Video Card Death? /Driver Question.

Hey guys for the last month or so my Call of duty 4 would just lock and all the textures would be messed up. Idk why but it just would. Also its not heat problem either since i checked the temp and they were pretty normal. 75 C. Today i changed my driver to the 177.89 and now my game hitches every min or so. Like a spike. Why is this all happening ?? Help !
Thanks

 

Is it only Call of Duty? See if it happens on other games.

 

just cod 4 . But there was 5 months where cod 4 ran fine.Not a problem at all. It might be something i might have disable in nvidia control panel to fix. But its just like graphics card just dies for sec then kicks back in. its really odd.

 

Personally i would just roll back the driver /or download the previous driver.

 

Well today i played tf 2 for like 4 mins and then it locked and blue screened and i got the error code of the blue screen (should i post the code
?) So i restarted it.

 

I don't know what is the cause of the problems, perhaps overheating, perhaps driver(s) issue.
BUT, I don't want to sound like a messenger of doom, but the 8600 cards are one of the two models that have the issue with dying. So, perhaps your card's time is up.

 

always post the code if you want help

 

kk here is the code
Kernel_Stack_Inpage_error
*** stop : 0x00000077 (0xc000000E,0xc000000E,0x00000006,0x01b45000)

If its video card death sign should i contact sager? I just sent the laptop in about 3 weeks ago about video heating and the cleaned it out and since then the temps have droped. (also when i opened the laptop myself there was no dust in there what so ever!! but they claimed it was dust)

 

helpful information there....

all right, the most common problem with that error is bad ram. Since you sent it in and they had it open to clean it out, my gut tells me it was not bad ram, but that the ram may have been removed and reinserted poorly. I would open the back and and reseat the ram.

Closely related to this could be a bad page file.

Start > run, type
cmd
<Enter>

at hte prompt type

chkdsk /f
<enter>

type
Y
<enter>
reboot


The second most likely cause of that error is a bad driver. Roll back and drivers you have installed since this issue began.

 

Can you upload the minidump file? should be in c:\windows\minidump, it will have the date on it. Also have you tried reinstalling COD4? If you have had the laptop a while, it might be worth it to clean it out with some compressed air.

 

okay here is a minidump file and ill do the hdd check. Is there a way to view report for the hdd check after windows has booted up?. I went to grab a snack by the time i got back I was on the desktop.

 

Were those the only minidump files there? they are a little old, but here is what I found:

Mini060808 was probably caused by usbhub.sys (USB Drivers)

Mini060208 was probably caused by dadder.sys (Razer Mouse Driver)

Mini050608 was probably caused by ntoskrnl.exe (Lots of things can cause this)

 

From the available MS KB material, it looks like what's happening with this error is that the system cannot read back into memory kernel data that was paged out to disk.

Specifically, "Stop : 0x00000077" is the general error code for errors trying to page back in data for the kernel's stack.

The four numbers in parens are parameters that further define the general error. Since the first parameter does not have the value 0, 1, or 2, then the second parameter, 0xc000000E, appears to be indicating an I/O status error like so:

MS KB315266.

On that basis, it looks like you either have a hard drive going bad, or, more likely, a corrupt hdd driver.

 

or, like I said, file system corruption, hence the chkdsk

 

Well, now my cod 4 aint freezing offten now maybe every 30 mins if that a little hitch. Why ? Any other things i can do to check my hdd?. Other then chkdsk or will that show me the problem for sure?
---
2 mins ago from my cod 4 just locked up... Idk why the temps were low since my laptop didnt feel hot i had to restart the comp.

 

if it is still occuring, it is probably not the drive. I'd switch to a memory test like memtest86

you can go to event viewer and check the winlogon entry following the chkdsk to see what it found

start > run
eventvwr.msc
<enter>

look for WINLOGON at the bootup following the chkdsk, double click it and report what it showed.

 

cant find winlogon to find chkdsk report . I looked under application and system under event logger.
---
Also sometimes cod 4 runs fine.. like played the last couple hours np.

