Not sure what the problem is yet, but as far as I can tell so far, it's only happening when I'm playing EQ. Things were fine running EQ for the raid earlier. I was running to Crescent Reach to powerlevel a friend's toon, and when I tried to zone from Crescent Reach to Blightfire, I crashed... as in blue screen of death. Finally got into Blightfire after another crash before evening having Tenam in the wolrd. Then in PoK, after a warning they were repopping the zone, I crashed. Not sure if it's the zone repops or what. But anyway, I can't seem to stay in game. Sometimes the PC just restarts. Sometimes it blue screens then restarts. Sometimes just EQ crashes. Anyone else experiencing the same, or have any ideas what it could be?
Edit: Oh, and yeah, I deleted EQgame.exe and patched, and it still does it. I'm even scanning my EQ directory for viruses at the moment...
I keep crashing
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Seems to have been my very last stick of RAM.... or the slot that it fits into on the motherboard. Not sure which.
Would anyone more versed in computers mind letting me know a few things?
1) Does 32 bit Windows XP actually recognize more than 3GB of RAM anyway? I've heard mixed answers on this. (I have 4x 1gig sticks)
2) If I replace the bad RAM, do I have to make sure to get the exact same brand and everything as the others, or if it's the same speed and same size, should it work with the other three existing ones?
Would anyone more versed in computers mind letting me know a few things?
1) Does 32 bit Windows XP actually recognize more than 3GB of RAM anyway? I've heard mixed answers on this. (I have 4x 1gig sticks)
2) If I replace the bad RAM, do I have to make sure to get the exact same brand and everything as the others, or if it's the same speed and same size, should it work with the other three existing ones?
Banging my head against a wall. Ram sticks seem to be okay. But I'm also getting errors with all removed, but the first. So maybe the first socket is not working. Although, things seem to be fine until I do something that accesses the video card. I think either my motherboard is bad, or the videocard which I just bought like 6 months ago is bad.
WinXP recognises 4GB, but that has to be spread across everything, so if you have a 512MB graphics card, only 3.5GB is left for system memory. Basically everything adds to the total of 4GB.
I would generally not use RAM from two different batches. Most boards with 4 slots will treat them in pairs, expecting each pair to be identical. If they aren't identical it will cause alot of problems.
If you drop down to only 3 sticks of memory, your computer MAY be set up to handle it, but it will likely force everything to run slower (single channel vs dual channel etc ...)
If you want to test your memory, there are programs to do exactly that, which you leave running over night. Something like 'MEMTEST' which comes as a CD image (ISO file) which you burn onto a CD and boot up into that so you can the test with nothing else in memory. This will confirm if you have a memory problem.
I would test all sticks one at a time in MEMTEST, then test them all in place together. See if it is a stick of the slot.
If everything is fine, but you don't start crashing until you play EQ, then it could be powersupply related, as if that fails, it doesn't provide enough to the graphics card, which causes it to crash the computer.
Worst case, you may get some tech support for the PC to have it fixed, though I don't know how much that costs. If you do that, some of them will want to replace lots of parts just to make a sale, so make sure you trust whoever you go to.
I would generally not use RAM from two different batches. Most boards with 4 slots will treat them in pairs, expecting each pair to be identical. If they aren't identical it will cause alot of problems.
If you drop down to only 3 sticks of memory, your computer MAY be set up to handle it, but it will likely force everything to run slower (single channel vs dual channel etc ...)
If you want to test your memory, there are programs to do exactly that, which you leave running over night. Something like 'MEMTEST' which comes as a CD image (ISO file) which you burn onto a CD and boot up into that so you can the test with nothing else in memory. This will confirm if you have a memory problem.
I would test all sticks one at a time in MEMTEST, then test them all in place together. See if it is a stick of the slot.
If everything is fine, but you don't start crashing until you play EQ, then it could be powersupply related, as if that fails, it doesn't provide enough to the graphics card, which causes it to crash the computer.
Worst case, you may get some tech support for the PC to have it fixed, though I don't know how much that costs. If you do that, some of them will want to replace lots of parts just to make a sale, so make sure you trust whoever you go to.
One step forward, two back. I now have less of an idea of what it is. I thought I had figured it out. I took the last stick of RAM out, and now it's crashing much less often, but still has a memory problem of some sorts somewhere. The thing is, I need to troubleshoot and figure out if it's the stick, the slot, or maybe even the memory on my video card. I'm thinking it might be the latter. But now you add powersupply into the mix, and it could be 4 things. /sigh
At least I'm pretty sure it's not the hard drive or the DVD drive.
