03-12-2005, 01:36 PM
Just some suggestions, they are not in any particular order.
I don't suppose that there is another motherboard (a friends maybe) that you can put the video card in to make sure that it doesn't have an issue? You can get an infinite loop type error when the card hits a bad patch of video RAM. You won't see this in anything but games, CAD programs, and maybe large photo editing, because you won't be slapping things around in the video RAM as much. It's not likely, but you could still have bad hardware on the video card, testing on that would be worth it if you can.
I also noticed that Intel has an updated chipset driver listed on driver page which is worth looking at. You already grabbed the newest BIOS so that clears that.
I can be system RAM hardware as well. Run memtest86 just to be safe. Even one error indicates a problem (though not necessarily with the memory, it could still be a the mem controller or another board component, but generally not). Again normal usage generally doesn't tax all the memory, a game will.
I ran into a fun one with an HP scanner the other day and trying to get a new driver installed for it. Appearently XP can have too many .inf files in the directory and this can break installs (with the scanner it was screwing with the WIA drivers not working correctly). Uninstall the driver (the card should still run in VGA mode) then go to C:\WINDOWS\inf sort by size and delete any 0 length files in there. Rename your nv4_disp.inf to nv4_disp.old (or whatever). You may have to change your view settings to show file extensions and unhide protected system files. Killing the HKLM\Software\NVidia key before a re-install of the drivers won't hurt either. Re-install the latest release drivers after that. Probably won't help but it will help insure a clean driver install, which with me and the HP scanner did work.
You've ruled out my first thought which was the Power Supply.
SP2 is mostly a red herring with hardware problems (working IT at a university I've installed it on several hundred hardware configurations now).
Least likely is spyware. I did fixed this same problem on a students system after clearing 200 spyware/malware/trackers/etc from his system. AdAware and Spybot in conjunction with each other (just one doesn't cut it, Spysweeper has proven to ber pretty crappy and I haven't really worked with the others because) or, surprisingly, the Microsoft Beta checker are worth spending the 15 - 20 minutes to run. Again, I doubt this is it, but I have seen clearing spy fix a nv4_disp blue screen on a system before. Please don't use the immunize or auto protect features of either of them. They are usuaully more trouble than they are worth.
I've also seen a re-install of the OS fix the problem, but I'm not an advocate of reinstall to fix something like this, because usually it doesn't help and now you've wasted more time and probably lost some data that you thought you had backed up but didn't.
I've also seen disabling Virus Scanning before playing the game fix a blue screen issue. Don't recall what the blue screen was, but it's another simple check.
I hope one of those helps.
I don't suppose that there is another motherboard (a friends maybe) that you can put the video card in to make sure that it doesn't have an issue? You can get an infinite loop type error when the card hits a bad patch of video RAM. You won't see this in anything but games, CAD programs, and maybe large photo editing, because you won't be slapping things around in the video RAM as much. It's not likely, but you could still have bad hardware on the video card, testing on that would be worth it if you can.
I also noticed that Intel has an updated chipset driver listed on driver page which is worth looking at. You already grabbed the newest BIOS so that clears that.
I can be system RAM hardware as well. Run memtest86 just to be safe. Even one error indicates a problem (though not necessarily with the memory, it could still be a the mem controller or another board component, but generally not). Again normal usage generally doesn't tax all the memory, a game will.
I ran into a fun one with an HP scanner the other day and trying to get a new driver installed for it. Appearently XP can have too many .inf files in the directory and this can break installs (with the scanner it was screwing with the WIA drivers not working correctly). Uninstall the driver (the card should still run in VGA mode) then go to C:\WINDOWS\inf sort by size and delete any 0 length files in there. Rename your nv4_disp.inf to nv4_disp.old (or whatever). You may have to change your view settings to show file extensions and unhide protected system files. Killing the HKLM\Software\NVidia key before a re-install of the drivers won't hurt either. Re-install the latest release drivers after that. Probably won't help but it will help insure a clean driver install, which with me and the HP scanner did work.
You've ruled out my first thought which was the Power Supply.
SP2 is mostly a red herring with hardware problems (working IT at a university I've installed it on several hundred hardware configurations now).
Least likely is spyware. I did fixed this same problem on a students system after clearing 200 spyware/malware/trackers/etc from his system. AdAware and Spybot in conjunction with each other (just one doesn't cut it, Spysweeper has proven to ber pretty crappy and I haven't really worked with the others because) or, surprisingly, the Microsoft Beta checker are worth spending the 15 - 20 minutes to run. Again, I doubt this is it, but I have seen clearing spy fix a nv4_disp blue screen on a system before. Please don't use the immunize or auto protect features of either of them. They are usuaully more trouble than they are worth.
I've also seen a re-install of the OS fix the problem, but I'm not an advocate of reinstall to fix something like this, because usually it doesn't help and now you've wasted more time and probably lost some data that you thought you had backed up but didn't.
I've also seen disabling Virus Scanning before playing the game fix a blue screen issue. Don't recall what the blue screen was, but it's another simple check.
I hope one of those helps.
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It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.
It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.