Decent Tower PC - all games crashing

[GavAsh]

Hey Guys,

I'm having a fairly annoying problem with my Tower PC where no games I try to play work. They all seem to freeze/crash/lag/flicker black/or not load at all.
The catch is that not 12 months ago I was playing these same games on this system just fine. (I stopped for Year 12 studies). Now no games at all will work.

I updated the NVidia drivers, thinking that that was at fault, and that didn't work. I then tried to install the drivers with the clean install method, didn't fix it either.

System Specs are as follows:
Intel Core i7 920 @2.67Ghz.
6GB of Memory (RAM)
DirectX v11
NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 (Total Available Graphics Memory 3835mb, Dedicated Video Memory 1024mb, Shared System Memory 2811mb)
--Let me know if you need to know anything else

The Games I have which all don't work are:
Just Cause 2
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3
Call of Duty Black Ops
Driver San Fransisco
Burnout Paradise
Portal 2
Need for Speed Undercover
Sims 3

Crash information: Generally the game will open up, get to the main menu, and I'll press "start game", and it will either freeze on the loading page, become completely unresponsive with a black screen, or it will load into the game and lag till it crashes. Burnout Paradise specifically starts showing game elements and flickering before crashing. I found that I could get Modern Warfare to run once, it lagged quite a bit but was slightly playable. I walked around a bit to see what happened, and the whole game froze every few moments. But then I walked into a room and as soon as I stopped facing the outside area the game worked perfectly. No idea why that happened, but perhaps that helps diagnosis
The settings for each game remained on what they were when they last worked 12 months ago, but I've tried to lower the settings completely and it doesn't work.

When Modern Warfare 3 crashed it complained about a Direct X problem. When Driver Sanfransisco crashed I was presented with a tooltip saying "Display driver NVIDIA Windows Kernel Mode Driver, Version 306.97 stopped responding and has successfully recovered."

I upgraded to Windows 8 (64x) yesterday, but the problem occurred just the same before and after the upgrade. I was previously on Windows 7 (64x).

If you could help me in any way, that would be so great. I've spent ages trying to fix this to no avail. Next stage is wipe the drive and reinstall everything

Thanks so much in advance,

Gavin

 

[13thmonkey]

run memtest for at least one cycle, or run with 1 stick and see if it crashes, repeat for each stick.

 

[GavAsh]

run memtest for at least one cycle, or run with 1 stick and see if it crashes, repeat for each stick.

Haven't heard of memtest before, how do I do that?

 

[Sunius]

Download the autoinstaller from www.memtest.org and install it into the flash drive. Then boot from it when turning on the computer.

 

[GavAsh]

Download the autoinstaller from www.memtest.org and install it into the flash drive. Then boot from it when turning on the computer.

Thanks, I'll give that a go and see what it says

To boot from a flash drive do I need to change something in bios or will it automatically boot from the memory stick? Or is there a button I need to hold down?
(Sorry I haven't done any of this before )

 

[Sunius]

Change the boot order to boot from USB first in bios . There's also a button if you prefer it, but you'll have to look it up on your motherboard manual - it's different on every single one of them.

 

[GavAsh]

Change the boot order to boot from USB first in bios . There's also a button if you prefer it, but you'll have to look it up on your motherboard manual - it's different on every single one of them.

Great thanks Sunius! Its running now I think I'll take a photograph of the results and post them here or something

 

[13thmonkey]

i'd try just gaming with one stick at a time, if it starts to work better you'll learn which stick is bad. Although it also sounds GPU ish. What temps is your gpu and cpu running at? realtemp should help, or rivatuner for the gpu.

 

[GavAsh]

i'd try just gaming with one stick at a time, if it starts to work better you'll learn which stick is bad. Although it also sounds GPU ish. What temps is your gpu and cpu running at? realtemp should help, or rivatuner for the gpu.

Sorry to have to ask you guys to slow down on the complicated bits, but I'm not really sure what a "stick" is? Is that referring to RAM? I have no idea :S

But once the Memtest finishes and I post the results, I'll have a look at realtemp and rivatuner. Though I'm worried I won't be able to monitor the temperature at the point the game crashes, cause the computer becomes pretty unresponsive

 

[13thmonkey]

sorry, 1 stick of ram, you'll have 3, the theory is that one has failed.

play in non-full screen mode and have rivatuner open at the same time.

 

[GavAsh]

sorry, 1 stick of ram, you'll have 3, the theory is that one has failed.

play in non-full screen mode and have rivatuner open at the same time.

I'll try a game that has a non-full screen mode, cause I know most that I mentioned are only full screen. I'm excited that you have a theory! So I'll take out sticks of ram and test the games when each one is out?

