Purple Screen in XP after Vista 64-bit Install

[Epicus]

Hey guys,

I don't know what really happened. I've been having a lot of issues with my PC since I built it a month ago.

Abit IP-35E
Q6600@2.4GHz w/ Stock
MCI GeForce8800GT OC
Rosewell 750W PSU
OCZ Vista Upgrade PC6400 5-6-6-18 DDR2 2x2GB
WD 160GB 7200 RPM SATA

After I put my PC together, I installed Windows XP, had issues with a black screen appearing during games. My problem seemed to go away (after days of troubleshooting with other techforums help) after I uninstalled .NET Framework 2.0 and 3.0. After this issue was almost a dead topic, I for some reason got an awesome brainstorm idea, "Hey let's see how Vista Ultimate 64-bit Edition ran on my PC" since I do a lot of photo editing and whatnot. Well, I went ahead and did that, I dual-booted. After the dual-boot, I set up Vista, everything runs smooth, got a 5.9 on Windows Experience, and then I wanted to use some other programs and play some games that I didn't have installed on the 64-bit, and Windows froze at splash screen. After reboot, it just kind of 'lagged' through the Splash screen with low framerate, and I was able to get into XPx86, and everything seems to be going okay... and then during a game I was playing, I get a purple screen. (This was in XP, not Vista). This purple screen had no writing, no menus, just a solid lavender screen. In the background I could still hear my menu and games going on, and it seemed like the opacity of the purple screen was 98%, for once in a while a glitch or something will shine through.

I updated the drivers to the newest form, and then tried again, and it all seemed fine for a few days, then when I was playing another game I got the screen again. Then I restarted, and was in the process of unloading the drivers, and I purple screened on Device Manager.

After reading a few forums, some said the dual-boot caused it, so I tried to follow some steps to uninstall Vista, but the shell line can't be run from a non-64-bit platform.

I think my question is, does anyone know what is causing this purple screen issue? I haven't had this occur yet while using Vista, but then again, I don't have any real games or programs installed on it.

And another question would be: is there a way to remove Vista 64-bit edition, or am I stuck with no choice but format both partitions?

Thanks for any help.

 

[roadrunner197069]

You can format the vista partition easy. And I think your PSU is the culprit. Rosewill is junk.

 

[Epicus]

You can format the vista partition easy. And I think your PSU is the culprit. Rosewill is junk.

Formatting the Vista partition wouldn't solve my problem, because it links itself to my previous XP boot. And other ppl talk about Rosewill being junk, but it's still $150 PSU and unless there's proof, you can't just point fingers based on name.

 

[roadrunner197069]

Well formatting probably wont help but you can do it without messing things up.

I dont care if you paid $15000 for a PSU, if it is of junk quality it wont hang with todays game.


Your problem sounds like a classic underpowered system.

Sorry I cant wave some magical answer at you. You wanted help and I offered it.

 

[evongugg]

Test the memory with memtest86+.

For laughs, change that lavender to another color:
http://www.petri.co.il/change_bsod_color.htm

 

[Shadow703793]

^ Agreed. The PSU is cr@p. Get a good top tire PSU listed here:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=108088
I recomend PP&C 610 or Corsair 520HX/550VX/450VX

 

[piratepast40]

I don't understand how you can immediately jump on the power supply as the culprit when it worked fine before the Vista install and the problem only occurs in XP. I'm not necessarily disputing your assertion, just asking for quantitative justification. I find it hard to believe that troubleshooting power supplies is a matter of parts replacement versus component testing to determine whatis actually wrong.

Epicus, check your voltages in bios and speedfan. Then use speedfan to graph voltages under load. At the very least, you get an indication if voltages are in spec and thus if the power supply is holding up under load - at least under the limitations of the software and monitors.

 

[roadrunner197069]

I don't understand how you can immediately jump on the power supply as the culprit when it worked fine before the Vista install and the problem only occurs in XP. I'm not necessarily disputing your assertion, just asking for quantitative justification. I find it hard to believe that troubleshooting power supplies is a matter of parts replacement versus component testing to determine whatis actually wrong.

Epicus, check your voltages in bios and speedfan. Then use speedfan to graph voltages under load. At the very least, you get an indication if voltages are in spec and thus if the power supply is holding up under load - at least under the limitations of the software and monitors.

Probably because he is only playing games and such "stressing" in XP. He said he dont have any real games or apps on Vista. If he did when they stress it would cause problems. Pretty much when you have a crappy brand PSU and you have trouble in games, its a no brainer what the problem is. You would know that if you had very much experience.

