Okay... I'm open for suggestions

by **Major SONAR** » Thu Aug 17, 2006 3:55 pm

Help! I'm having computer problems. I'm not sure anyone can answer this question, but I'm desperate.

Recently, I installed a new sound card (Creative X-Fi). I swore I would never buy another Creative product. So maybe that was my first mistake. I can't say with 100% certainty, but I think my computer problems started then, or very close to that point.

My computer now locks up 3 - 4 times a day and even Ctrl-Alt-Del, will not get me out. Half the time, when i choose shut down, even that doesn't work. Programs will lock up for no reason. I have looked at task manger to try and determine what processes may be causing these problems, but not having much luck. Could possibly be a virus (doubtful, but Bit Defender does pick up "Magne2t" and "Magne3t") Which I'm not even sure are actually viruses (and I do delete the file containing the virus). A search on Virus Encyclopedias does not show these files as a virus.

It seems to be a memory problem. I am now running out of "memory or system resources". I have 2 Gb RAM and plenty of HD space. Sometimes programs utilize 100% CPU utilization and take 5 - 10 seconds when opening files... this is not normal at all.

I am switching my phone system from Vonage back to POTS. Vonage has been changing my 2 router configurations around. I don't think this would have anything to do with the problems I described above... Am I wrong?

I uninstalled my previous sound card drivers and rebooted before installing the X-FI drivers. I even RE-installed the drivers to see if this resolved the problem... It did not help.

I know a fair amount about computers, but I'm stumped. I'm considering reformating my hard drive (it's about that time), but who want's to wast 8-10 hours reinstalling everything??

Okay... enough rambling. Anyone have any ideas or suggestions??
:help:

by **jfmaday** » Thu Aug 17, 2006 4:20 pm

i would go through with the reformat. I tnever hurts to start anew. If reformating does help then it was some piece of software causeing the problem, be it a program or a driver, then be careful what you install. Also make sure your motherboard BIOS is the most up to date version. Back when I first got my X-fi card my bios wasn't good enough and the card would cause it to not boot properly.

by **cavalierlwt** » Thu Aug 17, 2006 4:21 pm

I can't really help you with your current problem, but take my advice and make life easier in the future, seriously:

1) Get a program like Norton's Ghost or something similar

2) Repartition your hard drive, if you only have one, so that you have a main partition, and a smaller, backup partition--6 or 7 gigs.

3) Reformat Hard Drive

4) Reinstall OS and the basic essentials-- Office (if you use it), browser, CD burning software, maybe that one game you can't live without.

5) Patch everything up to date. Do no 'extra' websurfing while you do this, get on, get what you need, get off.

6) When everything is perfect, make a backup image of your main partition using Ghost or whatever.

7) Save the image file on the smaller partition as well as on CD/DVD discs.

8) Finish setting up all the other less important stuff on your system

Once you have this perfect pristine image of your system, it's easier to go back to it in the future--btw, Window's System Restore generally sucks.

Something like your current problems pops up, you can move your email files, important documents over to the small partition, re-Ghost the main partition. Start to finish in less than a half an hour, right back to 'perfect'

by **]DP[Artie** » Thu Aug 17, 2006 4:51 pm

First thing I would do is run memtestx86 and make sure there's not a problem there before reformatting or anything along those lines. And double check that your memory timing settings in your BIOS are correct for the memory you're using.

As for Vonage, go into each of your router's config pages and disable 'remote administration'. Then the only way to make config changes (besides being hacked) is if you're sitting on the LAN side.

by **Savant** » Thu Aug 17, 2006 5:35 pm

Ck this link out, i have the same card and thankfully no issues like this

http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&message.id=72509

by **ANTONIUS** » Thu Aug 17, 2006 5:38 pm

Major try new drivers for x-fi worked for me . (creative autoupdate)
http://us.creative.com/support/downloads/softwareupdate.asp?nSUFlag=1&sDestUrl=http://us.creative.com/support/downloads/&hdAllProduct=1&LangID=1033&hdDspLangID=1033

by **Major SONAR** » Thu Aug 17, 2006 9:08 pm

Wow, a lot of good suggestions here! Some of them I had forgotten about (IRQ and PCI slot locations for one).

