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Post by Hucklebubba on Sept 8, 2008 19:25:29 GMT -5
Over the past few months, I've made a series of upgrades to my doddering and good-natured Dimension 3000, rather than just putting that money toward a new computer.
The downside to what was probably already a dumb idea is that since then, my PC has started "misbehaving"--random hard-locks, a bountiful crop of blue screens, etc. etc.--and one of the only possible causes I haven't ruled out is an inadequate power supply. It still has the 250 watt unit it came with.
So, just a second ago, I got on Dell's chat support, for to check the compatibility of an Antec BP350, so that I could then buy it somewhere else for half the price.
This was the tech support lady's verbatim response:
yes its compatible.
however, your system can only go up to 250w.
What I'm wondering is this: In how many different ways does what she said not make sense?
Firstly, I like how she basically said, "Yes, it's compatible; it just isn't compatible."
Secondly, I didn't know that there was any stricture against power supply installation based on too-high output potential. I thought that, as long as you could get it to fit in the case and connect properly, you could use as juicy of a PSU as you like, with the upshot being that your system might never make full use of it. But, if I understand her correctly, she's implying that installing a 350w power supply in my machine would be the computer equivalent of a cocaine overdose.
Is she wrong? Am I? Or is there a mysterious third party controlling everything from the shadows?
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Post by Head Mutant on Sept 9, 2008 8:34:14 GMT -5
Uh... unless your computer's motherboard is so delicate that it would fry under the strain of more power, I don't think that's true. I just upgraded my computer from a 250W to a 550W power supply, no problem. In all of the documentation I got for it, there wasn't anything that warned against having TOO powerful a power supply for the various components. You do have to make sure the power supply is properly ventilated, of course; going up to a more powerful supply means that you'll be generating more heat in your case. Also make sure it'll fit -- I had to return my first purchase simply because I didn't consider the size. This might help. I have a Dell too, and one thing I discovered during my power supply upgrade adventure is that Dell custom makes their power supplies (particularly the mounting) so that it's very difficult to upgrade to a new brand instead of paying Dell for a new power supply from their stock. I wouldn't put too much stock in what a Dell representative tells you -- you might want to get a second opinion from a computer tech who's pretty familiar with how to upgrade Dell computers. |
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Post by Hucklebubba on Sept 9, 2008 23:39:42 GMT -5
Thanks Justin. Just for that, I'm going to send you an article.
About how old is your PC, by the way?
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Post by Head Mutant on Sept 10, 2008 8:17:28 GMT -5
My PC is about two years old, but it's still fairly up there in terms of processing power and RAM.
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Post by duckie on Sept 10, 2008 15:39:28 GMT -5
Just one other thing to keep in mind... if one of your upgrades was a new chip, it may be a heat sink problem. I do recall going from an Intel chip to an AMD on a system before, and then got the blue screen of death all the time, after running for a bit. Have you ruled this out?
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Post by Hucklebubba on Sept 12, 2008 1:02:12 GMT -5
The chip is one of the few things I haven't touched. Here's the full list of upgrades:
GPU: Radeon 9250-->Geforce 6200 (lemon; karked after just a couple of months)-->Radeon X1300
RAM: Dell 2x512mb-->Coursair 2x1gb
HD: Western Digital 40gb-->Western Digital 320gb
External: Lite-On EZ Dub combo drive
And now, the symptoms, in order of decreasing frequency:
1. Random lock-ups.
The most frequent, the most mystifying, and the most annoying, all in one!
They seem to slightly favor games and other high demand applications, but can happen at any time. Perhaps my PC is trying to deliver a ham-fisted object lesson about mortality?
2. Forced reboot.
This can come with or without "serious error" warnings upon subsequent startup. Upon reporting thereof, speculated causes run the gamut. I think I even got one one time that said "We actually don't have the slightest idea what's wrong with your computer, and we've been pretending this whole time. Sorry."
3. BSOD implicating RAM.
I actually haven't had any of these since running Memtest+ and Windows Diagnostic, so perhaps my RAM just wanted to know that someone cared.
