Hello all,

Recently, I've has some serious issues with my graphics card acting up and last night it started affecting system stability and not just graphical performance. Some backstory to this whole situation:

The two main applications I am concerned with are World of Warcraft and Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. The first signs that something might be wrong was that I was getting a lot of critical errors in WoW as well as getting graphical glitches. The main graphical glitches were that the floor would disappear at times and sometimes the screen would fill with large jagged polygons, which could be eliminated by minimizing and then maximizing the game. After running MemTest86, I discovered that 2 of my RAM DIMMs were bad, so I replaced them, which fixed the issue with critical errors. However, the issue with the jagged polygons remained, but was just a minor annoyance so I pretty much ignored it. At this point in time, I was also able to run WC3 successfully without any graphical glitches at all.

Starting about a week ago, I started getting weird lockups in both games, where the mouse would become unresponsive and the sound would either start looping the last second indefinitely or it would continue playing as normal. After 30-45 seconds, the issue would usually resolve itself and I would be able to continue playing. About 2-3 days ago, I first encountered the infinite loop bug. The BSOD code is 0xEA and Windows says that the device driver infinitely looped and blames nv4_disp. I read a bit on the WoW forums and there were suggestions that an insufficiently good PSU might be causing issues, so I went ahead and upgraded my PSU from a 500W to a 750W (probably way overkill, but I figured I might as well rule that out). However, I was still able to successfully play for quite a while (several hours) without seeing a BSOD. Unfortunately, last night broke this pattern. I am now unable to play more than 10 minutes before locking up (and getting a BSOD) and sometimes I lock up on the loading screen for either game.

I've done a bit of research about this bug and I've tried the following tests/potential fixes:

1) Run MemTest86 overnight (no errors found at all)
2) Downloaded the latest graphics drivers from Nvidia (no effect)
3) Downloaded the latest audio drivers (no effect)
4) Downloaded the latest chipset drivers (no effect)
5) Run virus/spyware scans (nothing unusual, only tracking cookies and the like)
6) Uninstalled graphics drivers numerous times and tried out various old builds/newer beta drivers (including 81.43 which I saw suggested a lot) (no effect)
7) Removed combined writes and changed the hardware acceleration to the minimum permitted to run each game (no effect)
8) Applied a patch I found that apparently disables register MX55(?) that supposedly is responsible for some of these infinite loops (seemed to slow down the rate of BSOD, but they still appeared within 20 minutes)

The one highly unusual thing that I found was that during a run of BurnInTest with 2D graphics. Over one pass, it found that almost 1/4 of the operations resulting in errors. Of a total of ~1500 operations, ~400 errors were reported. However, it found no errors at all during the 3D graphics test. I've run the tests through several dozen passes and the same pattern emerges.

My current system specs are as follows:

Asus A8N32-SLI motherboard
Onboard sound
AMD x2 4800+
Nvidia 7900 GTX 512 MB
4 GB RAM (2 sticks are brand new)
750W PSU (brand new)

Is there any chance that this all might be caused by driver errors (even though I have tried like 6 versions without success)? Or can corrupt video memory actually cause the system to lock up? Also, there were rumors flying around that a recent WoW patch (2.4) caused some stability issues which might have messed up drivers which in turn damaged the hardware. I've seen a lot of posts about people complaining that the new patch caused system instability not just in game but outside as well. Is this something that can feasibly happen? Finally, if I were to get a new video card, am I likely to fix this issue or is it possible that the card might be damaged by my system setup?

Thanks a lot for reading this long post and answering all these questions. I greatly appreciate it!

Does anything show up in the Event Viewer about the same time as when the problem does?

If you mean the BSOD error code it is as follows:

0xEA(0x88E01520, 0x88D64270, 0xBACEFCBC, 0x1)

The error number is the same everytime, as is the last argument. The middle three seem to fluctuate randomly.

No, the Event Viewer. Click on my link

Still not sure what you mean, but I randomly pulled a couple of recent errors that I saw.

Application section:

Date || Time || Source || Category || Event

4/28/2008 20:38:22 Application Hang (101) 1002 Hanging application mmc.exe, version 5.1.2600.2180, hang module hungapp, version 0.0.0.0, hang address 0x00000000.
4/29/2008 02:04:19 Application Hang (101) 1002 Hanging application Frozen Throne.exe, version 1.5.0.0, hang module hungapp, version 0.0.0.0, hang address 0x00000000.
4/29/2008 02:05:36 Application Hang (101) 1002 Hanging application Frozen Throne.exe, version 1.5.0.0, hang module hungapp, version 0.0.0.0, hang address 0x00000000.
4/29/2008 02:06:47 Application Hang (101) 1002 Hanging application Frozen Throne.exe, version 1.5.0.0, hang module hungapp, version 0.0.0.0, hang address 0x00000000.
4/30/2008 00:18:07 Ci CIService 4124 Content index on c:\system volume information\catalog.wci is corrupt. Please shutdown and restart the Indexing Service (cisvc).
4/30/2008 00:18:07 Ci CIService 4124 Cleaning up corrupt content index metadata on c:\system volume information\catalog.wci. Index will be automatically restored by refiltering all documents.
4/30/2008 11:39:46 Ci CIService 4126 Cleaning up corrupt content index metadata on c:\system volume information\catalog.wci. Index will be automatically restored by refiltering all documents.

System section:

Date || Time || Source || Category || Event

4/29/2008 02:00:18 System Error (102) 1003 Error code 100000ea, parameter1 88e01520, parameter2 88d64270, parameter3 bacefcbc, parameter4 00000001.
4/29/2008 02:24:23 Service Control Manager None 7026 Error code 100000ea, parameter1 8a65fda8, parameter2 88ef06d8, parameter3 bace7cbc, parameter4 00000001.
4/30/2008 00:04:32 System Error (102) 1003 Error code 100000ea, parameter1 88798020, parameter2 8a04dd58, parameter3 bace7cbc, parameter4 00000001.

Indexing service caught my eye. You might want to download the diagnostic utility for your hard drive and run it

I've been trying to get the diagnostic utility to run, but I have neither a floppy drive in my computer or ready access to a CD-Burner. I've been trying to burn the .iso file (from Seagate) onto a USB drive by first converting it to a .img file and then using an HP utility to burn that .img file onto a USB key. However, I haven't managed to get it to boot up. Any suggestions?

Edit: I ran the chkdsk /r command and it found no errors on my disk.

Edit2: I just ran the stress test again and I around ~2000 errors in ~1000 operations before I got a BSOD with the same error: 0xEA nv4_disp Infinite loop. I'll be ordering a new card from Newegg tonight and hopefully that will fix all my issues...