Problem with ATI HD5770 + W7 that crashes XX

Hi Christ and Peter,

Now I am ready to report back my situation. I finally have my issues fixed under W7 environment. I haven't had Vista reinstalled yet. My problem is not related to the Vista and change WP at all. But rather the compatibility problem between display driver and W7. It doesn't occur to all PC but some selected one for unknown reason and I was the unlucky one. I found this from the step recommended by you two. What had I done is quite simple but I would like to share my findings here so those who might have the same problem as mine can save time to fix it. Here you go:

1. As I mentioned in my last post, I have reinstalled W7 from scratch , then installed mobo, ATI HD 5770 , Lynx card drivers as well as flash BIOS with latest version. After rebooting, my PC went into BSOD.

2. Then I shoot back to the point where I haven't installed any drivers by using both unstallation tools under "control panel". But to make sure that these drivers were completely cleaned up, I used "driver sweeper" (freeware from Guru3D). Just a note for those who never use this sweeper, make sure that you reboot the system into fail safe mode (hit F8 right after system loading OS) then run driver sweep and check all the drivers that you want to remove then clean. In my case, I removed Lynx, ATI HD 5770 drivers.

3. As my BSOD jumps across OS, so Christ observation is right that there must be something wrong inherited in the boot.int file. How to clear this? I did a very simple dummy way. Just open the PC case, then remove battery on the mobo to reset BIOS (you can use jumper to short it as well). Note that I used to flash the BIOS. By doing this I brought mobo back to the default BIOS. This brought my PC back to the point as if I just finished installation of W7 on new hardware.

4.  Now reinstalling Lynx card driver first. Then shut down and turn on PC again. No problem. In my case, shut down =\ restart. Then instead of reinstalling the ATI display driver right away. I took time to google "ATI HD 5770 driver problem with Windows 7". Wow ! I am not alone. Tons of people having the same BSOD like me. The driver that has problem with W7 start from 10.3 to 10.9. The one that I always use is 10.9.

5. I was about to download ATI driver version 10.2 but luckily ATI just released a new 10.10 on that date. Release note implied driver conflict is resolved.

6. After installing ATI display driver version 10.10 and reboot, thanks god, system start normally. Then I went on to install all the applications that I need including XXHE. After 2 days test, the system has run smoothly and stably. A side note to user of ATI HD 5770, you should disable Catalyst AI (open CCC => Advance => Graphics => 3D => All => check "Disable Catalyst AI ).

My system is now pretty stable. Running XX , Power DVD, ripping CD and surfing the net all at the same time without problem.

My next action is to install Vista.

Peter, I have licences for both Vista Business 64bit and Windows Server 2008 64 bit. What do you recommend me to install?

Thanks,

Praphan

Hi Christ and Peter,

Thanks for your thoughts about my situation and advise.  Uhmmm... pretty technical for me but I will try to go back step by step to think about what went wrong.

One thing for sure now is that Lynx card is not  the cause of the  problem. I had it  removed from the mobo and the  stop working  thing still exists.    What a relief ! I can buy new mobo or graphic card to fix the issue , but not the Lynx card.

Tomorrow I will remove graphic card and use the onboard standard VGA to see what happen.  If it run without ... stop working.. or BSOD, then might be the graphic card driver conflict with XX.

For your information, I use 'driver sweeper' to totally clean drivers to make sure there is no left over whatsoever.

I will try to help myself as much as I can and report back soon.

Thank  you so much again.
Praphan

BTW Peter, I have the privilege of obtaining the Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter and Web (x64) from my company.

Is this version good to go?
Thanks

Hi Peter,

How can I be on my own when you reply to my post at the speed of light !

1. I am sure that I reinstalled the right graphic card driver since I saved it on the hard disk with clearly marked that it is for which OS.

2. As far as I remember, the "... stop service" issue started after I ran on Vista. I don't think I had ever encountered this issue on W7. But the point is that this ... stop working things got right into W7 environment even without XX installed in it.

