What could cause games to 'freeze' completely?

[flanker1121]

Hi folks -

A bit of a wide ranging and vague question I know, but I have problems with some games where they freeze completely - screen movement just stops as though a pause button has been pressed, sound continues at constant pitch (eg engine noise etc), and the only way to escape is through the reset button.

Games where this has happened in the past include:

Supreme Commander (vanilla game, the expansion pack 'Forged Alliance' is fine )

FS2004

FSX

Lock On - Modern Air Combat


My PC Specs:

C2D E6600 2.4GHz
EVGA 8800GTS 640 KO ACS3
4GB OCZ RAM
600w Thermaltake modular PSU
ASUS P5N32-E SLI Motherboard
Cooling: 3x120mm Sharkoon SE2000 fans, 1x80mm Sharkoon SE2000 fan
2xWD Raptor 74GB, 1xWD Caviar 750GB. No RAID.


NOTHING is overclocked whatsoever (apart from the graphics card which is factory overclocked, so I haven't touched anything). Might be worth noting that it's a self-build, so there's been no manufacturer testing etc...

Video/Chipset/Sound drivers are fully updated. I have reinstalled windows countless times on this PC as well for various reasons, so the problems persist on clean installations. I don't think heat is a problem - my cooling is decent, and CPUID shows pretty average temperatures. I have a zalman CPU fan/heatsink too.

A few notes about hardware (:shakehead

* These problems have happened with these particular games since I built the PC a year ago. I have got new HDDs since then, so I wouldn't blame them.

* As an experiment, I temporarily put a 7800GTX from my other PC in the place of the 8800 to see if the crashes would persist. THEY DID. I'd therefore take the blame off the 8800?

* After swapping out the video card, I did the same with the RAM. When I first built the PC, I used OCZ 2GB PC2-7200 nVIDIA SLI Ready (2x1GB). I took that out, and put in 4x1GB sticks from my other PC, which was a mixture of PC2-4200 and PC2-5300. The crashes then STOPPED in Lock On and FS2004 as far as I could see.

*Thinking that the memory was therefore at fault, I went ahead and bought the RAM i linked to in the PC specs at the start of this post. The crashes then resumed! Might it be that my PC doesn't like OCZ ram or something?



I can post a dxdiag if anyone wants me to...

Many thanks!

[Alex6714]

Re: What could cause games to 'freeze' completely?

Start/run and type dxdiag.

Then go to the sound or audio tab (I think) and turn down the sound acceleration.

It might help.

[flanker1121]

Re: What could cause games to 'freeze' completely?

turn down the sound acceleration.

I've already done that im afraid

I've also turned hardware acceleration (right click on desktop, properties, settings, advanced, troubleshoot) down a notch, as per advice from others. Neither have solved the problem

[=98=]

Re: What could cause games to 'freeze' completely?

Is it just whilst gaming?

[flanker1121]

Re: What could cause games to 'freeze' completely?

Is it just whilst gaming?

Yup - most other games (eg BF series, CoH, World in Conflict, Test Drive Unlimited) run flawlessly - that's why im a bit confused. The games worked fine on my old PC, but freeze on this one....

[=98=]

Re: What could cause games to 'freeze' completely?

http://www.totalgamingnetwork.com/main/showthread.php?p=2162062#post2162062

Please follow that guide and report back to tell us whether it's still crashing

[=)BiT(= Evant3k]

Re: What could cause games to 'freeze' completely?

I had that problem with my new rig, your problem is the RAM you have to manualy set the voltage and MHz for it to work stable.

I have 4gb (2x2gb Platinum OCZ DDR3 1600MHz RAM) and It kept on crashing my computer until I had it figured out. The only reason I bought OCZ is that Crossair XMS RAM I wanted was out of stock, but after setting everything up it works great. I set my DRAM voltage to 1.9 and my MHz to 1600 in the bios and had no crash or freeze since I did that.

[=98=]

Re: What could cause games to 'freeze' completely?

The maximum recommended voltage and speeds are printed on the side of each stick of RAM.

[flanker1121]

Re: What could cause games to 'freeze' completely?

The maximum recommended voltage and speeds are printed on the side of each stick of RAM.

Only the timings im afraid in my case...oh well google is my friend in that respect :laugh:

As for the guide, I'm running a clean installation of windows with the latest drivers as of a few weeks ago, but i might as well give it a go to see if it helps!

[flanker1121]

Re: What could cause games to 'freeze' completely?

Right this'll sound stupid, sorry!

How exactly do I set the RAM MHz? The voltage appears to be set already to 2.1v, which is what's advertised here.

If I go to Extreme Tweaker>FSB & Memory Config, it gives me options to 'Link or Unlink' the 'FSB-Memory Clock Mode'.

Unlinked allows me to 'Enter FSB memory and speed manually'. Linked means that when I change the FSB speed, the memory speed changes proportionally. I'm just worried about changing one but not the other. I know very little about the more complicated stuff...overclocking is a big mist for me

[=98=]

Re: What could cause games to 'freeze' completely?

If you want to manually change the RAM speeds, unlink them and there should be a setting that allows you to change RAM speeds.

[flanker1121]

Re: What could cause games to 'freeze' completely?

Whupde doo! The RAM frequency was at 800MHz, so I changed it to 1000 which is what OCZ reccommends.

Loaded up Lock On - Modern Air Combat, then got a BSOD saying 'IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL'.

Let the PC restart, went into the game again, and it crashed as it always has. What could I have done wrong with the RAM? Evant what exactly did you do?

[=98=]

Re: What could cause games to 'freeze' completely?

It might not be the RAM. If it's just "IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL" in can be hard to find the reason for the problem as it's such a generic error.

[[USAC]S|Cpl.TinFoil]

Re: What could cause games to 'freeze' completely?

IRQL deals with a memory fault, CPU problem, or drivers. Try running Memtest (burn and insert the CD at boot) and see if any problems pop up. Problems in that look very obvious if present.

If memtest works out and everything's fine, then it's a driver problem. Seeing that you've built your own system and all, I hope that you know how to reinstall them. If, however, the tests do show a fault, then you're screwed. Try reseating the affected RAM stick in other spots. If that doesn't work, RMA the RAM sticks or just take out the faulty stick if the warrantly or whatever's expired.

Since putting in different RAM in solved the problem, I'm thinking the fault's in the second stick. Happed to me after a year of using PQI value.

[flanker1121]

Re: What could cause games to 'freeze' completely?

Since putting more RAM in solved the problem

The problem occured with my old ram, then I put in temporary (slower) ram from another PC, which solved the problem. I then replaced that with the ram i am using now, which causes crashes again.

I just changed the frequency to 600MHz (I'd been told that underclocking had helped someone), which left me without a BSOD but still with the crashing problem...