It's here....

[TriggerHappy]

Well, it's been 10 minutes and I'm still waiting to connect to clients.

This is sooooooooo agrivating..... I'm at 721MB of 753!

This happens with Bit Torrent sometimes.

Restart your client. Keep restarting it until you connect to peers.

[Saxywoo]

FINALLY! It's done! Now to take my chances with the install and the servers.....

[Ruvanal]

I am open to suggestions.  Not much else to do during the download.

Your problems are sounding like one similar to mine about a year and half ago. The system overheated and cause some intermentent problems after that due to the heat damaging the North Bridge chip on the MB. It basically required a MB replacment to fix.

[JustAGuy]

In my experience, random lock-ups not attributed to driver failure, hard drive or video failure means motherboard failure or CPU fan failure + CPU overheat.

I doubt it's driver or video related, since you already swapped out that stuff. Your hard drive is fresh and clean, so that leaves the motherboard or CPU problems.

If these seemingly random (they're not, because they're caused by something failing) lockups appear only after the machine has been running for a while, and then once you reboot, every few seconds/minutes afterward, then it sounds like a CPU fan has failed, and your processor is getting toasty. But if you're sure the CPU fan is fine, then you might consider the motherboard. Something on the motherboard might have pooped (that's a technical term) and it might need replacing.

It's the worst thing to replace too.

So, I suggest you run it with the case open, and at the first lockup, check the state of your CPU fan, and any other fans on the motherboard. Give it a whiff -- if you smell burning silicon, your problem is closer to being solved.

If it turns out not to be hardware related at all, and say you have a huge memory fault causing error in your OpenGL app, then, well, that's all you. :)

[Saxywoo]

Another thing that it could be is that you might have a different operating system on the machine than what the system was designed for.

The laptop that I use to play WoW used to get blue screens all the time while in the game. Sometimes just loading it. That was when I had Windows 2000 Professional on my system.

My laptop was designed by IBM to work with Windows XP. I put the system up to XP, and the system runs like a champ. I'm able to run the game in a higher resolution, and can look around at any angle I choose, with hardly a hiccup in video performance.

Just another thought.

[LavCat]

This motherboard is on the Microsoft hardware compatibility list for Windows 2000 but not for XP that I could see. The system is working now on neither. XP had some other issues, but this is a different order of magnitude. I would almost like to see a blue screen at this point. Thanks for the thought however.

[LavCat]

The problem is not affected by heat, it seems, but as Ruvanal suggested the problem may have been caused by heat in the first place. Blowing a big fan directly in the open case does not help. Nor does it matter whether the power has been on for five minutes or five days.

My CPU's have always run cool, and nothing in this system has ever been overclocked. All the fans are working. The CPU's typically run about 46-47 degrees C. The over temperature point is I think 86.

My download is done, and the patch is now installed. After I send this message off I will take the system down and try a couple of different experiments:

This motherboard has dual SCSI controllers. I never thought to try the second. Next, if that does not work, I plan to take the SCSI controller out of my other system and put it in this one for a test. If that test does not work, it's time for a new motherboard.

I could try the CPU's one at a time to see if one is bad, but I'm not sure that such a test is worth the effort. If I had to buy a new CPU I'd rather put the cost towards a whole new system.

As to systems, I'm leaning towards an Athlon. A pair of Xeons or Opterons is a bit more than I wish to spend right now. Sad. I've not had a single CPU machine for many years.

[JustAGuy]

As to systems, I'm leaning towards an Athlon. A pair of Xeons or Opterons is a bit more than I wish to spend right now. Sad. I've not had a single CPU machine for many years.

Good luck with the testing. I have a feeling it will turn out to be the motherboard that has indeed crapped out on you.

As for your system; if you've gone so long with only dual/multi processor machines, may I suggest a P4 with Hyper Threading? The HT basically makes the P4 act as a multiprocesser machine. That's how it's recognized under Win XP, and you get pretty much the same benefit. It's worth looking into, if you're really going to be buying a single processor, yet yearn for multiple processors. I read something about Win XP Home not being able to make full use of the Hyper Threading, but XP Pro has no problems. Not 100% on that, though.

As I write this, I'm using Firefox for Linux on my Xbox :) Now that's a slow processor!

[LavCat]

Well, I can report it's *not* the SCSI controllers of the motherboard. Since the download, in many trials, I have not made it to the game. Only once have I reached as far as to the gryphon screen. DII at least loads, but it does not go long before the system freezes.

