Random Lockups (Question for CATALYST)

[telackey]

I have a brand new setup that has been randomly locking up. There is no warning, and no reproducible cause. What happens is that I will be working (often simply web browsing) and all windows will freeze, but the mouse still moves. If the mouse is 'clicked' a few times it too will freeze and the system must be reset.

I have recently been told that, though it has not yet displayed a STOP error, this sounds like an infinite loop in some device driver. (No offence) but the possible culprit leading the list seems to be my Powercolor 9700 Gold.

I am running a clean, slip-streamed installation of Windows 2000 Pro Service Pack 3, IE6 SP1 with current critical hotfixes, DirectX 9, and Catalyst 3.0 (7.81) drivers.

My system specs are as follows:

Antec True550 PSU EPS12V (SSI)
Supermicro X5DAE
x2 Intel Xeon 2.4Ghz 533MHz
1GB Infineon Registered ECC DDR-2100
Intel SRCU32 RAID U160
x4 Atlas 10k III
Western Digital WD800JB
Onboard Intel 82545EM Gigabit NIC
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz
Samsung SM-332B DVD/CD-RW
Powercolor 9700 Gold


To cover all the bases here is what I _have_ tried:

Clean, drivers only, no apps installed... no change.
I have checked the logs on my UPS (only a 56% load) and there are no power irregularites in voltage or frequency.

My system voltages.

11.92, +12v
4.95, +5v
3.25-6, +3.3v
3.36, 3.3VSB
1.46, VCCP
-11.96, -12V

My temps:

~36-38C for CPUs
~38-40C for System (a bit warm, but well within max range)

I have run Memtest-x86 3.0 looping for nearly an hour on my RAM without any errors.

The event logs in Windows 2000, the motherboard (including ECC logs), and the RAID controller are all perfectly clean.

Here is my question, what should be my next step? If it is the drivers, what different drivers should I apply? and how?

Supermicro does not believe the problem to be hardware, but a device driver (perhaps the Santa Cruz), but the TB has a long reputation of being the best card for dual Xeons, and Supermicro is basing their opinion on past problems with Creative Labs cards. They also mentioned the video card, coinciding with other opinions I have had given me.

[Qualitier]

I think that you have a hw problem, because of the random nature of your lock-ups, and a severe one, because it affects even simple and little stressing things like browsing. Catalysts failing such hard and at random in 2d? Are you kidding? (friendly said ).

Don't get scared: one of the most severe failures I've ever seen was years ago when I attached a 56k ISA modem, recently installed by a technician, with the ordinary screw that assembles every card to the case (what a shoddy job! I had thought). The effect of this simple action was spectacular: although the rig had been able to boot, it started to show random behaviour, worse and worse every minute. For instance I saw a removeable HD in the "My PC" folder (I have never had such device!)...

I managed to assume what had happened (should you be having a bad day, the screw disaligned the modem in its slot, and that was exactly the reason why the technician had refrained from putting the screw). But in that age I was somewhat inexpert and thought: why doesn't this stupid machine display a message telling me something so simple like: "the modem has not been plugged correctly"? Why a trifle like this is that hard to detect by sw? At least it could say that one card is not OK... At the very least, it could list my drives correctly... (wtf have them to do with the modem? )

Well, if you are expert enough to understand my ancient error in these questions, you already know that a hw flaw may be extremely tricky. Common causes are weak PSUs and bad memory modules. If you have several of the latter, you could try them one by one. But don't exclude anything. I once read a thread in which the cause for this kind of random errors turned out to be a bad CD reader (and I have had myself a defective CD reader that caused lock-ups, but not at random).

Btw, just another example: besides of random lock-ups, returns to desktop and other typical symptoms, a bad memory module altered (at random) the IA of one of my games. But I was sure that I had a hw problem because the DOS command FC did not always report pairs of huge files (>600MB) as identical when they actually were. It used to reverse around 1 bit per 400MB compared. When I replaced the module, all that crap dissapeared at once, including the IA altered.

[zpackrat]

Originally posted by telackey
I have a brand new setup that has been randomly locking up. There is no warning, and no reproducible cause. What happens is that I will be working (often simply web browsing) and all windows will freeze, but the mouse still moves. If the mouse is 'clicked' a few times it too will freeze and the system must be reset.

I have recently been told that, though it has not yet displayed a STOP error, this sounds like an infinite loop in some device driver. (No offence) but the possible culprit leading the list seems to be my Powercolor 9700 Gold.

I am running a clean, slip-streamed installation of Windows 2000 Pro Service Pack 3, IE6 SP1 with current critical hotfixes, DirectX 9, and Catalyst 3.0 (7.81) drivers.

Wow, I'm not alone anymore....
I have this same problem and is why I found your thread.
I have a radeon 8500 and was using the 2.5 cats and then the uncertified 3.0's and now the 3.0a's.
I have gone back to the uncertified 3.0's and have the same issue. I didn't have a problem with the 2.5's or the 3.0's until I installed the certified drivers.
If you come up with a cure for this issue please let us know, and I will do the same. I've only noticed it while browsing in IE, typically checking my folding stats of all things.

[bacondreamer]

Although not the same problem but very similar.

Recently purchased a Super Micro X5DAE board w/ the following specs:

2x Xeon 2.4GHz 533FSB w/ HT enabled in BIOS
2x 512MB DDR266 Reg. ECC
ATI AIW Radeon (the original one)
PNY TNT2 Vanta PCI Video Card 32-bit PCI slot
Silicon Image si608R ATA133 RAID controller in 32-bit PCI slot
CL SB Audigy in 64-bit PCI slot
WinXP Pro w/ SP1
All latest drivers and DX9.

Randomly when booting up, system will BSOD and reboot fairly quickly after that. From what I've been able to catch a glimpse of, it seems that the file ati3d1ag.dll seems to be the one barfing up at the startup. Once that happens and reboots, it works fine. Has anyone with a remotely similar setup seen this problem before? Any help would be greatly appreciated~!