Error message 0000009c when playing video games

[Slickster]

Hello,
I am having a problem with my computer, as you probably guessed. I'll start from the top. I had just installed the Half-Life/Counter-Strike client, Steam. I have all the games on it, CS and CS: Source. Last night I was playing CS 1.6 perfectly fine all night. No problems at all. Well, today, I was trying to burn a CD and my CD burner wasn't working right. So to test if it was even working at all, I put in my Power DVD CD to see if I could even install anything from the drive. No luck. So I put the same CD into my DVD drive to see if I could install from there. Again, no luck. So after messing around for a little bit, I realized that my jumper settings were wrong. Shut it off, changed them, turned it back on, problem solved. Well, after I tested them to make sure, I felt like some games. I hopped on CS: Source. I got into a server with one of my friends, and then after about 20 minutes of problem-free fragging, my screen flickers, goes completely blue with no text on it at all, and freezes. WTF!!! :?: So I restarted the computer, went into the Event Viewer to see if I could find out the problem. It ended up being an error with the file "pnpshark.sys". I searched google and found out it was something to do with Daemon Tools. I uninstalled that program right away. So I then got back onto CS: Source to give it another shot. Well, lets just say I didn't prevail. So here I am now. This time, the error was something different. Here is what was contained in the Event Viewer log file:

Source: System Error
Category: (102)
Type: Error
Event ID: 1003

Error code 0000009c, parameter1 00000004, parameter2 80540770,
parameter3 b2000000, parameter4 00070f0f.

0000: 53 79 73 74 65 6d 20 45 System E
0008: 72 72 6f 72 20 20 45 72 rror Er
0010: 72 6f 72 20 63 6f 64 65 ror code
0018: 20 30 30 30 30 30 30 39 0000009
0020: 63 20 20 50 61 72 61 6d c Param
0028: 65 74 65 72 73 20 30 30 eters 00
0030: 30 30 30 30 30 34 2c 20 000004,
0038: 38 30 35 34 30 37 37 30 80540770
0040: 2c 20 62 32 30 30 30 30 , b20000
0048: 30 30 2c 20 30 30 30 37 00, 0007
0050: 30 66 30 66 0f0f

My Computer stats:

Motherboard: Asus K8N-E Deluxe
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 3200+
RAM: 1024MB Corsair Value-Select RAM
Hard Drives: 2-Western Digital 80GB SATA
CD ROM Drives: Sony CD-RW CRX230ED
Sony DVD-ROM DDU1612
Video Card: ATI Radeon 9600XT

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me.

[BBinc]

I've got exactly the error message, with the same parameter codes.
My board is an ASUS A8V Ami bios, VIA chipset AMD 64 3000+ - all brand new, and running the latest BIOS update, Antec Sonata case (that's new, I had been told the crashes were the power supply and I wanted quieter anyway.
The crashes have come after shorter and shorter periods, and I ma down to barebones computing. Disabled everything I can, including USB.
Still crashing.
I just reflashed the BIOS for the fourth time, and this time it has been stable for twenty minutes. Yippee.
I tried two different drives, tried reloading Windows on one of them but it couldn't get through the installation. Tried a different video card, changed the memory chips. Only thing I have't pulled out is the floppy.
Got full virus protection up to date (Symantec).
One thing that will crash it for sure at the moment is my usb stick. Not straight away, but as soon as I try and drag anything to it. Or before I do.

[JANINE]

upgrade graphics n drivers guys. you'll find your problems should vanish. half life 2 is too powerful for the onboard mobo graphics to handle and for some cards to handle. no need to go disabling ports etc

[BBinc]

Mmmm,
Thanks Janine,
but my errors will happen with nothing running. I've disabled all services and stratup stuff that wasn't windows, and have been stable for over an hour now ...

[JANINE]

I have just spoken to one of my brothers who is a PCWorld engineer about this problem.

to run half life 2 you need to have a DVD rom drive installed which it sounds like you both have in your machines.

the one thing he did say though is if it carries on go for a total reformat of the hard drive(s) and reinstall windows.

in the case of the sata hard drive you will need to install their driver before reinstalling windows. it should come up PRESS F6 TO INSTALL SATA OR RAID DRIVER.