Ghosting is a great idea. Time consuming, but considering that I typically reformat my hard drive 1 - 2 times per year. It might be a good idea. I've never ghosted a drive before, but it couldn't be that difficult.

i'll have to check out the Memtest... haven't run that one in a LONG time! (Artie your age is showing..hehe)

In the end I decided to try downloading the automatic update from Creative. It sounds like sucide to me, but it's also the easist solution (and may work). Most likely my next effort will be uninstalling the drivers, moving the card to a new slot and reinstalling the drivers. If that fails, I will probably buy a newer bigger SATA hard drive and start over.

I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks for the suggestions.

by **Major SONAR** » Fri Aug 18, 2006 11:19 am

i installed the new Creative drivers and the problem is still here. The problem seems to be memory related.

After running the computer for a few hours, having several programs open and running simutanesouly (sp.) The computer will start beeping at me and will not function properly until I close down one or more of the open programs. Once I close some of the programs (freeing up memory... I think), the computer then functions properly.

I don't know what a memory leak is, but it sure sounds like a memory leak to me. Once again, I have 2 Gb or RAM and about 27.6 Gb free on my C partion (half of the free hard drive is allocated to virtual memory - assuming conventional memory runs out).

What could be causing this problem? Bad memory? Bad drivers, IRQ conflict? Any suggestions would be appreciated as I realize this type of problem is hard to track down. i have not moved my sound card to another slot yet. I will try to do that later today.

by **nameless** » Fri Aug 18, 2006 12:30 pm

1. remove the sound card and any related drivers to make sure, that the sound card is causing the trouble.
2. have you installed any programs after installing the sound card? if so, remove them too.
3. test the system.
4. if this solved the problem, reinstall the programs one after another and test again.
5. if the system is stable, after reinstalling the programs, your sound card is causing the trouble.

from what i read in some internet forums, the x-fi card is causing trouble in many ways. if you don't need if for some reasons, i would give it back and try a sound card from an other manufacturer. a sound card is NEVER worth the time and trouble.

by **Major SONAR** » Fri Aug 18, 2006 9:40 pm

I have taken the sound card out and tried to make my system crash. I did not remove any sound card drivers as it did not appear they loaded in the device manager. Here are the programs I have open.

Internet Explorer
Photoshop CS2 with 2 renderings open (350 Mb total)
Autocad with 3 drawings open
Adobe Acrobat with 3 large drawings open
MS Outlook with 3 -4 Gb .pst file open
Windows Explorer (two windows)
Task Manager
Media Monkey (MP3 Database manager/player)
MS Excel (3 files open)
Watching an AVI file (Avatar)

I don't know what else to open. My system is running smooth as silk. Everything pops right up, files open quickly, everything looks like it's working well.

However, it would usually take a couple of hours of activity before my system would lock up. (Then again, I don't usually open 10 programs at once. I usualy open up two ro three). I don't think heat is the problem, I have 4 - 120mm fans running. I suppose it could be heat, but the exhaust from the fans does not seem very warm. I bought the Antec case because it was cool and quite.

So far it's looking like the sound card. Any thoughts on other ways I might check to confirm it is the sound card? I only have one other slot to move the sound card to. Should I relocate the sound card to another slot and try again? (Dumb question... that seems like the next reasonable step)

Any other thoughts?

