Pc Tech Support

[JT!]

Channel 11? I think most wireless devices default on this channel

Yes!

Seem how I've chaged it to lucky number 8, download speeds have gone from 5mb to 8mb, and ping has dropped from 45 to 35. All that from just changing a number.

[forteh]

Cross post from OCUK forums, see if anyone here can offer some advice aswell

Sorry for the long post but hoping you guys can help me

A little while ago I spent some pennies upgrading my old system but Ive got a niggle that I want to get sorted.

I bought the gtx as a first upgrade and it ran fine with no issues at all.

A couple of months later I upgraded the mobo/cpu/ram from an A64x2 4400 to the i3 @4.02ghz bundle from ocuk. Super happy with the speed increase and all went well.

I soon found however that when playing games I would occasionally get texture corruption to varying degrees. Sometimes it would just change all textures to shades of purple but everything else was still clear, other times it would be complete corruption and nothing would be visible on the screen.

Alt tabbing back to desktop generally solved the texture corruption, but not all games support it and the only way to recover would be to alt F4 and lose anything that wasnt saved.

Whilst googling for the error two common sources were identified, overtemperature and lack of power. The card rarely gets above 65-70°C so that leaves the psu.

I have an OCZ modstream 520w, has always served me very well, however it is pretty old now. I read that the max draw on the gtx260 216 is 339w and the cpu is 110w, Ive run it with all but one HDD unplugged (normally have 3) and all case fans off so I think I should have enough juice, the PSU label says its good for 620w continuous peak for 60 seconds. Its still possibly borderline though. How could I check if the gpu is running low on power?

The error seems to happen at random, sometimes I can play for hours and nothing will happen, sometimes it can occur after minutes. Ive tried turning all graphics down and it still happens. Ive tried underclocking both gpu and cpu and it still happens. Cleaned out and updated all drivers and it still happens. Disabled soundcard and it still happens. Im pretty much stuck for what to do next

Im running xp pro sp3 + all updates, latest nvidia drivers etc. Error has occurred in HL2, arma2, dragonage, bloodbowl and batman arkham asylum, I presume it will occur in any other game that I install.

Upgrading the PSU would be a good first step, however I dont really have the spare money at the moment. A full reinstall of windows is an option but a ball ache, if I were to do so I would probably migrate to W7, again a cost I cant really stand at the moment. Dont suppose anyone has a spare suitable PSU I could borrow for testing?

Again sorry for the long post but any help would be much appreciated

Beers in advance

Any thoughts hardware peoples?

[Muel]

Definitely sounds power, heat or driver related to me. First thing I'd try would be to wipe Windows and reinstall. Got a spare hard drive though you could install it on for testing? I keep an old 40gb IDE for exacty that.

Next I'd find some fairly local nerdy b*****d, possibly living in Sheffield, with a working rig, and see if you can wack the graphics card in that, and one of his in yours. Maybe?

BTW what socket was your 4400? 939? I need to check my spec list again but I might be after one before long for my Aunty's computer.

Edited February 1, 2011 by Muel

[forteh]

Definitely sounds power, heat or driver related to me. First thing I'd try would be to wipe Windows and reinstall. Got a spare hard drive though you could install it on for testing? I keep an old 40gb IDE for exacty that.

Next I'd find some fairly local nerdy b*****d, possibly living in Sheffield, with a working rig, and see if you can wack the graphics card in that, and one of his in yours. Maybe?

BTW what socket was your 4400? 939? I need to check my spec list again but I might be after one before long for my Aunty's computer.

It was s939 and I no longer possess it

I cant see it being heat or driver, I have got some 160gig usb drives I can dump some stuff onto to clear a spare drive for a fresh windows install, perhaps Ill try that

Hardware swapping would be ideal, unfortunately by the time Ive driven to sheffield and back twice I could have bought a new psu

You got a spare 600-750w floating around?

[Muel]

Fair doos mate, and no, no I do not. I don't have any spares really.