4. Stop error BSOD implicating unknown device driver.
"No idea which one it is, but it sure is one of them."
5. Stop error BSOD implicating specific driver: ati3duag.dll
Ran Driver Cleaner a couple of days back just to make sure that there weren't any Nvidia scraps hanging around causing conflicts, and also reinstalled Radeon drivers and CCC. Haven't seen this error since then, so I'm cautiously optimistic.
6. IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL BSOD.
I'm not sure what I may have done to fix this one, but I haven't seen it for weeks.
7. "Serious error" warning at startup despite no apparent error.
I'm at a loss.
Steps taken:
HD defrag
Avast! Thorough scan--clean.
Ad-aware full scan--clean.
Memtest+; mulitple passes--clean.
Windows Diagnostic; multiple passes--clean.
Steps not taken:
Scandisk error check.
Rootkit research.
OS reinstall. (would reeeeaally like to avoid this one.)
Get new computer.
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Post by bladestarr on Sept 12, 2008 8:10:25 GMT -5
This is exactly correct. There is NO such thing as a "too powerful" power supply. The system will only pull what it needs.
I'd suggest finding the exact model numbers of your hard drive and combo drive and searching the internet for FIRMWARE upgrades to those devices before you do anything else. Bad or old firmware can cause "kooky" behavior in the Windows operating system, including causing miscellaneous random blue screen errors that don't look like they have anything to do with those devices.
If you have THE latest firmware for both of those devices..... I hate to say it, but you're probably looking at an OS reload. Windows can handle a change here and there to parts of the hardware, but after so many changes, sometimes it just simply craps out and needs to be refreshed. The good news is that your system is working decently enough for you to still make a backup of your personal files before the wipe.
You should thank the computer gods for that.
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Post by Al on Sept 12, 2008 10:26:43 GMT -5
If you have THE latest firmware for both of those devices..... I hate to say it, but you're probably looking at an OS reload. Windows can handle a change here and there to parts of the hardware, but after so many changes, sometimes it just simply craps out and needs to be refreshed. The good news is that your system is working decently enough for you to still make a backup of your personal files before the wipe. You should thank the computer gods for that. Let's just hope you don't own Spore... |
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Post by PoolMan on Sept 13, 2008 10:05:11 GMT -5
Why? Spore isn't particularly demanding, which is kind of refreshing for a current game.
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Post by bladestarr on Sept 13, 2008 11:07:12 GMT -5
Why? Spore isn't particularly demanding, which is kind of refreshing for a current game. I think he's talking about this:"Spore uses a modified version of the [51] digital rights management (DRM) software SecuROM as copy prevention, which requires authentication upon installation and when online access is used. This system was announced after the originally planned system met opposition from the public, as it would have required authentication every ten days.[52] Additionally, installation of a copy of the game will only be authenticated up to three times."Sort of like Windows Product Activation, which is a pain in the ass for people like me that wipe Windows at least twice a year, usually more, just because. |
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Post by Al on Sept 13, 2008 11:49:12 GMT -5
Why? Spore isn't particularly demanding, which is kind of refreshing for a current game. I think he's talking about this:"Spore uses a modified version of the [51] digital rights management (DRM) software SecuROM as copy prevention, which requires authentication upon installation and when online access is used. This system was announced after the originally planned system met opposition from the public, as it would have required authentication every ten days.[52] Additionally, installation of a copy of the game will only be authenticated up to three times."Sort of like Windows Product Activation, which is a pain in the ass for people like me that wipe Windows at least twice a year, usually more, just because. Yeah, I'm just snarking for my own amusement. Go about your business.  |
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dex
Ghostbuster
So what colour is the sky in your world?
Posts: 343
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Post by dex on Sept 14, 2008 7:55:24 GMT -5
If you are unsure wether this is a hardware issue or not, why don’t you get a live CD of some other operating system and run a stress test with it?
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Post by Hucklebubba on Sept 25, 2008 22:24:42 GMT -5
Update!
So, having long been a proponent of nuking the site from orbit, I went ahead and did a clean install of XP. That seemed to fix things. . .at first. But then, yea verily, the system locks and BSODs did resume.
