Optical Disk Drive, ATI Drivers

Hi, I've got a couple problems with a new desktop that I've recently built. Sorry for the wall of text, but I wanted to detail my situation as much as possible.

Optical Disk Drive: LG Internal Super Multi DVD Rewriter (20x)
My PC took an awfully long time to boot with this plugged in. It would make my CPU usage go right up to 100% and lag whatever the hell I was doing. It'll eventually stop lagging and the CPU usage would go back to 2-4% during idling.

Luckily, I was able to install my OS and all of the drivers. Then I popped in a Company of Heroes Gold Edition DVD to install the game and everything seemed to go fine so I AFKed to get something to drink. When I came back, the system rebooted... I didn't try to install Company of Heroes again.

I then loaded Crysis into the drive and it installed 100% without any problems. I played it for about an hour and quit to try installing other games.

Next, I tried to install Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. It came up to 95% and then stopped responding. I couldn't close the window, even through Task Manager, so I rebooted my system. I tried installing C&C3 again but it stopped at 5% this time. If the disk was corrupted, shouldn't it always stop at the same point?

Then I tried installing Sins of a Solar Empire. Mind you, I had just bought the game that day so the DVD shouldn't have been fscked. I loaded it up but it stopped responding somewhere in the middle of installation just like all the other games. I noticed that the LG drive's LED activity light stopped blinking whenever an installation would halt.

I then got pissed off and disconnected my LG drive from the motherboard. My computer then went pew pew through everything and even booted up faster than my XP PC.

Ok, I'll just use my mom's notebook and copy any software I need onto my iPod and then install it onto my computer from there. I then inserted some DVDs into my mom's notebook but guess what, it didn't run them. It detected the type of disk in it, whether it be a Blu-Ray, DVD or CD, but it wouldn't run them at all or show the image. It could've been a coincidence that both my mom's and my optical disk drives were faulty, but...

So after all of that, here's my question: can a faulty disk damage an optical drive? What about the other way around? Anyway, I will be returning this optical disk drive and get a different brand.

ATI Drivers: Catalyst 8.6, 8.8 (VisionTek Radeon HD 4850)
I bought a video card for my desktop that seems to crash my PC all the time. I'm wondering if it's the video card or the drivers? Whenever my PC would crash, Vista would pull up this log and say that ATI drivers were the culprit. Ok, I then booted into safe mode and downloaded the Catalyst 8.8 drivers. I then booted normally because the installer for the Catalyst 8.8 drivers couldn't detect my HD 4850 in safe mode. If you're wondering why I didn't download and install the drivers in normal mode, it's because my system would crash before I could even download the drivers.

So, I installed the Catalyst 8.8 drivers and rebooted. My system didn't crash for a couple hours and I thought that I had solved the issue by updating, but then it suddenly crashed again. I rebooted, Vista told me that ATI drivers were the culprit and then I crashed again within a couple minutes.

Ok so it might be the video card getting too hot? I checked and my HD 4850 was at 70ish Celsius while idle, which is normal for a 4850 equipped with the stock cooler. I decided to see if heat was the culprit anyway. I didn't know how to make the 4850's fan go faster so I set the 200mm and three 120mm fans in my Antec 900 to full blast. I then booted up and checked to see that my 4850 was in the high 50s, but it still crashed even though it was that cool!

I'm going to return and get a new 4850 sometime during the next few days to see if that solves my crashing problem. If it doesn't, then the problem could be the drivers and not the card.

So I wanted to ask: is there any way I could further diagnose my system to see if the ATI drivers were really the cause of all the crashing? And no, I can't boot normally so I have to diagnose with Safe mode.

All I installed were the drivers included with all of my hardware, but my HD 4850 crashed my system within the first hour or so that I booted. I was ok afterwards and could play Crysis and Hellgate London for hours upon hours, but my system continually crashes now. It only takes a couple minutes for it to crash. OMFG, is it the ATI drivers? Is it the video card? Is it a software conflict? Is it me and my amateur computer building?



