Wow...I've never had this much trouble building a pc before..

[MegaMustaine]

I've built 3 pcs before, but my current one I wanted to use for recording is giving me so much hassle it's not even funny.

I could go into specs if anyone is EXTREMELY intrigued, but basically its a Q6600 with 4 gb of ram, all that good stuff.

Anyways, when I was in vista, I was having a ton of problems. Microsoft Explorer would randomly crash, my computer would randomly restart, and running cubase or anything like that was pretty much not an option. (ez drummer or Cubase would always crash.)

After trying to deal with all that, I finally gave up. Moved back down to XP. Bought a new hardrive, so now I have one with vista and one with XP, in case I ever want Vista again.

But I'm still having problems. When doing a big session in cubase, my computer will randomly restart and give me a blue screen, but it doesn't display long enough to read the error message. Cubase has also been crashing. I just don't know what to do. This never happened on the other PC's I've built for friends, but the one I build for me is giving me all these troubles?

I've done all the sensible things. Checked my ram (passed all tests), I've updated bios/drivers on everything, all the windows updates, everything. I'm completely baffled as to how I can get this machine to run without crashing during demanding projects. I know this is VERY vague, but anyone?

 

[Damian B]

Are you using a 64-bit OS? Regular 32-bit windows can only take a total of 4gb of memory in the machine, that's including the ram in the soundcard, the cache on the processor, etc etc etc. When you put in 4gb of system ram, it's too much for 32-bit windows to handle, and you can run into issues. Try stepping it down to 2gb and see if that helps.

 

[Notuern]

Are you using a 64-bit OS? Regular 32-bit windows can only take a total of 4gb of memory in the machine, that's including the ram in the soundcard, the cache on the processor, etc etc etc. When you put in 4gb of system ram, it's too much for 32-bit windows to handle, and you can run into issues. Try stepping it down to 2gb and see if that helps.

This wont cause any problems at all.
The only thing that happens is that it wont map all ram.

I think it sounds like either a bad driver, or just hardware that has some conflicts with another piece of hardware(Although its rare that this stuff happens.)

Can you post exactly what stuff you have in your computer(Hardware and drivers)?

 

[kev]

Are you using a 64-bit OS? Regular 32-bit windows can only take a total of 4gb of memory in the machine, that's including the ram in the soundcard, the cache on the processor, etc etc etc. When you put in 4gb of system ram, it's too much for 32-bit windows to handle, and you can run into issues. Try stepping it down to 2gb and see if that helps.

vista 32-bit is now patched officailly for 4GB dude

 

[Notuern]

vista 32-bit is now patched officailly for 4GB dude

How is that possible?
Because the problem with this is the fact that a 32-bit operative can only map up to 4.2 billion different locations for ram(4 gb total ram.), so the only way to get 4gb is to not have any other card in the computer that has its own ram, and even then you cant get over 4gb.

Im not saying that you are lying, it just sounds very strange.

 

[Ihsahn1981]

What mobo are you using?

 

[MortenDK]

Ive had similar problems before and both times turned out to be the power supply!, all tho i was running games and not music produktion, it would just crash out of the blue sometimes either a blue screen, or to desktop or restarting!, a bigger power supply was i the ansver both times and is running smothly now!

 

[MegaMustaine]

I'll give my full specs, hopefully that will help. Could be my power supply, but I don't really think so. Specs:

Mobo: MB Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L P35+ICH9

Graphics: VGA MSI NX8800GTS 320M OC RT

Power Supply: PSU TT|W0106RU 700 W RT

Processor: Intel C2Q Q6600 2.40G 775 8M R

Ram: 1Gx2\Cor Twin2X2048-8500C5D R

Soundcard: Asus|Xonar DX 7.1 RT

I can provide links to any of these if you're interested. Also have a Samsung DVD burner and a seagate 500 gb drive.

