My System Becomes Corrupt After a few days.

[frans]

Hi, My system below:

MSI - Diamond K8 Plus.
2 GB Memory Ledgend.
MSI - GeForce 7800GT
LG - DVD Writer
AMD64 3200+ Processor
2 X 320 GB Western D's
1 External 250 Iomega Backup
Microsoft Digital Media Keyboard
Microsoft Laser 6000 Mouse
Creative Audigy (Onboard)

Windows XP SP2
84.XX Nividia Drivers
Defenitely NO VIRUSUS on SYSTEM

I bought Oblivion and installed it with latest patch. After +- 5 Days of playing it simply crashes to the desktop when saving or randomly during the game, Sometimes with an error stating a fault in Oblivion.exe, sometimes nothing. Then after another day or two Windows slows down considerably until it gets to the point where it no longer boots at all.

I allready went and purchased NORTON , updated & scanned, downloaded bitdefender, updated & scanned, Installed AVG, update scanned, used Ad-Aware, used Search & destroy.

By now I'm going loopy 8O so please HELP!!!

 

[marneus]

try disabling windows updates... & move anything that creates a magnetic field (eg speakers) well away from your tower

 

[MasterLee]

Why the 84.xx drivers, the newer drivers are better. I'm runnig 6800 Ultra with the 91.28's and they are fine.
I'd try changing the drivers and do a check disk for errors for starters.
Good luck.

 

[ethel]

This could be a memory problem. Use memtest86 (freely downloadable from the web) to test your RAM.

 

[Houndsteeth]

OK, going out on a limb here. This seriously sounds like data coruption as information is being cached and written to the hard drive(s). I see you have two 320 GB drives listed. Do you have them configured in a RAID array? If so, are you using a hardware or software RAID controller?

If you are not familiar with a RAID aray, it allows you to either take multiple drives and treat them as a single volume (RAID 0), take multiple drives and make them mirror each other (RAID 1), or take multiple drives and treat them as a single volume, but also include parity information on each of the members of the array so you can rebuild the entire volume even if you lose a single drive (RAID 5). For more info, look here.

If you are using the mainboard controller, I would take a good look and see if there is a bios update or driver updates for your mainboard. I would also recommend using the Western Digital formatting utilities if you need to reinstall Windows again. If you are using a controller card, look at updated drivers, or see if your card requires special procedures when formatting an array.

 

[qwertycopter]

Windows won't boot.. so does that mean you never get to the desktop? Do you get a bsod or other error message? If that is the case, try a repair install with your windows disk.

If it does boot but is just slow, check out task manager to see CPU/memory utilization. Is the CPU always around 100%?

Start > Run > type msconfig > startup tab
Check for anything suspicious. Examples include "startup items" that have no name or names that appear to be random letters/numbers or names written in leet-speak (example: "wind0ws"). These startup programs could be spyware.

When is the last time you defragged your hard drive and is it making any noises? What are your temps like (including boot drive temp)?

 

[zenmaster]

And if you are using an Array, I would recommend trying to rebuild the system w/o an array to see if this helps.

I agree it sounds as if disk corruption may be happening and the raid logic may be at fault.

As others suggested, Bios and Driver updates may correct this, but if they dont fix it, try w/o a raid.

 

[4745454b]

I'm with ethel, check the ram. I don't know who Ledgend is, and I don't know how good they are. If the ram is bad, you'll get bad results trying to use the computer. I'd also peek at the powersupply. If it isn't putting out the power it should, you can have lots of bad issues with that also. I use speedfan to check voltage levels, other programs should work also.

 

[ivoryjohn]

You said your system becomes corrupt after several days. If you are using hibernation or suspend over several days, you may need to reboot from time to time. Some drivers don't hibe well. Some background process don't wake up well. If you are suspending with 3d games loaded, they can become corrupt. The fact that your system won't boot at all sounds like either something is corrupting your hardware, or your cmos.

You said absolutely no viruses. Do you include spyware and other system leaches that don't technically fall under the virus umbrella?

 

[MCGTech]

Hi, My system below:

MSI - Diamond K8 Plus.
2 GB Memory Ledgend.
MSI - GeForce 7800GT
LG - DVD Writer
AMD64 3200+ Processor
2 X 320 GB Western D's
1 External 250 Iomega Backup
Microsoft Digital Media Keyboard
Microsoft Laser 6000 Mouse
Creative Audigy (Onboard)

Windows XP SP2
84.XX Nividia Drivers
Defenitely NO VIRUSUS on SYSTEM

I bought Oblivion and installed it with latest patch. After +- 5 Days of playing it simply crashes to the desktop when saving or randomly during the game, Sometimes with an error stating a fault in Oblivion.exe, sometimes nothing. Then after another day or two Windows slows down considerably until it gets to the point where it no longer boots at all.

