Game Crashes

[MrCoffee]

I'm going to do some more work on this when I get home but I thought I'd fish for suggestions first.

I've had instability on some games for a little while, WOW crashes to desktop with IRQL NOT LESS THAN OR EQUAL errors and protection faults. DOW DC crashes to desktop frequently when LAN gaming, I also get crashes with DOD, BF2 and Raven shield.

I'm positive the hardware is good, RAM and CPU are fully stress tested with Memtest86 and prime95, i've used ATItool with the graphics card to scan for artifacts.

I'm thinking its a driver or resource sharing issue. i've tried using different forceware drivers for the GFX and i've updated the creative drivers for the Sound card. Nforce dirvers are up to date.

[baronvongogo]

anything shown in the event viewer? maybe hard drive problem but unlikely.

did you install the nvidia firewall? that can cause problems...sounds like you have done the most you can to check hardware. Could do a repair of xp and install the drivers a fresh in a worst case scenario.

[KSoD]

I think it has to do with the ATi drivers. They have been shotty at best since AMD bought them out.

[baronvongogo]

but he has a 7800GS, didnt he just use ATI tools to find if he had atifacts?

[KSoD]

True but why use a ATi Tool for a nVidia card. That could have corrupted the drivers. My suggestion at this point is to uninstall the nVidia drivers. Download the latest stable ones from their site and re-install them. See if that helps any.

[MrCoffee]

Originally posted by Makaveli213
True but why use a ATi Tool for a nVidia card. That could have corrupted the drivers. My suggestion at this point is to uninstall the nVidia drivers. Download the latest stable ones from their site and re-install them. See if that helps any.

ATitool is fine for artifact testing with nvidia cards, besides I have tried uninstalling the drivers and reinstalling an older version, and then back to the latest version.

anything shown in the event viewer? maybe hard drive problem but unlikely.

did you install the nvidia firewall? that can cause problems...sounds like you have done the most you can to check hardware. Could do a repair of xp and install the drivers a fresh in a worst case scenario.

Funny thing but theres nothing about crashes or hangs in the event viewer. The only software firewall I'm using is XP ICF, and I shutdown all background apps including AV before launching my games (with my proc I need to. LOL)

I've looked around my system a bit and I suspect there is a problem with a shared IRQ, I know thats normally ok with IRQ steering but I can't think of much else.
my SCSI adapter and my onboard NIC are shareing IRQ 16, now I imagine both devices would be in heavy use especially with a game like wow.

I'm reluctant to do a repair of XP because its not far off a fresh install and I was getting similar problems before hand on my old Xp home installation.

i did take a look at one dump file and the stack trace pointed to a creative driver, since then i've updated the sound driver but I still get the same problems.