dewdude
High on resolution.
I thought Id share this with anyone else who does troubleshooting on computers. I had a major issue last week. My computer wanted to freeze on boot, such a hard lockup you had to hold the power button to reboot. It did this without hesitation on every boot.
After spending hours tracking the problem down, no luck. Ran every hardware test I could, it wasn't a hardware problem. Whatever it was, it was software. I was up a wall. I had the thing booted, thought I found a bad program which resolved after reinstalling it.
Previously, running system restore would magically fix this thing, but I had no restore points.
By stroke of luck, I discovered every time I attempted to load Steam, the system would lock up. Tried reinstalling Steam...then took to google.
I googled for 3 days and after hours of digging and narrowing down the problem (which, if id added Asus g72, the model of my laptop, it became the top result). There...in three threads, was the cause of the problem and solution. Creative MediaSource.
Asus bundled this with the sound card to help the relatively poor quality of the Realtek card, and honestly, when I have no other options, Ill use the EQ on it foe listening off the laptop.
Apparently, if you had any effects loaded, and tried to load Steam (or Skype), the system would majorly hang. Its a problem with the Realtek drivers. The system was loading Steam on boot. It was starting to make sense. The night before I suffered this problem...I had been using MediaSources EQ and Bass Boost to preview some 192khz tracks...at 192khz (my good DAC only does 96). I literally smacked myself in the head after this realization...and the problem became totally transparent.
Disabled all the effects from MediaSource, reinstalled Steam, problem solved...and 20 minutes later after redownloading Virtua Tennis....I was once again blasting baseline shots at computer AI that wasn't ready for it.
I'm so glad I didn't have to reformat, and that its not a sign of my 2 year old computer crapping out. If anything, after the defrag and registry cleaning, its running very well. Great framerates on my games at 1080x1920 over HDMI. Nothing says "oh wow" like playing Portal 2 on 46" flat panel. I can't wait to fling myself around levels on the 70" Sharp.
Looks like Ill be running around Borderlands shooting stuff again tonight.
After spending hours tracking the problem down, no luck. Ran every hardware test I could, it wasn't a hardware problem. Whatever it was, it was software. I was up a wall. I had the thing booted, thought I found a bad program which resolved after reinstalling it.
Previously, running system restore would magically fix this thing, but I had no restore points.
By stroke of luck, I discovered every time I attempted to load Steam, the system would lock up. Tried reinstalling Steam...then took to google.
I googled for 3 days and after hours of digging and narrowing down the problem (which, if id added Asus g72, the model of my laptop, it became the top result). There...in three threads, was the cause of the problem and solution. Creative MediaSource.
Asus bundled this with the sound card to help the relatively poor quality of the Realtek card, and honestly, when I have no other options, Ill use the EQ on it foe listening off the laptop.
Apparently, if you had any effects loaded, and tried to load Steam (or Skype), the system would majorly hang. Its a problem with the Realtek drivers. The system was loading Steam on boot. It was starting to make sense. The night before I suffered this problem...I had been using MediaSources EQ and Bass Boost to preview some 192khz tracks...at 192khz (my good DAC only does 96). I literally smacked myself in the head after this realization...and the problem became totally transparent.
Disabled all the effects from MediaSource, reinstalled Steam, problem solved...and 20 minutes later after redownloading Virtua Tennis....I was once again blasting baseline shots at computer AI that wasn't ready for it.
I'm so glad I didn't have to reformat, and that its not a sign of my 2 year old computer crapping out. If anything, after the defrag and registry cleaning, its running very well. Great framerates on my games at 1080x1920 over HDMI. Nothing says "oh wow" like playing Portal 2 on 46" flat panel. I can't wait to fling myself around levels on the 70" Sharp.
Looks like Ill be running around Borderlands shooting stuff again tonight.