 

What about wininit? Also like gerryf19 said, it might be worth it to check the memory with Memtest86+. If you want better hdd diagnostics, then just check the manufacturer's website. The major hard drive manufactures provide free diagnostic tools.

 

in windows xp, every time you logon to your computer, event viewer should log a winlogon event.

If you run a chkdsk /f as I described in my previous post, windows reports it cannot run a chkdsk because the volume is locked, would you like to run it at next startup (hence the Y, for yes.

Then when you reboot, windows runs a chkdsk before it loads itself (you will see a checking phase 1, phase 2, phase 3), then windows reboots.

Note the time, do it again (the chkdsk), then reboot.

Now go back to event viewer and look under APPLICATIONS, and look for WINLONG. It will be there.

If it is not there, this is indicative of a different problem--I've only run into that once in 20 years of working on computers...trust me, it's there, you're just missing it

(in vista, the info is not in winlogon, but wininit, as danny points out, but your sig indicates you have xp)

 

Event Type: Information
Event Source: Winlogon
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1001
Date: 8/21/2008
Time: 12:22:17 PM
User: N/A
Computer: GOLDIE-D3311886
Description:
Checking file system on C:
The type of the file system is NTFS.


A disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.
Cleaning up 1 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 1 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 1 unused security descriptors.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
Usn Journal verification completed.

51191090 KB total disk space.
44084056 KB in 65902 files.
27976 KB in 5743 indexes.
4 KB in bad sectors.
259526 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
6819528 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
12797772 total allocation units on disk.
1704882 allocation units available on disk.

Internal Info:
90 5c 01 00 e8 17 01 00 bf c9 01 00 00 00 00 00 .\..............
bf 0a 00 00 02 00 00 00 8f 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
e8 00 98 06 00 00 00 00 fe ef 60 29 00 00 00 00 ..........`)....
5e 0b 0b 09 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ^...............
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 c8 a3 2e 4c 00 00 00 00 ...........L....
99 9e 36 00 00 00 00 00 a0 39 07 00 6e 01 01 00 ..6......9..n...
00 00 00 00 00 60 ad 82 0a 00 00 00 6f 16 00 00 .....`......o...

Windows has finished checking your disk.
Please wait while your computer restarts.


For more e information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

There you are Also ill do memtest after i finish my cod 4 matches today. Also ill do an atitool test see how long my comp runs before it crashes. Last night i defragged D drive (2nd drive with cod 4) and today ill do my C: which has windows on it.

--------
this might help as well. I took screenshot after my cod 4 locks up and when it unfreezes it looks like this. All the textures are messed.From looking at the screen it looks like gpu isnt doing it job. Like for instance you can see the polygons of what would be an object.
http://www.xfire.com/profile/lavitiz/ (my pics are on that link)

 

is this the second or the first?

The clean ups are relatively minimal--the far (potentially) worse problem is the "4 KB in bad sectors" reference.

4kb is very small..almost nothing...and is only one sector, but that number should be 0kb.

I have seen harddrives last for years with only 4kb to 16kb in bad sectors, but I have also seen harddrives fail very quickly once bad sectors begin to appear.

Is that the cause of this issue? Perhaps, but it is not the most likely cause.

screen blotches like that usually indicates heat damaged gpus, though the freezing could still be driver related.

I wonder, if when you sent it in for work, if they did not properly reapply thermal compound to your gpu and cpu when reattaching heat sinks.

I'd still do the memory test, but I don't like the looks of a lot of what I am seeing

 

When i sent it, they said the laptop was 60% full of dust, which was odd i seen no dust what so ever. So they cleaned it up and my temps were lower. Like my temps are pretty normal and when im in game they are pretty low. If my laptop gets to how i can usually feel it on my palms. Well after major crash today i had.. (where it just froze) i restarted and then my games back to hitching again.

 

did you do the memtest?

 

That is very true. The first time I replaced the hdd in the vaio, I put in a WD 120GB that, within 3 months, I watched almost literally "eat" itself up as bad sectors spread like kudzu; in my case, it kept damaging the boot sector and the OS, so after the second re-installation, I punted the thing back to WD.

