What keeps causing these sporadic "VPU Recovery" Incidents?

Before you read, this has nothing to do with Mac vs PC fanboy wars, just a sort of story of a crazy problem I've been having and would like to share it for feedback/input on the situation.

Here goes.

I've been using my Mac for 4 years now (since 2006). I have been using Windows to play games of course and using OS X for everything else.

Running Windows under bootcamp, I didn't run into any problems until around mid 2009 while playing Ever Quest II when I started getting these errors. Hmm. Something along the lines of this: "VPU Recovery has reset your GPU as it was no longer responding to the driver's commands".

The GPU in my iMac is an ATi Radeon x1600 @ 256 MB

I had to deal with this for 2 or 3 weeks until it just stopped doing it on it's own. Harassed by these VPU windows and constant BSoD's about the graphics driver and the GPU and the GPU dying and this nonsense..so I thought, guess its time for a new comp. But I didn;t exactly have the money for that so I let it go and kept 'trying' to play games until it just..... went back.. to normal?!

The bitch of it was, I couldn't even play Diablo 2....in Windows, just in OS X...

Sometimes it just did it by itself while sitting idle, doing nothing or even just minor things in Windows and it would freak out.

Remedies I had tried to fix it (chronologically):

1. Reinstall Drivers - Failed to fix
2. Reinstall/Update Direct X 9 - Failed to fix
3. Rollback drivers for GPU - Failed to fix
4. Final Resort - Reinstall Windows - FAILED. TO. FIX.

Problems with 3d Acceleration/games, random GPU crashing in Mac OS X? - None. Absolutely Freaking None.

So after the problems went away (mind you, by itself... like it has some mind of it's own) I went along with gaming..haven't had any real problems since.

This is where it gets....weird...6 months later approximately, I'm playing an old school fun classic... Unreal Tournament 1999 with a buddy on my home LAN.

I'm playing of course on my iMac under Windows, he is playing on my old HP PC. The HP has an ATi Radeon 9550 @ 256 MB, it too has Catalyst Control center. We were playing just fine when all of the sudden, almost at the same time BOTH computers' screens black out, completely. For a millisecond in the back of my mind, "Oh, just a connection burp/server crash, the clients must have crashed because of it or something..no biggie." but then, when mine came back I saw it.. the horror.. VPU Recovery!!! Then, as I turned my head to the right, I almost shit. my. pants. VPU Recovery on the other computer too. I was freaked out for a good few minutes, but it did that only once and never again for a while.

Another few months or so and I'm playing Left 4 Dead one night, black screen for 5 seconds, and what a surprise.........VPU recovery window, I had to restart to play anything after that and of course I was in the clear for a while since.

Until now... it did it again, March 10, 2010 at roughly 1 AM I was interrupted in the middle of Left 4 Dead 2 by the most obnoxious screen blackouts and a final "VPu..blahblahscrewyoublahblahbullshitblahblah " and then, this time.. for the first time ever, i was allowed to keep playing the game, when it came back my FPS was slightly lower, but it cleared up and went back to normal after a bit.


*Approximate* dates of incidents:
June 2009 - EXTREME Incident, Unable to play games for 2-3 weeks, every game caused crashes, minor use in Windows caused lock ups and BSOD.
Nov 2009 - One time Incident, affecting two PC's in the same room playing UT1999. Both PC's needed to be restarted to 'reset' the GPU.
Jan 2010 - Playing Left 4 Dead, one VPU recovery related crash Incident, first time VPU crash while owning Left 4 dead.
March 10, 2010 - Playing Left 4 Dead 2 and interrupted by one crash, first VPU since owning L4d2, but will it stay a one time incident or keep doing it for weeks on end?

Now, this has nothing to do with OS X > Windows or any of that nonsense, it just needs to be said.. Still having no problems with anything in OS X. I didn't even have problems in Windows until after 3 years of use when the major incident occurred, and Windows was reinstalled every 6 months at that. The Incidents occurred on several installations of Windows as well. This leads me to believe the card is fine, because it is.. it is fine. The first incident was so bad, I thought the card was done, but it wasn't..it's fine and I'm still playing games fine today, with the exception of it coming back once in a "blue moon'. Only on Windows, not to mention a real actual Windows PC also did it in the same room. No Over heating on either systems either... Strangest thing I have seen in my life.

So I ask you ladies and Gentlemen..Would I be crazy to assume it's Radio Interference of any kind? The worst case of bad luck ever recorded? The craziest coincidence ever seen? Radiation? Conspiracy?!?! Whut????

Honestly though I'm totally lost.

We have trolls. I troll U, U Troll me. We all troll. I do ask politely that if you have a problem with my post or a statement you need to make that is not on topic, PM me rather than post in the thread and I will gladly respond.

