Graphic issue w/ 3 QTs

[sludgehound]

Not 100% sure whether a Vista Home Prem issue or h/w.
High end PC.  Upped power to 500W and 9800GT 2.0 card. Prior
was 400W and dif 9800GT card that maybe got damaged with a
faulty card adapter cable. Since 400W PS lacked dedicated
6 pin PCIe line. So used two 4 pin Molex to 6 pin
card adaptor.  Turns out one of the two 4 pin cables
was defective so card was really on under powered.
 The 3 QTs issue then, and still, is that everything
runs fast & fine on quad Q6600 & recent mobo. 4gb ram
at 1066 and 2 barracuda HDs
 Can play a game, run emails, open loads of sites, plain
cable direct to modem. Ran diags and all No errors.
 But run 3 QTs. 1 ETrade Streamer, 1 Izone/AMTD Streamer,
and 1 is their RT feed (non Stream).
 What happened with 400W and still 500W, is as market
data flows in during am, and various sound and popup
alerts trigger, boom.  I'll have Winmail open, maybe
2-3 static websites.  Soonish one QT will just ghost out
and need to be rerun.  Generally 1st Streamer tho varies.
Redid Vista, h/w drivers all current as is QT. No virus.
 With the 400W PS the failings were a repeatable black
border around screens and loss of control overall.  Generally
I could get a black boarder and then screen fail if no market and 3 QTs open and start into an email Reply.  bang.  Also
if I just went away for 15 mins or so of inactivity.
Return to a lockup.  All the Vista power features and BIOS
are set to never time out.  Can't recover anyway like in
Sleep.  Just went bye bye.  At least that stopped now.
 User forums pointed to underpowered PS with a high end
system.  So now the black borders and then black screen has
stopped. But again on Friday came the more usual white type
ghosted QT that fails.
 There's no popup that a QT feed quit or such.  Generally
happens with data flow, series of alerts triggered, and email
open.  If close down the failed QT and rerun it, it will usually
run fine (whole setup too) the rest of day. 
 Bad part is not knowing one QT has stopped.
 I can run this setup all day when market closed.  Updated
LAN and Gigabyte mobo sound driver. 
 Even tried to be sure extra sound files (South Park
voices) were ok.  Only dif seems to be the existence of
the market day's data.
 Each QT is +/- 50 stocks tho RT close to 100. 
 Ideas?  I hate to cut it all down to like 30 stocks just to
test that.  Also not really taxing QTs with more than 1
open chart per QT.  Most drain would be the number of alerts
set per QT to track when data flow begins changing.
It's not like a QT will fail 2 mins post Open. Can be 1/2hour later after some alerts have triggered -- Price or News.
 Thanks a lot.  Need these 3 to be tight and dry. Have run
out of ideas for cause and why QT would then run ok with the
other two from then on.
 Maybe I need to run each and pause for a full minute beteen
opening each.
 btw looking into next gen of mobos, vid cards,
DDR3 ram...yuck.  Need 750W min for stability w/ 8 pin
plug to mobo, newer PCIe 2.0 top end vid card uses 8 pin
line (8 pin to 6 pin adaptor for current cards).  On and
on with fade outs.  Saw couple mobo that are dual DDR2 and
DDR3 capable. Not together tho.  Looks like 4 slots.
2 of each - dif notches.  So need 2gb sticks of one or
other for 4 gb.  Some of dedicarted DDR3 4 slots can do 8gb
for Vista 64 bit setup.  Else the usual 3-4gb of 32 bit.
ASUS seemed only one yet w/ DDR3 plus full 2.0 PCIe.  2.0 will
work in current 1.0 PCIe slot just reduced to 1x16.
 Very costly upgrade path right now. Hence the dual ram
idea and 2.0 cards being backward compat. Saves on parts as
go along.  PS get pricey too >700W.  But with so much new
gear piling on, 1000W could be new norm.  Yikes,
  Happy 4th all.  Plan well and trade w/ care.  Tough old bear.