Bleargh, what a shitty experience I've got for the first PC I've built.

Anyway, thanks in advance.

Try installing a fresh install of the motherboard drivers first and foremost. Also, a motherboard BIOS update is always the best thing to do when you build a new PC. Typically, the motherboard was made months before with the 1st or 2nd BIOS release, and they have usually fixed glitches with specific hardware in further releases.

To me, it sounds like two issues.

One, your optical drive is just DOA, and a simple RMA should remedy that.

Your graphics card is probably fine, but it might be bad. Most likely, it is a motherboard driver/BIOS issue though. I see that 90% of the time after eliminating just a driver issue.

Stick with the LG drive though, as LG is a great manufacturer.

You are having standard PC building issues. However, these issues make you a better system builder. For being your first system, these are pretty minor. I give you applause for building your first system with only these minor issues. Typically, first time builders can't get their systems to even post the first few power ons. Good work.

Try what I suggested. If you need direction on how to do a BIOS Flash, feel free to ask.

Also, post brands and model numbers of your components including the CPU, motherboard, GPU, PSU, Drives (Optical and HDD), etc. Thanks.

Thanks for the fast reply, Rahja.
Here are my components:

• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 (Model: BX80571E7200)
• GPU: VisionTek Radeon HD 4850
• HDD: WD Caviar SE 160GB (Model: WD1600JSRTL) -I couldn't even find this one on WD's own website...
• Optical: LG 20x Internal Super Multi DVD Rewriter (Model: GH20LS10)
• PSU: CoolerMaster eXtreme Power 550W
• Motherboard: MSI P43 Neo3-F

Before I had started the thread, I used the "Live Update Online" feature on MSI's website. It updated my drivers and flashed BIOS automatically, but it has done absolutely nothing in solving my problems. I guess I could try flashing my BIOS manually. I've already downloaded the latest BIOS update for my motherboard anyway, I just don't know exactly how to flash. The readme it gave me was for Windows 95/ME/XP, and I don't exactly have a floppy.

Instructions on flashing would be appreciated, thanks.

Ah, you have Live Update, so that covers that.

You could try a vBIOS flash. To me, it sounds like you just had bad luck on components. Although, I have to say, it could also be your power supply.

Use this:
http://majorgeeks.com/download4181.html

Post a readout of the voltages of each rail of your power supply. That should give some insight into this issue (I hope)

Optical Drive:
I had some of the same problems with my LG SATA drive too. It basically came down to SATA optical drives being relatively new - a BIOS upgrade fixed it, if I recall. (I'm using a newer ASUS P5K mobo atm, which had no problems.)
I don't know what to say about Mom's drive - is it a DVD drive? Check for scratches, fingerprints, etc., on the disks - keep in mind that the disks are read starting from the inner rings, not the outer edge.
At any rate, it's possible (but rare) for a drive to damage an Optical disk, but it would involve some part of the drive coming into physical contact with the disk, but you would hear it and the disks would have circular scratches on them.
You could have a combination of things here involving BIOS updates (for you), dirty/smudged/scratched optical disks, and dirty/worn drive (Mom)

Video:
- drivers (most likely). It's usually recommended that you remove the old drivers first, but I'd have to admit that when I got my new 4870 I didn't bother. I just installed the disk that came with it right over the old drivers (which were for an HD2900XT though) and it works just fine.
- overheating (fan(s) not working)
- power supply - not likely unless it's bad (or you are getting powerline spikes)

To make your 4850 run cooler do this:

Make a profile in catalyst after turning on Overdrive and make sure clock and memory settings are correct.

For Vista

Then go to the following location and open the following file for editing "C:\Users\Your Windows ID\AppData\Local\ATI\ACE\Your CCC Profile.XML. The xml file will have the same name as the Catalyst Profile you saved. right click and hit edit.

For XP

Then go to the following location and open the following file for editing "C:\Documents and Settings\Your Windows ID\Local Settings\Application Data\ATI\ACE\Your CCC Profile.XML. The xml file will have the same name as the Catalyst Profile you saved. right click and hit edit.