[l33th3tr33]

Not a hge tech problem but when I scroll down through my browser (firefox) Using the click wheel ( not rolling the wheel but clicking it in and pulling the page up or down) it's really choppy and laggy. It's really REALLLLY annoying! Any thoughts?

[Muel]

Check you haved the graphics drivers installed, and check they're the latest ones.

[dann2707]

Right, so here's the deal!

Back at home in the computer I have a 8500GT graphics card that I want to put in my computer here at Uni, only the problem is I can't just remove it from the computer at home due to the fact there isn't a Video port in the motherboard at home, it's a really cheap one.

Is there any super cheap graphics card that the computer at home can use? Literally not looking at spending much money at all. Or any other ways to get past this dilemma, I really really want to play CSS and TF2 here!

Or if all else fails, a video card thats better than the 8500gt, and preferrably has HDMI input.

Edited February 1, 2011 by dann2707

[Muel]

I had an ATI 4670. Got it for about £50. It was very impressive for the price. Next step up would be a GTX460 or 560 I reckon, anything higher might be limited by your CPU.

[dann2707]

Just had a look on eBay, still a bit too pricey for me

What are these like?

Edited February 1, 2011 by dann2707

[Matt Vandart]

Anyone know what 'dwm.exe' process is on my computer?

[ZeroMatt]

Is basically the GUI on Vista and W7.

[Matt Vandart]

Is basically the GUI on Vista and W7.

And that is?

[MadManMike]

And that is?

What you're looking at right now.

[JD™]

And that is?

Graphical User Interface, if you want a useful answer.

[forteh]

Ive been playing with my computer tonight....

Reinstalled windows onto a fresh 20gig partion, using the remaining 130gig of that drive for basic storage (not a lot of IO writes) and using the other 150gig drive to install games and other stuff onto.

All latest drivers and updates, installed bloodbowl and played a couple of matches without any problems, so far so good. Time will tell if it has solved my problem though

[Muel]

Just had a look on eBay, still a bit too pricey for me

What are these like?

Tried to reply on Facebook, but my internet is being awful tonight so looks like my replies aren't getting through. Basically that card is more for HTPC purposes. It'll handle HD video whilst using a tiny amount of electricity and kicking out a tiny amount of heat, but it's not exactly gutsy. I'd say a 4650 is your minimum, or buy a cheapo card to stick in the PC at home and bring the 8500GT up.

Ive been playing with my computer tonight....

Reinstalled windows onto a fresh 20gig partion, using the remaining 130gig of that drive for basic storage (not a lot of IO writes) and using the other 150gig drive to install games and other stuff onto.

All latest drivers and updates, installed bloodbowl and played a couple of matches without any problems, so far so good. Time will tell if it has solved my problem though

Have you been coshing it much though Ed? Tried running Prime95 while also running a GPU intensive benchmark? Just to kick seven bells out of the PSU. I'd recomend the Unigine Tropics benchmark alongside Prime95 personally. The Unigine Heaven benchmark is also a good one, but it's far more demanding so the framerates won't go as high as with Tropics.

Edited February 2, 2011 by Muel

[forteh]

Have you been coshing it much though Ed? Tried running Prime95 while also running a GPU intensive benchmark? Just to kick seven bells out of the PSU. I'd recomend the Unigine Tropics benchmark alongside Prime95 personally. The Unigine Heaven benchmark is also a good one, but it's far more demanding so the framerates won't go as high as with Tropics.

Ive not done any load benchmarking, it was never particularly highly loaded when it would crash.

The recommended specs for bloodbowl are dual core cpu/256mb DX9 gpu (8000 series geforce)/2 gb ram. Seeing as I over double the recommended spec, I dont think its related to working the hardware too hard, rather a cock up with drivers/installation.

Will try running some benchmarks and see what happens, realistically playing over time will see if the error is thrown up

[forteh]

Error is still occurring

Need to try to source a bigger psu to see if that will eliminate the problem - gah!

edit: just run some of the tests you recommended, names tropics benchmark maxed out with 4 threads of p95 running aswell. 10 minutes solid and not a single glitch.

