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I have recently encountered problems when starting certain games such as Prince of Persia (Sands of Time) and Medieval Total War. When starting up the game, Windows crashed to the Blue Screen of Death and comes up with Stop Error: 0x0000008E (OxC0000005, 0x000001F4, 0xBA036CC8, 0x00000000) ....Beginning dump of phsyical memory.

The strange thing is that Doom3 run at high quality settings, Call of Duty, Homeworld 2 and many other games run with no problems. A quick search on Google and MS Knowledge base seem to indicate a possible problem with RAM, so I ran Memtest86+ V1.30 on boot-up from floppy and after 1 hrs 15 minutes of testing, no errors were reported.

I then uninstalled the drivers for my graphics card, which are the latest Nvidia66.93 drivers, booted into safemode, ran Driver Cleaner v3.3, rebooted and re-installed the older 61.77 drivers butthe problem still persists. My system: Athlon XP+ 2800, 1,024 MB DDR, Geforce 6800 GT 256mb DDR3 graphics, XP Home SP1.

All advice and suggestions will be gratefully received ! Thanks.

In order of usefulness perhaps, Wags. Sorry I can't be of more assistance. I've had this kind of problem myself and actually do have errors on one stick or other of my own (Crucial) Ram from MS Memory tester thing.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;827663

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;325730

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;811113

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;330187

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;330181

You could set a restore point and stick XP SP2 on to see if that fixed it. Chances are that it wouldn't I suppose and you'd maybe have other incompatibilities to deal with.

Maybe check doubly to ensure memory sticks are in properly - they can become loose.

Ensure hard drive isn't running errors maybe as a long shot. Plus check dxdiag diagnostics? Reinstall DX9 maybe?

Thanks Spook Tooth for the reply.

Infact I ran DXDiag and it crashes on the Direct Draw (Full Screen) test and also on Direct 3d, both with the Blue Screen of Death...0x0000008E (OxC0000005 etc etc.

I have downloaded and reinstalled direct x 9c, just in case that had become corrupted...but, still crashes on the test. :rant:

As the PC ran all games very well before, I am reluctant to install SP2, as it may cause me even more problems.. :unsure:

The graphics card - Geforce 6800 GT is quite new. I don't suspect that it is faulty since Doom3, which is 'hardware demanding' type of game, runs well at high quality settings as does COD and CODUO.

Maybe I will try a system restore......but will take a peak at the RAM to ensure it's not dislodged....

I would recommend installing SP2. It seems that microsoft finally done something right and it great....

Dont know what hang up's you have on it but give it a try, you can always unistall it!

The Pig has provided some useful links for removing corrupted installs of Direct X, though I've not used them before.

Here's the list:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&cli...ctx&btnG=Search

I'm afraid I've not tried any of those listed before, but I guess there are inherent dangers with an operation like this. Might be worth a shot though, to get dx9 reinstalled cleanly again?

I second Pilch on the SP2 front. Should be ok unless you have specific reasons for not installing it.

Hi Pilchy,

Thanks for the advice. I guess I'm reluctant to install SP2, because of the problems that many people appear to have encountered (ie PCA have a forum devoted to the subject). The PC ran all games fine before, it just seems that these damn 66.93 drivers have caused me some grief and caused a corruption somewhere ! :rant:

System Restore didn't help :( .

I'll uninstall the Nforce2 MB drivers and install the latest set tonight and reinstall the 61.77 drivers for the card and see if that helps. If not, maybe I'll give SP2 a try :unsure: .

Thanks for the link Spook. I'll check it out.

So far as I'm aware, no one here has had any probs with SP2 wags.

I think you've done most of this but, worth just checking through if only to eliminate possible causes.

I've got it on disk if you would like it.

I have!

Twice!

First time it locked my computer into 'Classic' mode, and wouldn't allow me to switch, and the second time it caused more than a few of my games to crash - Battlefield 1942, Hidden and Dangerous 2, and another one that escapes me at this moment.

My only suggestion would be to try one stick of RAM at a time, and see if that makes any difference (not much help, sorry, I was only here to voice my dislike of SP2)

Ordep, thanks for the offer of SP2. Actually I have it on a Computer Buyer disk, so if need be I'll install it from there.

I've now unistalled the Nforce2 drivers for the MB and installed the latest drivers and also uninstalled and reinstalled the 61.77 graphics card drivers. Guess what.?....Direct Draw and Direct3d still crashes the PC to the BSOD :rant:

At this rate I'll be limited to playing OpenGL games only...so no HL2 or MOHPA for me...... :( Thank god that COD runs well.

I hope my 6800GT card isn't faulty, but perhaps I should now take it out and put my old 5600Ultra in to see if that works.

Did the tests work ok with the Direct 3d dtests etc before?

Is the graphics card over clocked at all? Is anything overclocked?

Is it a heat problem at all?

Pilchy, the DXdiag tests on Direct Draw (full screen) and Direct3d crash to BSOD now, but I have never tested them in the past.

My CPU and Geforce 6800 GT are at stock speeds with no overclocking. The card temperature is fine and runs at 350 mhz with memory at 1000mhz.

It is not a random fault, because COD, Doom3 , Homeworld2 and a few other games always run, whereas Medieval Total War, Prince of Persia always crash.

It seems to be a definate problem with Direct Draw and Direct3d, but for the life of me I can't see why ! Ill put the 5600 Ultra back in tomorrow and see how that performs...

Well, the 5600ultra does just the same, so I'm at least relieved to know that my new 6800GT is not faulty :ph34r:

Looks like a reformat and reinstall is on the cards, when I've got the time... :blink:

Give SP2 a try mate...

If that doesnt work a possible BIOS update might solve it otherwise leave a re-format and re-install to another time as a last resort...

Thanks Pilchy, I think if I do try SP2 that I'll ensure that absolutely everything is backed up on CD first !

I'm nervous about doing a bios update incase I trash the whole damn system !

Wags - been doing a little hunting.

First off let's just assume that the TR caveat exists on this forum too, as I truly am NOT a tech head in anyway. K?

There seems to be tools out there to uninstall Direct X.....but they seem potentially buggy. However apparently WinXP comes with DX8.1 so if you can remove 9 on restart Win reinstalls 8.1. Alledgedly.

http://ask-leo.com/c000257.html

This was the bit that caught my eye, but it's also worth reading the entire post because it maybe that XP now installs with DX9 - I don't know.

There's also some suggestion that you should disable virus checkers when updating dx.

Alternatively there's a prog like this mentioned in the thread -

http://www.softpedia.com/public/cat/14/4/14-4-40.shtml

But you really should do this as the thing 2nd to last final solution(reinstallation) cause beta software is always something of a risk (heck - so is alpha). <_<

Upon further hunting I see that some of this is already covered in your PCAd thread, but I'll post it anyway lest it's of interest to others.

D