Now go down the page until you see the following lines in the XML file ...
Change the "Property name="FanSpeedAlgorithm" value=" from "Automatic" to "Manual"

Then change "Property name="Want" value=" from "23" to your desired fan speed.

Save the file then reload the Profile you just edited in the CCC. Done.

I set mine to 40% and it keeps it at 52-53 (C) when it is over 80 (F) in my room, whilst listening to music, surfing the web, with a couple other programs running. I can't hear it over the exhaust fans either, so it's not too noisy by any means.

Interesting. I used the tool that Rahja linked me to and it gave me all this stuff that made my head asplode. I couldn't find the reading on my PSU but it did give me something that was associated to power.
I did a cable check and everything was plugged in right... GPU -> PCI-E slot. 6 pin "optional" power connector -> GPU. Do you think I got the report, in the code above, because my PSU couldn't supply my GPU with enough power?

As for my Mom's optical drive, nevermind about it. Sorry for the trouble, Quaker. It started working properly after a restart. She usually doesn't turn it off but uses Sleep/Hibernate. >.<

I reformatted my entire hard drive to go off to a clean start and my optical drive started working again... I didn't dare to install the bloat that LG gave me on their disk though, as I noticed lagging after installing stuff like Nero Express, LightScribe, etc. I kept off of installing those and even Call of Duty 4, which failed to install the last 3 times I tried, had worked.

Then I installed the Catalyst 8.6 drivers, rebooted and started crashing to stupid BSoDs again. The first time I crashed it said:
The proceeding BSoDs crashed with atikmdag.sys and were:
I fully uninstalled my display drivers, uninstalled Catalyst 8.6 and deleted whatever was labeled "ATI" in my hard drive. Then I rebooted and did a fresh install of 8.8 and guess what, crash crash crash crash crash.

Thanks for the instructions, Elder. My memory was stock-clocked at 993MHz, but even at 58c it still crashed!

/sigh, I'm going to go swap out my PSU and GPU the day after tomorrow. Thanks for all your help guys.

Alright, I exchanged my GPU for another but I'm still getting the same, damned BSoDs. :banghead:

Now I'll have to exchange my motherboard for another one, and I'll return my PSU and get a different brand/type.

This is freaking frustrating...

Edit:
Ok, I glanced at my memory and "1.9V" is labeled on them. Is that the maximum it can handle or is that the bare minimum it needs? My mobo only supports 1.8V memory...

That PSU should provide more than enough power for your system, I have the same GPU, with an extremely power hungry AMD Phenom 9850 CPU that sucks up 125watts alone, and mine has more than enough juice to run perfectly.

What is the RAM that you have? It doesn't sound like RAM error messages, but if you are using not compatible/supported RAM, that could cause lots of system instability problems...

The memory modules I use are Corsair CM2X2048 - 6400C5s. Well here's a pic' of the memory I use.



And my motherboard is an MSI P43 Neo3-F.
My motherboard supports 1.8V DIMMs but mine are 1.9V... Is that a problem?

don't get more voltage on your memory than your mobo supports, its really not healthy for the mobo.

how much is wattage your PSU?


btw don't feel bad about the few little failures in your first system, there not to bad.
i made my own system a while ago and i nearly burned my cpu because i failed to mount the cooler right.

hehe - the first time I ever replaced a cooler, I DID burn up the chipset, due to improper application... so don't feel bad - you haven't fried anything yet.

As far as the 1.9V RAM in a 1.8V supporting mobo - I can't say 100% that it's the reason, but as a general rule - stay away from using components that are specifically NOT supported in your motherboard's documentation. I would throw a different 1.8V DIMM in there, anything at all - even a 1GB that you pull out of a friends computer for an hour or two... just to see if it solves the problem.

I exchanged my PSU and mobo for new ones and everything seems to work now. I haven't seen a BSoD in hours yet. =]