The BSoDs are back in town

[Warcold]

After 2 BSoD free days friday and saturday, they are back.
So far I have had several BSoDs almost everyday playing WAR. They also bothered me on my 2 weeks of WoW trial. EVE-trial didnt give problems.
The comp is almost 2 months old, so quite new.

System:
MSI P45 Platinum motherboard
Intel 8500 Dual Core processor
Asus 4850 512 MB videocard
2 x 2GB mem
onboard sound
520W power
Vista Premium 64bit

Windows points at ATI videocard as reason for the crashes.
Forums are littered with 4850 BSoDs, with just as many 'working' solutions given. I have tried some of em (that fit my mediocre computer knowledge), without results.
I can't explain why I had 2 BSoD free days, and why the BSoDs have come back.
BSoDs occur at different moments. They happen when idling, traveling, during combat etc. Although I have them more often than random when starting to type something in chat. Sometimes they happen every few hours, sometimes with ~30 mins intervals. Seems complete random. Sometimes they happen a few times after which I have a clear run for the rest of the day (i.e. 4-6 hours)

-It isn't the temperature of the videocard, it crashes even at temps in the 50's (C^o)
-I have newest driver installed.
-I havent tried fooling around with IRQ settings yet (as proposed by Rubino)
-I havent flashed the BIOS yet (haven't (seen it) done before, so bit reluctant to do this), but some ppl on forums did, with diverse results (lot of em haven't seen change)
-Also havent tried flashing GPU-BIOS. Had a go at it, but also was reluctant to go ahead with this, for aforementioned reason. (reason for doing this was someone on forum mentioning voltage changing behavior (for powersaving) of 4850 might be a bit dodgy)

The .dmp files look like total gibberish for me and the event-viewer is littered with error messages and I don't know where to look for.

If someone has a suggestion, feel free 
Especially Vac, who offered to have a go at it. Thanks for that!

[Torgal]

Have you tried running a memory test? Something like http://www.memtest.org/. It's all about isolating the component that's causing you problems (if indeed it's a hardware fault), so work on one possible problem at a time and eliminate it (spare machines are golden for this).

Does it only occur when you play WAR? Do you play any other games? If so, does it occur during those games also? Do you use your pc for other stuff? Do you ever leave it idle for long periods? (does it BSOD when you're not running a game)

[Warcold]

Ok, BSoDs are still here. What have I done so far?

- I've done windows memtest, without results. (MdSched.exe)
- I've searched my BIOS for a way to change IRQ settings, but there seems to be no option for it  Or anyway, I cant find it...

BSoD's happen in WAR and WoW, but not in EVE.
Also no BSoDs outside of these 2 games yet, not during long idles either. Havent really tried playing other games yet, but most games I got are >3 yrs old, so doubt anything will happen there.

[Envicta]

Main cause of BSoD's are either Memory page faults, IRQ conflicts, Software drivers or hardware conflicts.

The former is something you can't defend against,  its because 2 coders for 2 different programs decided to specify the same memory to use and the operating system let them!    This causes a page-fault and pretty much kills the O/S dead.

IRQ conflicts in my opinion are the majority of all problems.    Lets say for "simpleton" that your PC is a building with 15 roads flowing in/out of it.   If 2 pieces of hardware use the same road,  then at some point, there will potentially be a crash!

Going into Control Panel -> System -> Hardware Tab -> Device Manager -> View Menu -> "Resources by Type".

Then expand the IRQ option,  you'll see all your hardware split across the 15-25 or so IRQ's.      If you have 2 pieces of hardware that sound different, but both share the same IRQ then you "potentially" have a problem.

The main ones that cause problems are "Graphics Card", "Sound Card", "Network Card" and any IDE/SATA HD Controllers.

List them here if you want, and I can tell you what they probably are.

Ok so the next option is Software Drivers,    this is basically linked to "Hardware conflicts".

The things to update are

Motherboard Drivers (including any on-board network etc) - People forget this,  but its very important!
Graphics Card Drivers
Sound Card Drivers
Direct-X

The last option was "hardware conflict",    if this is the case then no-matter what you do...   then potentially at any random point you'll have a problem..       I've had a few systems that would constantly crash and I had to replace something to fix it..     

These days the hardware faults are more common with cheap-generic hardware.    This is because manufacturers will generally test there hardware against the "popular" hardware choices and will ignore the rest.

I hope this has been some help!

Ta,

Envicta

[Rubino]

Don't forget mem leaks!  Badly written software can bring a machine down sharpish.
Andanin had a problem with the game patcher - it appears that some files weren't being patched properly and one file ended up being 60 GB or so.
Might be worth using the file check option on the patcher. Be warned - it does take a while.

I've heard that sound cards can cause some real problems with games - mostly due to shifting sands with drivers, MS support, etc.
As a trial - you might want disable the sound card via the device manager (right click on the sound card) to see if it makes a difference.  It'll be a strange experience without sound though.

[vacuum]

1. Do ensure that the user access control (UAC) is disabled in vista.
2. Create a power profile for your machine called 'gaming' and in that profile, run at full power. Use that profile when gaming.
3. Run buffthrottle
4. This is a 'WAR' problem. Playing EVE at 200FPS, I don't get the issue at all. This makes me wonder about DX9, ATI and vista.

[Warcold]

Lets say for "simpleton"

Good, cause I am one.

IRQ of the GPU is 7 and it's the only one with that IRQ.

So that's another rule-out.


Yeah, some hardware failure in my GPU could be possibility, but pc is a selfbuild, so I dont expect much in guarantee from the vendor...

Hmm, DirectX, not exactly sure I installed newest version, but I believe so.
Motherboard driver: guess you mean BIOS-flash with that??


Thanks for all the suggestions ppl  , I will try some stuff out that I havent already and will keep you posted.


btw, not playing much atm 
some fool at university thought the students should have somewhat more to do than usual or something 
hope to see you soon

[Macrune]

If you google any of the major GPU's you can find threads relating to BSoD's with them.  It would seem for the most part from what ive found to be an issue btwn certain GPU motherboard combinations and the game.

For example : a Gigabyte GA-MA770-DS3 motherboard with an Nvidia 9600GT GPU will suffer alot of BSoD's where as if you change that for a 9800GTX+ you wont get any BSoD's at all.

Then if you use a Gigabyte GA-M750SLI-DS4 motherboard with the 9600GT it works fine. 

If you have a friend who can lend you a different type of GPU it my be worth a go just to see if its a conflict issue like the one ive mentioned above.