Fiction is my vote. But like others, I'm gonna vote RAM, in this case. I want to say Complicity and Bucky BOTH has issues w/ GW and RAM (jump in here guys)?

Nope, my issue was purely heat related. I had my 2.8 P4 OCed to 3.36, GW would at times cause it to get too hot, it would BSoD for a second and then reset. Dropped it down to 3.0 and haven't had a problem since. It wasn't hard to figure out though, since I could literaly feel the heat pouring out of the case.

OT: I'm sick of the damn pop-under. Not because it keeps getting through my pop-up blocker, but because it keeps changing the Blue's News favicon to a light blue bag with a blue heart on it. Not cool.

Edit: tpyos
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"Pain, or damage don't end the world, or despair, or fuckin' beatin's. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man, and give some back." -Al Swearengen

Guild Wars: Erol Shalor E/Mo
This comment was edited on Jul 17, 21:16.

funkster. although you are new (or lurk and never post) thanks for the input. Very good synopsis.

xXBatmanXx - Lance Corporal xXBatmanXx
http://www.bf2tracker.com/bf2_userprofile.php?bf2id=45215952 (back online 7/14/05)

I've been a Windows programmer since 1991, and I've been using Windows-NT-based OSes since they were first released... 1993 iirc. (Windows 2000 and Windows XP are NT-based.) And I can safely say your diagnostician is living in a fool's paradise.

Theoretically, neither BF2 nor any other program should be able to BSoD the system. The design of Windows NT should preclude that. But there are two ways in which it could.

First of all, in Windows NT, programs run in "user-space", not in "kernel-space". This uses facilities on the CPU (user space is "ring 3", kernel space is "ring 0") to ensure protection. Code in user-space isn't allowed to do a lot; if it tries to do something malicious, it gets stopped cold. In order for a well-behaved user-space program to do anything *interesting*, like open a file or play a sound, it has to ask the kernel to do it; because the kernel is in "ring 0", it can do anything it likes. So theoretically the only way a user-space program could crash the OS is by asking the kernel to do something that results in the *kernel* crashing. A malicious request with a deliberate buffer overflow, or just a bug in the kernel. This isn't supposed to ever happen, as the "take requests from user-space" part of the kernel is ten years old and battle-hardened. Honestly I doubt this is the problem; this is what your diagnostician pal is thinking of when he says it's "not possible".

But there's a second concern. Since the original NT, many drivers have been moved out of "user space" to "kernel space". Windows NT's original design was "microkernel"-ish, in that *every* device driver was forced to live outside the kernel. That way, again, it wasn't *possible* even for bad *drivers* to crash the system! (You can perhaps appreciate in what ways this is a good design.)

However, in order to actually get anything *done*, you had to suffer a large number of "ring transitions", where you go into and out of the "kernel" dozens of times in order to get anything done. For example, if BF2 wants to send a texture to the card, it calls the kernel and says "send this to the graphics card". We've now gone from ring 3 to ring 0, which I'll mark as R3->R0 henceforth. The kernel now turns around and calls the graphics driver (R0->R3), which says "ah, yes, to do that you need to poke at the card *this* way (R3->R0 and back) and *that* way (R3->R0 and back) and so on.

All those ring transitions add up pretty quickly. In the world of application programming, they are shockingly slow, and you wind up hitting a *lot* of 'em very quickly. So, over time, the NT group has been moving more things out of user-space and into kernel-space. Graphics drivers were moved into the kernel with NT 4.0, back in the late-ish 90s.

And guess what *that* means. Now your graphics driver runs at ring level 0, in kernel-space, so it can do anything it wants. Including crash your whole OS. Graphics drivers are notoriously buggy; they are thrown together to support a new card, and banged on enough until they work relatively well, then shipped. Everyone here has seen more than their share of graphics-driver bugs.

I find it *very* easy to believe that BF2 is calling the graphics driver in such a way that it incurs a BSoD'ing graphics-driver bug.

I,too, had the same problem. I got a 6800, and at higher resolutions, I got a BSoD. Happened every time....guess what. It isn't the video card or the drivers. The video card is putting out so much heat, it is causing your CPU to overheat. Look at your CPU temp and consider better cooling to it. I bet it fixes the problem.

Ihya thanks for the spoiling.

I'm happier and happier not to have bought BF2 (yet?) even if I feel kinda left out sometimes Ah, well, I definitely don't have any time to spare anyway...

Reality is a nice place, but I wouldn't want to live there!

Short day or are we yet to see and update?
Probably trying like hell to get his games to work! hhaahahah
Blue you are not the only one corrupted by the virus that is BF2 - I am hurting in my school work and my fiance' has reminded me a few times that we now live together (as of last week).

xXBatmanXx - Lance Corporal xXBatmanXx
http://www.bf2tracker.com/bf2_userprofile.php?bf2id=45215952 (back online 7/14/05)

What a disservice to Tolkien. Bravo NYT.

I hope Blues taking about a CRT. It’s not wise to own a high end LCD that isn’t widescreen in this age IMHO.

The New York Times ran a lengthy review within hours of the book's release, likening Rowling's achievement to the works of author J.R.R. Tolkien of "Lord of the Rings."

(quote from the Potter article thing)

Sorry what?! Harry Potter in the same league as Lord of the Rings?! No way. Harry Potter is like HL2. Some hate it but most love it, and it's very linear not to mention thoroughly hyped up. Lord of the Rings is like Deus Ex. Great game with multiple ways to complete the objectives with as little hype as possible (Not talking about the movies, im jsut talking about the books).

