my computer is driving me crazy

[armerius]

so here is my issue, oh tech gurus.

this morning, everything worked fine.

i came home tonight and my computer will not boot past the windows XP splash screen.

Safe mode works fine.

what I have attempted (and had no luck with):

removed sound card
removed each memory stick seperately
changed SATA port on mobo
used windows system restore to go back 1 week
attempted to reinstall windows (it hung while inspecting the hard drive and never went past 19010)

I am at a loss.

do i reformat?

is my hd dead?

it's not a virus, and it's not spyware.... checked for both in safe mode.

please help?



system specs:

Athlon 64 3500
Epox nforce4 pro mobo
x800xl 512mb
sound blaster audigy 2 platinum
1.5 gig pc3200 ddr

[F7]

check and make sure the sata connectors are on there tight.

this happens to me every once in awhile; the connector will come loose and I won't be able to boot up.

if that doesn't work, sounds like your hdd might be dead.

I'd put money on the sata connectors though. those things suck.

[armerius]

tried... no difference

[armerius]

reformatted, reinstalled windows.

everything seems to be working so far.

[Paladin]

That's a bit extreme, but it usually works. Unless you have a Dell laptop...

If you have more problems, hit F8 before the Windows splash screen to get to the boot menu. If you choose the step by step confirmation and work through that until you hit whatever is causing the problem. Odds are it is the video driver.



[edit - added the actual key to hit, which was mysteriously absent from the post - Ned]

[Andri]

I would have thrown it away by now and bought a new one. :x

[armerius]

ok, so I am having some REALLY wierd issues here.

I seem to occasionally get a blue screen crash (twice now since the reformat) the makes my computer speakers SCREAM like the machine is puking... then reboot.

once this happens, I can't boot... same issue as before.. it just sits at a grey screen after the windows XP splash.

so I go into safe mode and do a system restore. that has worked twice now.

but i'm getting a bit tired of this.

any advice? any ideas what could be causing this?

[Paladin]

If the scream is coming from the speakers, no idea.

If it's coming from the case, odds are it's the hard drive. It wouldn't be a Seagate by chance, would it?

Otherwise, the hamster is catching its tail in the wheel.

[armerius]

no, it came from the speakers... almost like some weird sort of electical feedback

[Circuit]

Just out of curiosity, does your motherboard require an extra, 4-pin connection from the powersupply? If your x800 requires a power connection, is it connected?

[armerius]

yup.. the 4 pin is in the motherboard and the 6 pin is in the video card.

[Paladin]

When you had the sound card installed, did you disable the onboard sound in the BIOS?

[armerius]

yup... mobo sound is disabled in bios.

[Paladin]

OK, so...

the on-board sound is disabled.
audio is provided by the Sound Blaster Audigy.
windows blue-screens and you get a high-pitched noise from the speakers, then it reboots
after rebooting, it stops with a gray screen after the windows splash

does that sum it up?

Do you have PVR hardware/softrware on your system?

[Paladin]

Ok Arm, I had some time to do some real searching while I was manning the phones this afternoon, and I *may* have found it. The problem you're having is a known issue, sometimes called a Blue Screech of Death (a play on BSOD) or Screeching Blue Death (SBD). It seems to be exclusive to the Audigy 2 line of sound cards.

The best article I found about it is here (http://forum.eagames.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=3256). You can read the explaination on Page 1 of the thread and then skip to page 20 for the most current link to Creatives OpenAL files. Basically, it boils down to most games installing old versions of openal.dll that used DirectSound for OpenAL emulation, when the Audigy 2's support OpenAL natively, which makes the Audigy's puke. You have to download the file, extract OpenAL.dll and then replace every copy of OpenAL.dll on your system with that one. Some games, like Battlefield 2, install their own version of OpenAL.dll, and you have to do some renaming to make it work. Fortunately, this thread is BF2 specific and walks you through doing that. There's a linked Techspot article that explains how to fix it in UT2003/2004 (you can use the game's .ini configuration file to force it to use the OpenAL.dll file in the Windows32\System directory instead of the one UT installs). Again, it'll only fix it after you replace the copy in the System directory with the newer version.

For D&D Online, you can read about fixing the same problem here (http://www.ddo.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-2409.html).

A few other threads on it:

http://www.abxzone.com/forums/printthread.php?t=90329&pp=50

http://forums.ocwizard.com/index.php?showtopic-371&st=0&

[armerius]

wow!

i cannot wait to get to work on this and see if it fixes it.

i'm skeptical only because it is so unpredictable. I've ruled out memory as the issue.. replaced my substandard ram with extremely high quality sticks of OCZ (2 gigs pc 3200 2-3-2-5)

it seems to just do it very half-hazardly... it'll run for hours and then do it... or it'll run for minutes and do it.

[Paladin]

Good luck. I hope it works for you. If not, I think it's still fair to say the Audigy is the source of the problem you are having now, although maybe not the one that made you reformat.

[armerius]

so far so good, pally... no crashes in 2 hours of BF2... but that has happened before...

I wonder if that same file exists in Guild Wars and in HL2...

[Paladin]

Likely. If not, you can turn off the hardware sound. The easiest thing to do would be to search the hard drive for all the copies of that file and replace them all.

[armerius]

couldn't find anymore occurences of the file outside of an Nvidia one for the onboard sound (Which i left in place).

so far so good. some marathon session and no crashes... if this holds up, you are my new hero pally.

[Paladin]

Glad it's working for you. As for how random it seemed, from what I read, there were certain repeatable things people were able to do that would trigger it, like a grenade explosion from a certain direction and so on. In actual gameplay, such things would appear to be completely random since you would probably crash before whatever the trigger was would affect you, or before you'd have time to assimilate it.

[armerius]

reformatting again.

it just got worse... starting the infinite BSOD/reboot loop.

this time i'm going with onboard sound and no firewire card... nothing but my optical drives, graphics card, hard drive, memory, onboard devices.

that should narrow it down.

if this keeps up, i'm going to buy a new hard drive tonight.

[Paladin]

Doh!

[armerius]

well.. as was well and good... and then... that grey screen again that keeps me from finishing booting!

i had the sound card pulled! the sound blaster had absolutely nothing to do with this (although i never got the BSOD.. it just switch to not booting for no reason at all this time)... so i am REALLY thinking there is something WRONG with the hard drive.

---

new hard drive ordered.. should be here tomorrow.. i love newegg.

i've now replaced both hard drive and memory.. anyone have any other advice?