 

[ydfah]

Any chance that having had run the video card with an underpowered PS caused damage to it?

[ydfah]

Also, check and see if your resources are low at the time the lockup occurs.

[sludgehound]

Did replace that possibly bad card with same model,
dif brand.  That and 500W PS ended black boarder and
gradual black screen issue.  Couldn't run Task Mgr or any
tool to check resources since no control of system.
 With the issue now of a QT failing, I will try and
monitor pre market resources and when open.
DDR2 Kingston 4gb 1066 should take a load.  The CPU Q6600
quad barely draws any % use. Maybe 1 core will spike to
15% and settled  back to 5% with steady core temps.
 I fussed with onboard sound driver a bit but just a small
set of powered speakers.  Did once have a corrupt sound
file cashreg.wav that I got somewhere and caused crashes.
Oh I should redo MS Media Player since fail usually
seems to come about 1/2 after open w/ lot of alerts.
 Thanks for ideas.  hmm  How odd is this?  The Realtek
driver for mobo is in place and sounds work. But
when did a Vista search bar Meia Player and clicked on
that line...MP 11 opened in what looked like it wasn't
fully installed from the Vista Update. It asked if I
wanted it as default Player?  Yes. And Express.  It quickly
did its default settings thing and opened.
 Maybe that has some bearing on sound alerts in QT when
a whole of them trigger price and maybe a few News ones
tho didn't assign that for many - usually only if an open
position or one with sudden price action.
 Darn I so meant to check that. Can't trust Vista
Update to fully install programs?  Unless I got MP 11
as a sep install from MS.  Don't remember.  Just saw it
was 'installed' just never ran it by itself.
 Will watch for this too in am.
 

[Brynk]

I use Vista w/ 2 QT's running and have the identical problems unless I delete the cache files (sdata.dmp) daily. 

By days end they are up over 160 Megs in size
Once they get over 200 megs everything bogs down, even w/ 3 gigs RAM

All data rebuilds in a few minutes after a restart w/ about 20 meg files

I don't use the news feature, but if I recall correctly, the snews.dmp file could get pretty large also and affect performance

[sludgehound]

Thanks. Haven't checked those for awhile. sdata 21000 KB
and snews is only 1000 KB.
Started late today and have to leave for 2 hrs but so far
ok as is. Letting it all run w/ Winmail open and couple sites
to see how holds up unattended.

[Brynk]

I also try to keep limit the # of unnecessary alerts
They have a tendency to build up, especially orphans.
Too many and they start to drag on resources

[sludgehound]

Thanks once again.  Yes I'm aware of the various
resource demands in regard to certain functions.  Lots
of open charts being one of them.
But I got to thinking that I'd only begun to have
that falling QT thing after upgrading h/w components.
Prior parts were slower but worked.  Made check list but
diags had shown no errors among parts.  Yet primary boot
drive would make this occasional short sharp low click
sound at some points when a heavy access called for.
No program ever seemed to fail.  Just Vista going into
that black border and black screen thing. 
Kept thinking was graphic card related. But only thing
left was to switch the two 360 SATA II drives.
No click or pause like behavior today.  Smooth quiet.
I can go among all the open tasks and 3 QTs stay active. One
would have failed now.  I hated idea of switching
those darn drives even with clone s/w.  Now I gotta
sweat that my backup files are on a suspect secondary.
Backed real critical files to DVDs.  Secondary is fast
amd quiet tho so far.
Anyway that's it for now.  Now I can concentrate on this
crap market with all its blow offs.  But seems like fun
after the system nightmare.  At least the drive gave a
little hint of trouble. Passed all those stupid diags tho.
Did read a few forums and posts about how much it seems
Seagate had fallen in quality. Barracudas were always fine
for me tho.  New ones too.  That made it all the harder to
suspect them.  LOL