Crashing when watching movies or listening to music

[gpatel]

Hey folks! I'd just like to say that I've been surfing here for a while now, and I really like the community that's here and the site in general is great.

So anyway! I have a problem as you may or may not have guessed. What happens is, when I watch a movie or listen to music, my system will crash. The crashes range from the first 5 minutes to an hour or so. I have been baffled as to what the problem could be. I initally thought it was codecs conflicting, or my onboard sound/lan conflicting with my PCI NIC or soundcard. Many people have suggested overheating, though my CPU temp averages at 40c and my case temp averages at 30c. There's one area I haven't looked into yet, and that's my power supply and voltages. I have attatched a screenshot I took from MotherBoard Monitor. Do they look alright?


Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[cryptoguy]

Well, since the crashing occurs ONLY when you watch movies or listen to music, I don't think this could be power supply/voltage... Maybe sound card problem?

[mazdarx7-64]

Try to see if you can disable the onboard sound in the bios since you have a PCI sound card.

[gpatel]

Ack, stupid me. I forgot to mention I have the onboard LAN and sound disabled.

[MitaDC]

yah I don't see any voltage problems, I would think heat, what other type of things do you do? Do you game? If not try running like a benchmark on your comp and see if it crashes. Have you ran memtest or anything?

[mazdarx7-64]

The temps in the screen shot looked great, but it may be reporting wrong. 30C for a case temp is cold.

[MitaDC]

oops didn't see that, maybe ram then... also it still could be a power supply problem, if you have a voltage spike you aren't gonna be able to catch it on MBM... and it will freeze/restart your comp

[gpatel]

Well here's an update:

I just downloaded a copy of Knoppix, and booted from the Live CD. Knoppix didn't come with any drivers that would work with my sound card, but I was doing things like I did in Windows that would normally crash it, such as skipping through chapters quickly, and randomly but it seemed to work fine in Linux and not crash. So, I took out the CD, and then my PCI sound card (which was manufactured by a company called Typhoon) and enabled the onboard sound I had. Then, I booted up into Windows, and it worked fine!

But now, another problem seems to have risen!

It now likes to freeze momentarily while I'm doing something for 1-2 seconds then there will be a brief period of it working fine then freeze slightly again. It's especailly annnoying when I'm listening to music, or watching movies!

Ack!

Edit: Oh! Sygate seemed to be the cause. Looks like I'll be looking for another firewall to use. :P


Thanks for the help guys.

[wju425]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mazdarx7-64

The temps in the screen shot looked great, but it may be reporting wrong. 30C for a case temp is cold.

Why is that too cold? Then mine's freezing.

47c for cpu (xp1700 tba o/c to xp2000)
28c for case (extra fans helps)

Anyway You may need to increase your vcache so you have enough buffering. This is a long shot since I don't know how much mems you have. Also increasing your aperture size can help too. It helps to have plenty of mems so you can adjust your vcache and/or graphic aperture sizes to have plenty of leeway.

\o/ Billy

[Postal Dude]

Same here. My Case runs at around 29 to 31 thats with 3 case fans tho