Not the nVidia BSOD - SOLVED

[jolrei]

This is not about the nVidia BSOD problem, because I do not have an nVidia card.  Just to be clear.

I have never had a crash problem before, but the magic rig seems to be having some difficulties.  Playing along nicely yesterday, I just got to the point where the boring permaplat elder had finally managed to create a servo.  Upon trying to initialize the servo, the system went BSOD ("your computer has suffered a terrible error and Windoze is shutting it down to annoy you, and maybe prevent damage").  As this was the first time it had ever done that, I treated it as a random glitch, and restarted.  45 minutes later, BSOD again.

This could be due to several things, I suppose:
1) Overheating - need to check temperatures.
2) Video drivers - may need updating.
3) Power supply inadequate - not likely since I have 450W and a low-usage video card.
4) useshaders - I could turn them off and see if that helps (bye-bye fishies)
5) Inadequate video card - mine is old and probably the very minimum ATI card that would actually run the game.
6) Bad mesh or other CC - surely this would just crash the game, not the entire rig.
7) Borked lot or family - see 6.

I note from searches that most of the BSOD problems in the past have been related to nVidia cards, so I am simultaneously annoyed and interested by my rig's behaviour.  It has only BSODed twice, and only related to TS2.  My use of "Search" has resulted in the above list of possible problems to check.

Rig specs:
Pentium 4 3Gig
2 Gig RAMZ
450W Power
ATI X300 Video card (old - could be the culprit)
There is plenty of HD space left.  Rig has been recently cleaned out so no dust.  Cooling fans are all working.
The game is an Arrred version running from no-cd crack (All EPs, no SPs).
Running Windoze XP-pro

Question:  
1) Has anyone else with an ATI card suffered a BSOD and, if so, could you fix it, and how?
2) Have I missed anything else that I should check?

[Khan of Wyrms]

You should check first for a short circuit between the keyboard and monitor.


Next, clean the CPU case, especially the heatsinks, vents, and fans.

[jolrei]

Interesting - I will do that.  I did just clean all the heat sinks and vents, but will check them again anyway.  I may try running with the side panels off as well.  Might help if it's an overheat issue.

[Khan of Wyrms]

You JUST did that?  As in right before your problem?  If so, perhaps you broke something?

[jolrei]

You JUST did that?  As in right before your problem?  If so, perhaps you broke something?

No, within the past 2 weeks.  The BSOD seems to only happen when playing TS2.  For other games and work software the system runs stable.  I am fairly sure I did not break something, but it doesn't hurt to check to make sure that things are clean and cooling systems are working.

[Khan of Wyrms]

Did the BSOD or Windoze error reporting reveal the driver that was the suspect in the stop error?

[jolrei]

Not that I saw - windoze was set to auto-restart, so the BSOD screen flashed through to shut-down before I could read the whole thing.  I'll try to disable that so I can get a better look if it happens again.  I'll hunt down the error logs - I never needed one before, so I'm still not entirely cognizant of where XP hides them.

Edit:  I realise that ATI has updated drivers since I last did an update, so I'll just update those as well and see what happens.

Other Edit: That seems to have done the trick.  New drivers installed and working.  No crashes since.  Fiingers remain crossed, but things look good so far.  Running CPU and board monitors and temperatures remain within normal running limits.