Please people, Rule out Ram before waising any more time with settings and drivers.

Derrin,

Uuhhh.... he did replace the RAM and had the same problem. Changing a setting is what fixed it. Same thing with mine. Same thing with many of my customers with the same problem. His just happened to be a timing issue with the RAM.

Why spend money unless you have to? In my opinion and in most people's opinion spending more money on a system that is supposed to work in the first place is ridiculous. Most of the systems I fix are brand new. My system, when I got it was too. I replaced RAM and video card and none of those situations worked. I finally narrowed it down to a setting in BIOS. For most of my customers with this problem, it was usually because they were overclocking. Yep, changing a setting in BIOS fixed the problem. Rule of thumb.....If you want a stable system, don't overclock. The 10 to 15% max gain you'll get out of it just isn't worth the hassle.

Most people post their questions here because they don't have the money to go out and buy whatever they want. Most of us here have bills to pay and families to take care of. As a result, spending more money on a computer is not a priority.

In my opinion, changing settings first, flashing BIOS, reinstalling OS, etc should always come before replacing equipment. Unless, of course, you live in la la land, and either have an unlimited source of income, or living with someone else that pays your bills for you.

Steve,

No, the RAM should have no bearing on the quality of graphics. There must be a setting somewhere, either with the video settings we changed the other day or inside the software itself.

Oh, and glad to be of help. Anytime. I monitor this thread regularly, so just let me know when you need something.

Oh, by the way, did you say you were from Virginia?

Derrin,

Uuhhh.... he did replace the RAM and had the same problem. Changing a setting is what fixed it. Same thing with mine. Same thing with many of my customers with the same problem. His just happened to be a timing issue with the RAM.

>Uhhh Todd

>Yes He did replace the ram and now his problem is fixed. He had to >adjust his speed down one click.

Why spend money unless you have to? In my opinion and in most people's opinion spending more money on a system that is supposed to work in the first place is ridiculous.

>I agree unless you make $40+ per hour by selling full time on the
>web like I do. Every hour you are down kills you.

Most of the systems I fix are brand new. My system, when I got it was too. I replaced RAM and video card and none of those situations worked. I finally narrowed it down to a setting in BIOS. For most of my customers with this problem, it was usually because they were overclocking. Yep, changing a setting in BIOS fixed the problem. Rule of thumb.....If you want a stable system, don't overclock. The 10 to 15% max gain you'll get out of it just isn't worth the hassle.

>I agree with this too. Need more speed, get a faster machine.

Most people post their questions here because they don't have the money to go out and buy whatever they want. Most of us here have bills to pay and families to take care of. As a result, spending more money on a computer is not a priority.

>I'm a 40 year old guy with 2 kids, 2 dogs, a wife, a mortgage etc..
>I'm all for saving a buck. Your implication is that I am a frivolous >spender with unlimited funds and time to screw around with making my >computer work. Or that I'm some kid living with mommy and daddy. >Quite the opposite. I have very limited time every day
>to do anything but work, so to go back and forth making little tweaks >here and there and having the same results doesn't work for me. I'd >rather get it fixed than deal with having an unreliable machine. I need >stability first and foremost. And since a stable computer is my primary >tool for making out my day to day existence, I would pay damn near >anything to get it.

In my opinion, changing settings first, flashing BIOS, reinstalling OS, etc should always come before replacing equipment. Unless, of course, you live in la la land, and either have an unlimited source of income, or living with someone else that pays your bills for you.

>You're right Todd (you always are) Effective debate and discussion >doesn't need to include insults. Many other on this nearly year
>long thread have solved by simply replacing the cheap generic ram that >came in their machine with some certified good stuff from a legit dealer.
>People reading this Guinness book length thread should conduct a little >experiment. Since reading through this entire would now take an entire >day, try this. Go to page 1 and do a ctrl+f find search for "RAM” and >then again for "Memory" continue with this drill until you have gone >through all of the pages. You will find several people who have fixed this >problem by either replacing faulty generic ram with name brand >approved ram or removing one 256 stick, or swapping their single 512 >stick for 2x256 sticks. Or simply swapping slots in the MOBO.
>What happens is you start to see a pattern. Ram swap=fix.
>I'm simply saying that's what did it for me. After 60+ days of crash, >Blue screens, lost data, lost work, not to mention the stress and >frustration I found a fix and I want to make sure that anyone still >experiencing these problems has ruled it out. Since March of this year my machine has not crashed once. I did nothing other than replace the 1 stick of generic no name 512 that originally came in my computer.
I made no other adjustments, Flashed no Bios, No clean OS install.
RAM swap=Fixed.

My current system prcessors
AMD XP2400
ASUS A7N8X
2x256 400ddr Genuine Samsung
64 GeForce4 ti
DVD/CD/Floppy/
60gig 7200 rpm HD
Enermax Whisper 465W PSU

>If you have done the ram thing and are still having trouble, keep reading >Todd’s posts and he'll help you figure it out.

