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Well, my "powerhouse" workstation system has always been finicky. Lately, though, it seems even more finicky than usual. I'd like to chronicle a list of problems and see if anyone knows how to fix them.

1) Blue screens & reboots. Every so often, I'll be in the middle of doing something when -- POOF. I'll briefly see a blue screen, followed promptly by a system reboot. No warning, no apparent reason. Initially, I thought it might be a heat problem, but this occurs rather reproducibly when using Illustrator 9, a low-intensity program to be sure (not reproducibly in terms of sequence of events but rather that if I'm using Illustrator for a long period, it'll almost always do this at least once). I've checked the event viewer and it lists stop errors of 0x7f and 0xa.

2) System heat. I have a pretty hefty system, so I'm no stranger to running hot. However, my father and I recently retrofitted the case to have a great deal more CFM power than it had previously (increased forward intakes from a single obstructed 12cm fan to an unobstructed 12cm fan and two 8cm fans; increased rear exhaust from two 8cm fans to add another 12cm fan), separated the hard drives into an added-on, self-engineered metal housing (the location of the forward 8cm fans), and so forth. Each processor (AMD AthlonMP 1800s) has a Swiftech heatsink and 4cm fan on it (the loudest damn fans in my case). Idling, the processors still rank ~55C. The RAM registered ~40C. The power supply also has an intake/exhaust fan in it. This may or may not relate to problem #1.

3) Blue screens with rendering & serving. When I'm rendering animations from LightWave or AfterEffects, while also playing music on my laptop from the external USB music drive on my workstation over the network, it nearly consistently will crap out if the render time is long enough. Same is also true with Premiere.

4) AVI playback, particular with DivX. While playing back DivX files in media player, the files will occasionally leap ahead a half second or so. Just randomly. Not at consistent points within a given file, but it happens with all DivX files. DivX player does the reverse, in that it'll sometimes stop video playback and hang on a frame while the audio continues. A little later, the video will resume right where the audio has advanced to.

5) DivX/Sorenson/partial-frame codec handling in Premiere & AfterEffects. Neither Pemiere nor AfterEffects seems to handle partial-frame codecs, and I'd very much like to know why, since I haven't heard of anyone else having this problem. When attempting to playback or render out a file from Premiere or AfterEffects in DivX/XviD/whatever format, the programs only treat the partial frame data as partial frames, rather than as full frames as they should interpret them. I'll see data blocks and occasionally a full keyframe, but never full frame video data.

The system specs:
Windows 2000 SP4
Dual AthlonMP 1800 processors
Tyan S2460 TigerMP Motherboard
2 GB PC2100 SDRAM
PNY Quadro4 900XGL Workstation graphics card
Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live 5.1
Maxtor 80 GB HDD (C:, G:)
IBM DeskStar 120GB HDD (D:)
two 18.4 GB Seagate 10k RPM SCSI drives striped into a RAID (R:)
Enermax 430W power supply

Any help on any issue would be much appreciated.

Check your RAM for problems with memtest?

Check how much power that thing is using. 430W should be enough though, but better to make sure.

Blue screens...that happened to me over and over, when it didn't like my graphics card. When I put the graphics card in another computer, it worked perfectly. (Windows XP)

Sokartawi wrote:Check your RAM for problems with memtest?

Did that. None found at all.

Check how much power that thing is using. 430W should be enough though, but better to make sure.

How would I do this?

Inspect your capacitors to see if their tops have bulged, if they are leaking or rusting.

Here's a list of the SaveDump error codes I've received:
It's sorted first by error code and then by date. It only goes back May 6, since I did a format/fresh reinstall of Windows at that time.

• All of the 0x7f error codes are the same.
• Most of the 0xa error codes differ. Three of them have a 0x1c second parameter. Two of them have a 0x2 second parameter. Four have a 0x1 third parameter. One has a 0x0 third parameter. Two have identical fourth parameters.
• There's only one occurence of a 0xd1 error.
• There's only one occurence of a 0x1e error.

According to Microsoft, general causes of 0x7f are:

• Your computer has hardware or software problems (most common is low-level hardware corruption like bad RAM, mismatched memory modules, malfunctioning motherboard)
• Overclocked processor

I have verified the RAM's integrity. The memory modules are all of identical type. I have not overclocked my processors.

