Experiencing hard locks during online games...help!!

Hello all,

Hoping you guys can help me. Not sure if this si the right forum but wasn't sure where else to put it. Rig is in the sig.

Here's my issue, I get hard locks whenever I'm playing an online game. It usually take a while before it happens. Sometimes I can play for hours before it happens and other times just a couple minutes. I've got bios, chipset, network and all other drivers current. I've tried eliminating my wireless router and go straight from my cable modem, same thing. I was thinking that since it hard locks it might have something to do with the ethernet port on the mobo. But I installed a wireless adapter and it still happened. This happens whether I'm oc'd or at stock speeds. If I'm just surfing then everything is fine, no disconnects and never have any issues except for when I'm playing online games. I ran a ping test for a couple of hours with no packet loss.

I've been pulling my hair out trying to figure this out and think I've finally narrowed it down to some type of hardware issue. Although the rig runs Linx and Furmark stable for hours. I ran Memtest overnight and that all checked out. Anything you guys can think of that I should be checking? Any way to test and narrow the problem down further?

sup. is your E36 a m3 or 3 something. i have 2 325is and love em

could be OS corruption

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Originally Posted by fbmbirds

sup. is your E36 a m3 or 3 something. i have 2 325is and love em

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It's a '99 M3. It's a lot of fun. :D

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Originally Posted by stangracin3

could be OS corruption

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Just reinstalled Win 7 this weekend, so it's nice and fresh.

have you tried disableing SLI to see if one of the video card are going out?

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Originally Posted by stangracin3

have you tried disableing SLI to see if one of the video card are going out?

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No, but I would think that if the vid card was the problem it would happen in regular game play and not just online play.

What exactly happens during the hard lock? Looping sound? Screen freeze from what was on the screen last or does it go black? Is it a complete hard lock requiring you to restart or does it blue screen/restart shortly after on its own?

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Originally Posted by Dark-Energy

What exactly happens during the hard lock? Looping sound? Screen freeze from what was on the screen last or does it go black? Is it a complete hard lock requiring you to restart or does it blue screen/restart shortly after on its own?

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The screen freezes and just stays that way until I power it off. Total system freeze.

see if you get the same problem when at stock clocks on your gpus and cpu.

Gpu isn't oc'd and it happens with stock or oc cpu speeds.

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Originally Posted by Sideroxylon

The screen freezes and just stays that way until I power it off. Total system freeze.

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Maybe bad CPU, happened to me when I pushed my CPU too far. But if yours is at stock... I am just guessing though

This is a strange one, I have had stuff like this happen in the past. It is very hard to track down.

Almost always though, it is CPU or Motherboard related. Motherboard is unlikely, my guess is it is the CPU. Try running orthos/prime95 small ffts for a while, at the same time run furmark too. If you had another CPU to test that would be useful.

What is your powersupply?

I'd crank up IOH voltage to around 1.20-1.24V first and/or put a 92mm fan next to NB heatsink and see what happens.

Hard locks have nothing to do with internet connections -.-
These problems (if at stock) are always motherboard, RAM, soundcard (which no one bothered to mention yet), power supply/cables (often overlooked), or video related, and sometimes (although rarely) CPU related. A dying part on a motherboard or sound card can cause this quickly.

Have you tried a prime95 (64 bit) Blend test? Also try a current LinX/Intel Burn Test run with max stress. (do like a 1 hour run). You can also try these tests with Furmark or RTHDRIBL looping in the background. Passing these should remove the motherboard from the list of culprits.

If you pass all these tests but still freeze in gaming, take the entire system apart, clean all the dust, and then reassemble everything. Should fix everything.

Check for bulging/bursting capacitors on your video card or motherboard.

Seen this before, check your memory timings and voltage. maybe a little more voltage and higher timings are needed than before. also crank up IOH voltage to see if this works and make sure the board is not overheating

RAM i assume? o/c or something?

or GPU RAM o/c unstable?


both of those 2 causes are probable, check it

Thanks for all the replies guys. Sorry I haven't replied recently. After messing with it for hours yesterday I just walked away disgusted.

I know your all trying to help but the key factor is that it ONLY happens when online gaming. I'm pretty good with computers but am having a hard time determining what is going on during online play that doesn't happen during single player gaming. That's the key to figuring this out. But, I just don't know enough about the inner workings of computers to know what that might be.