Thanks for reading, friends. Hope you've had a good night.

Im not a mac user so i cant really advise but only thing that sort of niggles my mind is - windows is designed for pc`s and ms i would guess only debug ( lmao yeah right ) it on a windows platform so any issues that would arise from an "emulator ( dunno what else to call it )" wouldnt show for them.
Also the rate which ms has updates and fixes may also cause problems if the emulator wasnt updated regular to allow for changes.
As i said i never used a mac so how you run windows or set it up i dont know about - but im just saying what springs to mind incase it may be of use

Have you tried disabling VPU recovery in the ATI control panel?

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/...cs-accelerator

On another site i was reading, says that the error is caused by windows ( in your case the emulator ) reading the driver and when playing games the card takes to long to render a frame in the game, so windows thinks the GPU has hung and posts the error, i guess the trick that Reformed said to turn it off in the ATI control panel may solve this,

On another note also from using Google, this problem seems to hound the entire ATI range from the x1600 range and any card released after it, it may happen to older cards but i didn't look into it.

I had this problem for weeks on end before and, strangely, the solution was to change RAM modules to different slots on the motherboard. I was conviced it was soley a graphics issue too but out of desperation and frustration I moved my RAM about and it has been fine ever since.

Makes no sense to me but I'm sure you're willing to try anything by this point.

Thank you for your responses, all.

First thing I'd like to point out thought, is that I am not using an Emulator to run Windows. Bootcamp allows you to pick a bootable partition or drive and allows Windows to start up and then run fully native on the computer's hardware. I was aware that even after Windows is running, there are a few things different, that is some specialized drivers/software to take control of the screen's brightness, keyboard eject button and so on, things a PC already has buttons on the case and monitors for.

The oddest thing is that I didn't have problems up until a random point in time almost 3 years into use.

And to further cover Reformed's suggestion, I did actually disable VPU, Even uninstalled CCC at one point and instead of VPU "attempting" to recover the hardware, Windows just BSoD'd immediately the second a problem came up.

Makosi, I've even reseated the RAM sticks, but never changed their position. I DID have upgraded RAM for a little while before the problem started, but also changing back to my old RAM didn't help it. It makes no sense to me either. Maybe I'll fool around with the RAM again, but I haven't had any problems since last night's freak incident.

I still have no idea why the HP PC did it at the same in the same room, too.

Is VRAM virus out of the question also?

I'd probably make sure the BIOS is flashed to the most current revision and test the system RAM next. I think I read the same article as rb.widow and it mentioned problems between VIA chipsets and your series of ATI card. XP in particular (I don't know what version of Windows you are using) is very stable unless there are serious hardware issues.

I had a customer recently come to me with a similar issue where it would BSoD randomly in Vista. In that case at least it was a bad stick of RAM and as the system gobbled up more resources it would eventually find the bad address and crash.

Well I just had several incidents again in the past 30 minutes. I think I fixed it by cursing very loud, hitting it and almost breaking my cell phone which is a random object nearby. I also reinstalled the graphics drivers in the middle of all that. Seems to have stopped.

its a windows problem all the way around.

1. its not hardware because it would happen under mac
2. prooobably not drivers because you have reinstalled them several times & im guessing you used different driver versions to elimiate that problem.
3. VPU problems seem to only happen to ATI systems which i do believe your mac does use ATI.

pretty much all points directly at VPU.
try this & see if it helps. set the VPU threshold to 9-11 seconds (i think the default is something like 2-5 seconds?) then disable VPU altogether in windows.
if memory serves you have to make those kinds of changes in the registry... search "VPU recovery window" on google and you should find a few hits on how others have successfully resolved the problem.

mind you the suggestion i made doesnt actually fix anything... it more or less hides the problem and delays the VPU from kicking in so that any freezeup in the display system has a chance to recover rather than actually restarting the entire graphics system (which is usually whats causing the BSODs in these cases).

I'll definitely try this next time I go into Windows. I was playing Half-Life 2 for the first time earlier, hour or so into it (like with any game it seems mostly) and my screen blacked/sound started skipping over and over (which is already past the point of VPU trying to save it) so I just restarted it into OS X. I was disgusted, pissed off and to make matters worse, I'm sick.. I don't feel well and I just wanted to play any RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing game and chill. But nooooooo. Gaming PC is next. Mac is retired from gaming as soon as that becomes a reality. It's just too much of a pain anymore. I'll keep it for my iPod and casual PC use.

Yeah, but I'll try this when I go back into Windows. I'm just tired of this RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing thing right now. Embarrassing. Just Embarrassing when you're in the middle of a..say... Left 4 dead session online and you can still use voice chat to talk and say your leaving because your computer is an old piece of shit that used to work.