Wireless glitch - looking for tools

[avarice]

I just recently built a new Core2Duo based system as a fine replacement for my aging P4 Prescot. I will recycle the prescot as a backup chaifing dish to keep mini hotdogs in BBQ sauce warm during football games - but I digress.

The system generally works just fine, and playing City of Heroes/Villians is nearly seamless. The problem comes when I play Dungeons and Dragons online, the load screen gets artifacts, and the whole system goes bonkers with weird polygons and flashing screen - I cannot even play the game, and end up having to reboot as these symptoms persist into the windows session. This is the only game where things act up.

I believe it has something to do with my wireless card, but I do not know of any tools I can use to track conflicts or issues within my system.

The card I am using is the DLINK G520 Ver. B Wireless NIC. And my system specs are:

CPU-E6600 (Stock Cooling)
P5B MB
2GB Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400C4
Antec P180B case
FSPGroup FX600-GLN 600W PS
XFX 7600GT

I am not overclocking, and my CPU temp is very good - only 8 degrees over the MB temp.

Any advice you can give would be greatly appreciated. I am currently using my Prescot box to play DDO - but with football season in full swing, I need to get this resolved so I can heat up my hotdogs and BBQ sauce. (Running gag).


Also - I realize that the hardware is cutting edge (reletively speaking) and that drivers are generally a bit behind the curve in this respect. Is there any tool or website or something out there that you can post your specifications to and have automated e-mails or even updates to drivers as they are released? Just wondering.


Cheers.

 

[Sleepy2]

Check in Start, settings, control panel, administrative tools, computer management, device manager, view, resources by type, interrupt request. Does the wireless nic share an interrupt with the graphics card? If so, something fairly easy to try would be swapping the nic to another pci slot.

 

[wolfman140]

This is a silly thing to ask probably but...I'm assuming you've uninstalled, downloaded the last video driver, then re-installed it? Did you try installing the game itself? I mean it sounds entirely like a graphics card issue but like you said its only that game. Maybe something funky happened during the install?
Some software is just bogus sometimes...for example take BF2 (which is known to be buggy in itself)...On my new conroe comp...It HAS to crash and die when I start playing. Once it does and I restart my computer, i can play for hours. But for whatever reason it always crash and freeze up the first time, then after that it'll never do it again (until I restart my comp or something and playing a couple days of course). I have no idea why...WoW plays just perfectly fine I've ran Dual prime 95 for hours on end with no problems.

 

[avarice]

Sorry - more clarification.

Yes I have installed all available drivers in almost all possible combinations. currently I have all the newest drivers for Video and even a Beta release for the NIC. BIOS and all other elements are up-to date.

As for the IRQ suggestion - I did look into that, and found that the Vidio was on IRQ16 and the NIC was on 23. There were other elements of course on both of those IRQs - but mostly these were related to MB, Chipset, and it's onboard components.

Still looking to see if there are tools for identifying conflicts as they occur - sortof an active monitoring SW. Also if there was a meathod or site to alert to possible driver updates.

Thanks for the advice so far - keep them coming - I am sure we will get this resolved soon.

Cheers.

 

[Sleepy2]

What about the graphic cards temperature? I use Riva Tuner to monitor and tweak my graphics card, it can be downloaded here:
http://downloads.guru3d.com/
Overheating of the gpu can cause those issues.

Also, does that card have a power connector molex? Try putting it onto its own cable run (don't run any other devices off the other plugs on that cable run).

Another thing to look for with drivers is to compare driver files from the card manufacturer with nvidia's driver, check file sizes. Where the latest versions differ try the card assemblers driver. At the site linked above they also have driver cleaner utilities which may assist.

 

[avarice]

To answer a couple of questions and to update on the issue:

What about the graphic cards temperature? 41C Idle - upto 48C load.

Also, does that card have a power connector molex? No Molex on the 7600GT. Power should not be an issue with my PS.

I have replaced the Wireless, as well as moving the box and tested on a wired network (removing HW and SW as needed to isolate the issue). The problem persists. SO - I am now thinking it is not the wireless as I had suspected.

I am starting to think it has something to do with the BIOS or the Chipset - as the most bleeding edge tech I have on this is the MB and CPU. The Video card is stable tech, and the drivers are current. I also tested the memory, and it appears to be 100%.

Any other thoughts?

 

[Doughbuy]

Your system looks rock solid to me... and if other games work, just not D&D, I want to discount hardware from the list... maybe uninstall and reinstall your DX9 drivers. Shooting in the dark, but thats what half of these are.

Also, do a memcheck for the heck of it. Prolly have nothing to do with anything but eh.

 

[avarice]

Well that brings in a new subject for discussion - how do you uninstall and re-install the DX9 drivers. From what I understand Microsoft in their kind and benevolent overlord status makes it very difficult to uninstall - well pretty much anything OS related - including DX.

Please advise.

 

[avarice]

Problem Solved - though not as I had intended.

I did find a way to uninstall DX and got it back to the version on my XP CD (8.1 I believe) - same issue - I did this a few times after installing a couple of different DX9 versions - still the same issues.

Then I got a bit radical. I went looking for a beta release of Windwos Vista - and I found the RC1 release (good until June 2007). After downloading the ISO, Creating a bootable DVD, Installing Vista (easier than I thought), and updateing the nVidia drivers (also beta) - I now have what appears to be a stable and running environment for both of the online games I use. DDO is working without the flickering problem.

What this means is that the hardware was indeed fine. The software was the problem.

Thank you all for the assistance. If you have an extra machine - give Vista a look - it seems pretty sweet - but it's early in the relationship...give it time.

Cheers.