Unreadable bsod without dump

Hi all,

I use Win2k SP4 on my System and it worked well for about a year now. Here and there a bsod but never one I could not "beat" (by cleaning the system, updating drivers, disabling forced AA&AF, etc.) and almost every program and game works nearly flawless. But lately, first in HL², and now in UT2k4, I get a bsod, or something like that, because it's unreadable. Looks like someone distorted the whole screen with photoshop
Additional the sound "freezes" and when I reset there is no memory dump file.
In HL² in just happened 3 times, so it never bothered me too much, but now in UT2k4 it happens almost certainly after some playtime.
Ut2k4 didn't work well with the catalyst 4.12 drivers for me, one mod gave a bsod with error in ati3duag.dll when I left the start chamber. But I managed to avoid this with downgrading (used driver cleaner 3.3) to 4.11.
Christmas brought me a headset+new soundcard (Terratec Aureon 5.1 fun) and so I had to disable the nforce2 onboard sound (I disabled the onboard modem too). UT2k4 joined me on Christmas too, and the bsod appeared in HL² before, but not reproduceable.
So, I bet you need more information, but I can't provide a memory.dmp because this bsod didn't give me one.
Should I post my dxdiag, or something else?

Best regards anyway

-Jones-

 

The MEMORY.DMP should be in your Windows directory, and make sure in the advanced settings on your machine you should see a label that says Write Debugging Information and make sure the drop down box says Complete Memory Dump.

BTW: Does the BSOD have a STOP error number? If not, you should check your minidump folder.

 

Additional the sound "freezes" and when I reset there is no memory dump file.
I usually take this as a queue that something went wrong, but not a bluescreen in the traditional sense. I do not expect you are actually getting a blue screen/bugcheck, but that your hardware went nutty on you, possibly due to bad drivers, maybe something else, like heat or bad MB.

Since audio was your latest change, lets see if we can isolate the phenomenon to a component. DXDIAG and change your sound to 'no accelleration'. Test for behavior. Change audio depth to 8 bit mono, test for behavior. Figure out if that game has a switch to disable audio (most do), test for behavior.

If none of those made a difference, then its probably not a problem with the audio software/hardware.

Next culprit is the video card. Get rid of all wizbang features like AA, high color depth, etc etc. Play the game in 640x480 at lowest possible color depth. Any change? Pull the drivers and use the WindowsUpdate drivers for your card. Any change? Try the drivers on the CD you got when u bought the card.

If you are still coming up with these hangs, time to start looking for BIOS updates, any VIA 4in1 drivers or Motherboard drivers you have have or need. etc etc. Possible to obtain a different video card for testing? Pull a RAM chip? Get a temperature monitor software and check for overheating. All your fans spinning?