I am getting a jerk or hesitation in my video regardless of what application
I am using ever since installing DX9.0b from 9.0a about 4 weeks ago.
I am using a Dell Inspiron 4500,
512MB RAM, 40GB HD, P4, 2Ghz processor, with a Nvidia Geforce 4 mx 420
including the latest drivers (issue 7/29/03) and it still jerks or hesitates
about every 5 seconds. I get this when I do the direct draw and 3d tests
within DXDiag, not to mention every video game I have. It only
started happening once I installed the 9.0b ver of DX so I used the Sys
Restore option to go back to 9.0a and the problem followed. So I decided to go back to 8.1 and the problem still persists. Has anyone seen this problem yet or even heard of it?


TIA
Jay

just thought i'd add...


I get the same problems but only if I try to use agp 4x otherwise runs smooth

I want agp 4x though....


VIA KT266 Chipset (VIA Northbridge)
AMD Anthlon 1.2ghz
256 generic DDR Ram
Windows XP + SP1
MSI StarForce Geforce 4 ti 4200 TD 128mb
nvidia det's 45.24
VIA Hyperion's 4.49 (AGPGART 430a)

Derrin,

>Yes He did replace the ram and now his problem is fixed. He had to >adjust his speed down one click.

Which could have fixed the problem in the first place.

>I agree unless you make $40+ per hour by selling full time on the
>web like I do. Every hour you are down kills you.

In that case, you shouldn't be playing games on it, or overclocking it. He wasn't having problems with anything but games so the point is moot.

>I agree with this too. Need more speed, get a faster machine.

Amen

>I'm all for saving a buck. Your implication is that I am a frivolous >spender with unlimited funds and time to screw around with making my >computer work. Or that I'm some kid living with mommy and daddy. >Quite the opposite.

Not sure why or how you pulled that out of what I stated, but that wasn't my intention. My point was most people would rather spend time than money. I've been in the computer field 15 years and that has always been true, even with large corporations. That's why they hire professionals to solve problems...so they don't have to buy new PC's or parts every time something goes wrong with it.

It took me several weeks to figure mine out when I first got mine. Sure, I could have gone out and bought a new 250 buck ATI card, but why bother with something as unimportant as a game? If this was a PC making me money, then sure, 250 wouldn't be that big of a deal. In fact, I would have just thrown a 50 buck card at it and let it be.

>stability first and foremost.

Me too.

>And since a stable computer is my primary tool for making out my day to day existence, I would pay damn near anything to get it.

Me too, but I sure wouldn't be playing games on it if it was that important. Therefore, I wouldn't have to tweak settings OR replace RAM.

>Effective debate and discussion doesn't need to include insults.

Huh??? That wasn't an insult. It's the truth. I run across all three types in this field. I have those who think that a 486 computer ought to run Office XP or who think they need to buy a 3 GHZ machine to browse the internet (la la land). Then, I have customers that are doctors and lawyers and can afford to buy a new PC whenever their email quits working (virtual unlimited source of income). Finally, I've had customers who are kids or college students living with mom and dad. These kids know enough about computers to con their parents into buying things for it they don't really need (someone else pays the bills). However, most of my customers do not fall into one of these three categories. Most are middle class typical Americans who are financially strapped because they have families to take care of and bills to pay. Additionally, the wife has to work and the kids are in day care. Therefore, they don't want to spend money on their PC and many times, they don't contract me because their games aren't worth paying me to fix their PC. So, I simply give them suggestions on what to do. That's why I chose to help Steve. I've read this thread and many others and it's the same junk. Noone seems willing to help anyone. They pop up here and say, "This is the answer." When that person tries it and it doesn't work they post here again, but everyone seems to ignore them. Not me. I know how frustrating it is to a customer to not get answers from tech support people.

>Since reading through this entire would now take an entire day

Well, it took me 15 min. However, regardless of the time you spend reading this thread, if it helps you solve the problem without spending money, it's worth it.

>You will find several people who have fixed this problem by either replacing faulty generic ram with name brand approved ram or removing one 256 stick, or swapping their single 512 stick for 2x256 sticks. Or simply swapping slots in the MOBO.

Yes, and you will also find several people who have replaced drivers, tweaked settings, reinstalled from scratch, updated BIOS. You will also find that many of these people swapped RAM as a last resort too. Again, most of the systems I've fixed were not the RAM. They were settings in BIOS. There is no one solution for every problem in the computer field. Just because it works for 1, 2, or 3 people doesn't mean it works for all. However, I have noticed that replacing the NVidia card with an ATI card fixes the problem 95% of the time. It would be easy enough for me to suggest that as THE solution. However, I know that most people can't just go out and buy another card, so I gladly spend my time helping them out. In Steve's case, replacing the card didn't work, so I helped him narrow it down.

>Blue screens

Most people aren't getting these. They are generally an indication of a major hardware problem or faulty driver.

>RAM swap=Fixed.

Again, just because it worked for you doesn't mean it works for others. I know of a few cases where replacing the power supply fixed the problem. Replacing a faulty fan. Replacing a faulty heat sink. All are valid solutions. If swapping the RAM was the solution to everyone's problem, don't you think NVidia, Intel, AMD, etc would all be recommending it? Also, why would Corsair RAM not work in some of these systems? Yes, it was "approved". Some of these systems are Compaq with Compaq RAM in them. Others are HP. Not everyone builds their own system (in fact, most don't).

