Torture Test Error
 

I have just run P95 on my computer for the first time ever as I recently bought WoW. I had several installation issues and read the FAQ's on the Blizzard site and they said to try a manual install, which also failed.

The next step they suggested was to run P95 and see what happens.

Here are my results:

[Wed Oct 11 14:36:21 2006]
Self-test 1024K passed!
[Wed Oct 11 14:51:22 2006]
Self-test 8K passed!
[Wed Oct 11 14:59:44 2006]
FATAL ERROR: Final result was 18719402, expected: 9FF8F462.
Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file.

This doesn't mean much to me - so could anyone advise? My hardware is as follows:

- Intel Pentium 4 processor w/ HT Technology @ 3.2GHz (FSB 800MHz)
- 2GB Corsair DDR2 667MHz ValueSelect RAM (4 x 512MB Modules)
- ATI X1800XT Radeon 512MB GDDR3 Card
- Seagate Barracuda 250GB 7200rpm Main Drive

Thanks in advance for your assistance.

- krypton_ls

Try memtest86 to check your memory ;)

Hello victor, and thanks for your reply.

I downloaded the memtest86 program and coppied it to floppy disk. It ran happily for the past 2hrs, 23 mins and 50 seconds until I hit the Escape key!

It went through 4 complete tests and reported no errors at all. Here is the information the program gave me whilst in operation:

Wall Time: 2:23:50
Cached: 2048M<
RsvdMem: 276M
MemMap: e820-Std
Cache: On
ECC: Off
Test: Std
Pass: 4
Errors: 0

Can anyone advise on what else I could do? Thanks in advance ;)

Check your temperatures in BIOS (accessed through pressing the "del" key (or on some computers "F1") as your computer boots -- just after the keyboard lights flash -- or when you are prompted to do so by the BIOS.)

Report your temperature readings here. :glare:

Check for dust accumulation around your CPU's heatsink and fan...

The idle temperature of my CPU stays at exactly 44 degrees centigrade whether under load or not. Even if I play an intensive game of FEAR for a few hours it will rarely budge over 45-46 degrees.

The heatsink I have it not the standard Intel one - I recently bought a fancy Zalman one which is much quieter and does the same job.

Regarding overclocking - nothing has ever been overclocked in my system - EVER! :)

The machine was made by myself and all using new quality components from various Internet sites, here in the UK.

Any more suggestions at all? Thanks for your reply. ;)

I suggest you enter BIOS and set it to "failsafe" and retest with prime95.

Also try running prime95 in "safe mode" (accessible by pressing [F8] at start of Windoze boot.)

Perhaps someone else can comment on temperature software which can read temperature when the computer is under load.

Do you have plenty of system fans?

PS: What Power Supply Unit are you using?

You mention failsafe - where abouts is this setting?

I will also try running P95 in Safe Mode - I didn't think of that! :)

As for temperature's in Windows, I use a free program called SensorsView which checks the CPU, Motherboard, CPU Fan and two internal hard drives.

As for system fans, I have my Zalman CPU cooler, one drawing in air at the front and two out at the back. Not forgetting the two inbuilt to my main PSU and the one for the graphics card!

The PSU was a cheap one when purchased and is 500W with a connector for the graphics card. The total number of devices that use it are as follows:

- DVD-RW Drive
- DVD-ROM Drive
- 1 x 250GB SATA and 1 x 160GB IDE Hard Drive
- Graphics Card
- Floppy Drive
- Fan Controller
- 4 x 80mm blue LED fans

Also, I am using an ECS PF88 Extreme Hybrid motherboard.

One further point to add, is that when I ran the other memory checker program, memtest86, during the 2 hours + it ran for, the power supply was feeling hotter than usual, is what I noticed when I felt through the case and also the air that came out of it. Do you think I may need a more powerful PSU for my system?

Also, just so that you are all completely filled in on my situation: The vast majority of games I try to play, (Half Life 2, Doom 3, Quake 4, FEAR and FEAR Combat, GTA Vice City, Command & Conquer Generals/Zero Hour, Age of Empires II/III, Hitman Blood Money, Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion, Battlefield 2/Special Forces and postal 2) ALL crash during loading or during the first few minutes of gameplay.

