model is it? Are you using internal or external hard disks?
You could try to disable write caching on your hard disks by doing this:
* Make sure that you have logged in with user account which does have Administrator-privilege enabled.
* Click on Start button.
* Click on Settings.
* Click on Control Panel.
* Click on System icon in Control Panel.
* Click on Hardware tab.
* Click on Device Manager-button inside Hardware tab.
* Click on Disk Drives.
* For every hard disk in Disk Drivers, right click on them and select Properties.
* Select Policies-tab inside property dialog.
* Click on "Enable write caching on the disk"-checkbox inside Policies-tab. Make sure that there is no check inside that box. It means it is disabled.
* Press OK-button.
* Reboot your computer.
What brand your motherboard is?
Koki on 5/1/2009 at 15:15
Oh yeah, I guess you could check what's going on using Event Viewer.
Andarthiel on 5/1/2009 at 23:31
Quote Posted by The Brain
Looks like that your hard disk(s) is somehow failing. What model is it? Are you using internal or external hard disks?
You could try to disable write caching on your hard disks by doing this:
* Make sure that you have logged in with user account which does have Administrator-privilege enabled.
* Click on Start button.
* Click on Settings.
* Click on Control Panel.
* Click on System icon in Control Panel.
* Click on Hardware tab.
* Click on Device Manager-button inside Hardware tab.
* Click on Disk Drives.
* For every hard disk in Disk Drivers, right click on them and select Properties.
* Select Policies-tab inside property dialog.
* Click on "Enable write caching on the disk"-checkbox inside Policies-tab. Make sure that there is no check inside that box. It means it is disabled.
* Press OK-button.
* Reboot your computer.
What brand your motherboard is?
My hard disk is a Western Digital Caviar Green 500GB SATA HDD and it's internal.
My Motherboard is an MSI K9N6SGM
I just looked through the event viewer for when it crashed and saw this warning event reklating to a disk called Ftdisk:
"The system failed to flush data to the transaction log. Corruption may occur."
I'll try that write combining thing now.
Papy on 6/1/2009 at 02:18
You could use a program like (
http://www.hdtune.com/) HD Tune to check your hard disk. Take a look at the SMART data, maybe it will tell you something. If all seems fine, run the benchmark a few times.
After that you can check your memory with (
http://www.memtest.org/) Memtest. Let it run for a few hours.
Andarthiel on 6/1/2009 at 08:27
HDTune showed no error with any of the tests and the same with Memtest(which I ran overnight)
Papy on 6/1/2009 at 09:09
After a crash to desktop, can you still access your hard disk and dvd drive? Can you copy a file from a cd or dvd to your desktop for example? Also does this problem happens only when playing Clear Sky and no other games?
Andarthiel on 6/1/2009 at 22:10
Quote Posted by Papy
After a crash to desktop, can you still access your hard disk and dvd drive? Can you copy a file from a cd or dvd to your desktop for example? Also does this problem happens only when playing Clear Sky and no other games?
yea I can do all that without any problems. I just noticed that Mass Effect does the same crash and it's installed on the same HDD so I doubt that's a coincidence so I''m going to re-format that drive now(backup everything first of course) to see if that fixes it.
Papy on 7/1/2009 at 05:14
It's installed on a second drive? To be honest, I doubt reformating a data drive will change anything. Of course, I've seen a lot of strange things so who knows...
If I had to take a guess, since you found no problem with HD Tune and Memtest, I'd say your video card may be what's overheating, particularly because there are rumors about defective G92 chips (and I heard some OEM's "solution" was to increase the fan speed sooner with a BIOS update). You may try (
http://downloads.guru3d.com/RivaTuner-v2.22-download-163.html) Riva Tuner to check your video card temperature and maybe try to play with the fan speed.
Andarthiel on 7/1/2009 at 14:20
Riva Tuner didn't really do that much for me. Most of it's features are for Overclocking and that's the last thing I need.
I'm starting to think that it might be the RAM after all, I don't see how my PC could overheat I'm not overclocking and my PC has an adequate power supply unit. Luckily I ordered 4 GB DDR2 Dual Channel Kit so that should be arriving soon and then I can see if it's the RAM doing it or not. If it was either GeForce or my HDD failing then it wouldn't really affect my internet etc.
Papy on 7/1/2009 at 16:24
Quote Posted by Andarthiel
If it was either GeForce or my HDD failing then it wouldn't really affect my internet etc.
I had an X800XL which was overheating (fan failing) and, although most of the time the computer just completely froze while playing, sometimes it was just a CDT followed with some completely random errors and a highly unstable system.
I suggested Riva Tuner not to overclock your card, but to make the fan turn at full speed all the time. This was the BIOS "solution" some OEM used to compensate for bad G92 chips. Also, you can use it to check your chip temperature (I also have a 8800GT and my peak temperature while playing is 65C). BTW, I just checked ntune and it seems you can underclock your card with it. There is also a stability test (not sure what it does). It may be worth a try (yes, I know you don't believe it's the video card, but I'm just saying what I would do).
Of course this could be a memory problem (I see a lot of memory chips failing and that's why I now use ECC memory only), but considering Memtest is much more a torture test than a game, I would find it strange... but as I said, I'm used to see a lot of strange things with computer so who knows (for example I remember a SoundBlaster causing read error from my CD drive and hard disk because of an incompatibilty with an old motherboard chipset).
Anyway, good luck!
