icelava.net

And once again some of the pettiest of issues come back to trouble me and prevent me from accomplishing the simplest of tasks, granting me hours of frustration and absolute zero pleasure.

I couldn't even install World of Warcraft on my desktop PC.

It would seemingly have the CPU raging full throttle while processing the file terrain.MPQ. Forever. Searching around the Internet, I found similar woes that all seem to hint at a common issue: RAM. People were reporting success after re-positioning or removing certain memory modules.

Oh and I knew that way too well. The RAM position combo on my desktop server has to be just right for the motherboard to even boot up. The many wasted days I have spent on this machine....

Well, I did buy a new slab of 512MB to boost this desktop of mine to 1GB a few weeks back. But it had been operating peacefully with the existing twin 256MB pieces up until I tried to install the World of Warcraft. (They are all Kingston PC2100 CL2.5 for your info) Guess indeed nothing like a monster game to truly stress and test the stability of your system to the max. Fine, I plugged all memory modules out from their original positions:

• Bank 0: 256MB
• Bank 1: 256MB
• Bank 2: 512MB
• Bank 3: none

And set them as (theoretically speaking, they can be positioned anywhere, unlike the designs of old that required sequential paired droppings. And jumpers to boot.)

• Bank 0: 512MB
• Bank 1: none
• Bank 2: 256MB
• Bank 3: 256MB
  

Now here's when all the interesting sparks and smoke started flying. First start up into Windows showed my network card was unplugged. No it was not. Nevermind I replug the network cable and it went into a perpertual drunked state trying to establish DHCP. And since my keyboard/mouse (hooked on via a PS2-USB converter because my PS2 ports are toast) was not detected no matter how many times I replug, I forced a hard reset.

Next up? The critical services.exe terminates abnormally on startup and state it has to shut down the system. But never does on expiry of the countdown. Another hard reset. The next few times have random items crashing (e.g. explorer.exe) before the system automatically decides to reset itself, saving me the trouble of a manual reset. How thoughtful....

Out went the pair of 256MB modules and I (finally) got a bootable and eventless Windows. Somewhat unsurprisingly, the game installation goes beyond terrain.MPQ and prompted me for following discs.

What can you draw from these? More evidence that RAM is the most sensitive, fussy, and uncooperative of computer components. Always consider running through the permutations that the RAM modules and motherboard slots offer you - such immense fun with mathematics.

And just in case you think i am done installing and happily playing my life away with World of Warcraft, the bad news is it still fails. The third disc complains:

Patch data is bad. (source CRC mismatch: -2066885277/938818595) (BNUpdate::PTCApply)

Looks like another long day without the actual play.

UPDATE: looks like that BNUpdate error is random. After powering down and bringing it back up, the next installation throw the error on the second disc. I took out the 512MB piece and refitted the 256MBs back into Banks 0 and 1 again. At the same time i am simultaneously installing into my laptop to witness the results.

UPDATE: Installation on my laptop succeeds. Using the 256MB twins, i hit the same terrain.MPQ "rage" again. The 512MB gives the BNUpdate errors. Conclusion: i am bringing all three pieces down to Convergent for a medical checkup.

Interesting note: while taking out the pair of 256MB modules, i noticed one was assembled in Taiwan and the other in China. I wonder if these RAM follow current affairs...

I should have thought of this eariler.

Reduce the bus speed from 133MHz to 100MHz. So the RAM essentially becomes DDR200 and my AthlonXP 2000+ goes to down 100 x 13 = 1.3GHz.

And the installation goes through smoothly now, since I put a fake physical limit to my hardware. Still, it would be wise of Blizzard to produce an alternative installation program that can throttle the CPU so that the burden isn't so severe.

How about gameplay? I dunno. I just patched this game, and am going to reboot back to normal specs and see how it goes.

Update: I'm so obssessed with World of Warcraft..... help.