 

[Ihsahn1981]

I'll give my full specs, hopefully that will help. Could be my power supply, but I don't really think so. Specs:

Mobo: MB Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L P35+ICH9

Graphics: VGA MSI NX8800GTS 320M OC RT

Power Supply: PSU TT|W0106RU 700 W RT

Processor: Intel C2Q Q6600 2.40G 775 8M R

Ram: 1Gx2Cor Twin2X2048-8500C5D R

Soundcard: Asus|Xonar DX 7.1 RT

I can provide links to any of these if you're interested. Also have a Samsung DVD burner and a seagate 500 gb drive.

Doesnt seem like a bad setup really..

However, failure rates on mobos these days are insanely high. Some reports say that 60-70% will fail much before they should be expected too.

 

[VH100R]

try to see in the bios of your mobo if you are using any overclock profile.

it seems your system is unstable maybe due to this.

 

[cobhc]

vista 32-bit is now patched officailly for 4GB dude

It's only been patched to show 4GB under system properties, as far as I'm aware, it still doesn't allocate all 4GB.

From the Vistax64 forum "Functionally, SP1 works the same as pre-SP1. 32-bit Vista will only be able to use and benefit from ~3Gb RAM (the exact number depends on a few factors). SP1 fixes the way it displays the actual amount of physical RAM installed, but the way it's used by the 32-bit OS hasn't changed."

 

[M.Lehto]

Just to let you know, you can make the blue-screen go away by making a change in Windows-setup, where it freezes with the error message and you have time to read and later google the message code and see what's really the problem. Sorry, I don't remember the right setup, but check them through and you'll find it (I did with my previous setup and also found the reason of the errors)

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms789516.aspx <-- There's a list of the error codes

 

[kev]

Yep, the os views the 4GB completely now at default but you just make the tweaks to the PAE and DEP to allocate it all- try this little guide:

http://www.ocmodshop.com/ocmodshop.aspx?a=989

 

[Carcass29]

It sounds like you may have a virus...is it a legal copy of XP?

-Or- maybe this will help you.....sometimes my mac did this because I'm running XP on the bootcamp side of my mac. I would open a project in Cubase and witin a few minutes or a few hours, my pc would just shut off completely without warning and the blue screen of death would flash for a second and then restart. (I lost numerous sessions, ideas)After countless days or even weeks of thinking I had a virus... and numerous searches on the web about virus, hardware issues and many other options.....I tried somkething different...I switched to Nuendo and I haven't had any problems since, I figure it must have been some sort of driver issue within Cubase...conflicting with XP...save yourself the headache trying to figure it out...switch to a different DAW

 

[MegaMustaine]

Haha, yes both copies of XP and Vista are legal.

 

[Unavailable]

If it's not blue-screening every time, it may be a heat or PSU issue. Check that you mounted the heatsink on the CPU properly. Also make sure you have the correct power cables connected to everything.

Check your temperatures with Everest Home Edition (http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4181.html), or something similar.

 

[kaomao]

maybe it's your power supply fan or the cpu fan not working that good, so it's causing you problems.
I had the very same problems on mine while playing games like Gta san andreas, after 4-5 mins it crashed.
Anyway I rebuilt a new pc at that time cause I couldn't figure out what was the problem.
Check the powersupply and don't buy a cheap powersupply, it doesn't matter it says 700watt, it must be a good one especially if you play a lot of new video games.
Enermax are the way to go, you may even consider Corsair power supply

 

[bibz]

Id consider making sure the temperatures are fine, then try reseating the ram. Corsair is extremely reputable, but theres a chance it's it aswell. My mate had a dead stick from geil that caused him some headaches a little bit ago.

 

[cobhc]

maybe it's your power supply fan or the cpu fan not working that good, so it's causing you problems.
I had the very same problems on mine while playing games like Gta san andreas, after 4-5 mins it crashed.
Anyway I rebuilt a new pc at that time cause I couldn't figure out what was the problem.
Check the powersupply and don't buy a cheap powersupply, it doesn't matter it says 700watt, it must be a good one especially if you play a lot of new video games.
Enermax are the way to go, you may even consider Corsair power supply

The PSU he has is Thermaltake (by no means cheap).