Blue screen of death

[Dulcimerist]

I'm still confused by this Dell system having a Quad Core and GeForce GTX 550 Ti coming preloaded with Windows XP. Was your system a custom order from Dell, where you were able to ask that they install XP as the OS?

I see that the board in that is based on the nForce technology. Are you using its nTune software to overclock anything in any way?

To answer my earlier question, it appears as though your PSU is an OEM Dell 750W. I'm assuming that it's about four years old?

Have you updated the Dell BIOS at all on this system?

[Delt]

I see that the board in that is based on the nForce technology. Are you using its nTune software to overclock anything in any way?

You know, I bumped o/c'ing as a cause way down the probability, since he didn't know how to even dxdiag -- but you make a good point. Highly doubt that 550i came with the system. If he stuck it in there (or a buddy/shop) and did some gpu o/cing, for sure that could be a bsod in XP...even for just one game.

[My2Cents]

Indeed, at this point I would contact Turbine Technical Support.

A BSOD -can- be triggered by one specific piece of software, but almost always indicates an underlying system level software and/or hardware problem, and I would strongly suggest you locate the cause no matter what software you are running, as at best you are likely to encounter the error at some point in the future, and at worst you may be encountering a hardware failure or degredation that can become worse and worse over time.

As a general rule, in my <you don't want to even think about it> years of computer experience, it is -never- wise to rely on the latest <anything> to be stable. If you feel the need to be at the bleeding edge of technology then you should be aware that it can come at substantial financial cost and a guaranteed level of risk.

I, personally, chose to never purchase the latest anything for stable use. Of course like everyone else I like to tinker with the latest from time to time, but I know when I do this I should not expect perfection and sometimes things can go pretty bad. The field of computer hardware and software technologu is just too wide and varied to expect everything to work perfectly right out of the door.

(You can also save a ton of money by buying 1 or 2 generations back of hardware and still get some pretty decent stuff.)

I'm just sayin'

[Dulcimerist]

You know, I bumped o/c'ing as a cause way down the probability, since he didn't know how to even dxdiag -- but you make a good point. Highly doubt that 550i came with the system. If he stuck it in there (or a buddy/shop) and did some gpu o/cing, for sure that could be a bsod in XP...even for just one game.

The Quad Q6600 version of this system originally came with dual GeForce 8800GT cards in it.

I'm wondering if the original OEM PSU is still in it, or if it was swapped out when the new graphics card was installed. My gut is still with the PSU - especially on a modified Dell if it's still using its orginal aging PSU.

I'm still curious to see some temperature readings, or hear if running DDO with the computer case wide open changes anything.

[Cyr]

You likely didn't want all that info, but I wasn't sure what to leave out so... there you have it. Hope it helps. On a side note, I didn't crash lastnight for the first night since ive been playing DDO. On a hunch, I blew compressed air on my vid card every hour or so. So perhaps DDO is overheating it for some reason. Not sure why since it is a very old game and this PC should be more than capable to run it at max settings.
Also I tried lowering the graphic settings a few nights ago and still crashed.

Oh...

From what I understand (and from what the frame rate report shows me) DDO does not limit the number of frames per second automatically.

You can do this by going into the troubleshooting tab (if I remember correctly) and setting the slider to reduce frame rate to the desired frame rate.

The easy way to see if you are having tons of frames per second is to hit control + f and see what the number is. If it is above 120 I would say that you probably do not need it to be that high.

I found this one out after playing LOTRO and DDO on my new rig which had a built in system temperature monitor. I was really surprised at the high temps so I turned down settings and it still got hot so I started investigating. Limiting the frames per second to a more reasonable number (120) instead of the 200-350 I was getting made all the difference for me.

[Marcus-Hawkeye]

check your c:\windows\minidump folder and see if there are dump files for the times you've experienced your error. If there are files there, you can use windbg to analyze the issue. 80% of the time it'll point right to the problem.

[Tinythunder]

check your c:\windows\minidump folder and see if there are dump files for the times you've experienced your error. If there are files there, you can use windbg to analyze the issue. 80% of the time it'll point right to the problem.

This ^^

There are 12 files in there, and they all coincide with times and dates of the crashes that have occured while playing DDO. Thank you for the tip, I am looking into windbg as we speak. I have never used it before so hopefully I don't make things worse by screwing around with it. (EDIT: This program seems to involve alot of codes and I have zero training in computer codes so it made me nervous and I stopped. Please tell me exactly which version I should use if you can).

"Driver Update" is a secure software endorsed by Windows. Graphics card and sound drivers were easy to find but I was having trouble with the rest, and it turned out that I had about 10 "other" drivers that were outdated.

Yes I isntalled the 550TI. I was told by a kid at the Geek Squad that it would be perfectly compatable with my system. Yes I know XP is old for the rest of my system. The reason I have XP is because when I bought this Dell, the only other operating system available was Vista, and I heard nothing but bad things about Vista at the time so I went with XP instead. So even when the system was new (with the 8800GT) XP was behind. The limited RAM capacity of XP is so far behind the rest of this PC that I am either going to have to upgrade to Win7 or just get a new computer. But either way I was told that the 550TI was compatable with my specs, so for yall that are curious about it, I hope this clears things up.

I have not checked the FPS in game yet, that is also a good suggestion and I will look into it as soon I see if I can use Windbg and launch the game again. But on a side note, I did eventually still get a crash while having the side cover off and an additional fan blowing directly on the card, so I deducted that overheating wasnt the issue.

Thanks again for all the advice.