Killed by blue screens,trashing my pc and getting a new one?

Inti · Post by **Inti** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 4:57 pm

Hi, I'm from rome I've been reading this forum a lot before choosing to write something, but I'm desperate.
I got a PIV 3,2 ghz with an asus p5gd2x motherboard socket 775, since I tried to install my new pulsar 2 i started getting tons of blue screens (irq not less or equal, page fault on nonpaged area and many more).
I also have a uad 1 pci card and a liquid mix plugged on a pci-firewire card.
I tried to switch off acpi apic support but nothing really changed, it took ages to assign different irqs to each card, but when I finally did I kept on gettin blue screens every hour on my cubase sx3 (running under scope 4 platform).
The program Pc doctor says I got some problems with my Pci ports, but doesn't really say what.
I disabled all the usb ports and all the useless things, It's been over a month now watching blue screens, I really feel that the only thing I can do is change my motherboard (I also tried to install xp sp2 in Pc standard mode, but I got other blue screens during the installation).
I'm desperate, don't know if I even should change the whole pc setup, cause it doesn't appear to be a solution...
whoever can help me is really welcome.
thanks
Inti

ScofieldKid · Post by **ScofieldKid** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 8:56 pm

Ouch. We feel your pain.

Usually when I start seeing problems like that, I try verify the proper working order of the:

1. memory
2. CPU
3. power supply
4. video card

I know that's not much help. The one that is hardest is the power supply, because although you never expect it to be the problem, it can be really hard to figure out. If you have spare parts around for all o those, you can swap, and try again. Sometimes it is the case that the video card is drawing too much power, things like that. But... the most often problem I have seen is bad memory modules.

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 12:48 am

you just forgot heat on your list...

one thing I don't understand
...I also have a uad 1 pci card and a liquid mix plugged on a pci-firewire card...
is that an external box that maps PCI to Firewire ?
never knew about that, but in case it exists, the driving software may confuse the 'real' PCI bus

cheers, Tom

kylie · Post by **kylie** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 4:13 am

I did not find a board named like that, but those who are named similar don't seem to have IEEE1394 onboard, so an additional card is necessary for using a firewire device. they should, anyway, not issue too much heat, and the liquid mix is an external box. the uad may be another source of heat, well.

I' try removing all pci cards and wait for bluescreens. if they continue to happen, there is some serious thing going on. then I'd plug one card after the other and watch the whole thing.
maybe you can indeed a faulty card or even a faulty slot. if possible, try reseating/reordering the cards.

-greetings, markus-

you don't happen to have the via board, do you?

valis · Post by **valis** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 4:17 am

Right click on my computer (or whatever you named it) and choose 'manage', go to 'device manager' on left, view>"Resources by Type", then list your irqs and devices here as you see them listed.

Also verify that you don't have any devices in your studio routed to Scope via midi (either through sequencer or being directly connected to your dsp card's midi i/o) that use ACTIVE SENSING.

Inti · Post by **Inti** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 5:38 am

I used to have an mbox installed before pulsar 2 and collect a few blue screens once every week, but I was used to it.
Since I bought pulsar 2 and then uad 1 things got way worse.
I tried to unplug everything but the audiocard and the video card but i keep on getting different bluescreens, now I'll try to see what happens getting back on the mbox setup...
A pc tester told m ther's a problem on the parallel ports.
If i ever had to get a new mobo, what should I get to make everything work perfectly (pulsar2 pci-liquid mix firwire-uad1 pci)?

kylie · Post by **kylie** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 5:50 am

Inti wrote:A pc tester told m ther's a problem on the parallel ports.

do you use it? and if not, did you try to disable it in the BIOS?

-greetings, markus-

Inti · Post by **Inti** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 9:57 am

I'm supposed to plug the firewire-pci card and the uad 1 on them, do you think I should try to disable them and see if it heals something?

kylie · Post by **kylie** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 12:28 pm

the parallel port is the one you usually connect a printer to. it's often named LPT too. I doubt that you hook the uad and the firewire card to it, since they are plugged into the pci slots. what exactly did the tech guy suspect?. you mentioned he told you the pci slots could be problematic. if so, you should try to run the cards in another board if possible. if you unplug all cards but the gfx, and still have problems, the audio cards are probably fine, and the problem could be still one of the named ones (board, cpu, memory, and not to forget the psu).
invite the tech guy for a pizza and vino, and let him make some tests...

-greetings, markus-

Post by **garyb** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 6:33 pm

that's good advice. if you are seeing blue screens, there's some kind of hardware malfunction. the fact that you already had blue screens means that you had an issue to begin with, memory, motherboard, graphics card or power supply....

Inti · Post by **Inti** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 2:36 pm

I tried to switch the lpt port off from Bios, but same stuff...
The problem starts usually from cubase telling me to save my song with a different name coz there's some kind of error, and then everything starts to crash one after the other...
I'll ty to install nuendo but I doubt is the software's fault.
I just changed my hard disk and we tested Ram and they both were fine.
I'm quite shure it's the Mobo, I'll try to get a new one.
can you suggest any kind of motherboard that could fit my needs?
It's my last chance before built a brand new pc....
Thanks to everyone for the help, really.
Inti

Shroomz~> · Post by **Shroomz~>** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 3:29 pm

If you haven't already checked the graphics card & PSU as others have suggested here, you really should try to do that. If you don't have those parts in another computer or whatever you could buy a couple of cheap ones for testing. I've personally had crazy blue screen crashing systems because of a faulty gfx card & on a few occasions because of faulty PSUs.

Post by **hubird** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 8:16 am

a pc still is cheaper...

next to nothing · Post by **next to nothing** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 8:27 am

have you upgraded motherboard drivers and bios? i recently reinstalled windows and had bluescreens all over. Updated the mobo drivers and all was fine.

Post by **garyb** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 10:05 am

hubird wrote:a pc still is cheaper...

broken macs don't work well either.

Post by **hubird** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 3:10 pm

garyb wrote:
hubird wrote:a pc still is cheaper...
broken macs don't work well either.

stardust wrote:Seriously. i thought you can still put them in a glass cabinet

I can't reply here, it would be very OT (hm, or not?), but I warn you, I will come back

(Still I have that feeling...would this problem manifest itself on the same way on a mac?).
So I decided not to reply.