Here's something I neglected to mention last time: The weirdness started up right around the time I started playing Oblivion. In fact, the first blue screen I experienced happened upon initialization of the Oblivion Script Extender.
I should pause at this point and mention that I'm an absolute junkie for mods (using, not making), and have nearly a gig of third party window-dressing in play, from as simple as sexy armor sets and a custom catgirl race (Shut up! Leave me alone!), to as complex as FPS-boosting optimization programs.
Now, considering Oblivion's persnickety reputation, along with all of the further-destabilizing ornaments I'm hanging from it, in-game crashes probably aren't anything to be surprised at. Having it poopify my entire system, however, strikes me as a bit odd. Of further interest is the fact that the correlation between Oblivion's installation and my PC's sudden tit-uppedness was also observed during my most recent OS reinstall.
Flash-forward to just a couple days ago, and my continuing desperate quest to try and blame my computer's weirdness on a virus. I had heard that Computer Associates hosted a free web-scanner that was supposed to be the hippo's nipples, so I gave it a shot. And. . .
PAYDIRT!!
Two of my Oblivion mods that had come in installer form (versus a .7z or .rar archive) were carrying W32.Adclicker trojans.
The bad news: In a noobish panic, I deleted the infected files, without noting which Adclicker variant was in play, which means that I don't know what I need to do in the registry.
The other bad news: I had the bright idea of deliberately re-infecting my system so that CA's scanner could tell me what I need to know. Unfortunately in a weird way, it didn't find any viruses this go-round; the dirty mods were inexplicably squeaky clean (I had them backed up on a CD-RW, so they should've been exactly the same).
The sort of grayish news: Deleting the infected files hasn't helped anything anyway, and I doubt fixing the registry would either, as what little research I've done on the Adclicker tends to indicate that it isn't nasty enough to be responsible for the issues I've been experiencing.
So, here's the million dollar question: Assuming that CA's scanner had a false positive, and thereby taking viruses off the table, can anyone write me a compelling essay as to how Oblivion and/or my excessive moddiness thereof could potentially wig out the entire system?
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Post by bladestarr on Sept 26, 2008 1:39:58 GMT -5
WARNING: the following response contains an "excessive" use of "quotations", apparently for no real reason!
It can quite easily, and I'll tell you why: most BSODS are caused by "memory allocation" errors, even the ones that are listed as "device errors", they are still usually complaining about a device not having access to a specific location of physical memory. What this means is that an application is using a specific address of memory, then another application comes around and tugs at the same specific address of memory. Windows was never taught how to handle that situation, or "who wins" the tug-of-war contest and gets access to that piece of memory, so in the end you lose and Windows sits there going "duhhhhh......." that's a BSOD. At least, that's my attempt to explain a typical BSOD without using an uber geeky techie explanation.
So, what does this have to do with your game and mods? Well, Oblivion, as with many applications, are hard-coded to only use "this" range of memory addresses. Microsoft releases the information to programmers as to which pieces of memory are allowed to be "played with" and which ones Windows NEEDs to have open to stay stable.
Well, when people use modding applications to change the nature of their games, they AREN'T given that list of "safe" memory to use. In fact, most modding applications don't talk about memory at all, that's simply not "user friendly". So what do the designers of this applications do instead? Well, since the mod application designers are usually the game designers, they will simply "use" the specific slices of memory that the game already has "access to", because why not? It's safe memory, right? Until you realize that the application may try to use the memory at the exact same time that a mod is trying to. Ooops. Thus BSODs. It really depends on the application involved, as some "mod application" writers are smarter than others and will set aside specific memory addresses FOR the mod applications to use so that it doesn't trip over the game. Apparently Oblivion didn't have these smart programmers.
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Post by PoolMan on Sept 26, 2008 11:16:12 GMT -5
So, having long been a proponent of nuking the site from orbitHee hee... that has ALWAYS been my favourite euphemism for reinstalling the OS. We're such nerds... Great answer by the way, Philotix! |
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