I allready went and purchased NORTON , updated & scanned, downloaded bitdefender, updated & scanned, Installed AVG, update scanned, used Ad-Aware, used Search & destroy.

By now I'm going loopy 8O so please HELP!!!

I believe you have overheated drives.

I don't know anything about your case, but if it does not have a fan DIRECTLY behind those two HDs I strongly suggest you be sure not to mount them one directly above the other, or even adjacent to optical drives. Even with spacing, add a front fan if you don't have one.

Enable S.M.A.R.T. in bios in order to monitor the drive temperatures. I use PC Wizard to check them from time to time and I'm sure someone can suggest a full-time monitor.

 

[jimw428]

Before you do anything else, run memtest and a good disk testing utility. My favorite for testing disk drives is a DOS based program available on the Hitachi web site. It takes all the Windows guess work out of the process and will test all types of drives.

 

[sweetpants]

I'm just curious, is it not BOOTING or not POSTING...

No post indicates a problem before the Windows Loading screen. If that's the case you're probably not looking at a drive failure, it's possible but not likely. If not posting at all? I would pull memory and see if your motherboard generates beep codes. If not check to make sure the power supply fan is spinning (make sure it's not dead).

If it is POSTing but not getting into Windows, could be corrupt driver, OR hardware. I would ask if you get any blue screen errors, and can you get into safe mode? If you can get into safe mode can you get to the event viewer?
Right Click My Computer
Left Click on Manage
Left Click on Event Viewer and organize by date.
( I think I may have skipped a step but you will know what I'm talking about, I don't have access to the management utility as I am at work)

If nothing in there helps you, I would try updating all your drivers to the latest versions.

In all honesty if it's an error with Oblivion.exe I would think it could be a read/write error with the drives or memory. If you have any kinds of hard drive diagnostics run them. Also, if you suspect you have adware, spyware, and the such try looking into HijackThis.

 

[calyn]

Considering you also mentioned it crashes randomly in Oblivion also when not saving it seems more likely to be a memory problem. I'd run memtest86 first. If that doesn't show any problems the hitachi drive tester is your next best test, it could be the random crashes occur only when loading something from disk, could you confirm that?

 

[frans]

Hard Drives are Cooled by Thermal Coolers, they register at 32 degrees c. I've got a Gigabyte Gas Cooler. (Best part of my PC!!! -23 Degrees on my CPU.)

I scanned the memory and it did not report anything faulty. The only funny thing seem to be that the the benckmark analyzer rates this as high performance memory?

I do not want a raid setup because one potential crash could render both drive's data useless.

I decided to do a rebuild.

1. Completely disasembled my PC.
2. Assembled it with a 200 GB HDD instead of my 320's.
3. Loaded Windows in incremental stages - One driver at a time and then run burntest. No probs.
4. Plugged back the old boot drive and yep - it does not boot.
5. Run a scan on old 320 from 200. No problems found.
6. Formatted both 320's. Reloaded Windows.
7. Again a slowdown.
8. Formatted both 320 Again, loaded Linux & Disk Anni.
9. Disk Anni reported that there is a cache issue on one of my HDD that needed attention.
10. Ripped out both 320's, took them to the supplier.
11. Got angry at supplier.
12. Threaten to sue supplier.
13. Contacted laywer.
14. Supplier personlly deliver new sealed HDD's with appology.
15. Thank you guys for all the help. I personally think that Seagate Sucks.

PS - Can a corrupt file, not a system file -e.g. mp3, jpg, etc-, lead to a general corruption on hard disk drives?

 

[4745454b]

PS - Can a corrupt file, not a system file -e.g. mp3, jpg, etc-, lead to a general corruption on hard disk drives?

I don't see how, unless its being accessed at the time. A data file just sitting on your harddrive shouldn't cause any issues at all. Unless its being accessed by windows, a program, or being used by your registry, it should be happy just sitting there. (ie, if its a .jpg that isn't being used, should be fine. If this .jpg is your background, and its sitting in a corrupted spot on the harddrive, there would be problems.)

 

[Mondoman]

What about ivoryjohn's point (#9)? Video drivers (not to mention other software components) are certainly not bug-free, problems/corruption will accumulate over time, so you should really be rebooting the system once a day.

 

[Mondoman]

Sounds like you may have solved your problem. In any case, for future stress testing, try running PRISM95 (there are options to focus mostly on the CPU or to use a lot of memory).