Weird DOD:S issues

[Foo]

I've been away from the DOD, CS, CSS, and DOD:S scene for almost half a year and I come back as a pathetic noob. Not helping this is DOD:S killing my machine! After playing the game for varying periods of time (30 minutes - 6 hours ) the game will either crash, taking the machine with it, or all player models will disappear but the guns! (Very hard to shoot a sniper when his gun is floating on the ground and that's all you get to see - especially since the gun isn't even where the bullets get fired from anymore). When I reboot the machine one of two things will happen: 1.) The machine will boot fine, but crash within the hour in the game. 2.) One of the harddrives will make a clicking noise and fail to work until I fidget with hdparm in linux with it. Does anyone have any ideas on the situation? No S.M.A.R.T. thresholds have been exceded, the tempatures are normal, etc. The only thing that seems off: My 12v rail runs around 11.9v.

 

Here's the machine's config:

Hardware:

GA-K8NS Pro motherboard

- Using F13 BIOS <AFAIK the latest>

Athlon 64 2800+ (socket 768 - this is the original )

1gb DDR400 (clocked at 166 because the memory controller on the cpu does not support this config at 200mhz)

ATI Radeon X800 GTO 256MB <I'm tempted to go for that X1300 512MB AGP card - ONLY $130!!!!!!>

120GB Segate SATA-300 hdd

250GB Segate SATA-300 hdd

(No raid config in Windows)

420w p/s (came with case - it's sketchy - powermax )

<unused> D-Link DFE 530+ TX ethernet card <I'm using the onboard gigabit>

A random Samsung dvd/cdrw combo drive

 

Software:

Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64

ATI Catalyst 6.5

Latest nVidia chipset driver listed on Gigabyte's site as stable for this mobo

- including the audio, ide, etc. I'm not using the SIL 3114 controller.

The marvell yukon gigabit ethernet driver

Razer copperhead driver

<It's a clean install for games, NOTHING other than steam and this stuff!>

 

The 120gb hdd is the one failing, and failing only when I play DOD:S...

[Goofus Maximus]

I get that occasionally in CS:S, and used to get it in DoD:S as well. I stopped playing DoD:S though, since after playing for a while, areas would develop where I'd get single-digit fps, and a crash would eventually follow, if I didn't stop right then. It was like accidentally trying to run through a tar-pit.

 

In CS:S, the disappearing models is a sign to type "retry" in the console. I don't know what exactly is causing it, since, if it was heat related, I'd expect the models to disappear again in short order, yet that's almost never the case. Basically, I think Source just has very sloppy memory-management, and "loses track" of player models or props on occasion. The crashing is a different issue, and is just Source+HDR "Situation Normal" in the World According To Goofus...

[Guest ash-]

You have experienced the dreaded Click Of Death ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_crash ). Once your hard drive starts making this noise it's already too late, it's dead . Sometimes you may get lucky and be able to back up large amounts of data before the drive finally kicks it but the drive head will end up destroying everything at the same time! As for DOD:S, not sure what could be wrong with it unless it's on your dead HD.

 

How long have you had your seagates? Seagate gives 5 year warranties on all their hard drives. I have a 30GB seagate on my fileserver that has lasted me nearly 6 years.

Edited June 10, 2006 by ash-

[Guest ash-]

I get that occasionally in CS:S, and used to get it in DoD:S as well. I stopped playing DoD:S though, since after playing for a while, areas would develop where I'd get single-digit fps, and a crash would eventually follow, if I didn't stop right then. It was like accidentally trying to run through a tar-pit.

 

In CS:S, the disappearing models is a sign to type "retry" in the console. I don't know what exactly is causing it, since, if it was heat related, I'd expect the models to disappear again in short order, yet that's almost never the case. Basically, I think Source just has very sloppy memory-management, and "loses track" of player models or props on occasion. The crashing is a different issue, and is just Source+HDR "Situation Normal" in the World According To Goofus...

 

 

I had the same problem with DoD:S during the free weekend. I could play well for an hour or too and then my FPS would progressively get worse and worse until it was just a constant slideshow.

[Foo]

You have experienced the dreaded Click Of Death ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_crash ). Once your hard drive starts making this noise it's already too late, it's dead . Sometimes you may get lucky and be able to back up large amounts of data before the drive finally kicks it but the drive head will end up destroying everything at the same time! As for DOD:S, not sure what could be wrong with it unless it's on your dead HD.

 

How long have you had your seagates? Seagate gives 5 year warranties on all their hard drives. I have a 30GB seagate on my fileserver that has lasted me nearly 6 years.

 

Well the drive that's failing I've had for two years. It works intermittently (it's been doing this for a month), and only starts doing it again in DOD:S.

 

The other is brand new (due to that one failing ) I was able to fill it in a week The network storage here is completly exhaused

[Guest ash-]

You have experienced the dreaded Click Of Death ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_crash ). Once your hard drive starts making this noise it's already too late, it's dead . Sometimes you may get lucky and be able to back up large amounts of data before the drive finally kicks it but the drive head will end up destroying everything at the same time! As for DOD:S, not sure what could be wrong with it unless it's on your dead HD.

 

How long have you had your seagates? Seagate gives 5 year warranties on all their hard drives. I have a 30GB seagate on my fileserver that has lasted me nearly 6 years.

 

Well the drive that's failing I've had for two years. It works intermittently (it's been doing this for a month), and only starts doing it again in DOD:S.

 

The other is brand new (due to that one failing ) I was able to fill it in a week The network storage here is completly exhaused

 

Yeah, I've had hard drives that have done this before. They start clicking all of a sudden and it goes on for a week or more until the drive is completely ruined. If you are constantly "filling" your hard drive then you might want to consider burning your most important data onto DVDs. Constant hard drive activity will quickly shorten the life span of any hard drive.

[Cujo]

several things to address here. main thing is that these problems you guys are experiencing should not be happening and i'm going to suggest you have corrupt files for whatever reason. you also could be having memory errors as well which would cause the corrupt files. try downloading and installing this: http://www.memtest.org/download/1.65/memte...1.65.floppy.zip

 

it's fairly straight forward. should test your ram. if it runs for 8+ hours then your ram is probably fine and i would check your hard drive.

 

another thing to try would be a complete re-download of all your steam files. in other words start fresh. see if it still happens.

 

btw, foo your 12v rail at 11.9 is well within +-5% that atx spec allows for.