Damn Ati Vpu Recovery!

[Murrie]

So i built this whip ass new PC (Brigantia and I have nearly the same hardware, different cases, and a couple other bits - She does run Windows XP - I run win2000)

AMD64 3200
Giga-byte MoB0
1gig Corsair ram
X800 XL 256mb video card.

I also have:
Soundblaster Live 5.1
using a PCI nic card.

And i upgraded to a 430 Antec Power supply (hoping that would fix this)

Ever since I put the new X800xl into it I have been getting the following message when playing wow:

"VPU Recover has reset your graphics accelerator or it was no longer responding to graphics driver commands"

It occurs ever so often, before the new power supply it was pretty regular, and pretty much unrecoverable, the system would hang, or the monitor would display "off mode in 5 seconds" message like there was nothing coming from the video card...
Last night after sticking in the new PS the frequency of the problem went way down, and was "recoverable" - in that i mean the game would hang for a bit, I could then alt tab out, click "cancel" on the send info to ati message and continue playing - at least some of the time, i had to reboot others times...

Apparently this isnt an unknown problem for the ATI cards and doing a search on "Random Vpu Recovery" in google turns this error up going back 4 or so years... And there are a couple of huge threads on this in the wow forums (and on numerous other game forums)

At first I was sure it was a power thing, hence the new PS, but now it definitely seems to be some other nonsense - unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any known cause, nor guaranteed 'fix'

I found this:
http://www.foxpop.com/imre/2005/vpurecover/vpurecover.html
Troubleshooting ATI Radeon VGA cards, Ati Radeon VPU Recover
article that I am working on troubleshooting the Problem with.

The strange thing is this didnt happen to me when I was playing Murr on Saturday - we played from 4 or 5 hours without fail, then on Sunday I logged in Zombrain and started seeing the VPU recovery error and having the monitor shut down...

Im not pissed off yet, Ive delt with these kinds of weird PC compatibility issues before and currently am leaning towards some type of IRQ port conflict which I will be messing with tonight, its just weird that it only seems to be a problem with WoW and almost seems like its only specific to my Mage...

Ive got alot of things yet to fiddle with, but ill take any advice anyone has. (and yes I am considering taking the card back and just getting a 6800GT to spare myself the hassle, but I do not beleive the card itself is bad, theres just something slightly outta wack on my system)

[Rooster]

Only happens in WoW?

[Murrie]

i cannot be absolutely sure it only happens in wow, but the only times ive seen it are in WoW -
I need to put a couple hours into Half-life 2 or something to test more throughly -

but looking around the net the problem only occuring in one or two games doesnt seem unusual, (like WoW will through the error but EQ2 is fine, or Doom3 has the problem but HL2 is fine) and some of the people on the WoW forums also seem to only see the problem on one character - problems forking weird thats for sure...

[Murrie]

think i sorted out the VPU problem... ATI has two sets of drivers, one with the control panel, one with a new control console that requires parts of the .net framework.
I blew the control panel version out, installed the drivers off the CD that included the newer control console thingy, and the VPU recovery problem went away.

I did get a couple wow error 132 crashes but I think thats becuase the drivers off the CD are a bit old..

[Rooster]

So are you saying you're now using drivers that use .net in the control panel, or ones that don't?

[Murrie]

yes, the ones with the .net stuff

[Murrie]

well i spoke too soon, i downloaded and installed the most current version of the drivers with the Control Center (the .net thing)
and started having issues again last night.

Im gonna move my sound card to another PCI slot and reinstall it, as well as try a couple other things. If im still having problems im gonna trade cards with Brigantia and see if she starts having the same problem.

either way I think im gonna blow my OS away this weekend and upgrade to XP

[Rooster]

What are you running right now, Win2K?

[Murrie]

aye 2k

[Rooster]

Let me know what you find.

I have 2 friends with similar problems, one with an ATI X800 Pro & one 9800 Pro.
Both have issues with WoW.

Wife plays with a 9800 Pro and she's fine.

[Murrie]

my 9800 pro was solid gold, drop a X800 XL and everything goes to hell. Seems to be unrelated to any specific card as ive seen people with X850s PEs, 9600pros, 9600XT, 9800s, 9700s and all manner of ATI cards with this problem.

i hope its something stupid like a driver issue -

And an update on the problem games - I had the same thing happen when I was playing Half-Life2 Counter-Strike, so it doesnt necessarily seem to be a WoW related problem, i just play wow more than anything else.

