BreakmanX.com

Alright, I've got a couple of minor PC problems that are driving me up the wall. If anyone here can help, it would be appreciated.

#1: The system crashes, and the moniter goes black, except for a blue message that says "H/V Frequency Over Range." It only seems to happen during intense gaming, never during surfing or word processing. Never had it before the new moniter and video card (Viewsonic G71F+ and XFX GeForce FX 5900), but since I installed both at the same time I don't know which it is. If someone could tell me what the hell an H/V Frequency is that would help a ton.

#2: I'm getting radom freezes while playing UT2004. Might be bad install, but I doubt it. Nothing else seems buggy. CPU temp is 35-45 celcius, and though I don't have a temperature sensor on my geforce, it never feels hot, just warm.

#3: Every now and then, this has happened maybe twice, my game will crash and my video card will give me a message saying that "the video card is not receiving enough power and will lower performace to keep things safe" or whatever. I have the 4-pin power wire hooked up from the power supply. I did change the wiring around in there a bit so that the video card's power is higher up the chain, and closer to the power supply. I've got a 410 Watt power supply, generic brand. I'm wondering if I should buy a good name brand power supply, maybe that will help. But is there some other reason that would happen? It hasn't happened since the last time I switched the wiring around, but that was only a week ago.

I have a feeling that maybe all these problems are related, and that possibly a new power supply would fix things up. But the 410 that I have, even a generic 410, seems like it would be plenty adequate. Thoughts? Suggestions?

I doubt it is a power supply issue, however, anything is possible. Did you get all the latest drivers for your new hardware from their companys? This may not solve your problem, but driver conflict can fuck up so many things that its worth a shot. Also, try unplugging one of your cd drives to free up some power to see if that helps. What mobo/processor combo do you have?

P.S. 410 seems like one of those odd numbers. It is possible that your system doesn't like that, but I really doubt it, power is power.

CPU is an AMD Athlon XP 2600+, mobo is an MSI K7N2 Delta, with an nForce 2 chipset. I have my Athlon running at 2.09 gigs right now, via the motherboard "set to high performance" feature, I may set it back to "normal" and see if that helps stability. Though, everything stays plenty cool, so I doubt it. Might be something to try later. I've never overclocked the CPU for any length of time, just played around with it now and then.

Ah yes, drivers. I check for driver updates fairly irregularly, but often enough I guess. I'll get right on that. Tell me something, when one goes to WindowsUpdate.com and has it scan your computer, telling you what updates you "need," does it always include driver updates? Or just driver updates from certain manufacturers? Or just driver updates for certain hardware? Cause I know I've downloaded driver updates there before, but it's hard to imagine that it's all-inclusive. I appreciate the help man, thanks.

You're right, it's not all inclusive. It'll only give you certain drivers, like chipset drivers or something, but nothing huge, like video card or sound card. I'd hit up nvidia.com first for their latest set, then try your motherboard makers site and see what they have to offer. If you really want to be up-to-date, then you can look for other hardware drivers, like your CD-RW drive. I know it sounds weird, but I know Plextor updates the drivers for my PlexWriter Premium every now and then.

Also, just to be on the safe side, when updating your video drivers, uninstall the old ones first, then restart, run on the Windows drivers, then install the new drivers. It's a pain, I know, but I've had problems because I didn't uninstall before updating.

Well, I downloaded the latest Forceware from nvidia.com, and that seems to be helping. I just played UT for an hour and a half straight, with no crashes. Thanks guys. God I feel like a noob; I can build a computer, yet I can't even remember to update the drivers. Maybe I will now though!