SYSDUMP- GRAPHICS ERRORS FIXED
Below is a post that I made on DFArena that may help some of you.
First, I’d like to thank everyone that posted suggestions and ideas on this thread.
It wasn’t many of you but that, in itself, says a lot about you and people that try to help fellow Nova gamers. So thanks to all that contributed.
Second, as I posted here previously, I built a brand new PC just for Nova gaming. (Yeah, I know. I’m nuts!) All the components were brand new and I was getting SYSDUMP.TXT errors and display freezes during the games.
Well, after over 60 hours…yes, 60 HOURS…of configuring, reconfiguring, web surfing and even buying a second, new graphics card, I finally found the cause of my problems. I am posting it here in order to help anyone else that comes across similar headaches.
One word…MEMORY!
When I built the machine I bought and installed two 512 meg CORSAIR (model number VS512MB133) DDR memory sticks. I would NOT recommend this brand to anyone…ever! The best memory chips, to my knowledge, are made by CRUCIAL and/or KINGSTON. After all, memory is an integral part of the Nova gaming footprint and gamers shouldn’t sell them short by using cheap mem sticks.
FYI…after having ripped my hair out, lost days of sleep ( I was starting to look like a distant relative of the Unabomber) and tearing the new machine apart, I finally got around to testing the memory sticks.
I should also mention that this happened after I checked all XP docs for OpenGL problems (there are a few), ATI OpenGL probs…also a few, onboard Soundcard vs PCI Soundcard conflicts, blah blah. You get the picture.
Enough bantor.
Anyhow, I found a great website that has free progs for memory diagnostics that I’d like to share with all of you…
www.MemTest86.com This site rocks and is a MUST HAVE bookmark for anyone that is a serious gamer or is building his/her own machine.
The memtest program is free and does a thorough series of diagnostic tests of your memory sticks on your machine. The prog, called “memtest”, can be downloaded to be used on a boot up floppy or, like in my case, you can DL the ISO image file that you can burn onto a CD to create a boot up CD. (Shut your machine off, insert CD and restart PC. Memtest will boot and start, and perform the appropriate tests.)
When I did this, the prog went through a long and thorough series of tests. (yes, you should be patient cause they are long tests) The beauty about this program is that it will tell you how many errors your memsticks have, and by reading their locations, you’ll know which stick is bad.
For example, I had two 512 sticks. All errors…495 in total…were listed as being in memory locations 520 +. This told me that the bad stick was in DR slot 2…the second stick.
Once I removed it, I rebooted machine and loaded BHD. It worked perfectly! No sysdumps. No freezes. All gone.
I am now awaiting two, new CRUCIAL mem sticks that I’ll be installing this week.
So ends 10 days of blood, sweat and tears. No one should have to go through that experience, so I hope that you can use the info contained herein for your diagnostics and, more importantly, your sanity. Hope it helps you.
Thanks to all.
JJ_ST1 www.ST1USA.com
Comments can be posted here or emailed to me at JoJo@ST1USA.COM