 

[Epicus]

Well I just had the problem occur under Vista. Although instead of lavender BSOD, my screen just went black, and I was hardly stressing the PC. I was idling with a game menu screen open. With Speedfan and BIOS, my PSU never drops between the recommended voltages by my mobo company.

CPU Core: 1.18V
DDR2 Voltage: 1.97V
CPU VTT Voltage: 1.18V
MCH 1.25V Voltage: 1.32V
ATX 12+V: 12.21V
ATX +3.3V: 3.33V

What I don't understand is if this company can't even supply a PSU that works on a computer, as everyone is so stating, why are they still in business? Because they scam people into buying their PSU?

And replying to the BSOD color changer... I don't think it's even a genuine BSOD, like I said, it has no text. It's just a solid lavender screen, othertimes just solid black.

 

[roadrunner197069]

Rosewill works great for your basic internet machine. I have seen 100s of posts about problems with rosewill in gaming machines.

Its not software since you tried XP and Vista. So it is hardware. Either your card is chit "unlikely" or your PSU isnt up to the task. You can get a good namebrand PSU in the $60 range. Or you can Rma your card and pay shipping both ways and still have the same problem.

 

[roadrunner197069]

Ya tipical underpower GPU results. Change that PSU before you go crazy. Sell that Rosewill on Ebay.

 

[bobbknight]

Agreed can the PSU, get atleast a tier 3 or better.





"What kind of homosexual are you Nancy, thats not purple, thats muave."

 

[Epicus]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139001

I am considering this one, although the price is kind of steep, I do not want to go through something like this again, if this is indeed the problem...

 

[San Pedro]

Hey I have something for you to try. Install all the updates to vista, including sp1 and directx 9 (yes 9). Then just search for your game and program executables and run them (you may want to move your saved game data from the windows xp user folder to the windows vista user folder). This should allow you to play all your games and run all your programs. This is what I do, and I don't have a problem.

Here's a cheaper corsair to check out: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139004

 

[randomizer]

If modular cables are of the utmost importance, the HX-520 is the PSU for you. Otherwise the VX-550 (which is not modular) is somewhat better for high power-drawing systems. Your system is not really "high power-drawing" so either PSU is good enough. I can speak from personal experience that the HX-520 is very quiet, and very stable. The VX-550 should be similar.

 

[Zorg]

I don't know exactly what your problem is, but at $119.00 the PC Power & Cooling S610EPS EPS12V 610W Continuous @ 40°C is very good. And Rosewill generally speaking suck, their high wattage ones are supposedly better, I wouldn't buy one with the other good alternatives.

 

[RetiredChief]

On monitoring PSU voltages: As piratepast40 said you can graph the voltages. What I would do is monitor the temps & voltages run a small program to stress Graphic card (ie I load ATI tools and run 3D view) Look for abnormal drop on +12 and/or excessive temp. Run a program like TAT, or orthos to stress CPU/Memory Note VCore1 (CPU) and Vcore2 (V Dram) for abnormal drop.

NOTE: Monitoring +12 V only monitors one Rail in a multirail PSU, ie +12 V1 could be fine while unmonitored rail such as +12V2 to GPU drops below 11.6 when loaded.

You were not specific in what fixed you previous problems.

Have you run a good test of your memory, as mentioned memtest86 from a boot CD. I didn't look up your memory so I assume it is 2.0 as your VDram voltage is 1.97V.

On Dual boot - I prefer loading operating system on 1st HDD then disconnecting HDD. Install 2nd operating system on 2nd HDD. Reconnect 1st HDD and using Bios select for selecting which HDD to boot from. I have 2 pairs of Raid0 HDD, one with XP, the other with Vista 32 Bus. During post I can hit F12 and select which OP to use - NO Cross link software boot menu

 

[lcaley]

This is kind of late, but if you decide you want to get rid of one of your OS's at some point, you should know I tried that a while back, and expected it to go very smoothly, but long story short, it didn't.

Here's the thread where this happened so you may see how NOT to do it lol.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/236939-44-dual-booting

Hope this helps, good luck with your system.

Cheers

 

[Epicus]

On monitoring PSU voltages: As piratepast40 said you can graph the voltages. What I would do is monitor the temps & voltages run a small program to stress Graphic card (ie I load ATI tools and run 3D view) Look for abnormal drop on +12 and/or excessive temp. Run a program like TAT, or orthos to stress CPU/Memory Note VCore1 (CPU) and Vcore2 (V Dram) for abnormal drop.

NOTE: Monitoring +12 V only monitors one Rail in a multirail PSU, ie +12 V1 could be fine while unmonitored rail such as +12V2 to GPU drops below 11.6 when loaded.

You were not specific in what fixed you previous problems.