Alternatively it's like an old man who's been around a lot (LotR) and is very wise and then there's a young kid thinking that he/she knows everything (Harry Potter) and eventually the kid gets bitch-slapped down to earth by the old man.

That's probably a strange metaphor i've used there, but thats the only way i can describe it. Plus so far in my reading of the book (about 120 pages in) i find that i care less and less about Harry and i just hope that he dies.

But hey, when you're waiting for The Bonehunters thats due out in 6 or 7 months you have to read something righT?

This comment was edited on Jul 17, 20:02.

I say it's the drivers. I had the 77.72 installed for about a week or so before I took them off my system. Every other shutdown resulted in a BSoD releated to one NV file or another. Tried reinstall, in safe mode, after running drivercleaner. No dice. Tried a second download to be sure, still no good. Rolled back to 71.89, and I have yet to crash in any game I've tried since.

why would you want to run it at that resolution? it will be choppy as shit.

He prob wants to run it at a native LCD screen resolution would be my guess...huh blue?

“I find the most erotic part of the female anatomy is the boobies.” -Zap

why would you want to run it at that resolution? it will be choppy as shit.

Looks like Blues’ problem coincides agreeably with the release of the 7800GTX. How does BF2 at 2048x1536 sound?

I'm with RAM or Power Supply.

So... no application-triggered BSoDs in WinXP... fact, or fiction?

Fiction is my vote. But like others, I'm gonna vote RAM, in this case. I want to say Complicity and Bucky BOTH has issues w/ GW and RAM (jump in here guys)?

edit: And Blue, I thought you were an ATI guy?



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GW: Nilaar Madalla, lvl 20 R/Mo / Xylos Gath, lvl 10 W/Mo

I have to apologize for the way I feel... http://www.nin.com
This comment was edited on Jul 17, 18:51.

The other suggestions I'd have made have been made--such as check your ram and PSU...but I think you should begin with this one:

If your 6800 is overclocked beyond its nVidia factory defaults for the particular 6800 gpu you own (as the marketing name of "OC" seems to indicate) then I'd use Coolbits to lower the gpu clock to the nVidia standard clocks and try again.

Ditto any cpu/fsb overclocking you are doing in your system, if any. Set all clocks to factory default and then see if the problem repeats.

Remember that nVidia doesn't warranty or support the overclocking that some nVidia OEMs (like BFG) do to try and make the cards run faster to attract more business. There's a good reason nVidia doesn't support 3rd-party overclocking directly--they don't test and validate their gpus for overclocked conditions.

At 1600x1200 you are putting maximum stress on a 3d gpu when running a 3d game at that resolution, and as such, in a game serving up the right conditions, even a relatively "minor" gpu overclock could cause the gpu to fail--so find out what the stock clock is for your gpu and set it there and you may well see the problem disappear. It's very likely as you do not apparently have these problems under lower resolutions in the game at the "OC" setting.

The only time I ever experienced the "infinite loop" graphics error under XP was way back in 2001 and when I'd first installed the OS and was running a nVidia GF4 gpu. But in that case *all* my 3d games were affected equally--in that none of them would run at all.

It turned out to be a problem between the VIA chipset I was using at the time and Windows XP--in that I was running the fsb clock for the ram bus at a higher speed than the fsb clock setting for the cpu (asynchronous operation), and although the same video card and VIA chipsets and games had no problem running this way under Win9x, XP would tolerate nothing but synchronous clocking of the ram and cpu buses. As soon as I set up synchronous timings for the cpu and ram bus under XP the problem completely vanished.

But since this is apparently a problem you only get in this game at this resolution, my bet would be that something overclocked in your system, or just your overclocked gpu if nothing else, is causing the game to fail because of being overclocked. Because the problem is resolution sensitive, my bet is that it's the "OC" clock of your gpu causing the problem in this particular game.

The memory thing is true.. but beleive it or not, most of the time the swapping RAM out to fix the problem is still not fixing the root of the issue.

It is almost 100% a power supply problem. You are crossing a threshold of too much power draw when you get to 1600x1200. Doing any number of things can SEEM to fix the problem. Slightly less RAM or different RAM that may use less power may put you just back under the threshold.

Try replacing your power supply with a larger, better quality one and you will almost certainly fix the problem.

Or is it just when you set a film up where omnipotent enemies arrive to sow untold destruction on a world you send yourself into a dead end story line where a ridiculous achillies heel is the only way to resolve everything so the home team wins?

watch Starship Troopers... or BSG

Okay if I have learned anything from Hollywood movies, it's that Aliens always fuck up their Alien Invasion. Examples as follows:

• Aliens can build spaceships but forget to pack their environment suits and are taken down by bacteria. War of the Worlds.

• Aliens build space ships with force fields, which can be taken down with a computer virus!. Never heard of a firewall, asshats? Independence day

• Aliens dissolve in salty water, so they decide to invade a planet that is 2/3 covered in the stuff. Day of the Triffids

• Aliens invent spaceships, but cannot open doors. Signs (They seemingly didn't learn anything from The Triffids either as they also die on contact with water).

I mean do we live in the stupid end of the universe or something, with retarded aliens as neighbours? Or is it just when you set a film up where omnipotent enemies arrive to sow untold destruction on a world you send yourself into a dead end story line where a ridiculous achillies heel is the only way to resolve everything so the home team wins?