Time to flash the BIOS?

[jgrif08]

I'll try and keep this brief:

Specs:
MoBo: Asus a8n32 SLI Deluxe
Graphics: HIS Radeon x1950 pro
HD: Western Digital WD2500ks 250gig
Processor: AMD A64 x2
RAM: 1G x 2 Mushkin
PSU: Rosewill RP550-2

Lately something was getting really noisy when i started my computer up. It would start to make a revving noise similar to a loud fan right around the Windows XP loading screen, would die down a little, then rev up again during the welcome screen. Sometimes it was just the noise and everything would start up fine and get nice and quiet. Other times it would flash to the Blue Screen of Death and restart (I was able to gather some of the 'Technical Information' on the BSOD and can include more but part of it read:

*** ati2cqag.dll

Something to do with my graphics card perhaps??
The problem starting occurring after installing a couple of new games. So I uninstalled the games, updated the drivers for my video card and while I was at it installed the AMD Dual Core Optimizer. Reinstalled the games and everything was fine.... for the time...

Noise came back. Sometimes starts fine, sometimes I have to try a couple of times to get it passed the Welcome screen. Tonight I came home from work and got the BSOD twice.

"STOP: C000021A fatal systemerror
the windows logon process system process terminated unexpectedley with a status of 0xc0000005 (0x00000000 0x0000000)
system has been shut down"

I'm on the problem computer right now after a hard shut down and restart.



any ideas? is my HD going bad? Time to flash the BIOS?

thanks for reading.

[jgrif08]

FYI: I have cracked the case at one point to see if the noise corresponded to a noisy fan... it doesn't appear to be fan related

[Kov-Ice]

How's the fan on your video card? Have you tried clearing any dust build-up from the vid card and cpu heat sinks/fans with a few shots of canned air?

[jgrif08]

i have hit em a couple times with canned air.

this computer is less than two months old and has been dusted a handful of times so I suspect thats not the problem.

gotten three crashes in a row after posting this upon trying to launch "Company of Heroes"

BSOD reads:

"the device driver got stuck in an infinte loop. This usually indicates a problem with the device itself or with the device driver programming the hardware incorrectly"

[Kov-Ice]

Does your mobo have onboard video capability? Or do you have access to any other working video card? At least that would allow you to isolate whether the vid card was the culprit.

[jgrif08]

sorry been away for a while...

no access to another video card and as far as i know my mobo has no video processing...

[jgrif08]

** Bump

anyone have any ideas about this 'infinite loop' error message?

[Gen.Ben]

I'm thinking it may be the video card overheating and the sound you heard is the fan dying?

Can you check the temps of the video card?

[jgrif08]

How do I go about checking the temp of the video card?

I'm sure there's a simple program of some sort to do it I've just never done it before.

Thanks