[Riddick]

Ever once in a while I get a message when I startup WoW that says it could not detect my video acceleration or something like that. Only happens ever so often but even if I ignore it and continue to play I don't notice anything different, using a 6800GT 256mb. Everything else works ok and I play in Source (Half-Life 2, Counterstrike) quite a bit as well as Republic Commando.

[Murrie]

i wish i could ignore this, most of the time i have to reboot to be able to get back to playing and last night I couldnt move for more than a minute before it would die on me...

[Rooster]

I jumped down to fight Vicious Fallout in Gnomeragan (for the Acidic walker boots), and promptly crashed (computer crash) just as I started swinging.

By the time I got back in (after the stupid character already exists with that name).. I saw myself, then loading screen - I was dead. Dammit.

Level 41, killed by a stupid grey-elite Ooze (course, I wasn't swinging at it, so it had all day to kill me).

GRRR.. first time anything bad's happened from a drop/crash though.

[Murrie]

ouch

[Rooster]

I did kill him while I was afk though. :)

[Murrie]

at this point i think its a heat thing.

I reverted to the original drivers off the CD which didnt fix it, but did help some

then I opened the case and pointed a fan at it and and didnt have a problem... too late to say but im leaning towards heat atm

[Rooster]

My friend did have to return his X800 Pro twice. Fan failed within 2 months.

[Murrie]

another strikeout, its not heat, crashed twice on me as soon as i started the PC up tonight... then ran for an entire run through LBRS, then crashed 3 times in a row when i went in another instance...

The fan is running -

Tomorrow brigs and I will be switching out the cards - her machine should start having the same problems if its the card.

Now i am pissed...

[Murrie]

Alright I am definately NOT calling this fixed yet, but I finally got fed up and took the card back and exchanged it.
We shall see over the next couple of days if this clears up my VPU recovery, and hard locking issues.

[Murrie]

well even a new card could help me, my PC is still fuxored. hard locks, random hanging, stuttery john style playing,
my latest joy of a problem:
last night my monitor would go black and then display:

"HV Frequency Over Range" - which requires a power cycle to reset.

who the fuck knows whats wrong with it. I guess im gonna go pick up a new XP cd and cleans my harddrive in hopes that will help...

[spyder913]

what rez/refresh are you using, just out of curiosity?

[Murrie]

I think its at 60 now, but i like it at 75 (the highest supported by monitor at my prefered resolution 1600x1200.

I changed it around, made game and desktop match resolution/refresh rate match, but that didnt seem to help - the problem seems to come and go, - WOW was buggered last night -
I would log in and in a couple minutes either it would hang for a minute, lock up compleetely, or hang and display the blackscreen/HV frequency bullshit. I fiddled with some stuff to no avail -

I updated my Bios to the latest one available during one of my downtimes, matched my RAM speed setting to the values Corsair has listed - booted in safe mode and tried something that Brigs found on the net (dont remember, i dont think i did anything as in it was already set the way she said it should be)
I lowered the refresh on my desktop(1280x1024) to 60, made the game match (1280x1024 @60) - and crashed the second i tried tried to move at least twice. I must have locked up/crashed/hung about 6 or 7 times within 30-45 minutes each hang/crash requiring a reboot - and had the game hang for a minute or so a couple times, which seemed to recover and let me keep playing for a short bit.

After the last reboot i didnt change anything - I logged in and played CounterStrike Source for about an hour without problem, 3 different maps, with 30 folks in them
and then way able to log back into wow and play for an hour - go figure...
CS Source runs the video card up hotter than WoW by a degree or two so Im pretty sure its not a heat issue on the video card- But I also bet that CS source isnt immune to the problem either...

[Murrie]

Funny thing is we played all the way through Scholomance Saturday night, I was online from about 9PM through 2:30 3AM - went from Org to UC to Kargath back then over to SCholo all without any more than a slight bit of occasional stutter

I think at this point its time to blow away my OS and rebuild. the OS has made it through several upgrades and probably has a lot of shit floating around in it. sadly brigs has lost her XP professional CD so im either reinstalling win2k or buying XPpro...

