BSoD clarification.

[Epical]

First off, this happened back in March, not now... just want to follow up on it to see what the problem was.

Essentially what happened was that I bought a sound card (Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer), installed it, and subsequently rebooted due to necessary installation completion. Now, I normally don't turn my computer off unless I know it's been on for a very long time or I want to give it a rest, etc.. So, after installing it, I didn't reboot or turn it off until about a week or so and I noticed that with the card in my machine I would BSoD when loads Windows. If it was out, I would not.

I'm not sure what could've caused that problem other than drivers or a faulty card itself, because I have a 600W PSU, and I don't really have anything big enough in my system to use ALL of that. Anyways, I got screenshots (had to use my cell phone cam) and I want to follow up on what that meant. The card, while it worked, sounded really good and way better than my onboard card, and music is a pretty big part of my PC experience so I want it to sound as good as possible.

http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/6...3071657ml6.jpg

http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/5...3071656ap6.jpg

Same screen, just two different angles. If you can't read it, the error code at the bottom is 0x0000009c (0x00000000, 0xF771B050, 0xF2000840, 0x00000800). Any help would be appreciated.

[Koga]

The MCA/MCE check failed usually due to bad ram or cpu/overheating overclocked hardware/or possibly bad power supply

There are some compatability issues with some hardware drivers and the other software programs.
do you have a dump file you can post?

[Epical]

The MCA/MCE check failed usually due to bad ram or cpu/overheating overclocked hardware/or possibly bad power supply

I highly doubt any of these are the issue since this PC runs perfect at any given moment.

There are some compatability issues with some hardware drivers and the other software programs.
do you have a dump file you can post?

This is probably what went wrong. The dump file you want is in the Event Viewer, right? If so, under Application, Security, ACEEventLog, or System?

[Koga]

Start>Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Event Viewer

[Snowknight26]

Start>Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Event Viewer

Way to read what he said.

I believe its System; slightly different on Vista so I can't be certain.

[Epical]

Hmm, something happened on July 25th that created 384728374827483247723 entries in the System tab of the Event Viewer at 10:25 AM that has pushed even the bottom of the list off the view. Is it possible to view thing past what you see in the immediate Event Viewer log?

[Cephius]

Hmm, something happened on July 25th that created 384728374827483247723 entries in the System tab of the Event Viewer at 10:25 AM that has pushed even the bottom of the list off the view. Is it possible to view thing past what you see in the immediate Event Viewer log?

Under the "view" menu you can set filters or just remove the option to look at all events in the log. Just take note of a time that a BsOD occured and set the viewer to view the log for +/- a few minutes around it.

In my experience BSoDs such as this mean your drivers are out of date or bad like the other user suggested, or that the card is simply bad. If you have the newest drivers try rolling back to an older one, or see if Creative has a hotfix for certain motherboards or something to that effect. If all else fails, I would dig the reciept out and return/exchange the card :\

[divisortheory]

What type of CPU was this?

Edit: It appears to be a BUS error. I'm going to assume this was a PCI card? Can you try plugging it into a different PCI slot? The error code indicated on the blue screen is unlikely to have been caused by a faulty driver.

[Epical]

Under the "view" menu you can set filters or just remove the option to look at all events in the log. Just take note of a time that a BsOD occured and set the viewer to view the log for +/- a few minutes around it.

In my experience BSoDs such as this mean your drivers are out of date or bad like the other user suggested, or that the card is simply bad. If you have the newest drivers try rolling back to an older one, or see if Creative has a hotfix for certain motherboards or something to that effect. If all else fails, I would dig the reciept out and return/exchange the card :\

Went and tried that, but nothing comes up for March 30th (which is when this happened). =(

What type of CPU was this?

Edit: It appears to be a BUS error. I'm going to assume this was a PCI card? Can you try plugging it into a different PCI slot? The error code indicated on the blue screen is unlikely to have been caused by a faulty driver.

Intel C2D E6600 (stock). And yes, it was a PCI Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer sound card. I don't think I tried a different PCI slot because of the way my case is (the PSU is at the bottom and my nylon-wrapped cables are too stiff to move out of the way of the bottom-most PCI slot).

I'm thinking about picking another one of these cards up and trying again.

[Epical]

Nothing? =( Basically I was dealing with a) a bad card or b) a bad PCI slot?

[Sigi]

pretty much.

[divisortheory]

Nothing? =( Basically I was dealing with a) a bad card or b) a bad PCI slot?

More likely a bad slot. Just try a new slot, quick and simple test.

[Mifaco]

is the Soundblaster sharing an IRQ with anything else?

[Epical]

Since it's bumped: I went out and bought it again and it installed fine. I've restarted multiple times to try and produce the same problem and it hasn't appeared. Last time, I remember upgrading to the latest drivers (however I found it fishy that when searching for this card's latest drivers, the set that show up don't say the name of this specific card), and this time I just stuck with the drivers off the install CD. I truly think that's what my problem was, for whatever reason.