Anyway, it was not my intention to insult anyone. Sorry if I did. My intention was to help Steve narrow down the problem without him having to spend money. My emails were directed to him, not anyone else.

Jason,

Does your hard drive light "flicker" when this happens? How long is the delay? Less than one second?

Jason,

Does your hard drive light "flicker" when this happens? How long is the delay? Less than one second?

The HD light doesn't seem to coincide with the "freeze" that I keep getting. The "freeze" lasts less than one second but repeats itself every 5 seconds. Not good gaming conditions. I'm almost ready to re-install XP, but don't even know if that will do the trick.
Thanks-
Jay

There must be some kind of process going on. Try shutting down all programs in the tray area, then try the game. If that doesn't work, you might try temporarily disabling background programs from starting when the system boots. You can do that through the startup tab in msconfig. It's generally not a good idea to disable the ones that run from the windows or system32 directories, though. After that, reboot and try again. If it stops, the offending program is one of the ones you disabled. Then, it's just a matter of the process of elimination to find which one. Your event viewer may give some clues as well.

Todd-
No such luck with running processes. I tried all the ones that would allow me to shut them off. Back to the drawing board. To me, the most mind-boggling part of this problem is, since updating to 9b, I have reverted back to 9a files via sys restore and could not get back to good. I've even used DXbuster with same results.
Go figure!
Jay

Jason,

Have you checked the event viewer to see if it is logging anything?

Wonder if this will ever be resolved?

Todd,

Yeah it was just a setting. I reinstalled that game and now it looks BETTER THAN EVER. Very, very, very crisp graphics even better than a PS2.

I've been watching the Two Towers lately so I haven't been able to get online. Yes I'm from Virginia. Beautiful state, its cold in the winter and HOT in the summer but I manage.

Now that I've seen the Two Towers several times I think I can tear myself away from the dvd player and reply to your reply alot sooner then last time!

Steve,

I'm glad to hear that you are finally able to do other things rather than pull your hair out with your computer. It's a wonderful feeling. When I upgraded my PC last time so I could run FS2002, I spent weeks trying to get my computer to run right. I'll never forget being able to finally sit down and fly the simulator rather than fixing a brand new computer.

I live in Georgia, about 1.5 hours south of Atlanta....It's hot in the summer, hot in the spring, hot in the fall, and gets cold maybe 4-6 weeks in winter. I don't mind, though, I'd rather it be 95 degrees and feeling like a suana than 25 and feeling like a deep freeze. I keep my thermosthat on 75 during the summer. Drives my wife crazy. She would rather in be cooler in the house.

i had the same prob,so i send my card to fix,and this guy show me
all the capacitors and chips that was about to blow,before that, i also lowered the clock speed and it worked,but not respecting the resolution and other stuff ,now im trying to get a new capacitor (4 of them).and they are hard to find so if any 1 can help me to find them i apreciate it.

in case u need to check by ur self.the capacitors where a bit fat and the have a cross on top that cross was a bit raised,and the chips where brown,if u have that, well means ur card is overheating,
by the way my card is a pny verto gf4 4200.

I've been reading through some of these (not all), and just wanted to chime in. I had (up until a couple minutes ago) a pny 4200 for over half year (i think). Then one day it started freezing in games and occasionally rebooting the machine during a game. While swapping it out with a gforce2 i happen to have I noticed it was really hot (i nearly burned myself). Not the part with the heatsink - but the capacitors and the little square black thingies attached to the board with three connectors (i don't know what they are called). Upon closer examination i noticed that one of these guys had burnt up. Strangly the card still works a little, but graphics cause it to crash, however it is getting hot enough to melt components so it is probably only a matter of time before the card stops working completely. I had a via mb, now i have an intel 875. As far as i can tell the intel board doesn't have any agp settings other than aperture size (no 2x,4x,8x or whatever), so how could avoid cooking my video card?

Hi All,
Firstly, my setup:
AMD Athlon 1.13Ghz
K7SEM Motherboard
SiS Chipset.
nVidia GeForce MX440 64MB 8xAGP

That's all info I'm posting because I think info like RAM and OS is UNRELATED to this problem. I fixed my problem by simply installing AGP Support drivers for my motherboard. In my case it's Sis's VXD drivers for Windows 98 SE.

good one but, unfortunatly the VIA VXD(AGP Drivers) don't work properly on any NTFS OS and WINXP in FAT32 mode

GeForce 4 Ti4200 128mb
anthlon 1.2
MS6380 LE w/ VIA northbridge

or on their own chipsets for that matter. The most recent Hyperion 4.49 do fix the stability problem, but you must force 2x AGP in the bios. VIA is still robbing us of functional AGP 4x and 8x. + if you toggle w/ the AGP Driving setting you might luck out.

Basically the problem is DX 3D will NOT load in AGP 4x and up on VIA chipsets w/ GeForce 4 video cards.... as it does NOT recognize the addressing in 4x+ mode and toggles the "invalid video/no specified video card error" I.E the black screen or the flash to desktop.