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xp freezes


Nicholas Simpson

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Nicholas,

Well at least you know it's not the graphics card at fault.

I am running out of ideas, but a couple more thoughts...make sure that your computer is not overheating and how big is the power supply? Modern computers have more powerful ones, USB devices drain power. One more thought, you could try upgrading the motherboard BIOS.

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Ye I was thinking about the power supply ages ago i think its a 350watt is it!

 

Wat would u suggest?

 

The specs are as follows-

 

xp 2600 Amd Athlon Processor

80 gb HDD Master

20 gb HDD Slave

Sound Blaster Live!

512mb DDR ram!

Tv Tuner Card!

Cd Rom Drive

Cd/Rw Drive

Floppy Drive

Gforce Fx5200 256mb DDR Graphics Card.

 

Mother board is a Gigabyte KT-600 Series with onboard sound and network card etc.

 

It also has 4 extra usb ports running on it 2 on the front and 2 on the back plus the 2 that are built into the motherboard.

 

The cover has blue lights on it which are powered up at all times just was the cheapest case at the time when i bought my PC!

 

Running Windows XP Pro at the moment. Got all relevant software installed with spy bot s and destroy, everest, zone alarm, norton a/v., avg a/v.

 

Please HELP! Any suggestions now?

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Looking through a site that I found threw the link NEWT give.

 

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=294

 

Seems very similar to the problems i am having wat ya reckon?

 

unofficial patch

 

This patch has to go through more testing in Taiwan from several departments before it is released officially and in fact will probably end up being a silent install patch in the next version of the 4in1 drivers – that is if further rigorous testing proves that it is in fact a fix to this issue. If you choose to install this patch on your computer, you do so at your own risk and full responsibility yourself. Speaking frankly, normally new fixes, patchs, drivers and the like are never released beta to the public.

So what does it do? It closes the RX55 memory register in BIOS. The RX55 register's official name and function is Memory Write Queue (MWQ) timer. The MWQ timer is actually a timing device included in the memory host controller to prevent write data being held in the memory queue too long. After the data has been in the queue too long it times out. This timed out data is then given a higher write request priority. Now that might sound nice – a bit of extra performance BUT the procedure fails when overloaded. 3D games and Win XP put too much load on the memory queuing timer procedure. The nVidia new driver exaggerates the problem even more as the driver enables nVidia cards to use even more memory than previous driver versions.

 

So in a nutshell it’s a memory timing problem that only happens when the RX55 register is opened. Some motherboard manufacturers have already released new BIOS that have the register closed. In other instances, this patch is needed.

 

One thing I have noticed is that I think some people in are confusing one issue with the issue that I am referring to here. Symptoms I am talking about are the infinite loop error, dropping to desktop in 3D games or spontaneous reboot in 3D games. What I strongly suggest is that you try these trouble shooting suggestions before trying the patch:

 

- Load optimized defaults in your BIOS and do not modify memory settings

- set your memory settings in the BIOS less aggressively and test

- make sure you have an adequate power supply

- update your BIOS and test

- disable or enable AGP fast write and test (this has worked for some people)

 

The reason that I make these suggestions is that I think some people are confusing general instability because their systems are being pushed to the max, with this error. For example, if you have a 250watt power supply, 128mb RAM and have all your memory settings at max then you may be asking for trouble – the symptoms may be similar to this issue but it’s not the same. If you still get the issue after gong through these suggestions then try the beta patch (if you want to – remember it is BETA).

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Nick, for a gaming rig, and certainly with all the kit youre running in that case, I would be looking to put a 500 watt Power supply and a couple of case fans in there.

I would also consider adding another 512MB of matched RAM to cope with newer games.

Good luck with the freezes!

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