Windows XP + R9500 Pro = Apparent Video Playback Issues

[Fiercest]

In response to Yawgm0th:

Thanks for searching out those links. I'm already familiar with the first one from the Resource Kit Documentation but I'd never seen the second one before. Too bad it's predicting the doom of my system RAM or video RAM.

I'm absolutely positive I'm using the right Catalyst drivers. I mean, I deleted the setup program of the v4.3 Catalysts off my HDD and redownloaded it just to be safe. Then I installed them using the "Catalyst Installation" guide instructions. I'm not sure if I can get anymore correct then that.

I've been using this video card for at least half a year now so I'm sure it gets along with my mobo fine. As for the integrity of the card, I can't exactly vouch for it since this is the first time something like this has happened. If the card is damaged or in the process of breaking down, it still doesn't explain why I can play video games just fine and have video playback crashing and burning. Still, you're right in saying the card itself is probably the problem.

Assuming we can't find a fix for this, I'm willing to spend $0.00 on a new card, lol. I'd love to use this error as an excuse to splurge on a brand new 256MB Radeon 9800 XT, but I have neither the money nor the time to GET the money. I have a job and all but I did a little calculated the other day regarding my income and my bills and suffice it to say, I won't be able to purchase an expensive piece of hardware (such as a new vid card) until sometime around Christmas this year. And the fact that I have to spend money FOR Christmas on OTHER PEOPLE doesn't help either... :snip:


In response to PrairieDawg:

My system RAM consists of three sticks. The first one is of 256MB, while the second and third are 128MB sticks. Yeah yeah, I know that isn't the world's greatest RAM configuration but it's what I got and it's done the job flawlessly for over two years. I'm only receiving memory related problem as of 48 hours ago.

No, I've not tried Memtest but I'll download it now. What does it do? Any special test or settings I need to have it run?

-Fiercest

[Yawgm0th]

I was thinking more along the lines of a Radeon 9600SEfor $70. But if you aboslutely have no method of making that kind of money, I guess you can forget it. And it might be the RAM. But that's even more expensive to replace (in this case, probably). :(

Try this link for your drivers. I haven't read through the Catalyst guide (don't have an ATI card ATM), but it shouldn't be neccesarry for installing the drivers to a functional point. Download the catalyst drivers from that link, and install them (read any instructions they come with). This error can be caused by bad drivers. If you still have problems, and memtest says your RAM is fine, that would be a very good indicator that the problem lies with the video card itself.

[Fiercest]

I wouldn't buy a Radeon 9600 for several reasons I learned about 6 months ago when I was researching video card reviews really hardcore, trying to find the perfect affordable video card for my rig. I can tell you're probably curious what I'm talking about now, so to sum it up I'll say this:

The Radeon 9500 Pro was essentially an oopsie-daisy for ATI. They meant to make the cards and meant to sell them but they weren't very cost effective. In laymans terms, it was almost like ATI was giving away a Radeon 9700 Pro for every Radeon 9500 Pro they sold, the only difference between the two being the bus interface limitations of the 9500 Pro. (128-bit for the 9500, 256-bit for the 9700)

So ATI essentially restructured their product line to make their dollar return on investment more efficient by releasing 9600s and 9800s as the successors of the 9500 and 9700 lines respectfully. (Notice how the 9500s and 9700s are no longer for sale from ATI. Not the original, non-All In Wonder cards anyway) However, while the 9800s were truly a slightly faster version of the 9700s, the 9600s were actually slower then the 9500s, at least the Pro versions anyway.

To make a long story short, if I switched out my current Radeon 9500 Pro for a Radeon 9600 Pro, I'd actually be parting with money for a slower video card.

Anyway, as to the link you gave me, thank you, but thats the link I've been using all this time. I only download Catalysts from ATIs own site. I clicked on that link and laughed out loud because I'd already seen it today at least 3 times already. But still, thanks for trying bro, I really do appreciate the lengths everyones going through for me. :cheers:

FYI, the ATI "Catalyst Installation" guide I've been using to install the Catalysts is basically a severely more thorough version of what ATI themselves say in their uninstall instructions. So I've definately NOT been doing any harm by installing my Catalysts using the guide.

