Please help out of ideas

[tedtlogan]

Ok here it is. I traded in my ps3 blu ray collection games and laptop to buy a second hand pc to play guild wars 2. I have since spent 3 full days of time i took off work to play this game trying to get the pc to work. It has been agony because everything seems fine including in stress tests but when i play games it freezes every 5 minutes then starts working again. It makes everything unplayable and frankly i want to rip my hair out. Here is a video i posted on youtube of the problem happening. Notice the text disappearing, it starts to slow up, sound starts to go, then freeze completely. If watch till the end of video you see that it all comes back again then this repeats every 5 min or so. It's like it builds up a backlog of data then has to pause to process it before it will carry on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5C [...] ata_player

Please if you have any suggestions i really would appreciate it. I can't get all my very well looked after equipment back from the 2nd hand store and getting a whole new rig from them is not an easy option as it depends on stock and wether another store may have something similair. Also the pc runs fine for browsing and general use and games are silky smooth with high graphics setting until about 5 mins in then it crashes. Also the fact all the equipment passes stress tests i feel like its just a setting i need to change.

I know its not the game because i have the exact same problem when trying to play star craft 2

Here is my spec

AMD phenom II x6 1055t 2.8GHz
Nvidia GTX 460 2gb
3 x 2gb ddr3 1333mhz ram
asrock m3a ucc motherboard
windows 7

Here is a run down of things I have painstakingly tried to no avail. Also it was a fresh install of windows. It might not seem like alot from the list but this is after many conversations emails research and hours on forums trying to find an answer to my problem. I am not a expert and have limited knowledge so have found it very hard to get as far as i have and have learnt a lot on the way! However i have become extremely disheartened as after 3 solid days a hundred million reboots thousands of variations (it feels) of settings changed. Every time i am just about to think it might just work! It crashes, please please please can someone give me the magic fix im looking for you honestly would make my bloody year i've never done something this aggravating time consuming but in the end ultimately unsuccessful.

Heres the list

- underclocking the cpu
- overclocking the cpu
- changing multiple settings on the cpu to see if it makes a difference like "turbo" setting or "cool and quiet" setting basically any setting i could that didn't look too important or i didnt understand
- turning off cores of my cpu
- turning of each individual core to see if any weren't working
- taking out each individual stick of ram
- trying ram on different bus
- reinstalling drivers for gpu
- trying multiple beta drivers for gpu
- underclocking the gpu
- replacing gpu same problem persists
- running game from different HDD
- trying a different psu
- stress test the cpu was fine
- stress test gpu again fine
- mem test passed
- changing the multiplier on my ram (someone suggested it might not be in sync with my cpu)
- and finally reinstalling windows for the second time in 3 days but still same problem persists

i also thought about motherboard drivers but i didnt think i needed any of these maybe you can tell me different
http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview. [...] =M3A%20UCC

also it blue screened once and i downloaded blue screen viewer to try to tell me what the problem was. After looking i thought maybe its a corrupt system file but a reinstall of windows did nothing

this is what the two red highlighted dump files said


==================================================
Dump File : 091112-27125-01.dmp
Crash Time : 11/09/2012 20:29:24
Bug Check String : KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR
Bug Check Code : 0x0000007a
Parameter 1 : fffff6fc`40007158
Parameter 2 : ffffffff`c00000c0
Parameter 3 : 00000000`b06a5860
Parameter 4 : fffff880`00e2b000
Caused By Driver : volmgrx.sys
Caused By Address : volmgrx.sys+1000
File Description :
Product Name :
Company :
File Version :
Processor : x64
Crash Address : ntoskrnl.exe+7f1c0
Stack Address 1 :
Stack Address 2 :
Stack Address 3 :
Computer Name :
Full Path : C:\Windows\Minidump\091112-27125-01.dmp
Processors Count : 4
Major Version : 15
Minor Version : 7601
Dump File Size : 266,320
==================================================


==================================================
Filename : ntoskrnl.exe
Address In Stack : ntoskrnl.exe+ec542
From Address : fffff800`02c07000
To Address : fffff800`031ef000
Size : 0x005e8000
Time Stamp : 0x4fa390f3
Time String : 04/05/2012 09:18:59
Product Name : Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
File Description : NT Kernel & System
File Version : 6.1.7601.17835 (win7sp1_gdr.120503-2030)
Company : Microsoft Corporation
Full Path : C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
==================================================

thanks for reading looking foward to some fresh ideas!

Dingo07 wrote :

Just a guess, but it seems like the memory is choking it

I would run Resource Monitor and then play, and see what's going on when it chokes


Ok so i ran resource monitor. My cpu is working very hard when it freezes. Also its probably worth knowing i that the freezing will initiate in less time and happen more frequently when there is only 1 x 2gb of ram installed as opposed to 3 x 2gb sticks installed. Is the cpu trying to make up for something the ram isnt doing? If so how do i get the ram to do its job properly?

I decided to repost as i wasn't getting much feedback

 

[Engima]

Have you tried using only two RAM sticks instead of three? What are the temps your getting during idle and when you start playing GW2?

 

[Raiddinn]

Possibly a failing hard drive. Run CHKDSK by going to:
Start
Computer
Right Click C:\
Properties
Tools
Error Checking
Start
Hit yes to do it on next restart
Restart the PC

That could take a while, but it should conclusively prove whether it is or is not a failing hard drive.

Also, by RAM test, what do you mean exactly? If you did the test that is available from inside Windows then there are no guarantees of correct results. Windows itself reserves a huge block of RAM and that part doesn't get tested by the program. If the fault exists inside that area then it would not be revealed.

If you did the Windows one, I would search for Memtest86+ and download that, use an imaging program like ImgBurn to deconstruct the ISO file and copy the contents of it to a CD and then boot with that.

MemTest86+ (at least the last time I checked) was a 32 bit program, though, which means it can only test a max of 4GBs of RAM at a time. You would have to scan each stick individually with none of the others installed, or do 2 tests one with 4 and the other with just 2. It should take the same amount of real time either way. That, however, might also be kinda long. I would recommend at least getting into the 8th pass before you assume the RAM will pass all the tests.

I am sorry to tell you to do these long tests when you are ready to jump in and game, but it is the nature of the beast sometimes.

If it is as you said with multiple windows reinstalls, tested with different drivers, and stuff like that, then that rules out most of the quick fixes.

However, before you start on those 2 tests there are 2 shorter ones you can try. The first is undoing what you did with the BIOS settings. You can take the battery out for 30 min or, if the motherboard has a jumper setting that will reset the board you can switch that for 5 minutes and then switch it back and it should achieve the same result.

Before you do this, go into the BIOS and see what instructions your hard drive is using. It will be either IDE, AHCI, or SATA most likely. After the reset you may manually have to change it back to what it was before you do the above. If you don't, you will have to reinstall Windows again.

Additionally, you can update the BIOS if you haven't got the newest one already.

To me the problems sounds more like it is one of the first things I said, but at least the last tests should go by pretty quickly in relation to the first two tests I suggested.