I guess this weekend I will be doing system shopping. I'm going in the hospital for a bit next week, and I'd like to get the stuff on order so I have something to come home to besides dead petunias and a dehydrated cat.

To my knowledge you are entirely correct about the hyperthreading and XP. Maybe it's my imagination but with single thread machines, something always wants to take the cursor. I find that rude and annoying.

I was watching the processor loading while the patch was being applied. One CPU was pretty much max, while the second was 50-70%.

I can't start a poll of course, but which processors play WoW better? I read a recent review on AnandTech that for Doom at least, the AMD parts gave much higher frame rates. I also read a recent review in one of the trade magazines that for workstations under heavy load dual Xeons beat dual Opterons hands down, even though when lightly loaded the Opterons were faster.

Has anyone here yet tried running WoW on a socket 939 system?


Edit: Spelling.

[Saxywoo]

Just another thought.... Do you think that it could have to do with the video card? I do know that when the video card really gets crunching, the chip(s) on there really get warmed up. Of course, with the setup that you have, your video card probably does have a fan on it....

Your memory overheating perhaps?

[Artega]

At least you're able to play whenever you want - it's downright painful to have a Level 14 Tauren Warrior just collecting dust when all of the Lurkers are finally fighting for the right side <_<

Anyone mind explaining what a BitTorrent is, exactly? Low-band people like me have never been able to download large files, and it sounds like BT is for large files. From what I've heard, it basically streams the file to your computer like a P2P system. Is that about what it does?

[LavCat]

I doubt the problem is the video card because I tried several: nVidia and ATI, AGP and PCI. Nothing worked. I can't say for sure the memory is not over heating, but I doubt that's the problem. The motherboard is designed to keep working even if an entire DRAM chip fails. No ECC faults are being logged.


I ordered new parts this afternoon:

Athlon 3500+
Thermaltake A1836 cooler
MSI K8N NEO2 motherboard
Crucial BL6464Z402 PC3200 memory (2x512)
Adaptec 39160 SCSI controller

I still need to order a power supply.

[DeeBye]

Anyone mind explaining what a BitTorrent is, exactly?

http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/introduction.html

Low-band people like me have never been able to download large files, and it sounds like BT is for large files.&nbsp; From what I've heard, it basically streams the file to your computer like a P2P system.&nbsp; Is that about what it does?

BT is great for mass-sharing of large files, because everyone downloading the file is also utilising their upstream bandwidth to redistribute what they've already downloaded to others.

You can still use BT, even with low bandwith (I know this from personal experience). It will resume downloads right where you leave off. It just takes a lot longer :)

[JustAGuy]

For a power supply, you can't go wrong with Enermax or Antec. Both have served me very well in the past. My current PSU is an Enermax 450W, but I can't recall the exact model right now. It's nice and quiet, with variable secondary fan speed, controlled by the motherboard.

My previous PSU was an Antec 400W, but my faulty motherboard caused it to fail (not the other way around, oddly enough). I really shouldn't have been overclocking that board, but that's another story...

[Artega]

Sounds sexy, but I'd prefer a better brand of RAM. I use Mushkin, though I've heard Corsair is easily equal to Mushkin in terms of quality. Then again, if you can get a great deal on twin sticks of Crucial, go for it ^_^

[LavCat]

I have been using PC Power & Cooling since about 1989, and I think I will stick with them. Though I am sure any one of a number of other brands would be sufficient.

[LavCat]

I had not been in the market for PC memory much in the past few years, and I had to educate myself. Anandtech is a site whose reviews I value, and they recommended Crucial, considering that this is for an Athlon system:

Our recommendations do not really change from our DDR400 2-2-2 roundup, but we do need to add Geil Ultra X to the highly recommended. Crucial Ballistix stills achieves the fastest timings we have seen across the bandwidth, but Geil Ultra X joins OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev. 2 as a memory with the broadest bandwidth yet seen with any memory - particularly a memory rated at DDR400. Geil even surpasses the excellent OCZ Platinum Rev.2 by a few MHz at the top, but performance is close enough they should be considered basically equivalent, which is very high praise for Geil Ultra X.

The nice thing about the wealth of excellent choices in DDR400 2-2-2 memory is that the buyer finally gets to look at value in their DDR400 2-2-2 purchase. Since all of the DDR400 2-2-2 we recently tested goes to DDR500 you can shop for price among the seven available memories with assurance you will get the fastest DDR400 timings possible, with bandwidth to at least DDR500. If you want the widest bandwidth possible then you can choose between the Geil PC3200 Ultra X tested here and the equally excellent OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev. 2.

