CSS freezing up / crashing

suicidal_monkey · February 16, 2007, 04:23:10 PM

Well, I completely removed Steam and have reinstalled it and downloaded CSS into it. At first glance it seems generally smoother. I will try playtest tonight but I really must work solidly for a month now

Quote from: Twine;177609Is your pc by any chance a dell?

I hope not! I built it into it's current case which is a 10cm high silverstone (it was supposed to become the htpc when I got a new pc but I have yet to buy this new pc!) which makes things quite cramped and the gpu is in a 90-degree adapter and is quite near to the casing. It often fails to boot with and graphics after it's been in transit (e.g. going to a lan) and getting into it is a pita (the rem ovable cover is the bottom of the case and as it's a desktop/media format I tend to have a lot of stuff sitting on top of it!

suicidal_monkey · February 16, 2007, 04:27:54 PM

interestingly enough the re-installation of Steam and the rolling back to the older OMEGA drivers has also fixed (or stopped causing) a problem I had with AVG which was having mini-crashes whenever I tried to look at the test results/test centre, though it was fine for scanning files aside from this so it may well have been something in the graphics drivers! good grief

It appears to not be broke now so I'm not going to try and fix it any further until it dies on me again!

DrSteam · February 16, 2007, 05:57:59 PM

Yeah, 'don't fix it if it ain't broke' is a lesson I learn't the hard way a long time ago. :g:

suicidal_monkey · February 20, 2007, 08:25:26 AM

well, it seems okay-ish, though it still suffers from some sort of blockage in the data, be it audio/video/network. It's as if every now and then the game runs out of data to process for a second or so. At least it didn't totally choke up and stop this time...

Whitey · February 20, 2007, 08:45:50 AM

Quote from: suicidal_monkey;177931be it audio/video/network.

or hard disk? :g:

suicidal_monkey · February 20, 2007, 09:05:23 AM

Quote from: Whitey;177932or hard disk? :g:

could be ... but wouldn't I notice other things going wrong and not just CSS?
(I t just froze up again, though at least it let me get back to the desktop this time)

Whitey · February 20, 2007, 01:51:52 PM

Quote from: suicidal_monkey;177933could be ... but wouldn't I notice other things going wrong and not just CSS?
(I t just froze up again, though at least it let me get back to the desktop this time)

I would have thought so and It's more likely to be a graphics/driver issue from what you've posted so far but I just thought I'd add it to the mix as you said it was like a blockage in the data.

suicidal_monkey · February 22, 2007, 10:24:48 PM

hmmm ... could it be the power supply getting too hot and/or dying a slow death?
Air coming out the back is pretty dang warm

the crashes are still happening but now CSS gradually falls back to the desktop and lets me carry on without hitting reset ... except for just now when it sort of shut off the video (and I presume the rest of the pc apart from the fans or something)

delanvital · February 22, 2007, 10:48:27 PM

Quote from: suicidal_monkey;178239hmmm ... could it be the power supply getting too hot and/or dying a slow death?
Air coming out the back is pretty dang warm

the crashes are still happening but now CSS gradually falls back to the desktop and lets me carry on without hitting reset ... except for just now when it sort of shut off the video (and I presume the rest of the pc apart from the fans or something)

Find a prog that monitors your voltage and check out what it is when loading games and putting pressure on the system in general. Check the +5v and see how much it drops below the 5v. AFAIK 4.7-4.8-ish is absolute minimum.

suicidal_monkey · February 23, 2007, 05:53:47 PM

Quote from: delanvital;178241Find a prog that monitors your voltage and check out what it is when loading games and putting pressure on the system in general. Check the +5v and see how much it drops below the 5v. AFAIK 4.7-4.8-ish is absolute minimum.

Hmmm. According to MBM5 (motherboard monitor) with ambient approx 20C

Code Select

 SYS CPU +5V
 26  32  4.81 after boot
 37  44  4.78 idle
 41  51  4.73 load (varies 4.70-4.73-4.76, normally the upper two)
 41  53  4.70 max observed with a short bit of gpu straining (varies 4.70-4.73)

...should I be worried, ...assuming MBM is getting the readings correct?!

The heat pouring out of the psu (which I think has to extract all the heat from the PCI/AGP cards too) builds up something approaching hairdryer levels (i.e. GPU/PCI card surround may be rather hotter than the system. Air coming out the vent near the cpu is practically cool in comparison. might need to do some cleaning and some modding) after a few minutes of running.:ohmy:

...on the other hand I've found a reasonable number of other similar-sounding crash error threads by searching for "datacache.dll" as that's what crops up when windows manages to throw up an error message most of the time. appears to be something between directx/audio/graphics ... i.e. something they cannot pin down :/

delanvital · February 23, 2007, 05:59:46 PM

Just an idea... to check if the PSU can not keep up, howabout jumping a second PSU and add to the setup, f.i. to the heavy parts like the gfx-card and then check the readings on your normal PSU to see if it takes off the load? If you get back in the 4.85-5 range by doing so, I would say the PSU is underpowered. If not, the PSU might be failling. I am no wiz, but 4.7 is too low IMHO.

suicidal_monkey · February 23, 2007, 06:02:25 PM

Quote from: delanvital;178370Just an idea... to check if the PSU can not keep up, howabout jumping a second PSU and add to the setup, f.i. to the heavy parts like the gfx-card and then check the readings on your normal PSU to see if it takes off the load? If you get back in the 4.85-5 range by doing so, I would say the PSU is underpowered. If not, the PSU might be failling. I am no wiz, but 4.7 is too low IMHO.

good plan ... I will see if I have any old psu's... the one in the case is a custom size that came with the case...and it used to do okay! Might try cleanig out the dust and fluff, might be partly a heat issue too.

delanvital · February 23, 2007, 06:03:35 PM

Quote from: suicidal_monkey;178373good plan ... I will see if I have any old psu's... the one in the case is a custom size that came with the case...and it used to do okay! Might try cleanig out the dust and fluff, might be partly a heat issue too.

It sure is. The hotter the PSU is the less it delivers.