[Jscuzza]

I've been in the field of IT for nearly 10 years now and I just cannot figure this issue out. I used to never have issues with crashing until about 18 months ago. I would get a random crash here and there, but nothing major. Beginning of last year I was playing a few games and they started crashing. I was playing Rift and that had consistent crashing issues and I would BSOD many times a day, but only while playing.

I thought it was a faulty GFX card, so I did an RMA for the device. I got the new one and it didn't help, so then I checked the memory. It seems that 1 or 2 sticks of RAM were not functioning properly and would not boot the computer.

I then decided it was time to build a new PC, since I wanted to move to DDR3 over 2. I bought all of the new parts and installed everything like I normally do. I installed my games and everything was working well for a day or two. Two days later, my games start crashing again. There were only a few things I didn't replace on the new PC.

I kept:

PSU
HDD
Sound Card
OS

I then replaced the PSU and got an SSD. These didn't fix the issue either. To this day, no matter what game I play, I experience consistent crashing. Rebooting the PC seems to fix the issue for a while, but then it starts again.

I've reinstalled the OS, run virus scans, built a new computer, etc. I cannot figure out what the hell is going on. Is it possible that the OS is corrupt? I notice, regardless of brand of the GPU, I get consistent "Driver has stopped responding and has recovered" messages. This can occur even if I am just reading the news on the web.

I am hoping someone can point me in the right direction, because I cannot afford to build another PC, haha. (not like it would help)

[Sick_Jargon]

Hi Jscuzza,

I understand your frustration, it wasn't all too long ago I had a crashing issue that drove me crazy.

Could you post your Mainboard brand/model and PSU brand/model please.

Also, have you tried stripping your rig down to the bear minimum and testing this way?

• Removing Extra HDD's
• Using On-Board sound/graphics
• Using 1 stick of memory
• Limiting the amount of cores to 4

Tried the following?

• Checking for unsafe temperatures
• Checking for hardware damage
• Updating main drivers (graphics, sound, bios)
• Updating to SP1 and other Windows updates
• Run HDD diagnostic tools
• Tried a 32bit OS

Sorry if some of it sounds a little patronizing, it's just good to see where you're up to

Cheers.

[tom6049]

The way I read your post, you've changed everything except the sound card.
There are a few things that you can try.
1) Try different Sound Blaster X-Fi drivers.
2) Move the sound card to a different slot
3) Uninstall the Sound Blaster X-Fi, remove it and test the integrated sound card.

[Tanis]

I would tend to agree with tom, it seems you have changed out a lot of parts over time and one of the main consistent components is the sound card.

I would ask the question, do you really need a dedicated sound card? The Soundblaster is fairly old tech now and most onboard sound card are more than good enough for gaming and the like. I would say the only people that really make use of dedicated cards now are those that are doing a lot of audio work (editing, compiling etc).

Looking at your DXDiag, your soundblaster drivers are out of date anyway. Yours appear to be dated 2009 and the newest release is Jun 2010. The fact the latest drivers are two years old is probably a cause for concern, the card is probably no longer supported and technology has moved on alot in the last two years.

So, my recommendation as a further process of elimination would be to ditch the Soundblaster and use the onboard as it is probably more than capable and better supported.