GPU got up to 82°C but no errors anywhere, I know 10 minutes isnt really long enough to prove anything but thats 10 minutes using as much power as I can and it didnt even flinch. I really dont know whats wrong with this fecking computer

FWIW just before the textures corrupt, the game freezes for perhaps a second and then the corruption occurs and it continues from there; do you think it could be a I/O issue with one of the drives?

Edited February 3, 2011 by forteh

[Muel]

In terms of total power used, that PSU should be fine Ed. You've got an i3 and a GTX260 right? I've got a 965BE C2 (140w) and two 5830s all overclocked to their limit running on a Corsair 650w. Doesn't even get the PSU properly warmed up.

[forteh]

In terms of total power used, that PSU should be fine Ed. You've got an i3 and a GTX260 right? I've got a 965BE C2 (140w) and two 5830s all overclocked to their limit running on a Corsair 650w. Doesn't even get the PSU properly warmed up.

According to the antec psu calculator site thingy I should only need something like 460w, its really weird how it can run gpu and cpu at 100% load for 10 minutes without glitching at all. The 460w is calculated with all case fans and 3HDDs running, I currently only have 2HDDs and no fans running so should be well below that.

Perhaps I should give a little more insight into my hard disks, see if that sheds any light on it.....

I have a 160gig sata WD drive that Ive been using for the last 3-4 years and never had a problem with it, keep it regularly checked and defragged; its partitioned for 20gig OS space and 140gig storage space.

About a year ago my OHs HDD fell over (maxtor 160gig sata) and instead of just reinstalling windows she put a new disk in. When I got the i3 I salvaged the maxtor, formatted, checked and installed windows and all games onto it and used the older WD for storage, since then Ive been having these problems on and off.

Following my fresh install the other night, I put XP onto the WD on the 20gig partion and installed bloodbowl onto the maxtor and problems happening still. Maybe I should reinstall bloodbowl onto the other partition of the WD and just use the maxtor for storage. IIRC the maxtor dropped a couple of sectors, I just formatted and I assume it flagged up the bad sectors to ignore.

Worth a shot?

Edited February 3, 2011 by forteh

[Krisboats]

According to the antec psu calculator site thingy I should only need something like 460w, its really weird how it can run gpu and cpu at 100% load for 10 minutes without glitching at all. The 460w is calculated with all case fans and 3HDDs running, I currently only have 2HDDs and no fans running so should be well below that.

Worth a shot?

Have you thought about it being a faulty motherboard? Seems as though you've tried most other things, so hardware wise it'll either be power, graphics or motherboard. Have you tried a different graphics card to see if it still continues? Just seems a bit funny that your graphics card would work fine until you upgraded other things.

[forteh]

Have you thought about it being a faulty motherboard? Seems as though you've tried most other things, so hardware wise it'll either be power, graphics or motherboard. Have you tried a different graphics card to see if it still continues? Just seems a bit funny that your graphics card would work fine until you upgraded other things.

I hadnt considered it could be the motherboard, seems weird that its such an intermittant faulty though. Ive only got an old 7900gs that I can try, if reinstalling onto the other drive doesnt help than Ill try that. Its hard to pinpoint a single thing as being faulty in this case because I changed cpu/ram/mobo/hdd at the same time. It may even be a fault with the gpu, that said I dont recall it happening in the month before I upgraded the cpu.

edit: Ive still got a months warrenty on the motherboard!

edit again: swapped the install over to the WD drive and played a solid 2 hours or bloodbowl without a single glitch, fingers crossed it was the other drive a bit b0rked

Edited February 3, 2011 by forteh

[dann2707]

I've been looking into my CPU and over clocking, it's the Athlon II x2 245 which is 2.9Ghz standard. Multiple threads on various forums show people overclocking them up to 2.6Ghz and it being stable, even on stock cooling. I wouldn't mind giving this a go but soon as I get into BIOS my mind goes blank and I'm not quite sure which bits to fiddle with and what not to in terms of Voltage and multipliers and all that.

Any help? cheers!

[Leistonbmx]

You want to go from 2.9 to 2.6?