Gaming PC Diagnostic
 

I'm going crazy with this and could probably use some fresh eyes on it.

I built a new PC for a friend recently. Specs:

CORSAIR HX series HX650 650W ATX12V v2.2 / EPS12V 2.91 SLI Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply
Intel Core i7-3770 Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.9GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4000 BX80637I73770
EVGA SuperClocked w/ ACX Cooling 02G-P4-2774-KR GeForce GTX 770 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 SLI Support Video Card
ASRock Z77 Extreme4 LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
Western Digital WD AV-GP WD10EURX 1TB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - OEM
Intel 520 Series Cherryville SSDSC2CW180A3K5 2.5" 180GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBRL

Built it perfectly fine. Originally got 2x of the RAM (so 4x4GB), but one of the sticks was preventing the BIOS from posting, so it was RMA'd. After removing it, the PC boots.

Installed Windows 7. Run into some issues during that.. it freezes during it's bootup after initially installing some drivers. Have to hard reboot it. Then it intermittently has freezing issues every once in a while.

Here's the really confusing part. It won't launch ANY games.

Everquest - It actually gets to the server select. As soon as it starts loading in.. music comes on and you can see the loading screen for maybe 2-3 seconds, then it crashes without an error, straight to desktop.

Star Wars - Won't even get past the launcher. Soon as you hit Play, about 10 seconds later you get a SWTOR has encountered an error. MSVC100.dll or whatever.

We installed DX9.. all drivers are correct and latest versions, straight off manufacturing website. Latest NVidia driver was installed.

We tried the following diagnostics...

Removed a stick of RAM.. still issues.
Placed RAM stick back, removed the other stick... still issues.
Removed video card and used onboard HD 4000... still issues.

Updated BIOS to latest.. still issues.

Tried launching games from different hard drives.. still issues.

We completely blew away Windows 7, started all over again... still issues.

At this point I'm thinking it's a defective motherboard.. possibly one of those tiny little bulbs got knocked somehow? I'm not sure, but something is definitely wrong.

Anyways, let me know what you guys think.

I would have to agree with a bad motherboard. If it's an easy thing to RMA or exchange I would start there.

The only other thing I noticed is the 650W power supply. That VID card alone is going to pull at least 250 watts. I think 600W min. is the rec. for that card. That said; I've had weird freezing issues when a PS is starting to fail.

Good Luck!

Bad board. Most cpu issues would have it not boot at all at least once.

Hmm.. When we tested it without the video card, we only unplugged it from the motherboard, but the power connectors were still there. However, if it was running into a power issue, wouldn't it shut the whole PC off if it passed threshold? The game is just crashing at that point, to desktop.

Sounds like Mobo sir

If you're using the SSD, ensure that AHCI mode is enabled.

Make sure you have Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable Package installed.

For a 64 bit OS: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/downl....aspx?id=18471

The next thing we would like you to do is go to your EverQuest directory and delete the following files:

defaults.ini
eqclient.ini
eqgame.exe
EQGfx_Dx8.dll
EQGraphicsDX9.dll
eqlsClient.ini
eqmain.dll

Once the files have been deleted, open the EverQuest launcher, log in, and click the Advanced Tools button (the small button with gears on it) in the lower left hand corner of the launcher. From there click Validate Game Assets > Validate and try accessing the game once the validation process has been completed.

Please explain why a motherboard would be selective about the games it does and does not want to operate?

Did you try deleting the system32 folder? Usually works for me.

Check your bios for PCIe x16 setting. If the setting is there and set to auto change it to Gen2.