Have you run a good test of your memory, as mentioned memtest86 from a boot CD. I didn't look up your memory so I assume it is 2.0 as your VDram voltage is 1.97V.

On Dual boot - I prefer loading operating system on 1st HDD then disconnecting HDD. Install 2nd operating system on 2nd HDD. Reconnect 1st HDD and using Bios select for selecting which HDD to boot from. I have 2 pairs of Raid0 HDD, one with XP, the other with Vista 32 Bus. During post I can hit F12 and select which OP to use - NO Cross link software boot menu

This is actually a very interesting approach to dual-booting, had this been my 4th or 5th time installing Vista I may have done this... however I still lack another HDD in my system atm.

The only thing that fixed my previous problems was uninstalling .NET Framework 2.0 and 3.0. I know it doesn't make any sense, and it still makes no sense to me. But I had black screen issues, couldn't play any games on my PC. Uninstalled these and I was able to run COD4 and Witcher on my PC for 15+ hrs straight with no issues. Then everything seemed to go to hell once I installed Vista Ultimate 64-bit on a different partition.

According to the website, this cheap value RAM from OCZ is supposed to run at minimum 1.8V, and when I was diagnosing a black screen issue I had a month back, a couple of folks on different forums had recommended that OCZ memory always run a lil' extra voltage, closer to 2.0, so I had upped it's voltage just a little bit so that now it runs at 1.97V.

I'll try running some stress tests again, but usually I can never get my PC to purple/black screen via this method. If I load up a game though, it comes within 10 minutes.

Edit: Ran memtestx86 from boot CD, there were no issues.

Edit2:
Two photos here. One from HDtach and the other a comparison between SpeedFan vs abit EQ. I got some weird readings on the +12V, unfortunately I had everything I could, checked, in the options of SpeedFan here.

Do these results seem typical to you? It seems like both the burst and Average read speed is SLOW.

SpeedFan says my +12V only running at 6.49, this seems off to me, since abitEQ telling me 12.21V...
abit EQ has been giving me warnings every so often while I've been running HD Tach, but everytime I go to see which voltage is below/above standard, it disappears. Trying to provoke it.

 

[lcaley]

The voltages in speedfan are not very reliable, but neither is any application that comes with your mobo usually (in my experience at least) so I'd guess your +12V is somewhere between the two given values. Try keeping speedfan running while you play a game to see if it drops lower than 6.49 when your graphics card is pulling from that +12v heavily.
If your screen goes purple, I'd try taking a screenshot of the graph(it shouldn't be funny colors) and saving it in paint. Alt tab out of your game (you'll have to make sure before you start your game that the speedfan graph is on the screen behind your game), push printscr. Open the run command with "win key + r" type mspaint and push enter. Push "ctrl+v" to paste, "ctrl + s" to save, type the filename you want to save it as. Push enter. Restart your computer and look at your voltages in the screenshot (and to see if you can blindly save a screenshot ).

 

[Epicus]

Well I have an Enermax Noisetaker 485W that I used with my old PC... I just swapped my Rosewill out for it, I will see if it resolves my issue any.

Edit: Well, the minute I plugged in my PC, abitEQ started telling me my fans weren't working, however they were all spinning. I quickly restarted my PC, and disabled the fan control for abitEQ, now counting on SpeedFan to do the work for me :/ So far, my Vcore;1.18V, +12V still reading at 6.49V, AVcc: 3.26V. Also now using this Enermax, CPU-Z is recognizing my processor clocked at 2394.4MHz, when with my other PSU it was more around 2450 MHz.

I also reset my heatsink and redid my thermal paste since I thought 65C is quite high for 90% load@5minutes, but it doesn't appear to have changed anything

I love building computers when they work, I don't mind troubleshooting simple mistakes and tweaking it, but this is just shooting blindly, and the only forseeable future I have is "Where the money at?"

 

[randomizer]

abitEQ is more likely to be accurate than Speedfan, for two reasons:

1) Your system simply wouldn't function a 6.49V for the 12V rail, most fans would be barely moving with that.

2) abitEQ reads from the proprietry uGuru chip, which functions as a clock generator as well as a temp/voltage reporter (among other things), and is something that most programs aren't able to interface with well.

 

[Epicus]

Well I haven't encountered any purple screens as of yet, but when I booted my PC up this morning I got a BIOS error saying my CPU is no longer good or has been changed. I just rebooted and the msg went away, tried booting into Windows XP and PC froze at splash. Restarted, finally got into Windows, then uGuru, which loaded before I turned my PC off, no longer boots. Just get a friendly reminder from Dr.Watson.

 

[kwanasek]

Recap:

Your original problems only happened when loading down the CPU with a game?