3. The easiest way to test the graphic card is to remove it from this PC and stick it in my other PC. The trouble is that it requires too much work since I use water cooling blocks rather than conventional cooling fan units on both GPU and CPU.  Even if I find out that the card fails I cannot RMA anyway (return to manufacturer). I removed the fan and have the warranty voided. Well I can watch the HD movie  from on board VGA adapter though with acceptable decent video quality.

thanks
Praphan

Hi Christ and Peter,

First of all, thanks so much for the advise. It has been a privilege for me to be part of this community. I consider myself as a novice but never feel alone. There is always a helping hand when needed.

I am quite busy this week and will follow your advice over the weekend. However, I can add more information about my problem as follows:

1. These ".... stop working" things are fatal for my case. It did not only cause XX to shut dead but sometime led to blue screen. I usually fixed the system by using recovery tool to bring the system back to the point where I had no problem. Sometime it was not recoverable and then required reinstalltation of OS.  Well Christ , this BIOS trick is very interesting. If I encountered another blue screen I will give it a try.

2. I don't have any USB device hooked to the system. My PC consisted of

Gigabyte 880 GA UD3H mother board
AMD X4 965 quad core processor
ATI HD 5770 graphic card
Lynx Studio AES 16  , Sub D connector broken out into AES/EBU output.
OCZ Vertex 2 60 GB SSD
One 1TB HHD, one 2TB HHD
Corsair DDR 3 , 4 GB RAM

3. I am sure that the system is not infected since I used the anti virus and malware to scan all the  HDDs.

4. I ran dual OS, W7 on HDD and Vista on SSD. Strange enough, these ghosts were 'contagious' across OS. To elaborate, when I encountered the problem on Vista, I rebooted and  switched to W7 which was shutted down properly and faced no problem prior to shutting down. Once  booted on W7, these ghosts jumped on to W7. Doesn't make any sense to me but it happened.  FYI, XX was not installed on W7 as I intended to use W7 environment purely for HD movie application. Vista was dedicated solely for XXHE.

After these ".....stop service" ghosts haunted me badly two days ago, then I decided to start from a clean sheet of paper ie reformating the two OS disks, pull out the SATA cable for the data disk.  Then reinstalling W7 on SSD. Then loading drivers for motherboard, Lynx card and graphic card. New problem arose. Black screen with hard disk LED blinking forever. After rebooting, same problem. Then I decided to reinstall the driver one by one and found out that the cause of deadly black screen came from ATI graphic card driver. So I am now running the system on a standard VGA adapter. This  is very strange again since I don't have any problem with ATI driver earlier on this PC. Is the graphic card failed ? Should not be since the monitor still connected HD 5770 card but running as a standard VGA.

Last  night I ran memtest. Today I put the CPU on stress test for 14 hours using Prime95. All passed. But these tools did not test the graphic card. So I still doubt if my graphic card failed or it is due to driver conflict. Definitely, now it is not related to XX as I started from a clean sheet of paper without installing XX on the system.

Well this is where I am now.

Next step for me is to remove the graphic card from the motherboard. Hook the monitor  to the onboard DVI connector. Then install XX and see what happen.

I will report back soon.

Thanks so much for the help again.

Cheers!

Praphan

Hi Chris,

Thanks for sharing your experience with me on installation of XXHE on Vista.

Mine is the weirdest thing I have ever encountered. Here is the story:

After I posted my report saying that my system was running smooth after reinstalling Vista with minimal drivers, I have had problem again after two days. Same old random all kind of services "....... stopped running" ranging from graphic card controller service to Exploror. This caused XXHE stopped running as well. Even worse, it could sometimes lead to 'blue screen'.   What I usually did is to run 'system recovery' to go back to a point where I am sure that the system used to run smooth. Then I could run it smooth again. I tried loading XXHE, internet Explorer, CD ripping application and DVD player all at the same time. The system could handle all these applications smoothly.    During the test, I even tried shut down the PC and then rebooted to run all these applications again. It worked fine. Then shutting the PC down at night.

