[Bastet]

btw:

Introduction

There has been a technical issue which has been discussed at length in the VIA Arena forums and in many other forums for a few months now, often known as the Infinite Loop or NV Loop/BSOD error.

What is the loop error?

The loop error is how Windows XP describs a critical error related to the graphics card. The loop error can and has been been reproduced with any video card and any chipset. It is by no means a new problem. Windows XP has just given it a name. If you were to plug in a faulty video card and plugged it in to any motherboard using WinXP, it will reproduce the loop error. That doesn't mean that the loop error is always caused by a faulty video card though.

What causes the loop error?

There is not one single factor or issue which causes the loop error. As mentioned, this issue has been discussed at length in the VIA Arena forums and the biggest problem has been that almost everyone, myself included have been desperatly looking for one single cause and fix. The loop error is a critical halt error that prevents you from using your mouse, keyboard or anything else on your PC apart from the reset button - just like a typical blue screen of death or hard lock up in Win98/ME. When your system locks up, it cannot process information from either the CPU or video card or both. If the CPU is locked up, the video card will continue to send information across the bus. The information is then bounced back to the video card because the processor has stopped responding. OR, if the video card has locked up, the processor will try to return the video information and it will bounce back. The information gets stuck in a loop bouncing back and forth between the CPU and video card. This can be caused by either the video card or CPU locking up, when either one cannot process the display data. And presto - we have the infinite loop. The lock up may be shown on a system in a variety of ways such as:

WinXP: 3D or 2D applications - system will lock and and then automatically restart. This is a feature of XP and not part of the issue. The automatic restart simply saves you from having to press the restart button.

Win2K: 3D or 2D applications - system will lock up and then present a blue screen error reporting an infinite loop

WinME/98: 3D or 2D applications - system will lock up, requiring you to reset the system with either the reset button or power button. Ctrl-Alt-Del will not work.

The "loop error" is in essence just a name that Microsoft has given to this type of error which can not be recovered from by using Ctrl-Alt-Del. Windows cannot give more detail in the error message because of course, when this type of error occurs and the PC is locked, there is no way for the OS to receive and process more information from the system on what may be going wrong. There is not one single cause and the issue must be looked at on a system by system basis.