FEAR generally runs well either on or offline and the same with The Elder Scrolls. The others - I've given up on for now! ^_^

There is definitely something wrong with my computer - be it RAM, (potentially) PSU or Graphics Card. And when Windows generates the error for the game crashing, it is always the main game .exe that crashes.

Any further advice, and I would be most grateful. ;)

[QUOTE=krypton_ls;88912]Also, just so that you are all completely filled in on my situation: The vast majority of games I try to play, (Half Life 2, Doom 3, Quake 4, FEAR and FEAR Combat, GTA Vice City, Command & Conquer Generals/Zero Hour, Age of Empires II/III, Hitman Blood Money, Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion, Battlefield 2/Special Forces and postal 2) ALL crash during loading or during the first few minutes of gameplay.[/QUOTE]
I was precisely going to ask if your system was stable :wink:
I don't have any solution, but at least we're sure P95 isn't the problem -- if that helps :rolleyes:

-What windows do you got?

-- Paul told you about 'failsafe' : it's an option you can choose in the boot-menu, right before windows loads. You should hit F8 to get to this menu, hit it either during the POST of your BIOS, or right after :smile:

I am running a fully legal copy of Windows XP Professional SP2.

So failsafe is just another term for booting in safe mode?

Don't confuse "safemode" with "failsafe". Safemode is a Windoze thing that is accessible by pressing [f8] when windows boots. "failsafe" is a motherboard thing...

As computer boots, press "del" repeatedly and go into BIOS and set the board to "load fail-safe defaults". Try prime95 again...

Ah right - now I see what you mean.

I'll give it a go in the morning and post back with how I get on.

Thanks for all your advice so far. ;)

Afetr you have set the board to "failsafe" dont forget to "save and exit" :wink:

Safe mode is a mode in Windows that loads the minimal generic drivers needed for Windows to run.
Fail safe defaults are BIOS settings that should work together.

The most likely culprit is memory, Memtest often misses memory problems that
Prime95 (by comparing known correct results with the results of calculations on your PC) and other programs (ie games by crashing after a short time)
uncover.

Sometimes the BIOS detects the memory incorrectly and picks settings
that aren't stable.

Things to try:
It may be as simple as too fast timings for the memory and setting them lower fixes it.
Another easy fix is upping the memory voltage in steps by the minimum amount.
There are other memory settings that could be incorrect and getting them
right will resolve the problem.

More drastic, testing the RAM a stick at a time (or in pairs if it's that type).
Where testing means running Windows and Prime95 or other app that had
problems, with the reduced amount of RAM.

I would agree with dsouza123's suggestion of testing the ram a pair at a time. Test everything with just one of the 1Gb pair, and then re-test with the other 1Gb pair, and then start swapping sticks of each pair to find the one or more that's bad, if any.

As stupid as this now seems - when I boot into Safe Mode the screen says there is a signal error! <_<

In "safe mode" Windoze uses a standard vga driver. This could be corrupted and might be repairable... maybe by booting the XP CD and running the recovery program. (Things might be further complicated by the fact that your mainboard has a built in graphics card.)

Oops: there seems to be a distinction between "recover" and "repair". [URL="http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm"]Here is an explanation of repair[/URL]

My motherboard does not have on-board graphics - only my PCI-E card.

And why would I want to repair Windows?

[QUOTE]And why would I want to repair Windows?[/QUOTE]

because this might remedy:

[QUOTE]As stupid as this now seems - when I boot into Safe Mode the screen says there is a signal error! <_<[/QUOTE]

You did install the motherboard drivers too when you built the system?

But would that explain the sudden loss of signal perhaps?

Could it be the graphics card or RAM I have be what is causing all this trouble?

From the advice that has accumulated here the past few days, my thoughts are as follows:

- Previously - most games I played crash a lot, so to me that would indicate the graphics card. But after using these memory programs, would it be more likely to be my RAM?

Everything I have is still under a full warranty of course, so should I just send it back or is there another program or way within Windows to check what component it is that is playing up?

