Ventrilo and 8600GT

[Marfoir]

<p>Hello,</p><p>I am having a wierd problem with running Ventrilo and EQ2. Everytime I have EQ2 up and ventrilo at the same time, I get these screen flickers, and the 3d rendering crashes. I still can chat, look at my xp bar, and even call home. If I am able to call home it resets the video and i can see again for the brief moments before the chop and crash again. </p><p>System Spec;</p><p>Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 1.8 Conroe</p><p>BFG nVidia 8600</p><p>2 GB 800mhz DD2 RAM</p><p>I am using the Beta verion of the nVidia drivers (release did same thing only worse), all my updates are done, and have patch SMP. I have tried running vent on a single core and still got the same problem. I have been forum diving all week and so far havnt come up with an answer between nVidia forems, Ventrilo forums, and EQ2 forums, any help or suggestion would be awsome. thanks in advance</p>

[Marfoir]

any ideas at all?

[Dark_Grue]

<cite>sdgfly wrote:</cite><blockquote>any ideas at all?</blockquote><p>It's doubtful your problem is related to Vent or your NVIDIA drivers. Since many folks (myself included) do use EQ2, Vent, and the latest (for varying values of "latest&quot<img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> drivers on similiar setups, that particular combination is unlikely to be the culprit.</p><p>EQ2 will, by itself, stress marginal systems, as it's a very CPU-intensive application. It also kicks your video card into 3D, which also stresses any thermal, framebuffer, and/or power issues you may have with the video card. Adding Vent onto the mix might introduce additional software stability problems, but more likely is going to just accelerate CPU-related problems.</p><p>From your description, it's your particular system that's the problem. First, there's the usual suspects of malware - always good to give a box the once-over with a broad spectrum of tools (I like Avast!, Trend Housecall, and Spybot S&D). However, it sounds like your VPU is crashing and causing a reset. That's not usually associated with malware infestations. In the past, there were VPU-reset problems associated with EQ2 - at one time I put a lot of effort into checking out new Catalyst versions for my Radion card back when I had ATI (there was an entire year where driver versions past a particular version number would cause problems). But that isn't applicable here since VPU resets aren't a known problem with current NVIDIA cards and drivers and EQ2 (for now).</p><p>A start would be to get Driver Cleaner and completely remove the NVIDIA drivers and install (read and follow the instructions carefully, or you'll be wasting your time - the order and steps they give are important). There's a possibility that previous driver installs could have gotten out of hand. You can try removing and reseating the card (with the power off, please!), it's possible the card's backed out of it's slot slightly, and gets intermittant contact as the system/card heats up. A misaligned backplane bracket can actually pull a card out of it's slot, especially when the capture screws are cranked down. Eyeball the card. Is the fan turning when the card is powered? Is the heatsink clogged with dust? If you choose to blow out the heatsink, don't make the mistake of letting the fan freewheel while you spin it with air. Even canned air can spin those tiny little fans well beyond the speed they're designed to spin at and melt the bearings - instead, gently hold the fan blade stationary with your finger and clean the card that way.</p><p>Barring any obvious problems, the cheapest route in terms of time and frustration is to scortched-earth rebuild the system from a fresh OS. Otherwise, you're looking at an intermittant hardware failure, which can be extremely difficult to diagnose. Prime suspect would still be the video card. Other than that, you'd have to just replace things until the problem goes away.</p><p>Welcome to the wonderful world of troubleshooting nonspecific, intermittant PC failures... <img src="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/images/smilies/1cfd6e2a9a2c0cf8e74b49b35e2e46c7.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" /></p>

[Marfoir]

<p>Thank you for your reply, I suppose it is my own fault for not specifing that I am a computer tech, I build this system as it is mainly becasue it was less than $500.00 to do so and I dont have thousands to spend on parts.</p><p>I unfortantly have tried all the steps you have previously mentioned, and this was a fresh install. Malware would not casue a failer of only the GPU when only certain applications where running. </p><p>That being said there are lesser systems out there that do not display this particular problem, i.e. the system this replaced was a 2.8 p4 with a 9600 saphire radeon nad 1gb of ram. That particual system did not have the same problem, it just made the game run less well than i wanted it to. to diagnose weither it was a cooling problem i lowered the settings to bear minumum and stil lexperianced the problem. I can run any other application while playing experiancing no problems all the while. It only happins when vent and eq2 are running at the same time, thus leading me to beleive the problem lies there. (for expample i can watch a divx movie on the other monitor while playing EQ2 and surf the web all at the same time without so much as a hiccup). I have cleaned out the drivers before installing the newer ones and yada yada yada ad nausiam. </p><p>Thank you for at least trying to help, but I am way beyond your steps. </p><p>P.S. the system is less than a week old so there isnt even time for dust to clog anywhere <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>