BF2S Forums New hardware = more frequent BF2 desktop crashes

Yup - BIOS is the most recent version (the board is an A8N SLI, rev 1013 I *think*), and the Nvidia RAID drivers are the latest ones from their website. Cheers for the suggestion though!

Last edited by AnarkyXtra (2006-02-27 04:43:18)

Really? Can anyone else with RAID 0 confirm this? If so, at least I know where the problem is coming from...

I've actualy had the same problem the past few days, and I don't have any kind of a Raid setup.  Just got a new power supply Saturday tho.  But my girl plays some BF, and it's closed to desktop 2 times on her this weekend, once friday nite, and once Sunday afternoon.

There is no evidence to back up the speculation that a RAID 0 setup creates system instability. If a simple striped array caused a system to become unstable then surely a more complex RAID 5 setup would cause even more chaos.. which it absolutely does not.

  I think as others have pointed out, the 1.2 patch has lead to more complaints about crashing to desktop than before. I had never crashed to the desktop before the patch (I have 2 160GB Seagate SATA 3.0 drives in a RAID 0), but now after installing the patch I get it 2-3 times a day.

Right. So it does seem like the patch is to blame...

Bugger. I liked the patch right up until then... 

yeah I've experince once in a while not as much as you do, but once in like a a week or a month maybe to say the most, I dont have any problems with it since it does not happen very often to me, so I dont think its that of a big deal to you check your video settings they might be too high, for ur vide card might have to lower it not sure. also check you hard drive configuration here is the site if you need more help.

http://www.experts-exchange.com/

I wish I had a point to start... but the only way to figure it out is to step things through piece by piece.

What we know thus far is that the problem started after the installation of a dual-80GB SATA HD in RAID-0 setup.  This raises the question as to whether or not there is ample power supplied to the drives.  However, the odd part is that the "rated" power for the PSU mentioned is 500W, more than enough to keep the two drives up and running for a while.  The cause can also work both ways, such that the cause isn't the PSU but with one of the HD instead.  It only seem like that everything works normally.  But there's always that Lottery-style off-beat chance that one of the two HD is defective and is going bonkers on you.

There is also something that is also worth mentioning even though it may be unrelated: RAM.  In my experience, when RAM begin to mishave even the slightest bit, BF2 can crash to desktop without warning.  This is expecially true when you thought that Memtest86+ has ran looped tests through the RAM for 12 hours straight.  Even though the likelihood of unstable RAM is very slim, the possibility is there regardless.

It all sounds unbelievable and you think that it should behave correctly by any normal means.  But that's why you're here asking us now.  At the moment, I do not have any definite answer nor do I have any theories.  But I can share you my personal experiences and possible causes.  My suggestion is to experiment with varying degree of combination to determine whether or not one or the other is at fault.  This is my evaluation of the entire scenerio.  Feel free to post back on what you can find.