EDIT: I have noticed that a Creative program "DLLML.exe" is using RAM. Every few seconds it uses another 4 bytes of memory. I'm not sure how much it takes to load DLLML.exe, but when I first looked at it, the program was sitting at about 16 Mb. Currently it is at 17,800 and climbing. I recall it being about 45 Mb or so when my system was crashing. I think this program is causing my problems. Any thoughts?

by **]DP[Artie** » Fri Aug 18, 2006 10:32 pm

That very much could be the issue. As nameless said, get the sound card out and uninstall it's drivers. Leave it out for at least a few days and see if the bad behaviour continues or if it goes away. It's a free, easy step that will either pinpoint the problem or eliminate a variable.

Also run memtestx86 to test your memory. It also is free. Get the version that creates it's own bootable floppy (there's also a Win version but it's unable to fully test all the memory with Win running). Boot your machine with that floppy and let it run uninterrupted overnight and as long as possible beyond that. If the problem takes a while to start happening, then the longer you can let memtest run the better.

You also said that half the free harddrive is allocated to virtual setting....is that something that you've set yourself? i.e. by allocating like 14GB? If so, switch back to letting Win take care of it by itself. With 2GB of ram you'll rarely ever come close to using it all, so there's no reason to have the system mapping out like 12 or 14 GB on your harddrive as mem space.

This is all easy stuff that might well take care of the problem so you should try it before taking more drastic (and time consuming) actions like reformatting. If none of this works, you've lost nothing, but if it's a hardware prob with the sound card (or driver issue) or memory error you'll find it.

by **Major SONAR** » Sat Aug 19, 2006 12:30 am

I put the card back in another slot. Everything is working fine, but I haven't stressed my system. Just playing BF2 with no other programs running.

The DLLML.exe started out around 8,000k RAM and is currently at 16,500k and climbing. Is this normal? Does anyone else here use an X-Fi card?

I could leave my sound card out of my computer... but how can you play games without sound?? :freak:

I may leave my computer running overnight and check the DLLML.exe in the morning. Tomorrow I have some work to do and that will stress the computer sufficiently to see if moving the card around solved the problem or not. Should it crash again tomorrow, I will remove the card for a few days and see what happens.

I don't have a floppy drive anymore. If moving the card doesn't work I will run the memtest as best I can. All else fails, I'll reformat, but that is a LAST resort. I'll keep ya posted... and thanks for the advice.

EDIT: I let windows allocate my RAM. I don't know why it's at 13 Gb, but that seems to be about 50% of my free space.

by **PraiseA||ah** » Sat Aug 19, 2006 1:04 am

Letting Windows allocate RAM slows down your system, that's been my experience. I set my VM at a specific size. There is a windows tweak guide that can help with that. Off topic.. but since you mentioned it...

by **Savant** » Sat Aug 19, 2006 7:43 am

DLLML.exe started out around 8,000k RAM and is currently at 16,500k and climbing. Is this normal? Does anyone else here use an X-Fi card?

^ No, on my system DLLML.exe rock steady@ 5852k

and the VOLPANEL.exe is @ 4540k all while in use.

did you run a device manager ck to see if hardware is running correctly?

by **Major SONAR** » Sat Aug 19, 2006 8:18 am

System ran all night. DLLML.exe is now at 36,700k. It appears to have stopped climbing. VolPanel.exe is at 4,112k, which seems reasonable to me.

Device manager showws everything working fine (as it did when I was having problems).

I go back and forth on letting Windows manage my RAM. Once I upgraded to 2 Gb, I decided to let Windows manage it. Haven't had any problems until recently and I've had the RAM for 6 - 8 months. Good suggestion though.

After reading the Creative forums it apperas a number of people with Asus motherboards have problems with their Creative soundcard. I am using a cheap ASRock MB. (ASRock is manufactured by Asus). Perhaps there is a connection?

I'm going to leave the card in it's new slot and see how it goes today. Any crashes and I will pull it out and work without it. Assuming everything runs smoothly, I think it safe to say that the card is causing problems. I will keep you informed on my progress.

Okay... I'm open for suggestions

Okay... I'm open for suggestions

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