 

[13thmonkey]

better to test with only one in, it'll creak but it'll work. remember power down, and turn psu off before removing sticks
most games have a windowed mode

 

[GavAsh]

better to test with only one in, it'll creak but it'll work. remember power down, and turn psu off before removing sticks
most games have a windowed mode

Sure mate

Btw, there is a lot of red on the memtest saying failing addresses...will that tell me which stick is bad?

 

[GavAsh]

Here are what I think are the results. This Memtest thing has gone on for well over 5 hours now, and it doesn't seem to say "Complete" or anything. It just starts over and over and over again. I won't cancel it now incase you guys tell me I have to wait till it says its done, but if I don't, please let me know

Thanks, and here is a photo of the screen it shows

 

[Sunius]

Yea your memory is faulty. Ouch. The memory test doesn't ever end - it will loop forever. You now have to open up your PC and take memory test with each stick separately to find out which ones are faulty.

 

[GavAsh]

Yea your memory is faulty. Ouch. The memory test doesn't ever end - it will loop forever. You now have to open up your PC and take memory test with each stick separately to find out which ones are faulty.

Well, as much as that sucks, I'm glad the issue has now been identified! Thanks man! It is now no longer a phantom problem

Before I embark on the removing RAM process...
1. I take out two of the sticks.
2. I boot into Memtest again and let the test run.
3. As you mentioned it runs forever, at what point do I know it has spotted what I need to know, and how do I pinpoint the dodgy stick from the sticks that function properly? What do I look out for?
4. I obviously repeat till I find that tell-tale sign

 

[Sunius]

For #3, you probably wont see any physical signs of the fault, just have one stick of RAM in at a time and try to play a game. If it crashes, that's your faulty stick. If they all cause it to crash, you may even have a faulty GPU.

Make sure you have the power to the PC disconnected before you touch the insides of the case. Also press the ON button on the PC to make sure all electricity has been discharged, you'll probably see the lights flash on then off.

Memory test is much better at checking whether RAM is faulty than gaming on it.

Well, as much as that sucks, I'm glad the issue has now been identified! Thanks man! It is now no longer a phantom problem

Before I embark on the removing RAM process...
1. I take out two of the sticks.
2. I boot into Memtest again and let the test run.
3. As you mentioned it runs forever, at what point do I know it has spotted what I need to know, and how do I pinpoint the dodgy stick from the sticks that function properly? What do I look out for?
4. I obviously repeat till I find that tell-tale sign

4 passes should be enough.

 

[GavAsh]

Memory test is much better at checking whether RAM is faulty than gaming on it.



4 passes should be enough.

So you suggest I do the memtest 3 times on each of the sticks. But what do I see on the memtest that distinguishes it from faulty or fine?

 

[GavAsh]

For #3, you probably wont see any physical signs of the fault, just have one stick of RAM in at a time and try to play a game. If it crashes, that's your faulty stick. If they all cause it to crash, you may even have a faulty GPU.

Make sure you have the power to the PC disconnected before you touch the insides of the case. Also press the ON button on the PC to make sure all electricity has been discharged, you'll probably see the lights flash on then off.

Thanks Fortunately I helped a friend build the computer in the first place so I know my way around taking out the RAM and being safe and all that

Oh I sure hope it isn't a faulty GPU, they are much more expensive.

I originally had a 9500GT in the computer with the GTS 250. I attempted to put an SLI bridge between them. I thought that that was causing the problem, so I took out the 9500GT but it didn't change anything at all.

 

[GavAsh]

All sticks caused crashes in the games
I even tried in safe mode. (MW2)

Does this mean the GPU is faulty? I'll try each RAM stick with the memtest as soon as I know how to tell which one is faulty.

Do you guys have any other ideas? I'll have to take it to a repair shop....

 

[Sunius]

If a memory stick throws an error, it means it is faulty. Even single error is very bad. If a stick is good, it will throw no errors.

 

[GavAsh]

If a memory stick throws an error, it means it is faulty. Even single error is very bad. If a stick is good, it will throw no errors.

Maybe they are all faulty?

 

[13thmonkey]

can you borrow you friends ram and see if that gives the same fault?

unfortunately you nearly always end up needing to swap components in and out and so need spares? it could be memory controller on mobo, very bad luck, requires new mobo, but very very rare.

 

[GavAsh]

can you borrow you friends ram and see if that gives the same fault?

unfortunately you nearly always end up needing to swap components in and out and so need spares? it could be memory controller on mobo, very bad luck, requires new mobo, but very very rare.

I thought RAM had to be a specific "version" cause its not compatible across other motherboards....
I could borrow the RAM from the other computer in our house, but honestly I don't want to get that complicated... :/ How do I know if its even compatible?

 

[13thmonkey]

If it is ddr3 it will be compatible. it might drop to its slowest speed but it will work.

having other PC's makes you lucky as you can swap components until you find the faulty one.

its not complex, you could have an answer in 30mins if you just sat down and did it. what are you concerned about, so we can offer specific help.