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DudE132

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May 28, 2011
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I was playing GTA4 when the game suddenly froze. Now I wouldn't be posting here if this were a normal crash. A few seconds after the game froze, the screen went black and a sound came from my speakers as if they blew out and died. It then said the program was not responding and I had to force it closed. When I got to the desktop both Steam and Google Chrome also became unresponsive. Whenever I moved my mouse cursor over anything in Steam/Chrome it would black things out. I then had to force close those then restart my PC.

Everything is fine now but what exactly happened? As soon as I closed out GTA4 I viewed both my CPU and GPU temps and they were perfectly fine. My speakers are fine too btw.

I have a GTX 560 TI, Phenom 2 x4, 8GB RAM.
 
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ttcboy

ttcboy

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It happens sometimes and there can be a few reasons.
-your system is overloaded at that point of time
-unstable current from PSU
-Bug from game
-Memory error

Anyway, if it doesn't happen frequently, i won't be worried.
 
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DudE132

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I'm using the 301.42 drivers for my 560 TI. And this is my PSU

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817171053

This is the first time I've had a crash like this and I played some more GTA4 last night and ran into zero issues. GTA4 on PC is known as a fairly buggy/broken game so it could have been the games fault.

I don't know if it's worth mentioning but months ago I OCed my CPU from 3.2 to 3.8 Ghz. The OC was stable and the temps were good and I've been playing daily since then so I really doubt that could be the problem.
 
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DudE132

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Well it just happened again. After GTA4 crashed my other programs became unresponsive just like last time. It also too significantly longer to reboot this time.

I've never heard anything bad about Coolermaster PSUs. Actually I've heard mainly good.

I will try a clean sweep and reinstall drivers, but I honestly think it could just be GTA4. GTA4 is infamously known as an abysmal port. It's a pretty odd coincidence that I'm now just experiencing this while playing the game.
 
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DudE132

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Well it happened again earlier minutes after launching the game but I didn't have a program open to see the temps in game when it happened.

So I played for the past 2 hours with all of my monitoring programs open and not a single crash. Temps were good the whole time like usual.
 
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DudE132

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Amd Phenom 2 x4 955 Black Edition 3.8Ghz (Stable OC)
ASUS M5A88-V EVO
EVGA GTX 560 TI 1GB
CoolerMaster GX 750W PSU
G.SKILL Ripjaws 8GB RAM (2x2GB) DDR3 1600
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 1TB HDD
CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Plus
CoolerMaster HAF 912 with 4 fans installed.

Honestly I think it's the game. GTA4 is known to be a broken game on PC. I just find it odd that my other programs would be affected by the crash.
 
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DudE132

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I've been playing quite a bit recently and haven't rant into the problems until now. This time it was different though. Instead of just crashing, the game starting getting some really bad graphical artifacts. It happened right after a big explosion in multiplayer. After 10 or so seconds of artifacts the game then crashed. Whenever I restarted the game the artifacts were still there. Even in another game "Mount and Blade Warband" I couldn't get past the first couple screens without it crashing.

As always though restarting my PC fixed all of the issues. Right before this happened I checked my temps out of curiosity and they were fine, but I closed the programs before the crash so I dont know what they were then.
 
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DudE132

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I really don't know what to think. I've had this PC for a year and a month and have never had any issues with it. And now all of a sudden when playing GTA4, a game that I've read sooo much bad about, I run into a lot of issues.

When you think about it it very much seems like the problem is the game. But the way the crashes effect the rest of my games and system doesn't seem right.
 
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Deemo13

Deemo13

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This is an odd situation. It could be a couple of things. I would make sure to wipe the drivers and reinstall them. It could be the power supply, it could be the drivers, its a mystery at this point.

Try and run a memory test if you can. That could be the issue.

Also urban legend, may I ask where you got a Nvidia GT340? I thought those were OEM?
 
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DudE132

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I've done a clean uninstall and reinstall of my drivers and it still occurs. Very randomly too. Since that last crash I played for too hours in a full multiplayer game in GTA4 with over a dozen Police cars on the screen and no issues. Not even any FPS drops.

 
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DudE132

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Happened twice today but the second time it happened, when I opened Google Chrome I got a message saying "your preferences file is corrupt". All of my bookmarks, settings, etc in Chrome were gone. They are all back now though.

I had my Temp monitoring programs out during the second crahs and my CPUs high was 53C and my GPUs high was 56
 
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DudE132

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Well this sucks. I need to get an external before I even think of Reinstalling Windows though because I have a lot of stuff I need to back up.

Are you positive this could be a corrupt Windows? I looked up "Google Chrome your preferences file is corrupt" and quite a few people have encountered this with Chrome. It could just be on Chromes end. I get a lot of flash errors with Chrome too so Chrome might just have a tendency to mess up.

And I still think it could be the game. It's no coincidence that the only time I encounter issues with my PC is when playing an infamously buggy and broken game.
 
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DudE132

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I don't see how Chrome could be causing this though. I've had Chrome since I built this PC a year ago and it's never happened with any other games.

Could it possibly be Games For Windows Live? I've heard nothing but bad about it. I was determined to never go near it but GTA4 made me cave.

And thinking back, there was a time I was considering reinstalling windows because of DX11 issues I've had in games. In Metro 2033 DX11 I get stuttering in certain places of the game. I was able to conclude that it is in fact apart of the engine though by having other people test it and confirm it happens.

I also had an issue with Crysis 2 DX11 patch. It only occurs in DX11. DX9 works fine though. I assumed this was just due to poor DX11 support and Crysis 2 being a port which I still stand by. Here's a video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61IHsA9WNqY

I just don't want to reinstall Windows unless I know for a fact it isn't a game bug.
 
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DudE132

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I think for now I will uninstall GTA4 and GFWL and just play other games and see how things go. Steam Sale gave me 20 new games so I'll have plenty to play. :p

If I don't encounter the issues then it was either the game or the client. I'll report back in maybe a day or two. Sooner obviously if the issue returns. Thanks for the help btw. I really appreciate it.
 
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DudE132

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Well I've been playing some Witcher 2, Skyrim, and Mount and Blade Warband and have not encountered the issue once. Skyrim is heavily modded too so if anything were wrong with my system I don't see how it could run Skyrim maxed with graphical mods. I'm also playing on 100 player servers in Warband. Warband stopped working once but that was because I kept alt tabbing so it was on my behalf.

With GTA 4 I've put in 27 hours and have had maybe 7 of these crashes so it's very random. I remember it took about 6 or 7 hours of gameplay before I first encountered the issue. In GTA4 it could happen minutes or hours after the launching the game to occur.

Honestly I really do believe it's either the game or Games For Windows Live. Both have infamously bad reputations which makes it more believable.
 
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