I've yet to try memtest yet as I wanted to download and play a few more "fresh" videos to be absolutely sure what the Red vs Blue episode experiment showed me. I'll post my findings in a bit.

-Fiercest

[maximus7001]

Try this memtest 86+ . Dowload the iso version and burn it to a cd , then boot from it and let it run all night. You never did say if you tried each ramstick on it's own.

[Yawgm0th]

Interesting about the R9500s. Didn't know that, but hardware searches prove it. That 9600 was only 64-bit but some of the 9500s I found were 128-bit with more memory, too.
Here's a Radeon 9500I found in case you need to replace your current card. $120 isn't bad for a 128-bit video card. You can download the videos if you want, but all signs (thus far) point to hardware problem (rather than bad files or faulty software). Unless someone finds something, I would say use memtest to determine if the problem is with the RAM or the video (and I'd put my money on the video). To make absolutely certain, try putting it in another computer if you can. I don't like the sound of your friend's so maybe a computer other than that would be a better test.

If you have another Radeon card that you know works, putting that in your own computer would be an even better test.

[Fiercest]

Yup, I wasn't seeing things.

I downloaded a pair of anime episodes off a peer-to-peer server I know of and tested them. I watched both of them, back to back, in both normal screen and full screen views and NO freezing. This is what I expected of an OS like Windows XP. For it to be outdone by Windows 98 SE is like a slap in the face.

I then played the red vs blue episode I downloaded and that played flawlessly as well, TWICE. I then remembered I had a zip file contained the (then) latest red vs blue episdoe on my old HDD and that I might've transferred it to my new HDD when I installed WinXP. A few seconds of searched turned it up down a few folder paths where I'd transferred the majority of data I backup up off the old HDD.

I now had a reference piece which I could accurately test what was going on. A red vs blue episode, just like the one I'd downloaded and successfully played, only this one was "used" in that it came from my old HDD, just like my other video files.

I extracted it and played it and it too played without a hitch. Hoping to have my cake and eat it too, I then attempted to play one of the video files that was causing the errors yesterday and earlier today and BOOM - crashed inside of 20 seconds.

Now this is just too confusing. The fact that the freeze happened again with the suspect video files but NOT with the red vs blue episode leads me to believe something is wrong with the video file itself. But both video files came from the same source, my old HDD.

So while I must admit all this testing has shown the existance of a few cracks in my systems armor, none of those cracks are large enough to point to the problem as being my system RAM or videocard RAM. The fact that my games run fine, yet the playback of a video dies supports this assumption. It appears more likely that the video files themselves are the problem. Or so I hope since this form of problem would only cost me time, where the other form of the problem would cost me money I don't have.

However I'm still going to run the memtest that you suggested maximus7001 just to be on the safe. The fact that my system froze while simply typing a forum reply still disturbs me.

I also found this program that supposedly scans video files, discovers what codecs they need to be played properly and then reports if my system has those codecs installed. Its called "GSpot v2.21" if anyones ever heard of it. I'm gonna run that on the video files that are giving me trouble and see if I can solve my playback problems with some hardcore codec searching.

I'll post back if I come across any new developments. Thanks for all your help guys! This forum rocks the party. :thumb:

-A much happier Fiercest :afro:

[Yawgm0th]

Didn't see that coming. Are any of the video files under 1MB? I'd be willing to test one if you e-mail it to me.

[Fiercest]

Negative. The smallest video file I've tested that was giving me trouble is 90 MB large.

Thanks for the offer though man. From here its pretty much a matter of more tests and more time, which I'm willing to invest, just not right now. I've had enough tests for one day. ;)

Lets just get a good nights rest and we'll try again tommorow. God knows we've earned it. ;)

Peace.

-Fiercest

[asklepios]

Just to clarify (getting off-topic now), asklepios was completely wrong about the server statistics. While more than half of web servers are using Apache, only about 30% of them use Linux (inlcuding TweakTown). More use Windows and many use regular UNIX, and there's no telling what file systems they're using (most will probably not be ext3, though). His point that you are likely to download something from a server using a different file system stands, though.
Enough wasted time on that subject. :D

errm...sorry if i was wrong but what i intended to say was Linux = Linux + Unix. you said that Windows servers are more. well i agree if you say it but just have a look at this

http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html

all of those sites are running *BSD (variant of UNIX) which uses UFS i.e. Unix File System. no *nix OS can run on NTFS or FAT32 so you can easily tell what file system they are using. either it is UFS or some variant of a journaling FS which certainly will not be NTFS.