Hopefully this will clear the errors.:)

[JANINE]

I've got exactly the error message, with the same parameter codes.
My board is an ASUS A8V Ami bios, VIA chipset AMD 64 3000+ - all brand new, and running the latest BIOS update, Antec Sonata case (that's new, I had been told the crashes were the power supply and I wanted quieter anyway.
The crashes have come after shorter and shorter periods, and I ma down to barebones computing. Disabled everything I can, including USB.
Still crashing.
I just reflashed the BIOS for the fourth time, and this time it has been stable for twenty minutes. Yippee.
I tried two different drives, tried reloading Windows on one of them but it couldn't get through the installation. Tried a different video card, changed the memory chips. Only thing I have't pulled out is the floppy.
Got full virus protection up to date (Symantec).
One thing that will crash it for sure at the moment is my usb stick. Not straight away, but as soon as I try and drag anything to it. Or before I do.

possibly the motherboard is malfunctioning. could be arguing IDE channels which can happen at any time. sorry to say but this means a new motherboard. arguing ide channels cannot be resolved any other way:D

[BBinc]

possibly the motherboard is malfunctioning. could be arguing IDE channels which can happen at any time. sorry to say but this means a new motherboard. arguing ide channels cannot be resolved any other way:D

Janine, Thanks. I worry that you are right about the mobo, the problems started when I installed the new motherboard and CPU. I have two IDE drives, both with a windows installation on them. Reformatting one of those and putting on a clean XP installation fixed it for a while (24hrs). Overnight, that is, unattended, the events viewer shows it decided to start a database, then shut it down because it was corrupt, and blue screened with the same error as before. Started again normal and stable, but when I tried a boot from the other drive, XP had a missing or corrupt 'hal.dll' file.
Given the relative success with the reformatted drive, I am going to do that again to both drives, and only install xp on one of them. Second choice might be to add a SATA.
If all that fails, then the mobo goes back. I haven't seen any posting about this mobo, but I notice most of the complaints about this error are using Asus boards. Oh, and I did flash the bios again with the latest.

[BBinc]

I hope I'm not too quick in saying this, but I seem to have stopped the crashing by dropping the hyerthreading in the bios to 800 instead of 1000.
Machine is still very quick and responsive. Of course, as these things go, it'll fall over when I least expect it and prove this solution wrong too.
Mind you, the manual says to do this if unstable.

[JANINE]

Janine, Thanks. I worry that you are right about the mobo, the problems started when I installed the new motherboard and CPU. I have two IDE drives, both with a windows installation on them. Reformatting one of those and putting on a clean XP installation fixed it for a while (24hrs). Overnight, that is, unattended, the events viewer shows it decided to start a database, then shut it down because it was corrupt, and blue screened with the same error as before. Started again normal and stable, but when I tried a boot from the other drive, XP had a missing or corrupt 'hal.dll' file.
Given the relative success with the reformatted drive, I am going to do that again to both drives, and only install xp on one of them. Second choice might be to add a SATA.
If all that fails, then the mobo goes back. I haven't seen any posting about this mobo, but I notice most of the complaints about this error are using Asus boards. Oh, and I did flash the bios again with the latest.

why would you want to install xp on both drives anyway? there is just virtually no point in it. if you really want xp on both drives by all means go ahead and do it. you will have to find the hal.dll file on the xp installation cd and then import it onto the new installation. this is very very hard.
my reccomendation is that you operate both hard drives as 1 volume and partition them. you can have two operating systems running off 1 partitioned hard drive as long as they both use the same file system ideally.
reformat both drives and make them 1 continual volume.

did the event log viewer allow you to open the 'database'. i hate to say this but there may well be a virus although i seriously hope not.

good luck:D

[rajeevr]

I hope I'm not too quick in saying this, but I seem to have stopped the crashing by dropping the hyerthreading in the bios to 800 instead of 1000.
Machine is still very quick and responsive. Of course, as these things go, it'll fall over when I least expect it and prove this solution wrong too.
Mind you, the manual says to do this if unstable.

this could be the solution as in my case crash happens when i run azeurus and pctv simultaneously.

[PSAnimal]

Hey, just googled this error and this topic came up, I really need help.

My problem's slightly different to the one mentioned here, I can play 1 game of CSS absolutely fine, but when it tried to connect to the server again it suddenly restarts, and when the PC comes back on, it tells me that it's just "recovered from a serious error". In the system log it tels me that it's the same error code as the one that the topic starter is having.

Any help is much appreciated, but I'm not a very technical person, so if you speak slowly and simply, that would be wonderful. :p