[QUOTE]But would that explain the sudden loss of signal perhaps?
[/QUOTE]

You only get "no signal" in safe mode, right?

[QUOTE]- Previously - most games I played crash a lot, so to me that would indicate the graphics card. But after using these memory programs, would it be more likely to be my RAM?[/QUOTE]

Unlikely to be a hardware problem -- more likely to be a driver issue, especially because you have run memtest and you are running evry thing at stock speed.

Did you set BIOS to "failsafe" and save?

Right, I just did the BIOS and set it to the fail-safe defaults and then saved + excited from that.

Booted back up and pressed and held down F8, and rthe system clicks and now says the following:

NTLDR is missing
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

So if I do that it re-boots and says the same thing :(

[QUOTE]Right, I just did the BIOS and set it to the fail-safe defaults and then saved + excited from that.[/QUOTE]

Does the computer still boot withour pressing [F8] ?

What is the boot sequence in BIOS?

What info about the disks does it give in BIOS?

Ok, when I posted my last reply I turned it off after I replied.

Now I just turned it back on and it crashed on my motherboard splash screen, which is normally the first thing I see before BIOS kicks in.

So I turned it off and turned it back on - to which I got nothing on the screen and my graphica card fan stayed at 100% speed - nothing more than that.

Aaargh - please help! :(

Remove the mains power cable from computer. Wait for a minute for the power to go from the syetem. Plug the power cable back in and boot...

Ok, tried that and it re-booted ok. But it still hands at the NTLDR error message, which is the last part of the BIOS/POST part, just after Verifying DMI Settings. :(

NTLDR is a Windoze thing.

What is the boot sequence (order) in BIOS? And what info does the BIOS give about the disks.

Make sure all cable inside the computer are fitted snugly.

From what I've read, your motherboard is set to "optimised" from the factory assuming you have qualified hardware-- you could try settnig the BIOS to "optimised" + save and seeing if it boots okay.

After that we can try a few other things to get Windoze to boot...

This is one hell of a weird problem.

I checked the BIOS settings as suggested and after you previously said to set the fail-safe settings, it totally screwed up the BIOS. The drives were being read in the wrong order, so I pulled the data cable out of my secondary drive which was now being read as the boot master and it booted happily into Windows.

Now where to go from here? Thanks in advance ;) (phew)

Plug the second drive back in and see if you can change the boot sequence (order)... maybe boot sata first?

You have one sata and one ide, okay? Is the sata the master/primary boot disk?

Correct - I have one SATA which is my Windows drive and one IDE drive with just files on. So I change the boot settings in BIOS and see if they get on together?

Yes. With both plugged in, see if you can get the SATA to boot first.

check in BIOS that both SATA and IDE are enabled

In the BIOS settings, the boot priority is set to Hard Drive, but there is no differentiation between SATA or IDE. So I left it as that and saved and excited, rebooted and it worked somehow.

Even though when the devices are listed they are in the wrong order but it still picks up that I want to boot into the SATA one. So Windows is back to normal, as it were on that machine for now. Maybe it's got something to do with the jumper settings on the IDE drive maybe?

But it works and reads the drives in the right order within Windows!

Back to the real problem - shall I try safe mode this time?

yes, now try safe mode again...

Bugger - as before, I get the following:

RGB1
Signal Error
H 64KHZ P: V 60HZ P

:(

This should not happen... It sounds like a "standard vga" error. I would suggest a windows repair like the one I linked above...

Anyway, instead, why not boot Windoze normally and, now that you have BIOS set to "failsafe", try to run prime95 for a while and see if you still get errors...

HTH

Ok Paul - thanks for all your advice so far.

I'll post back tomorrow if it goes to plan - if not then I guess I'll be here before I know it!

I've just started the Torture Test and Task Manager reports that it is using 50% of the CPU and 1,475,536K of RAM, which is about 3/4 of my 2GB. (4 x 512MB) This sounds normal in a stress test - correct?

I don't know much about prime95, but the [U]blend test[/U] will stress your system the most, showing up any weaknesses...

50% because your computer is HT-enabled -- really like 100%. This is normal and you do not need to change anything.