 

Quickpost this image to Myspace, Digg, Facebook, and others!

Those are temps after playing cod 4. right now where my left palm sits is really hot. So where the hdd is. So it might be an hdd thing. Also my game was hitchin every 1 min.

So hdd heating up and hitching could have something do with freezing.


----
about to run memtest.

 

could be--but did you do a memtest?

my real fear is that the gpu, when it was full of dust, was damaged by the heat--yes, they cleaned it out, and yes it runs cooler now, but that does not mean the heat did not do harm when it was there.

 

^^ i think you are right. I think its damaged by the heat. Also i did memtest no problems. almost 2 passes. I twas on for almost 2 hours. No errors. What i can do is reformat windows to get rid of all bad sectors etc. But i think you might be right about the heat causing some damage to it.

So my question is will sager do anything about it?

 

If you're still under warranty, they should happily replace the video card for you.

 

reformating will NOT get rid of bad sectors. Bad sectors are physically damaged sectors or sectors that have lost the ability to hold data

Running chkdsk will mark the bad sectors as bad and windows will no longer attempt to use them, but nothing will repair them.

If you are willing to do a reformat and reinstall, we may discover that some semi serious video subsystem file (perhaps a directx file) was damaged and your problem could go away

before proceeding...this only occurs in COD?

 

You can also run a hdd diagnostic utility such as PassMark DiskCheckUp, which is free for personal use, which may give a better idea of what, if anything, is failing on your hard drive, and possibly give you an idea as to how quickly it's failing. As I mentioned earlier, I've had a drive with bad sectors that proceeded to spawn new ones at a rapid pace, so that merely containing the known bad sectors wasn't sufficient to prevent corruption of my files.

 

okay im home from work ill be playing cod 4 ill see how it runs etc. Ill also do the hdd check. But another question since i sent this into sager not to long ago and paid $100 for shipping and told them there was something wrong with video card will they ask me to pay for shipping again since its only been a month since i got it back if that ?

 

I don't know--I would call them up and be polite but firm.

I was having video problems a month ago and sent my laptop in for service. I paid $100 in shipping and you sent it back and I am still having video problems.

I think you need to take another look at this pc, and it is only fair that you pay the shipping this time since you did not fix it correctly the first time. I realize that your tech department is busy, and may have missed the issue, since the behavior is sporadic and not easily reproduced. You need to sit down and stress the video subsystem with a high end game like COD or Crysis and you will see the problem continues to occur.

 

I don't know--I would call them up and be polite but firm.

I was having video problems a month ago and sent my laptop in for service. I paid $100 in shipping and you sent it back and I am still having video problems.

I think you need to take another look at this pc, and it is only fair that you pay the shipping this time since you did not fix it correctly the first time. I realize that your tech department is busy, and may have missed the issue, since the behavior is sporadic and not easily reproduced. You need to sit down and stress the video subsystem with a high end game like COD or Crysis and you will see the problem continues to occur.

 

yeah thanks. Ill see but i want to confirm there is a problem for sure. For instance today there were problem but not major crash. Which is odd. What i need to do is just run ati test see if it crashes on max load. Also my friend with same laptop with same drivers = fine. in cod 4

 

they will probably ask you to reinstall windows and see if the error re-occurs before asking you to send it back

 

my drive info is. Up anything else i can do? My last thing I am going to do is wipe drivers out including regi and install new drivers. Any recommended drivers?

 

try omega drivers for your video card

Since you habe the 8600 gpu, isn't this the one that is having heat damage issues?

 

bump! okay today crysis froze on me (just bought crysis runs pretty **** well) It froze on my outta no where during mp match. I looked at the temp right after game it was 67.Memory usuage was fine as well.

 

Wow, sorry that the problem is not gone. I agree that the hard drive is probably not the cause, but you may want to go ahead and run the Hard Drive manufacturer's diagnostic tools, just to make sure those bad sectors are not worse than they appear. Failing that it may be time to contact Sager.