inflater

Good day.
I own a Sapphire HD 3850 256 MB GDDR3 (PCIe), everything was working fine until I had to do a system reinstall. After reinstalling and installing the newest catalysts, the problems arise.

When playing CoD4, the game usually crashes to Windows with some error message that occured firstly in d3d9.dll, then I reinstalled Directx9 from the CoD DVD. Now it starts dropping to windows with a error in iw3sp.exe, dunno the offset (maybe it was 0x165A5?).
Or it crashes with BSOD regarding ati3duag.dll. I'm using XP SP3, so I couldnt install the hotfixes from microsoft regarding aec.sys (I did not have a BSOD with aec.sys in SP3 for now).
Other games crash too, either without reason (CS 1.6) or with BSOD, usually its PAGE FAULT IN NON PAGED AREA. It was crashing with DRIVER/IRQL NOT LESS EQUAL, but that was in SP2.

I have ran memtest86 for one single pass and it did complete without errors. Yes I know it was too few, but i think the RAM is okay... because all the stuff worked before the reinstallation (and system works fine when burning CDs, browsing the net or stuff... it does fault only when i am playing games.)

What could be the possible culprit? I think it's driver or Windows fault.

BTW some older games, like max payne 2, half life 2, do not seem to crash.

I'm using the catalysts 8.7 and it did with 8.6 too, even with 7.12 (SP2).

Anyways a quick note: when I was using SP2 and the BSOD did appear when gaming, upon restart, BIOS waited 4 seconds or so when POSTing (booting). That same applied if I tried programs from ASUS's motherboard support CD like "AI GEAR" program (which could slow down CPU and save power), it also rebooted and did wait the 4 seconds! (I don't know if this may help.)

I've posted a single minidump regarding this (I can post the whole minidump folder, but some BSODs are from SP2, some from catalyst 7.12s etc... so i want to make it clear for you.) This minidump is from catalyst 8.7, Windows XP SP3 and all updates.

Anyways thanks in advice!

Attached Files

Mini081408-01.zip (6.3 KB, 57 views)

inflater

Hello, anyone there...?

I have installed rivatuner and set the graphic card fan speed to 80 percent, and uninstalled catalysts (kept only the display driver). Now I got a BSOD 0xFC regarding d347prt.sys so I uninstalled DAEMON tools. After two days, I got a BSOD ATTEMPTED_EXECUTE_OF_NOEXECUTE_MEMORY without any file regarding. I've debugged the crashdump and found atikvmag.dll as another culprit... Good grief. When this will end?

I think i will do a 11 hour overnight MEMTEST86+.. I have never met with such problems .

Any help would be really appreciated!

Dyre Straits

When you commenced to reinstall, had you completely formatted the HDD first? Or, did you do a Repair installation?

At any rate, you have not mentioned whether you installed the Motherboard and Chipset drivers from ASUS for your motherboard. You definitely need to get the latest motherboard and chipset drivers installed prior to installing any other devices. You should also check whether there is a newer BIOS for that motherboard than the one you're using and also check if the new BIOS fixes problelms like what you're having.

If you're still having BSODs after doing this, try running the system with one RAM and then the other to see if there's any success eliminating the problems.

Good luck!

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jkim

I have almost the identical problem (difference is that I'm running X800 card). I've actually done everything suggested upto date that I've seen and it still happens.

Dyre Straits

Since your motherboard and video card are AGP, try setting the AGP setting to 4X in the BIOS to see if things work better. In all reality, you won't see any significant difference in performance between 4X and 8X but 4X tends to give better stability.

Good luck!

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jkim

Thanks for the reply. That was actually one of the first things I tried.
I don't know if I did it correctly though, as my MB bios doesn't have the option.
I just did it on the card through CCC.exe.

Dyre Straits

I haven't personally used an AGP card in quite some time now. Where exactly in CCC and what exactly was the setting you adjusted?

If your motherboard BIOS doesn't actually have a setting you can make in BIOS, there must be a jumper on the motherboard itself where this setting is made. Check your manual.

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inflater

Well, I've enabled AMD's cool and quiet technology just for the curiousity and I've reinstalled the nvidia chipset drivers. No BSOD from yesterday, the date of install, and counting..

jkim

In the SMARTGART menu, I toggled the AGP speed from 4x to 8x and back.

Dyre Straits

Did you reboot after making the change in Smartgart?

And, there really should be a way to make this change either in the BIOS or by jumper on the motherboard.

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