GAMES KEEP CRASHING

Hi TWGAMER666, you need to let people know your exact computer model and specifications (CPU, GPU Hard Drive etc)before they can help. Have you monitored your GPU/CPU temps? The moderators on this forum are very clever,especially Dell Chris M, but they will need more info in order to help.

Hi all.   Don't know where else to ask for help, have submitted  tech support request but no response as yet.   The reason I bought my alienware was soley to play the Total war games and the Sims 3.  However, I cannot play them for longer than an hour at a time because they crash.  Now, the majority of the crashes are caused by an error "mss32.dll", shogun2.dll and the latest ones are ntdll.dll, GameOverlayRenderer.dll & StackHash_82be.  Although I have done some internet research and have had tech support from the game manufacturers forum, I have a. no idea what these errors are and b. what is causing them.   I have been told that this could be anything to do with faulty memory, video memory or sound card problems.  In otherwords, it could be anything.   Now, seing as though I bought this rediculously overpriced "gaming" system to play games, I would like to know why it won't play them without crashing.   Please help, because I'm going completely mental here.

Oh, morblore, I'll check out that F12 thing you mentioned aswell.  Thanks for the tip.

Hi guys. Thank you for the replies.

Not being funny, but If I have a virus on my computer it came pre-installed with DELL as I have had these problems right from the start. I have 44 pages of error logs going right back to the first day the computer arrived.  I really hate it when people say I have a virus on my computer. I have fully upto date anti virus software that gets updated by the minute, it has been on the system since I bought it.  I don't use pirated software, I don't visit any unofficial or dodgey sites (only official ones and those that I am absoluetely certain are safe before using them) and the only things I download from the internet are software updates from official sites and mp3's from amazon.co.uk.  No disrespect, but my computer is not infected - unless, like I say, DELL installed a Virus when they made the machine?

With regards to the registry problems, yeah I can see where you are going with this, and as it stands I cannot argue that something has messed up the registry, however, my anti virus comes with a a regsitry fixer which I use quite often. Don't know whether that is the cause of some of the problems? However I have yesterday used the command prompt sfc utility which shows that there are now registry problems.  So once again, I am at a loss.

With regard to hardware, I have done every concievable RAM check available, using the blue screen RAM checking facility as well as the alienware PC doctor RAM testing facility.  Both results are the same - no errors found - all tests passed.

Harddrive doesn't need defragging, and is set to defrag on it's own. Have never needed to do this for some reason.

That leaves me thinking that the only culprits are either the video card, the sound card (s) onboard or creative SB x-fi or the motherboard itself.

Reinstalling windows is the last thing I want to do. Don't dell partition the drives or something? Sounds complicated and I would have a clue what to do. Last time I reinstalled a version of windows was windows Vista, so I don't know if things have changed since then.  Also, if I reinstall, I want to reformat completely, so will need assistance.  However, as I said, this is a last resort and would like to try out a few more suggestions before taking this somewhat drastic step.

With regards to the first post.

R4 Desktop

3820 3.6 GHZ intel i7 quad core

16 GB RAM @ 1600mhz

680GTX Nvidia 2 GB RAM

1TB HDD (standard)

Windows 7 Home premium

Soundblaster XFI Titanium.

Never worked properly from the start (see post about the 116 BSOD) For what it's worth, the AO5 BIOS update has been installed for about 2 weeks.

This is interested, I have just been told that the problem is something to do with memory addressing, not faulty RAM.  Any ideas on what could be causing this?

Ok, pressed F12 at boot, brought up lot of options, went into them... cant see no pre-boot assessment.  Any ideas?

Also, how do I find out my current chipset version and date?  As I am thinking of updating via dell R4 driver website, but I don't want to replace with current or older version for obvious reasons.

You should have the PSA+ listed under your F12 boot options. Use the up/down arrow keys to scroll through the options and the enter key to select which one you want. ESC key will boot defaults.

The chipset drivers need to be done first right after you install windows. Since you didn't touch them or reinstalled Windows they should be the same version listed on the Dell site for your system.

To find your current version:

Run Registry Editor (Start -> Run -> regedit -> enter)

Once in the Registry Editor expand "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE"

Next Expand "SOFTWARE"

Next Expand "INTEL"

Click on "Infinst"

On the right hand side there will be two things to look for.

First is to make sure the line that says "Install" has the word "success" next too it (to the right, under "data" ). This indicates the driver was installed correctly.

Next find the line that says "Version", and that will be your version number that was installed.

I notice also that if the line that says version (infver?) is 9.2.2, the latest version on the DELL website is 9.2.3

Could this be the cause of the problems?

Thank you for your help btw, nice to talk to you again morblore. Hope things are going well.

hmmm, slight problem then...

when i click infinst it comes up like this:

(default)     REG_SZ    (Value not set)

Infver         REG_SZ     9.2.2

Is there something I did wrong?

Try updating it and see what happens. Can't hurt. What about the PSA+ test? Did you find and run it yet?

Sorry, been searching other forums for any suggestions as well, really want to get this fixed... just realised its 7:42 in the morning, good job I'm not at work today.  Haven't tried pre boot assessment yet, will get round to it tomorrow evening.

If nothing else crops up, I'll try installing the latest chipset drivers, as mine appear to be just out of date. If it makes things worse I'm seriously going to crack up.

You really should start with a fresh OS install. That will be a 100% fix for the registry files. Who knows what other registry files are out of wack and you just havent seen the error yet.

Now of course if you do have hardware failing then they will get messed up again but the F12 PSA test should let you know if that's the case. Like I said before the two top causes will be hardware failing or a virus. Since you know it's not a virus it leaves hardware failing. It could also be a driver not playing nice but that's a long shot. I don't think it's your RAM ether.

I will take a guess and say that it's a bad HDD drive on the top of my list. Then next would be something you may have ran like a PC cleaning tool that did it. After that then who knows. The PSA will help a lot by telling you if your hardware is fine or not. You need to run that the next chance you get.

GL :)

Hi Morblore, Hope you are well.

Very sorry for the delayed reply, have been a bit busy last couple of days.

Ok, have managed to find the PSA option via F12 and have done a scan of all the hardware listed on the options screen (selected thorough scan, took an hour or so to finish), results came back that there was no problems found, nothing out of place, no error messages etc so all looks well as far as this is concerned.

I have also done numerous tests on my RAM which I think I noted earlier as well as testing via alien autopsy programme and once again no problems found.

DELL have sent me a new graphics card, why I don't know (I would like to keep and pay for it and use via SLI) but I am 99% - 100% the issue is not the graphics card.

Needless to say I now look at what you have advised above in that it could be a corrupted registry - not sure exactly how this has happened though.  I have recently updated the on-board sound driver and am awaiting results before taking the next step.

One thing I wish to ask you at this point then is that I have heard that when reformatting an alienware system there are complications with the partitions, which I know nothing about, though I have reformatted in the past (back in the days of windows xp though, so I may be somewhat rusty).  With reformatting is there any special steps I need to take?

Also, I have been told by SEGA that my problem is related to the fact that both my hdd and my dvd rom drive are both NTFS and SCSI at the same time.  I don't know anything about SCSI or how it would affect anything, do you think this could be a likely culprit? If so, is there anyway to fix it?

Thanks in advance.

I look forward to your reply.