According to Microsoft, general causes of 0xa are:

• A kernel mode process/driver attempted to access a memory address it did not have permission to access
• Can be caused by hardware or software.
• If fourth parameter falls within the range of a loaded system device driver, this is the driver causing the error

I have no clue how to check any of these, honestly...

According to Microsoft, usual cause of 0xd1 is "An attempt was made to touch pageable memory at a process internal request level (IRQL) that was too high. This is usually caused by drivers using improper addresses. Kernel-mode drivers are forbidden to access pageable memory at a high IRQL."

Sounds like a driver issue is more and more likely...

According to Microsoft, 0x1e "indicates that a kernel-mode process tried to execute an illegal or unknown processor instruction. This error handler is a default error handler that catches errors not associated with other specific error handlers."

Does that help anyone?

Looks like a driver issue to me, too. Make sure you're using the latest drivers for your mainboard and video card.

Assuming you're using all your RAM slots, try removing one stick and rotating the other sticks through other slots. Sometimes a memory slot on your mainboard will go bad (or be bad out of the box) and cause these kinds of issues. Even if the OS recognizes all the RAM, it doesn't mean the slots are using it right.

Check with your mainboard manufacturer and make sure that your RAM is certified by them to work with your mainboard. The manual might tell you something like " not all PC3200 RAM is supported" or something like that.

If it's always been finicky, I'd check your RAM first.

There are formulas for figuring out how much power your computer requires. You might check pcguide.com.

This is one of the reasons to have dual-boot operating systems. Whenever I've had a system problem I always switch to the other OS to see if that's running smoothly. If it is, and continues to run smoothly while heavily loaded, then I know that it's a software problem rather than a hardware problem.

There's always Knoppix. And nice rig... certainly better than an PII-450 (may have to steal P-III if I can get the PII to fit in the other case(massive passive cooling heatsink)).

I had a similar problem about half a year ago - occasional blue screens with reboots, especially under heavy load.

Since I couldn't fix the problem, I just tried to install Windows XP again. This turned out to be impossible, the system just wasn't stable enough.

It turned out that the harddisc with the Windows partition was broken. installing Windows on another HD solved the problem.

I guess that you have either a harddisc or RAM failure in your system.

Alright, here's what I can tell you from past experience. I knoiw your problem isn't heat related or power related.
Reason: If your computer overheats or your power supply can't out out enough power, the computer will just stop.
and do nothing. Most of the time it will reboot, I think mine hung once on the screen I was at. Your problems sound more like RAM problems or Motherboard problems. I find that if you have random problems, it's usually RAM. (I've gotten bad RAM a few times) Try swapping out the sticks one at a time. You might slow a bit and run out of ram during rendering, but it's a test that's fairly easy to do.

Actually, it just may very well be your power supply. I've seen nothing but bad press on Enermax power supplies dude. If you've got a second power supply sitting around, I'd suggest swapping them out and see if your problems go away. (or if you know how to jumper the ATX motherboard connector properly, use both power supplies. Run just the fans on the Enermax and the rest of the system on the other one. Just as long as its 300W or more it should handle it just fine.)

Vertigo1 wrote:Actually, it just may very well be your power supply. I've seen nothing but bad press on Enermax power supplies dude. If you've got a second power supply sitting around, I'd suggest swapping them out and see if your problems go away. (or if you know how to jumper the ATX motherboard connector properly, use both power supplies. Run just the fans on the Enermax and the rest of the system on the other one. Just as long as its 300W or more it should handle it just fine.)

Ouch, I didn't see his PSU brand. Yeah, Enermax has a poor reputation, especially under high-load conditions -- and the machine as listed above certainly qualifies as 'high-load'.

Since when has Enermax a bad reputation? I've used them for years, and know quite a lot people who uses them, too. I've never heard of any problems.

BabelHuber wrote:Since when has Enermax a bad reputation? I've used them for years, and know quite a lot people who uses them, too. I've never heard of any problems.

For some years. For normal use they're probably alright, but they don't perform well under heavy load.