At least I'm pretty sure it's not the hard drive or the DVD drive.
I've had tons of BSoD's. The problem is that most of the time it just flashes before a shut off/restart, and I can't read the error message. I can't remember the exact phrase now, but once it said "Page file" errr... blah. I can't remember the wording. Something about page not found or something of the sort. I looked it up and people were saying it's a memory problem, and typically it's a bad stick of ram. Kind of seems more like a videocard thing from what I can tell... but my videocard does have onboard RAM, so I kind of thought maybe that was it.
By the way, it's nearly certainly a hardware problem as far as I can tell. If it were some corrupt Windows system file or something, then the problem shouldn't, in theory, affect other operating systems. I popped in an old Ubuntu Linux disc, and although it didn't BSOD (since they don't have one) it did crash and power off. The problem is that my old video card died so hard (along with the power supply that killed it) that it doesn't work at all. The PC won't start up with it, so I have no way to test another video card to make sure that's it.
Kind of makes me wish that I was back in the U.S. I have so many computer parts back there that I could try other RAM, other video cards, etc, and try to figure out for sure what the problem is. /sigh
Kind of makes me wish that I was back in the U.S. I have so many computer parts back there that I could try other RAM, other video cards, etc, and try to figure out for sure what the problem is. /sigh
I actually got a bigger beefier PSU the old one died.
I found out that the motherboard went bad. I narrowed it down as much as I could with my abilities, and took it into the shop I got it from. They identified it pretty much right away as the motherboard, which sucks because it's a bit expensive/more difficult to replace than other stuff. However, I was happy that I at least got close. I had it narrowed down to either the motherboard or the videocard. At least it's not my new-ish videocard, or I would have lost all faith in Nvidia.
I found out that the motherboard went bad. I narrowed it down as much as I could with my abilities, and took it into the shop I got it from. They identified it pretty much right away as the motherboard, which sucks because it's a bit expensive/more difficult to replace than other stuff. However, I was happy that I at least got close. I had it narrowed down to either the motherboard or the videocard. At least it's not my new-ish videocard, or I would have lost all faith in Nvidia.
LMAO. I know the feeling. My missus and kid went away for 3 days. I got on Sunday around 10am and didn't get off until almost midnight, even with work the next day. Oh how I have missed days like that.Tenam wrote:I get the PC back tomorrow, but I am totally going through withdrawal symptoms. I have been twitching uncontrollably, having cold sweats, and even hallucinating. I have a tourniquet already tied around my arm in anticipation of shooting up some Evercrack tomorrow.
Shame she gets back today though
I keep several backup copies of EQ across several locations.
1. In case I have to do an emergency format/reinstall.
2. In case I accidentally break something in my ever increasing desire to fix Sony's f@#kups.
3. in case my partner gets it into her head that she has had enough of me sitting around playing EQ. Don't laugh it has happened. I just laughed at her as I casually copied my backup across while receiving the stare that told me I was sleeping on the couch that night.
1. In case I have to do an emergency format/reinstall.
2. In case I accidentally break something in my ever increasing desire to fix Sony's f@#kups.
3. in case my partner gets it into her head that she has had enough of me sitting around playing EQ. Don't laugh it has happened. I just laughed at her as I casually copied my backup across while receiving the stare that told me I was sleeping on the couch that night.
Well, i do have a copy on a work computer.... don't ask me why or how it got there. I have no idea. I think the Game Gnomes did it. I didn't have enough room on my thumdrive for the full folder, though. I just copied over what I could. I'm patching now, but still have about two hours left. (The time went down to be a bit more accurate now.)
Something I didn't realize before doing this was that you can't download the Everquest.exe file from eqplayers.com again. You have to use the launchpad thingy that uses Flash and bugs out if your screen saver activates. It sucks big floppy ones. So luckily I had Everquest.exe on the work machine that I copied over. I'm going to make sure to backup that file even if nothing else.
Something I didn't realize before doing this was that you can't download the Everquest.exe file from eqplayers.com again. You have to use the launchpad thingy that uses Flash and bugs out if your screen saver activates. It sucks big floppy ones. So luckily I had Everquest.exe on the work machine that I copied over. I'm going to make sure to backup that file even if nothing else.
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