Lately my girlfriend's computer has been hardlocking while playing World of Warcraft. I began to think it was related to the video card, since the VPU would attempt to "recover" from the graphic card not responding, and then it would eventually hard lock. This has been occuring at a much more frequent basis as time goes on.

Also, there's "artifacting" when in game. Glitches along the screen, sometimes it will hard lock at what looks like a completely pixelized green/blue/purple/etc screen.

System Specs:
VIA VT0825 Motherboard
AMD Sempron Processor 2400+
ATI Radeon 9500 Pro
768MB DDR RAM

What I have done:
1. Re-installed World of Warcraft. Did not help. Locked up about 5 minutes in. I have also tried playing with the video settings, no dice.

2. I guessed that the video card was going, so....Replaced video card. I just picked up a brand new ATI Radeon 9550. Froze after about 2 minutes in. I guess that wasn't the problem.

3. Completely updated all chipset, motherboard, and video card drivers. Again, froze.

Some ideas:

-not enough power? The computer has a 300W power supply, is this enough?

-overheating? I checked the CPU temp in BIOS, it read about 50C. That doesn't seem too high at all.

-too dusty? There is a fair amount of dust inside the case. I know this is a long shot, but it wouldn't hurt to pick up some compressed air I suppose.



Also: The video card was originally used in my computer before I gave it to my girlfriend. It worked fine with Warcraft then.


Also: WOW Website suggested that some VPU errors can be fixed by doing a rollback on the Catalyst drivers from 6 to 5.1, except I'm having trouble doing this with Windows XP. It keeps on trying to grab the latest driver. Any ways to get around this?

edit: Just rolled back successfully...

[Edited on December 13, 2005 at 7:45 PM. Reason : ]

[Edited on December 13, 2005 at 7:51 PM. Reason : ]

12/13/2005 7:41:48 PM

Quote :

"ATI Radeon 9500 Pro "

There is the problem.

ATI cannot make drivers.

My 9800 pro has hardlock and VPU recover problems in WoW as well.

its 100% the fault of the drivers. I think im gonna go back to catalyst 4.10 sometime soon since those were the last stable drivers ATI ever released.

12/13/2005 7:52:08 PM

I'll roll back again I suppose and see what happens.

30 second in freezes though..... drivers?

I mean, I have an X800 Pro with the latest catalyst drivers and I never get freezes.. ever.

12/13/2005 7:54:13 PM

it seems to be a problem with the 9xxx series.

i had the exact same problem with a 9600xt in UT2k4 until i put the drivers back to 4.10

I know other people in my guild have problems with their ATI cards and wow as well.

12/13/2005 7:56:17 PM

k I'll try it.

12/13/2005 10:02:00 PM

I can't get the rollback feature to work. How can I manually do this? When I uninstall the device it just simply reinstalls with the 6.1 drivers even when I specify the directory to pull from....

12/13/2005 10:10:44 PM

wait wait wait... do you mean Catalyst version 4.12 or driver build version 4.12? because the only drivers listed are 6.xx....

12/13/2005 10:39:24 PM

This is what happens to the monitor during the hang:

Quote :

"136.5 kHz / 169 Hz. out of scan range. change signal timing."

Microsoft says:

http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;315614&spid=1007&sid=global

I'll get back to this thread on what works and what doesn't

[Edited on December 13, 2005 at 11:03 PM. Reason : ]

12/13/2005 10:59:51 PM

well thats either the game or the OS setting the refresh rate to something your monitor does not support.

As suggested by the microsoft doc, you could try forcing a specific refresh rate. Either thru directx as mentioned in the artical or thru the catalyst control panel (i dont remember where the setting is tho).

As for which driver, try one of these https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&folderID=293

the 4.10-4.12 should work ok.

As for removing the existing drivers, use the catalyst uninstaller https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&folderID=293

[Edited on December 13, 2005 at 11:05 PM. Reason : .]

12/13/2005 11:04:01 PM

i use a 9800 pro and dont have issues

i cleaned a dust bunny out of my computer and it hasnt locked up since

12/13/2005 11:16:57 PM

I did the refresh rate override in DXDiag... got this 5 seconds after loading into Orgrimmar:

"OUT OF RANGE
6.7 kHz / 9.8 Hz"

^yeah I'm picking up some compressed air tomorrow. It's going to suck if that's what it is though

[Edited on December 13, 2005 at 11:20 PM. Reason : ]

12/13/2005 11:19:36 PM

anyone have any ideas? this is driving me insane.

12/14/2005 3:45:00 PM

ATI sucks

12/14/2005 4:04:28 PM

the only time i actually have the issue tho is in BWL from Chromag on

12/14/2005 4:08:12 PM

^^ I will bet you cash that if I put in a Geforce the same shit will happen.

12/14/2005 4:09:45 PM

what is like every possible thing that could be wrong with it

dust
new card
reconnecting cables
new firmware
what else can you do?

maybe just running something like adaware and defragging will work, hate shit like that

12/14/2005 4:38:10 PM

(posting from g/fs acct)

AND WE HAVE A BREAKTHROUGH!

Per Shaggy's idea over AIM, I swapped in my X800 pro. NO CRASHES. However, I also had to swap in my 430W power supply (130 more than what the computer had) in order to power up the X800 Pro. So, what I am going to do now is to put in the old video card to see if the power supply is what made the difference. Anyway, this is huge. If it isn't the power supply, then it must be something with the 9000 series that is causing the issues.

Anyway, bbl.

12/14/2005 5:02:47 PM

Yep, I think the card / overheating was the problem.

Quote :

"So that card was replaced with a new one. I have my new video card in for about a week, my room still getting hot then the card stopped working. It was on for about 5 mins, 2 mins into the game when the computer went "sleep" mode right in the middle of the game. I opened the case and the card was so hot that ti burned me."

http://help.lockergnome.com/lofiversion/index.php/t21813.html

I'm going to go return this 9550, pick up a Geforce (go ahead and gloat, Golovko) and also pick up some video card cooling supplies or something to get the temp down in this case.

12/14/2005 5:36:24 PM

not going to gloat so long as it fixed yoru problem and you can play

12/14/2005 6:37:24 PM