The weird thing is that after I rebooted again in the morning. These kind of ' service...... stopped working' came back and haunted me again like a ghost.  I have been fighting with this ghost for a while. Sometime even with reinstallation of Vista. Peter said it is unrelated but reinstallation is like working from a clean sheet of paper as I am not good at managing the PC.

Some of the PC guru at my office suggested that I had a virus problem., some even said that I should have hardware defect.

What did I do wrong?

Help please.

Thanks in advance.
Praphan

PS. I had XXHE installled on another computer runnning W7 without any problem at all.

Hi Peter,

Just to drop you a few lines to report on update of my system.

1. MS Security Essentials interfered XXHE. Uninstalled it.
2. My registry was all messed up after using registry application to clean it. DON'T USE THIS KIND OF TOOL.
3. Ending up reinstall Vista and update the motherboard Bios
4. Don't install any drivers that I don't need.
5. I run Vista only at the moment.

The system is stable now. No more annoying "....... stopped working".

Next project for me is to set up RAMDISK.

thanks and regards,
Praphan

Hi Mani,

Jealous !    Wanna  know how close you are to the heaven. Can you please share with us on how you set RAMDISK up in a dummy version. I am a basic PC user  

I know it takes time but I will wait.


Thanks in advance.
Praphan

Hi Peter,

Thank you for the advise.

I am not quite sure if my problem is related to wall paper. I followed your guide by reorganizing the music file  structure as suggested. The test did not work smoothly. I can sometime get the music playing randomly though but have to wait for XX which was not responding for 4 munites.  Here is a summary of my step by step actions:

1. I booted Vista. Then do nothing but started XX. Then I could change all the settings on XX without problem.  Then I added album in the playlist by clicking the library botton as I usually did on W7 platform.

2. Then click play button. XX went into "not responding" mode and the PC went unresponsive. Cannot launch any other applications even the explorer while XX was not responding. Not even launch the task manager.

3. After waiting for 3-4 minutes, sometime I could get the sound up for one minute and then the PC went halt again. But this was random. Sometime I would not hear any sound at all. The clock did not run.

4. If I have a patient then I will wait longer say another 5 minutes and I got the dialogue box saying XXEngine3.exe has stop working . Sometime I got the message saying the host process for windows service stop working as well. But the messages were random. Not getting this all the times. Then PC came back to working condition again. But one thing for sure is that XX stop running after I hit play again

5. If no patient , then I have to do hard reboot and the PC will bring me back to normal Vista window and the same problem again when I hit play button in XX.

6. At some point,  I just wait and wait for XX to come back from unresponsive mode and then close the XX and start it again. Now this time, I just uninstalled the Window Security Essential which is basically a free virus and internet security software.  Then I added the song to the playlist by dragging each song from the library area on the left side of the GUI to the play list. Then BINGO I was lucky to get XX running continueosly. Wow !!!!  Sound beautiful!  The reason why I uninstalled security Essential was that i got the malware thing running when I checked the task manager history. So I thought it might be the MS security that caused the problem

7. I shutdown the PC and restarted the system again to see how XX behave.  Oh no. Lots of problem messages coming up. But when I started XX, it worked.    While running XX a message coming up saying Task Scheduler Engine has stopped  working. And then a message saying Host Process for Windows services stopped working and was closed. I did not care as long as I hear the beautiful sound and enjoying music.

8. Test shutting down the PC and restart again . Now XX run smoother. But with some window error message like Spooler subsysgtem appl stopped working and was closed.



I am not quite sure what caused all these trouble but I guess  should be the security software.  When I have time tonite I will reinstall the Microsoft security Essential and see what happen.


But for now, I agreed that overall sound quality of XX on vista is better than on W7. No glicthes at all for me since I use Sennheiser HD 650 for the SQ test via Berkeley Alpha DAC. I hear no glitches. Sound more liquid and more natural.

