Hehe...dunno wtf I caught. I'm still not a 100%, but I'm already a lot better than a week ago. The dizzy sight has improved, my fatigue lessened and I feel like doing stuff again (was pretty bummed at the start). Blood examantion was perfectly fine according to the doc so I probably don't have anything major, which is nice, cos I'm really afraid of shit like cancer.


Anyhoo, so, chipset drivers are good for performance eh...crap. I guess it's not like BIOS, when you update them once they're saved into the mobo 'memory'? Because it just doesn't make much sense like this, you know? They give the warning not to install the latest drivers after the latest BIOS, but if you do a full format then wtf are you supposed to do? Flash down the BIOS I guess, but heck, I'm not starting that stuff. Waiting for a new driver version I guess...and all games are working fine at high detail so far, so I'm not really experiencing any problems. All guns are firing and stuff.

don't worry about it. If your performance is good, screw it. I'm sure I could tweak my system for a ocuple more FPS, but I can play every game I want just fine, so why bother? Maybe I'm just getting lazy in my old life. More likely, I have other things to keep my interested.

Ok, I finished the works on my pc...finally. Got the (black and shiny) DVD/RW drive today and installed it...bye bye crappy old-timer DVD-ROM crap. That thing was sloooow.

I could only attach it with one screw tho, strange as it may seem. But bleh, the other DVD drive had the same problem and it worked properly. Besides, I can probably afford a new DVDRW, not that expensive...still funny that it 's suspended on one screw tho.


While I was at it I re-arranged my ram. I stupidly forgot to put it in Dual-Channel mode last time. I did A1+A2, when DC of course is A1+B1. I already notice an improvement when loading out really resource-heavy games like Vampire: Bloodlines.

So, barring accidents my pwns for a while. Wahey!

Im definately building my next PC.

Mm, issue with my new DVDRW: when I insert a video DVD and fire it up with my DVD program (in this case PowerDVD), the application starts, freezes, then gives me a BSOD with machine_check_exception.

I did it twice to make sure and twice got the exact same error. Haven't had any problems other than that tho, so I reckon it's very specifically the new DVD. I tried firing up a similar DVD on the old DVDrom a few days back and that worked fine. I kinda hope in a way that it's the new DVDRW, if you know what I mean.

Anyhoo, anyone familiar with this?

I did some looking up, and found

http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... -us;329284

on the microsoft site.


So, keeping in mind the things I did since last (succesfully) running a DVD, on the old DVDrom drive:

-I put the ram in Dual Channel mode, ie moved a bar from the A2 to the B1 slot on the mobo
-replaced the DVDrom with the new DVDRW.


The microsoft page says that frequent general causes are



1) I'm not overclocking, so that's not it. Straight from the box default settings afaik.
2) I have a 500w PSU, so I doubt it won't be able to provide one HD, a mobo and a DVDRW. And a floppy, heh.
3)fans and temps are fine (CPU 30° and mobo 33° C)
4)memory...mmm. That's not impossible I guess, given that I switched it around. But dunno how the fuck that would get messed up, it was plain and simple insert, push, click, done.

So, it's either some incompatibility with the DVDRW (it's an Aopen model) or ram, dunno what else. I guess i'll play some high-end games for a while more and nothing gives a similar crash I can be pretty sure it's the DVD drive and not something else. Any other suggestions? memtest? Could faulty drivers for the DVD drive cause this problem?

Fucking microsoft and it's totally random info page. Basically they could have put on there "it can be anything really, so have fun".

Installed latest firmware for the DVD, to no avail. Tried same DVD and tadaa, same BSOD

So, are there drivers for DVD drives that stand apart from firmware?

WinXP doesn't typically need any DVD drivers. Have you tried reinstalling the DVD playing software, or tried a different DVD player? Alternately, does it do the same with a different DVD?

I'll give it a go; re-installing the software or using another DVD. As for DVD-player: the old one read movies just fine, and the last time I used it for that was 2-3 days before I got the new player. So I think it's safe to say (unless I start suffering other unstableties) that it's related to this player in some way or another.

It might be something really stupid tho, like the master/slave setting. I kinda went over that in a sec or two as it is my only IDE device (HD is SATA, no other optical drives) so I figured it wouldn't matter. I'll have a peek at it one of these days. Shouldn't a wrong master/slave setting give me problems other than crashing when reading a DVD tho?


Also didn't install the sound cable to the DVDRW, but meh, afaik that's optional. Don't see how that would be problematic for DVD's.

it should be master...possible "master without slave" if that's an option. I don't know the effect...i've used the wrong setting beore and all kinds of strange things happened, so there's no telling. It probably wouldn't bsod the box, but who knows.

The audio cable is optional. If it's just this drive, maybe it's a bad drive.

I think windows is just stupid when it comes to cd/dvd drives, i can still see my laptops dvd drive under my computer even when the laptop isnt connected to wlan and whats even wierder its not shared so go figure why i have two drives under my computer. Physically there is only one Plextor dvd writer attached.

so my oppinion is that it could be something and everything at the same time. damn this is one useless post in conclusion.

Lol, are you alright Peltz?

hehe....what an odd one.

I installed alcohol 120% before, which creates a virtual dvd drive. Lets you mount ISOs and such. So that would show up as a physical drive under my computer even though it's actually just a software drive.

aah ok that could be it, silly me i always thot now why the hell is this thing here and where did it come from.

Just curous. I did some quick research into how much it may cost me to build a top end pc. I calculated about £1300, but it could be £100 more. This was taken from component prices at a medium priced retailer.

Is this right?

How much have you spent on your system Ox? And do you consider it High, Medium or Low end?