blue screen of death

[swynx]

last night i downloaded the most recent driver for my graphics card. an ati radeon hd 3200. then twice this morning i got the blue screen. saying that the device or the drivers were faulty. and that it was stuck in an infinity loop.

what is an infinity loop and how does it work?

 

[Apollo-Soyuz 1975]

This just happened on my parents' desktop PC, followed by the computer failing to turn on from the power button. I'd suggest checking the power supply unit first. It's possible that the graphics chipset took a dump, but not as likely as a PSU failure.

 

[shane96ranger]

last night i downloaded the most recent driver for my graphics card. an ati radeon hd 3200. then twice this morning i got the blue screen. saying that the device or the drivers were faulty. and that it was stuck in an infinity loop.

what is an infinity loop and how does it work?

Windows update? I think they sent out a bum driver. Mine (Raedon HD 4200) has been acting up for the last two weeks. It freezes and reboots my computer when I play videos in full screen via VGA. It runs them fine via HDMI though.

Also, I believe you are referring to the infinite loop, rather than infinity. The infinite loop occurs because it has a condition that is not taking place, so it reboots to try and get the condition to take place. In lamens terms, it means your OS is most likely searching for a driver and when it doesn't find it, the computer reboots.

 

[swynx]

ahh i gotcha. what it was was i downloaded the "game booster" program. it told me that i could update my graphics card. it sent me to ati's site. so i figured why not. what it downloaded was not a driver, but an ati program. it lets me turn my screen, expand it, change the color, use my 3d desktop feature, and change whether my card is running for performance or visuals.

once i uninstalled it it quit happening. althought i noticed the only 2 times it happend r when the computer froze cuz i opened up to much junk.

 

[97RangerXLT]

when i built my new computer in february of 09, i decided to go with an nvidia card instead of ati radeon, because i had so many issues with shitty drivers. when i did have the radeon card, i had to roll it back to a driver that was over two years old for it to be able to even run my high end games such as far cry and call of duty.

no issues with nvidia, and it seems that ati still has not got its head pulled out of its ass on drivers yet...

aj

 

[Loud Ranger]

if you downloaded the application that changes your core clock or memory clock, you may be getting too hot. If you do reinstall the ati program that is crashing it install speedfan as well to monitor everything to make sure your not getting too hot.

If you think it might be a driver issue, boot into safe mode run driver sweeper to remove old drivers that may be interefering and then reinstall the new drivers and restart to exit safe mode.

 

[shane96ranger]

Well, I have always used ATI exclusively. I am very brand loyal; like how I only drive Fords. However, this is the 3rd ATI card in a row that has given me issues. I'm considering a change. I've never been an Nvidia fan, but I'm sick of my screen freezing and the computer rebooting. My wife works from home on this computer, so she's not the happiest of campers when it does it's magic in the middle of her work.

EDIT: Just a note that this particular go around my video card is on the board (the other two times were actual cards). It does not have a fan and shares memory out of the board RAM (both against my usual rules). This might be why, but it's still irritating as hell. And by the way, it is choppy with intense movement.....which has been a sore spot as well. Anyone else experience this with the Raedon HD series?

 

[kimcrwbr1]

Have you gone into cmos setup to see if it recognizes your card there. Just a thought

 

[Loud Ranger]

Well, I have always used ATI exclusively. I am very brand loyal; like how I only drive Fords. However, this is the 3rd ATI card in a row that has given me issues. I'm considering a change. I've never been an Nvidia fan, but I'm sick of my screen freezing and the computer rebooting. My wife works from home on this computer, so she's not the happiest of campers when it does it's magic in the middle of her work.

EDIT: Just a note that this particular go around my video card is on the board (the other two times were actual cards). It does not have a fan and shares memory out of the board RAM (both against my usual rules). This might be why, but it's still irritating as hell. And by the way, it is choppy with intense movement.....which has been a sore spot as well. Anyone else experience this with the Raedon HD series?

I like nvidia myself but it all depends on the manufacturer of the card itself. I wouldnt buy anything other than evga or xfx cards. Stay away from pny and bfg tech is my rule. I dont have anything against Ati but i just personally dont run them.

have you ever looked at the .dmp files in c/windows/minidump?
Every time you crash or bluescreen it will make a log file there telling you whats causing the issue.

 

[shane96ranger]

have you ever looked at the .dmp files in c/windows/minidump? Every time you crash or bluescreen it will make a log file there telling you whats causing the issue.

Yes, that's how I know what it is. Mine actually gave the blue screen of death twice after I posted on here yesterday so I rolled back the driver. It's been fine since, knock on wood. I also shut catalyst off, seems like that might be part of the issue as well.

My MB is an ASUS, so I expected a little more this go around.

 

[Loud Ranger]

Yes, that's how I know what it is. Mine actually gave the blue screen of death twice after I posted on here yesterday so I rolled back the driver. It's been fine since, knock on wood. I also shut catalyst off, seems like that might be part of the issue as well.

My MB is an ASUS, so I expected a little more this go around.

Ive always had good luck with asus myself, the computer upstairs i build has a onboard nvidia 8300 video and it works flawlessly. Hopefully its just a driver issue and works itself out for you.

 

[Psychopete]

what is an infinity loop and how does it work?

Infininte loop is when a piece of software is in a loop, and there is no control path for it to break out of it. Or what it's evaluating will never cause it to break.

1 is always true in Perl for instance - here is an example -

while (1)
{
print "Loop\n";
}

Loop would be printed on the screen until the program is terminated or killed from memory. In a non-multitasking enviornment (think old DOS), this would cause the machine to freeze.

 

[BlackBII]

...can you get into Safe mode?

 

[shane96ranger]

Infininte loop is when a piece of software is in a loop, and there is no control path for it to break out of it. Or what it's evaluating will never cause it to break.

1 is always true in Perl for instance - here is an example -

while (1)
{
print "Loop\n";
}

Loop would be printed on the screen until the program is terminated or killed from memory. In a non-multitasking enviornment (think old DOS), this would cause the machine to freeze.

The BSOD that I had specifically named the ATI driver. I'm fairly certain Catalyst is the program causing it.

EDIT: The driver name is ati2dvag

 

[Legend]

when i built my new computer in february of 09, i decided to go with an nvidia card instead of ati radeon, because i had so many issues with shitty drivers. when i did have the radeon card, i had to roll it back to a driver that was over two years old for it to be able to even run my high end games such as far cry and call of duty.

no issues with nvidia, and it seems that ati still has not got its head pulled out of its ass on drivers yet...

aj

^10
I finally decided I had wasted enough time messing with ATI drivers and pulled all the ATI cards I had and went to nvidia. I'm using Gigabyte video boards because I'm using Gigabyte motherboards.