[Murrie]

alright so alot of the majority of most people (but not everyone) with this problem have VIA mother board chipsets. So i did some poking around (cuase i had a VIA board, but now have an nvida board) and found some via files, sys, dll and others as well as some registry entries.

I cleaned them out and am hoping that helps :D ill update results.

[Elvtin]

Did the same thing happen when you put it in Brigs comp? I curious cause you didn't really say. hehe

BTW... when It hangs/freezes does anything appear in the system manager?

[Murrie]

didnt stick it in brigs machine, i just returned and exchanged for a new one.

ill have to check the event viewer but if i remember right there isnt any messages listed...

[Elvtin]

OoOoOo.. :)
Okie. I'ma be putting in the new ATI drivers tonight on my comp. I hope I don't have any trouble.. :p

[Murrie]

I would put money on it that you wont...

[Elvtin]

Goodie! I don't like problems although they give me something to work on. :)

[Murrie]

well last night was some of the best playing ive had since i got the new cards - the last two things ive done - on Monday i removed as much of the old VIA 4 in 1 driver as I could find - and last night i stuck my PC on a UPS

I think the UPS is the big winner and is what is really helping correct the problem. we shall see

[Elvtin]

mmmmm.... power surges? or drops?

[Murrie]

thinking just dirty power supply - understand there are 5 PCs in the basment computer room - mine being the farthest from the outlet (there are 2 that power all the PCs) - when i plopped my PC down i could not reach the power so my main powerstrip is plugged into a extention, plugged into another power strip.

looking at it makes me think "holy fuck we gonna have a fire" - probably need to get an electritian to wire up another wall outlet or 3 to spread out the load around some

Im thinking by the time the juice got to my PC it was weak and dirty - the UPS should keep the juices clean and strong.

[spyder913]

you freak.. don't daisy chain! And get a 30 amp circuit for your computers if you can =)

[Murrie]

aye! theres still sort of a chain involved, so i we will need to get more outlets in place - care to elaborate a bit more mr electrician so i have more ammo when i tell brigs all this?

[spyder913]

just tell her you don't want to burn the house down, that should be ammo enough

[Murrie]

lol right !!

[Rooster]

I have 2 UPS's on my system (1 for monitor, router & cable modem), 1 on Canidae's & one on our TV.

I'm a firm believer in them :)

Clean power is good.

[Brigantia]

just tell her you don't want to burn the house down, that should be ammo enough

Remember Brigs is the brains here and just telling me the house will burn down is not sufficient. Gotta tell me why or I'll tell you pppttthhhttthhh :)

Anyway, I want to add in at least one more curcuit breaker for the basement and up the amp'age on the one that is already there. I beleive the one for the basement is already at 30, was thinking going with 40s. Most of the others are the standard 20s I believe but I'd have to check again.

[Swifty_Johnson]

I had these exact same issues with ATI cards. They went away when I bought a Nvidia card. I did get some help from the ATI support website,

https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&folderID=27

Under Solve a Problem on the left hand side. Their suggestions reduced the number of crashs, but never stopped them.

Swifty

[Brigantia]

Looking at the wiring downstairs there, it seems that the circuit is a 20amp however the wire is a 14gauge (only carries 15amps).
So, I am going to all at once upgrade the circuit to a 30amp, add a second 30amp circuit and change out all the wire to either the 10 or 12 gauge - whichever will do it for the amps.

[Murrie]

still occasionally seeing this - not getting the VPU error, but the signal stops being sent to the monitor sometimes.

the 5.6 drivers seemed to help alot - no problem through last night after i updated (like nearly a week of Wow and BF2 without fail)
but WOW lockuped up twice last night... maybe its a different issue or something random who the fuck knows at this point...

[Murrie]

I am ridiculously cautious and apprehensive about posting this, but I think I licked this problem. Since I installed WinXP fresh (had windows2k before) to a new clean Harddrive I have not had any VPU recoveries, hard locks or other crashes that arnt directly related to crappy wow (or addon) coding (error 132 once or twice)

I am running Win XP sp2 with DirectX 9c and the 5.7 ATI drivers.

Keeping my fingers crossed that the problem really is gone...