[asklepios]

Upon playing a video file (same format as previously used video files, but not the exact same video) I got a PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA stop error within two minutes. BUT the error also included this line:

*The problem appears to have been caused by the following file: ati2dvag.dll*

have you tried setting your virtual memory to 0 and then setting it up again? that error usually comes when you have a corrupt paging file.

[Fiercest]

Hey asklepios, welcome back to the fold.

Setting my virtual memory to 0? Isn't that equivalent to disabiling the paging file? Isn't that highly recommended AGAINST in Persian Immortal's tweak guides?? Supposedly, Windows XP needs a paging file to run correctly....but what the hell. A refresh of the paging file sounds like its worth a shot. Try that out soon. Thanks!

-Fiercest

[Fiercest]

Update, maybe even the last one...

Alright, had work on Sunday so I had to postpone a few tests until this morning but I may have stumbled across the problem.

I did several things including reseting my IRQs to WinXP defaults (all major devices sharing IRQ 5), error checking my HDD, (with the scheduled check after restart option, both option checkboxes selected) triple checking BIOS, mobo chipset, directx, video, sound and even network card drivers to make sure they were the most recent versions, reinstalling WMP, reinstalling the DivX codec (v5.1.1), deleting and recopying the video files from the old HDD to the new, reseting my page file (first setting it to 0, restarting, setting it back to 2 gigs and restarting again) running "SFC /scannow" with the WinXP CD in the drive and finally, defragmenting.

After checking a few video files, two of them played successfully until the third one crashed WMP (it just disappeared) and thrust me back to my desktop. Upon trying again, the video played farther then it did the first time but resulted in the system crashing and instantly restarting.

Thinking it truly was my system memory and/or videocard (possibilities I've been in stubborn denial about due to their costly consequences) I was about to burn the memtest86 ISO onto a CD and attempt the overnight test maximus7001 suggested when it suddenly hit me to try GSpot on the video files under my old Win98SE installation stored on the old HDD. Doing this I didn't discover anything shockingly different about the codec information for the video files (the codec entries were exactly the same for both Win98SE and WinXP OS installations) but as I was restarting, planning to boot back into WinXP and continue the ISO burn, I noticed the "DivX505Bundle" file on the root of my old HDD.

This told me that under Win98SE, I was using the DivX 5.0.5 video codec and not the 5.1.1 I've been using all this time under the WinXP tests. I'd completely forgotten that the version under Win98SE was different, I'd simply assumed I'd upgraded the codec to 5.1.1 before I migrated to WinXP.

Using this as a base, I uninstalled the 5.1.1 codec from under WinXP, copied the 505Bundle from old HDD to new, and installed the 5.0.5 codec on my WinXP installation.

Voila! Problem solved! *Knocks on wood; I swear to God my rig has ears...*

Suddenly all my videos are playing as if I were under Win98SE again...flawlessly.

So YAHOO! *Breaks it down* :smokin:

My thanks to everyone thats been helping me cut the fat and narrow the range of problem causing possibilities. I'm going to run the memtest86 test just to be safe, but for now it seems as though I've weathered yet another troubleshooting storm. Who knew WinXP would've given me this much trouble? But thinking of staying with Win98SE in this day and age is dangerous thinking.

So thanks alot everyone! If I come across any more video playback related problems, I'll be sure to let y'all know so we can hack it to bits together once again.

Hip Hip Hooray. :cheers:

-Fiercest

P.S. I don't know why the 5.1.1 codec appears to have been the culprit, and why the stop errors were reporting it was my Catalyst drivers, but every system is unique and mine is far from winning any operational beauty contests. Just to be safe though, if you have the DivX 5.0.5 codec (and its working fine) and an ATI Radeon 9500 Pro card (the original one made by ATI themselves) you might want to think twice about upgrading to 5.1.1.