Hello

Icelava, thank you very much for the info. I'm a computer technician and one of my customers had the same problem. I tried many things but nothing worked. And then I found this forum and your advice SAVED MY LIFE.
Yes I changed the speed of my memory to 200Mhz and after that everything went smoothly.

YOU ARE THE MAN!!!!

What motherboard model do you happen to be facing with? Something I never document in my Curse Log, since it happened so long ago, was this Abit KG7 of mine is probably the component with ill quality since it has historically been unstable with CPU and RAM (those are other long stories of frustration), or which when placed onto another motherboard worked just fine.

Heya, im no computer tech so i really need some info about how to

Reduce the bus speed from 133MHz to 100MHz. So the RAM essentially becomes DDR200 and my AthlonXP 2000+ goes to down 100 x 13 = 1.3GHz. 

Cause i have the exactly problem as you..or should i say had since u fixed it.
Would be nice with some info as i said. 
 

---

well...hick...its no HICK t that bad?.......HICK!...is it?.........hick

Prodos wrote:

Heya, im no computer tech so i really need some info about how to

You need to tap into the BIOS setup when the computer first powers up. The booting screen sequence should hint to you how to do it. For common BIOS designs it is usually the DEL key.

Depending on the BIOS (check your motherboard manual), there should be some option to allow you to downclock the bus speed. After saving and rebooting, the computer should then run at the slower rating.

Ok so i got in to some kinda menu by pressing the DEL Key as you said but then what?

---

well...hick...its no HICK t that bad?.......HICK!...is it?.........hick

Refer to your motherboard's manual which will list where the option is to adjust its bus speed, and by the extension the memory clock.

So you wanna know my BIOS Version? well its American Megatrends Inc. 07.00T    and if this helps the SMBIOS Version is 2.3

---

well...hick...its no HICK t that bad?.......HICK!...is it?.........hick

Ok im starting to understand how to do this now its just one problem. Once pressed the DEL Key and entered the BIOS menu i can't find anything like Bus Speed! Maybe you know how to find it?

---

well...hick...its no HICK t that bad?.......HICK!...is it?.........hick

and with you i mean iceclava

---

well...hick...its no HICK t that bad?.......HICK!...is it?.........hick

Ok, so i tried to change the bus speed from 133Mhz to 100Mhz ( i think..ill explain that later ) and i tried to install WoW but it didnt work! shame sh*t Patch Data Is Bad etc. etc. etc.   BUT i dont know if i did this the right way   i changed the  CPU FSB CLOCK from  133 to 100..what i think is wierd is that i didnt see any Mhz tags then i saw something that said  CPU FSB/PCI OVERCLOCKING wich at the moment stod at H/W wich one am i supposed to change!? plz help ma XD 

---

well...hick...its no HICK t that bad?.......HICK!...is it?.........hick

Prodos wrote:

i changed the  CPU FSB CLOCK from  133 to 100..

That is the correct thing to do. I assumed you did save the settings, which will be evident by the bootup screen showing that your CPU is running at a slower speed due to the downclocking of the FSB (Front side bus, the motherboard bus speed).

e.g. If your CPU has a multiplier of x10, it usually would be 133 x10 = approx 1330MHz/1.3GHz. Setting it to 100 x10 = 1000MHz/1GHz.

You should not modify the CPU clock multiplier. But you need to know that the PCI stable bus speed is 33Mhz, so it has to be multiplied with another factor ratio to achieve the FSB speed you set. When the FSB is set at 100MHz, it must there be a ratio of 3:1 (100:33). If it is set at 133MHz, the ratio is 4:1 (133:33).


if you have already done all these and you still get data corruption, then it means the quality of your motherboard or RAM is so poor even a slower speed does not make it "relaxed" enough to prevent error occurrence. In that case it may be likely that even if you do managed to install, you can still encounter system instability when playing the game. (My old PC was able to switch back to 133MHz bus speed to play the game, but the CPU was definitely taxed albeit stable)