I'm starting to think it might have something to do with my ssd. I'm going to reinstall Win 7 on one of my mechanical drives today and see what happens.

Thanks all.

Or... it could be your ethernet controller since it's only during online play. Try slightly increasing platform voltages (i.e. CPU VTT/Uncore, DDR, IOH, ICH, etc.) even at stock speed to see if you can't isolate the problem. Of course this never rules out the chance of a software issue, but as far as hardware problems go, it could be a low speed path that's only activated by the inbound memory window caused by the ethernet controller, which is why something like LinX would never detect it.

Do the games have punkbuster or similar? Are you using hardware monitoring software at the same time? I've seen this in the past with this combination. I had to turn off my hardware monitoring software... seems the calls to the hardware were being interpreted by PB as being an attempt to hack or similar. Just a thought.

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Originally Posted by famish99

Or... it could be your ethernet controller since it's only during online play. Try slightly increasing platform voltages (i.e. CPU VTT/Uncore, DDR, IOH, ICH, etc.) even at stock speed to see if you can't isolate the problem. Of course this never rules out the chance of a software issue, but as far as hardware problems go, it could be a low speed path that's only activated by the inbound memory window caused by the ethernet controller, which is why something like LinX would never detect it.

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Thanks for the reply.

I should have stated this already. During my testing yesterday I disabled my onboard ethernet and tried a wireless usb adapter, and still had it lock up on me. I think that eliminated any problems with the mobo ethernet port.

I'm leaning towards the ssd now because it's the only thing in this build that's different from all my other builds. And the fact that this is kind of acting like a RAM issue and that's all a ssd is, just a bunch of RAM. I dunno. Maybe, that's flawed logic but it wont hurt to try. I'm running out of ideas here.

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Originally Posted by Linux_Box

Do the games have punkbuster or similar? Are you using hardware monitoring software at the same time? I've seen this in the past with this combination. I had to turn off my hardware monitoring software... seems the calls to the hardware were being interpreted by PB as being an attempt to hack or similar. Just a thought.

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No PB that I'm aware of. The only HW monitor that I have running is Speedfan. I don't think that would cause an issue. I'm playing WOW and Dirt2. The latter seems to make it lock much sooner than WOW generally. It's still very random though. Sometimes a couple minutes, other times, especially WOW, I can play for hours before it happens.

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Originally Posted by Sideroxylon

Thanks for the reply.

I should have stated this already. During my testing yesterday I disabled my onboard ethernet and tried a wireless usb adapter, and still had it lock up on me. I think that eliminated any problems with the mobo ethernet port.

I'm leaning towards the ssd now because it's the only thing in this build that's different from all my other builds. And the fact that this is kind of acting like a RAM issue and that's all a ssd is, just a bunch of RAM. I dunno. Maybe, that's flawed logic but it wont hurt to try. I'm running out of ideas here.

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The fact that it's an SSD doesn't mean data corruption will act like RAM failure, it's connected via SATA, which is then memory mapped to some virtual memory address. At this point it's hard to rule out software or hardware failure unless you're able to test it out on someone else's (stable) config. Try putting your hard drive in the stable computer, or vice versa.

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Originally Posted by Sideroxylon

No PB that I'm aware of. The only HW monitor that I have running is Speedfan. I don't think that would cause an issue. I'm playing WOW and Dirt2. The latter seems to make it lock much sooner than WOW generally. It's still very random though. Sometimes a couple minutes, other times, especially WOW, I can play for hours before it happens.

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first try to unload ANY tools working with hardware directly, because all of them have equal chances to suffer from PunkBuster’s memory scanning, then see if it fixes your problem

To see if you have PB running, open task manager and look for PnkBstrA.exe & PnkBstrB.exe

Thanks everyone for the help and advice.

I think I've got it figured out. It was the SSD. Reinstalled on one of my regular HDD's and all is well. Despite all the troubles I've been through I've been spoiled. This Raptor HDD is soooo slow. It's easy to get used to how fast the SSD's are. I'll get this thing RMA'd asap.

Thanks all. :cool:

Happy to hear that you found the problem.

go with a Intel X25-M G2 80 GB or the 160, very nice drives