System crash

demoncage

Waddup yalls,

This isn't necessarily graphics related, but might have to do w/ my video card, not sure.

I've been getting random crashes after bootup where everything on screen freezes with a brief period of enduring mouse input before a total freeze. No blue screen, just frozen. There's no errors recorded in the event logs leading up to the time of crash, and it doesn't appear to be related to the amount of data being processed.

I've sweeped my system w/all the usual anti-spyware/anti-virus programs and cleaned the found infections, no luck. I tried cleaning all dust out of the hardware and installed new memory but didn't have any luck. I've run a diagnostics utility on all the hardware, everything worked. Ran memtest, passed.

I did get better results by adjusting the performance settings to remove all the display effects, which made me think it might be video related, but I am still getting crashes nonetheless.

One more symptom that I've noticed recently is that there are blurs in displayed text that appear harbored in vertical segments across the monitor.

Anyone have an idea what could be failing? I'm guessing I'll have to just bite the bullet and take it in, but was curious if anyone else had similar problems recently.

Thanks for any help.

jrs100000

I had a similar problem on my laptop a while ago and the best answer I could find was that either my motherboard or my RAM were going bad. I was getting good returns on hardware tests as well, but apparently they are not conclusive

demoncage

Hey jrs100000, so what did it turn out to be in your case? Or did you just trash it for a new laptop?

Anyone else have similar crashes recently/in the past?

jrs100000

It was a laptop and pretty old so I just replaced it. If it had been a desktop I would have started by doing a fresh install of a different OS to ensure it was not a software problem. If it was still freezing I would have started pulling RAM chips one at a time until I found the one that was bad, and if that didnt work I would have had to go find a new mobo. It didnt have a real video card, but if it did I would have pulled that as well to see if it stopped freezing.

demoncage

So, lock ups have all but gone away, which is cool. I was getting a crazy amount/variety of blue screens but those seem to have subsided to a more tolerable rate. Through what exact means these symptoms have been tempered I will never know. I've tried so many different things over the past couple weeks that it's all just a big blur. I think installing more appropriate chipset and display drivers definitely helped. Plus I had a couple trojans on my machine and who knows how those files might have fucked up my registry.

BUT, and this is actually relevant to the forum, I can't launch 3D Studio Max, any version. I was having a similar problem w/ Zbrush 3 as well where I'd get a message saying there was an error in the zbrush 3 executable. I solved this temporarily by disabling one of the cores on my processor but this obviously isn't what I want and in all the time I've had Zbrush I haven't run accross this problem. But I can still run the program for the time being.

With Max however, I get the load dialog box before it crashes to the desktop without launching the program. No errors, nothing in the event logs.

I'm guessing someone out there has run across something similar. If you have any info, please share.

Psyk0

So you didnt replace any hardware recently and this started happening?.

Did you write down the error message in the BSOD? this can be helpful to pinpoint the source of the problem...well sometimes.

Faulty ram or ram that has been overclocked over its limit will cause a lot of random BSOD and will certainly not go away. Can you play games or use any other applications associated with direct x?

fast1

have you posted this problem in tech forums? think you will get your ans there

demoncage

Hey,

No, no hardware installs. I'd done a good amount of tooling around w/ software/driver updates and editing backround processes...all of which caused further mayhem for a time. But as of late I've had very few lock-ups or BSOD's, pretty stable for the most part.

My only main problem right now is 3D Studio max 8 and 9 not launching after all files are shown to be loaded. It loads the string of files, then right before it's supposed to launch the interface it crashes to the desktop, no error messages anywhere-event logs, dr watson- nothing. Not sure if it's a driver issue or what.

Maya works, Zbrush 3 works (with the aforementioned hack), all my games run even with settings cranked up.

So, it's a pretty isolated problem atm. I'm posting here (now) vs. a tech forum because it seems I'd find more people here familiar with this specific problem or something related who could point to some helpful resources.

Thanks for the suggestions so far. Any additional help appreciated.

demoncage

Anyone come across these issues w/ Max not launching?