In the more difficult area of memory for the Athlon 64, the Geil brings nothing new to the table. We found it behaved like Samsung memory tested in our roundup on the Athlon 64 platform, which means it tops out MUCH lower on the A64 than the Intel platform. Consider the A64 limit to be around DDR466 with this Geil Ultra X. That means for Athlon 64 systems, your best choices are still Crucial Ballistix or other Micron-based memory like OCZ 3500EB or 3700EB. The Micron-chip memory performs the same in our tests on either Intel or Athlon 64. If you prefer Samsung chips for your A64, then OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev. 2 was the only Samsung dimm to reach DDR500, which was still far short of the DDR557 it reached on the Intel 875 platform.

Besides, I have some work-related connection to folks at Micron, so I at least have someplace to complain.

To shift the topic back to WoW, what is the best way to migrate the program to a new system? I could test Microsoft's plug and play by seeing if an image of the existing disc would work on the new motherboard. Something tells me that is not the cleanest solution.

What I want to avoid is having to redo two weeks of downloads if I have to reinstall. Any suggestions?


Edit: Spelling. Still looking for suggestions.

[Refrigerator]

Well, I haven't downloaded the patch yet, as I've been away from my house since tuesday. I started the download and was going with an amazing ~12 kbps average! As "good" as this is, (compared to last download) I decided to see if I could actually get a decent rate, and am currently following the instructions with BitTorrent.

I have a level 10 (I think) orc shaman by the name of DafuKafu on the normal server that I created in preparation for the patch. I just couldn't wait to try the shaman out. REALLY interesting class, so far.

That's all for now!

[LavCat]

I am home from the hospital and have patched the patch. I think the game and I are both in beta. No catheter this time, which means I have to get up from the computer periodically. My roommate in the hospital was having her bladder removed this morning -- which seems a simple and elegant solution, but it does not sound like a lot of fun.

I have my new power supply, and am expecting the other computer parts this afternoon. A kind friend has said that he will make a cable that I need. It may be a few days before I feel up to working on all this, but we shall see. I very much miss WoW and my beta friends, and it's been more than a couple of weeks since I could play. I am very jealous of Ackland's pony, even if it is a puny one.

I still am not sure how best to port my installation of WoW to a new system without a fresh install. If I install the original program that I got when I joined the beta and then copy over all the up to date patched files, should that work? I am on a modem (my computer, not me, actually) and the thought of several days of downloads is something I want to avoid.

[JustAGuy]

Glad to hear you're out of the hospital and catheter-less. My cousin was in a train vs minivan accident a number of years back and the resulting damage to his bladder resulted in him having to have a catheter put in. He survived the accident and he's fine these days, but I do understand and know what it's like.

When you're feeling up to it, try and just copy the already installed WoW beta files to your machine. It just might work without any kind of proper installation routine. I bet the thing won't update properly in the future, but it'd run.

If you copy it and it runs ok, then good, problem solved. But, if it complains about this or that, there are a few registry entries for WoW you might want to enter. They exist in three directories I can see (one might be depreciated):

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Blizzard Entertainment\World of Warcraft

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Blizzard Entertainment\WoW (Probably depreciated)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Blizzard Entertainment\Word of Warcraft

The current user keys have subdirectories called "Client", and contained in them is user's configuration data, like the last account used and which realm the user was last on. Nothing the program can't regenerate.

The local mcahine key has no subdirectories. This one has some entries that will most likely be pertient to future patches, and/or running the game.

The three entries are:
GamePath
InstallPath
UninstallPath

All three are of type "String" (REG_SZ in the registry). GamePath and InstallPath are obvious -- it's where you installed the program (for me GamePath is C:\Games\World of Warcraft\WoW.exe and and InstallPath is the same, except no WoW.exe at the end). UninstallPath, on the other hand, is where the uninstaller is located. In my case, it was C:\Program Files\Common Files\Blizzard Entertainment\World of Warcraft\Uninstall.exe. You will probably want to copy that file over as well.

I suggest you copy the installed WoW files to the new machine, create the Local Machine key in your registry, and giver a run. If that doesn't work, well, I could probably come up with something else...

As for the puny pony -- we'll get you one soon enough.