I am happy now. But have to strukkle to get my system running smoother.  Any further suggestion?

I will come back again to report if MS Security Essential is causing the trouble.

Regards,
Praphan

Hi Boleary,

Sorry for late reply about my problem with Vista. I don't have any problem installing Vista and W7 in the same PC. But I am using 2 HDDs , one for Vista and another for W7. I tested both OS by running common applications inclusing PowerDVD without problem. XXHE works on W7. But on Vista, I could start it but when I hit "play" button, XXHE stop responding. It took about 3-5 minutes for my PC to come back to normal operation and said XXHE failed to run. I had problem with "change WP" (wall paper) too and Peter suggested that I disabled all the WP options. I did but still XX did not run after hitting the play button.

I don't know what I did wrong since I installed XX the same way I did on W7. I did reinstall three times and did not work.

I will re-install Vista and set it to lite instalment and see what happen.

thanks for the advise on RAMDISK anyway.
Too bad that I have never heard XX on Vista so far.

Cheers!
Praphan

Hi Peter and Mani,

I am one of those few dummies out there running XXHE on W7. Cannot wait to hear it on Vista. But then, I tried installing 0.9-z2 on Vista Business 32 bit without success.

Could anyone please give a dummy instruction to do a lite installation of Vista and step-by-step set up of RAMDISK.

I have W7 and Vista on the same PC.

I am running AMD X4 965 quad core, Gigabyte 880 GA-UD, Radeon HD 5770, Lynx Studio AES 16, 60GB SSD for OS alone, 2TB HHD for Data and 1TB HHD for W7 and other game/video applications.

Thanks in advance for your help guys!
Praphan

Khun Teera,

Any audible difference in SQ between Toslink and AES/EBU?
Generally AES/EBU delivers better SQ. But your case with M2Tech interface and XD-S1 might be different.

Praphan

Hi Khun Teera,

Julia by ESI is a PCI-based audio interface with breakout into optical/coax SPDIF and Midi output. I don't think you can use it on your Mac. You might wanna look for some audio interfaces like those manufactured by Weiss.

Guys anyone out there running XXHE on Mac. Please help.

Wish you the best of luck.

Praphan

Hi Khun Teera,

Welcome on board. I have heard about you from Dr. Suteetat.

Similar to Peter's comment, I wonder if you can share with us the details of your gears and system. Outline them in the signature is very common in this community.

I suspect that this should be to do with the sound device in your Mac. Please check if you sound device support 192KHz sampling rate. I and Doc use Lynx Studio AES 16.

Cheers!
Praphan

Hi there,

Before investing big amount of $$ into power conditioner which gives you a blacker black background and noise free listening, you should try to have a dedicated AC circuit running to your audio components. By dedicated I mean you have to rewire largest diameter good quality power cable you can from the main distribution board to your listening room/station. I use three 16 mm2 THW cable , one for line, one for neutral and one for ground. You have to ground properly as well using at least three 1.5 m ground rods. I also use specially treated (cryogenic) circuit breaker for this circuit. No refrigerator, air-cond or any home equipment using motor plugged into this circuit. I know it is hard but my house has 3 phase power supply and I can select the circuit that does not run those equipments that may generate RF or EMI during my listening time of the day.  You should also use hospital grade recepticle as well. Brand like hubble or marinco. If you can afford Wattgate or Oyaide, it's a great investment.

The rationale behind this is that you are trying to minimize the source of RF or EMI in the power supply to your audio gears. If you can do this, you may not need power conditioner which is some sort of filtering system comprising large bus bar, capacitor, varister and circuit breaker. All these can down grade sound quality, unless the conditioner uses top grade component like Nichikon or Mundoff capacitor which is bloody expensive. Even, Shuyata Hydra doesn't use this grade of component and it carries outrageous price tag.

The best way to buy a power conditioner is to borrow a demo unit from your dealer and listen to the improvement. If none, don't spend the money. But you have to improve your power line first.

Hope this can help.
Praphan