Swapped out powersupply didn't fix problem

Noticed that your CPU runs at 65C at 90% load.

Some thoughts:
First, the replacement power supply your using is way underpowered.
BFG tech requires a minimum of 425W PCI Express-compliant system power supply with a combined 12V current rating of 28A or more (Minimum system power requirement based on a standard PC configured with an Intel® Core™2 Extreme X6800 processor). The rating of most vendors power supplies are more of a guideline than absolute. The 450 watt PSU you are testing with is under powered. Always go 20% more watts than your combined CPU and Video card power requirments.

A total of 750 should be plenty for your system but only as long as it can supply 28A minimum on 12V. So it is possible your PSU is the problem. Also, overheating of the PSU can cause this type of issue. Does the Rosewill have a fan control on it? If it does, make sure it is running at full speed. Overide the auto speed adjust if you can.

I would also keep an eye on the CPU temp. I start getting nervous anytime temps around 65C show up. Heat kills.

Also, you might have pooched your RAM by heating it up with over voltage.

In the future, resist the urge to OC and OV your equipment until your confident that the system surives burn in. There are never any gaurentees that you won't damage components buy running them even a little over factory spec. If you want to play, sometimes you pay.

 

[Epicus]

Not that it makes much of a difference, but the PSU I swapped it out for is actually a 485W, not 450. I am using an MSI, not BFG, and it meets the 28A minimum on a 12V.

The Rosewill does not have a fan control on it, despite it being such a waste of my money.

I know that for Intel anything above 65C is getting scary, but I never reached these temps unless I put it under 90%+ load, so I reset the heatsink, and after running at 100% load for 30min, my CPU never went above 63C, idles at ~45C, so it's ok for now, I think.

I did a memtest on my RAM, and there were no errors. I don't think I 'pooched' it in any manner.

In the future, I maybe had intentions of overclocking this thing just a lil' bit and see how it ran, but all I did was raise the voltage by a few to see if it resolved my power stability issues, as recommended by other PC enthusiasts. According to OCZ websites, the RAM has a minimum and maximum voltage, and I haven't even come close to hitting the max voltage yet.

This PSU I swapped the Rosewill out for was never meant as a written in stone solution, but it is a good temporary solution to see if I still get the same error.

Recap:
Built a new PC:
------------------------------------------
Abit IP-35E
Q6600@2.4GHz w/ Stock
MSI GeForce8800GT OC(stock) (169.21)
Rosewell 750W PSU
OCZ Vista Upgrade PC6400 5-6-6-18 DDR2 2x2GB @ 2.0V
WD 160GB 7200 RPM SATA
------------------------------------------
CPU Core: 1.18V
DDR2 Voltage: 1.97V
CPU VTT Voltage: 1.18V
MCH 1.25V Voltage: 1.32V
ATX 12+V: 12.21V
ATX +3.3V: 3.33V
------------------------------------------

After building this PC, I had issues with monitor shutting off during games. I uninstalled .NET Framework 2.0 and 3.0 and never saw this issue again.

Two weeks after stable PC running and gaming, I picked up a copy of Vista Ultimate 64-bit and installed it on a separate partition. Since then, I've had severe stability issues with my PC. When playing games, my screen would go solid purple (in XP) or shut off (Vista), but I could still interact with Windows, just no visual. After quickly restarting and booting Windows, I went to change driver, from XP desktop, immediately black screened.

I posted on this forum here, and was told it was my PSU, so I swapped my Rosewill 750W PSU out with my old Enermax Noisetaker II 485W (EG495P-VE). Since then, Windows XP has failed to boot twice, and my BIOS said that my CPU changed or is no longer working which was later resolved by just restarting it again. Other than those issues, my PC has yet to purple or black screen, but I'm sure it's only imminent.

Aside from PSU, no one has any solutions for me, and even saying that it's the PSU is just a shot in the dark because monitoring the voltage of my PC has been stripped due to the poor quality of ABIT boards and their sensors.


Edit: I decided to check EventViewer to see what Windows has logged and I see two reoccuring errors, related to the problem I have no idea.

Event ID: 11
The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk0\D.

Event ID: 1003
Error code 000000ea, parameter1 8a3bd020, parameter2 89aa6ef0, parameter3 89aa4b30, parameter4 00000001.

And here is the error msg I got before uninstalling .NET Framework 2.0 and 3.0 logged:

Event ID: 108
The driver nv4_disp for the display device \Device\Video0 got stuck in an infinite loop. This usually indicates a problem with the device itself or with the device driver programming the hardware incorrectly. Please check with your hardware device vendor for any driver updates.


I apologize ahead of time for any 'smart-ass' retorts made in this response, my intention is just to clarify points.