Specs:

ASUS 8800GTX
EP34C-DS3R Gigabyte motherboard



Issue:

I run Windows XP home edition. The issue is more whenever I start a game, the small loading screen appears. And at the 1-1.5 second transition phase where the game should go fullscreen the PC BSOD's and crashes.

The error I got was:


Now I assume it is a driver issue. More specifically I had a cheap USB headset, it is possible that it interferes with the VC drivers & onboard mobo audio drivers. I uninstalled the cheap USB headset and hoped the uninstall got rid of all that headsets audio drivers. Can't be sure though.

I got it to work for a day though oddly enough... after disabling the realtek drivers, rebooting the pc, then enabling the realtek drivers again. All games booted fine repeatedly. However the next day it did the crashing again. So I tried the disabling/enabling again but it continued crashing.

Another oddity is I can start all games in windowed mode. It's just that when they go fullscreen that the crashes happen. Same on the individual chance that it doesn't crash, maybe 1/10 or 1/15 tries, it crashes if I alt-tab.






I think I may have found my issue. It's an IRQ conflict.

My soundcard and videocard are using the same IRQ port. 16. And the manual setting is greyed out:









What other kind of solution can there be to put either the VC or the soundcard onto a different IRQ slot?




I can .rar the minidumps from my windows system if need be?



PS: Remember a few days ago, the day before the issues started. I installed a lower quality USB headset which also installed it's on drivers onto the machine. I then out of ignorance uninstalled the realtek audio drivers. Got no sound. Downloaded and reinstalled the realtek audio, uninstalled the headset drivers.

Could that amateur slobbob job have brought about a driver imbalance that is causing the issue? Since mayhaps part of the USB headsets audio drivers is still on the machine somewhere, or the slop on/off/on of the audio drivers disturbed the precarious balance needed since the video/audio drivers share the same IRQ slot?

That is just some random thoughts of mine. Don't know if they help or not. I hope the minidumps tell you the issue.




PSS:




Some pictures I hope might help:

Hi DragonSpawn - Welcome to PCHF!!

If you could attach the minidumps that would be great, then our resident crash dump expert can have a look at them for you and help fix the problem.

Ok I put it on rapidshare as my zip file exceeds the max size, just barely :/

RapidShare: Easy Filehosting

Hello DragonSpawn, welcome to PCHF.

Well, many games don't actually respond well to [ALT]+[TAB], nor do many games work very well in a windowed environment.

There's no conflict on your screenshot as far as I can tell, devices often share the same IRQ. In the last screenshot you posted, it will actually tell you if there is a conflict present - "No conflicts." in english.

However, I have analysed your logs, and have found a problem with your ASUS Enhanced Video Driver, used for video playback. At the start of a game you often have game intro's and developer intro's etc. This is actually a known problem with ASUS. The solution to this problem is to simply remove this from Add/Remove Programs, and install the latest NVidia driver instead: Drivers - Download NVIDIA Drivers (If you have both ASUS and NVidia drivers installed, it is recommended that you uninstall both before installing the new NVidia drivers).

First I had the drivers I recieved in the graphic card box.

Then when the crashign started I updated the NVIDIA drivers to the newest, then when the crashing persisted I switched to the ASUS drivers. When that didn't solve issues I returned to the NVIDIA about a day or two ago.

I already removed the ASUS drivers. I removed all drivers, ran driver cleaner 1.5 pro, then slammed on the newest NVIDIA drivers.

Do you by any chance mean the ASUS Gamer OSD as being the issue? I took the liberty of screenshotting my remove/add program so you can see it:

Wellllll.... if you right click on your desktop, and go to Properties, click on the Settings tab, and look at the display information there. Does it show NVidia or ASUS? Thanks for the screenshots by the way, these do help.

I rarely advice to use drivers that are supplied on CD. Always download the latest drivers from the net. Newest drivers are likely to have all of these problems resolved, whereas a driver supplied on CD are likely to be the first releases and more often than not turn out to be untested, unstable and/or contain various bugs/problems, as well as features that may have not been released at that time.

I'm not sure about the ASUS OSD. Didn't even know it existed until you mentioned it. As far as I can tell it appears capture (encode) video gameplay as apposed to displaying it? Would need to analyse it further, but I doubt it.

If your sure that your only running the NVidia version of this driver, then we need to cripple the ASUS version and prevent it from even running:
- Restart your PC.
- Press F8 during startup and you'll be presented with a startup menu.
- Select Safe Mode.
- Look for a file called "atkosdmini.dll" which should reside in c:\windows\system32.
- Right click on it, and Rename to "atkosdmini.bak", and the restart your PC again in normal mode.

If the driver properties are showing an ASUS driver, then use the original ASUS driver CD and go through the setup wizard. The wizard may detect the driver and ask if you would like to un-install it. Otherwise, install it as normal, and then un-install it again via Add/Remove Programs. Also, be sure to remove the current NVidia driver shown in your last screenshot, before installing the latest NVidia driver.