PC crashes when playing Dolphin.

gato23 · 08-10-2014, 07:40 PM #1

so I just recently Downloaded Dolphin 4.0.2 to try and play some games.

Mainly Resident Evil Remake, RE 0 and Skies of Arcadia. any way at first I was experiencing no problems playing the games (aside from RE0's scratchy sounds)

I leave most of the settings default. I just tinker with the resolution and the AA.

but the longer I play my PC just stutters to a freeze then goes black as if the driver crashed. it won't even reset, even with using the on-board reset button on my motherboard, I have to shut down and start again my PC just to get it to work again.

I was using the latest nVidia dirvers 340.52 but even after I rolled back to the previous 337.88 drivers it still crashes.

the most It happens is when I use the change disk function to switch to the second disk. I would get 10-15 min. of game time before the inevitable crash.

tried tinkering with the emulator but it all ends the same. I currently have it uninstalled at the moment.

pls help.

**Garteal** · 08-10-2014, 07:48 PM #2

This sounds unrelated to Dolphin itself but rather seems to be your hardware or so instead.
In that case it could really be anything.

Do you hear sound looping (whatever sound was playing repeats infinitely until you hard boot)?
The next time you get this, try to press the CAPS-LOCK and NUM LOCK keys on your keyboard and answer the following question when you have: do the lights on your keyboard turn on and off when you do this?

To begin ruling things out, download HWInfo (a system diagnostics and monitoring software) and run it with sensors only checked. Keep the window open and play whatever game in Dolphin and monitor specifically your CPU, motherboard and GPU temps. Make sure to play for whatever amount it usually takes to crash your system. You can also enable logging in HWInfo and post that file here if you're unsure. (Logging is the paper with a + icon).

gato23 · (This post was last modified: 08-10-2014, 07:53 PM by gato23.)

to add my rig is:

Intel i5 4670
MSI z79 gaming mobo
Kingston 4gb (2x2gb) ram
gtx 660ti
160gb HDD
500gb HDD
2tb HDD
850w Cooler Master PSU (Silver Certified)

(08-10-2014, 07:48 PM)Garteal Wrote: Do you hear sound looping (whatever sound was playing repeats infinitely until you hard boot)?
The next time you get this, try to press the CAPS-LOCK and NUM LOCK keys on your keyboard and answer the following question when you have: do the lights on your keyboard turn on and off when you do this?

To begin ruling things out, download HWInfo (a system diagnostics and monitoring software) and run it with sensors only checked. Keep the window open and play whatever game in Dolphin and monitor specifically your CPU, motherboard and GPU temps. Make sure to play for whatever amount it usually takes to crash your system. You can also enable logging in HWInfo and post that file here if you're unsure. (Logging is the paper with a + icon).

yes to both and I will try to diagnose it better,

**Garteal** · 08-10-2014, 07:56 PM #4

So you hear the sound looping but the lights on your keyboard do respond?

Are you overclocking your GPU? If so, return to stock clocks as unstable clocks will crash the driver. It should recover though which doesn't seem to be happening to you.

gato23 · (This post was last modified: 08-10-2014, 08:02 PM by gato23.)

(08-10-2014, 07:56 PM)Garteal Wrote: So you hear the sound looping but the lights on your keyboard do respond?

Are you overclocking your GPU? If so, return to stock clocks as unstable clocks will crash the driver. It should recover though which doesn't seem to be happening to you.

I hear sound loop when it freezes before going to black sorta like a buzzer really. and when it goes black sometimes the CAPS LOCK and NUM LOCK would respond like normal the other time it would not.
and extreme was when I had my PC booted up again after a crash the keyboard would not respond I had to detached it from the USB slot and re-attach it again for it to work.

also no I am not Overclocking ANYTHING in my rig.

**Garteal** · 08-10-2014, 08:19 PM #6

Alright get back to me on the temps as soon as you can.

I'll list some other things you can try once we've ruled out that you aren't overheating in any way. But to give you another thing to try after:
Do a Memtest86+ test and leave it running for a while. Two hours approx will do three passes and if you get no errors then your RAM should be fine.
Better would be (and I'd recommend so) to run this overnight for like 10 hours or so. If you get errors, try your RAM sticks one by one running the test for 2 hours or so to determine which one went defective. If they both pass, either your RAM slot is defective or dying (unlikely, but possible) or they just needed reseating.

gato23 · 08-10-2014, 08:31 PM #7

would try the memtest but not right now.

also I run Heaven Benchmark like a couple of weeks ago on ultra and my GPU barely goes beyond 70.C but I'll try it again with the diagnosis tool.

**Garteal** · 08-10-2014, 08:34 PM #8

GPU temp sounds good, but there's more to the GPU like the VRM for example which might be overheating.
How long did you run it for?

gato23 · 08-10-2014, 08:43 PM #9

the normal benchmark run so 15-20 min? i was just tooling around then.

**Garteal** · 08-10-2014, 08:57 PM **#10**

It only takes 4-5 mins for the benchmark. Have you only noticed this behavior with Dolphin or do you get the same issue after (long) sessions with PC games?