As of late, I have been experiencing a growing amount of problems. It started out with a simple BSOD (!) one day, as I was playing a few games. I got a STOP message, complaining about nv4disp.dll, and I figured my video card was overheating, so I set the video clockspeed back where it should be (It was set 5% higher). For a time, everything was in working order.
Then a few days later, my moniter started de-syncing, but horizontally, not vertically. This monitor is almost 10 years old, so I thought it might be showing it's age. I thought nothing of it, and lowered the refresh rate from 75 to 72. The symptoms were reduced. But it was only two days later my moniter freak out by showing a black background, just displaying OVER LIMIT, and emitting a medium pitched hum. Funny thing is, it was not the monitor. I promptly degaussed the monitor, it didnt work. I unplugged, then replugged the monitor, same thing. I shut down the PC, then the monitor stopped complaining. Turned the PC back on, and it was working again.
However, when I did so, the Harddrive refused to be accessed. I did a prompt reboot and got the same thing. So I went into CMOS setup and cleared config data, and that seemed to work. I was up and running again within seconds. Played a game of WoW (sue me), and it ofcourse crashed after a while, like it always had with everyone on the face of the planet (Morrowind, anybody?). I decided to let it be and do some more experimentation with FS2Open. The moment it was launched I got another BSOD. It said PFN_LIST_CORRUPT
. OK, now I was genuinely afraid with the health of my system.
I Promptly got a memory tester up and running, but the results were... Inconclusive. Within seconds, the MATS+ test recorded 36 failed memory returns, all of which were in completely random areas. Normally, you'd see a few errors in the same memory address, but this was not the case. It looked suspicious, so I ran MATS+ test again, 29 failed memory returns. Again, completely random adresses, and none were of the previously failed. I let the test continue all the way to WINVS, and there were no further errors. I ran the extended tests, and again, MATS+ recorded a completely randomized series of failures, with no other tests failing. The only odd think I noticed was MATS+ w/o cache took an incredibly long amount of time (I suppose thats normal), yet it came up with no errors. I was definately confused, and concerned at this point.
Anyway, the next time I was able to boot into Windows, nv4disp.dll was giving me problems again. Many problems. I couldn't be running the system for more than 10 minutes without the driver quitting on me, so now I am running an old and unstable GeForce2
. Anyway, my system is getting progressively worse, and I'm not exactly thrilled about it. I have heard of cascade failure, but these are all independant devices. Something isn't right. CPU cache checks out, Memory modules check out, but CPU cahce+memory isn't working right at all. Neither is my video card, and secondary IDE channel.
So, what, may I ask, the hell is going on?
