Repeatedly experienced severe crashes while playing Q2 online

[Jman-CRU]

Hi guys,

I don't really know which board to post this on, but last year I've had some severe crashes while playing Q2 online, leaving 3 mainboards and a 500 Gigs HDD damaged, and I hope that maybe some of you more computer savyy folks may help me find out what caused it. I am posting this because I suspect there might be some yet unknown exploit, bug or security issue, and I hope you guys look into it.

Whenever these crashes occurred, I was using a Windows system (first XP, later Win7) and r1q2 with default opengl. At first, only r1q2 crashed several times, later the crash of r1q2 would let the OS crash, too, while internet traffic went on.
These crashes seemed to affect the vid card slot in use while the rest of the board - and vid card - seemed to remain functional. Only the last crash damaged an HDD, too.
The damaged systems all showed the same symptoms: After the crash booting would not get past the vid card test (vid card fan running full speed, monitor would be black and only turn on for a sec when you switched off the PC). The last board had an additional onboard GPU which was still functional after a crash had rendered the PCI-e slot useless (again, the vid card in use when the crash occured is still working fine on another board). I used the onboard graphic device until another crash happened. After that, the screen would show strange symbols on startup and the boot process would hang up on HDD detection.

The funny thing about it - and the reason why I'm posting this - is: It always happened when playing Q2 online, and regardless of the hardware and the Win-OS in use the damage to the system was the same - or a bit more than the time before.
What makes it kinda odd: Over the last YEARS, whenever a crash occured, someone was spec'ing me. Every time before a crash occurred, either a 160ish or a 140ish ping player would enter the server, move to the sidelines, I would type "players" to find out that he's spec'ing me, and the very next moment my r1q2 would crash. I'm not going to go in detail about those two, for it might as well be coincidental, but instead tell you what I've noticed with the last crashes.

After a crash in August last year had damaged a second mainboard, I abandoned XP because of security issues and set up a clean new (original) Win7 system with completely different hardware - again only for use with Q2. I took my time to update, harden and secure it according to several security guides by authorities and set up a pretty restrictive firewall policy that would only allow connections between my machine and the vanilla server (and AC traffic). I tested it several months, and there were no crashes at all, neither in singleplayer nor via LAN server.
After one week of playing Q2 online though, I would find the Windows firewall acting strange (like not
booting or crashing while I was online), followed by several changes to my registry. I reinstalled Win7
from backup and added additional security settings. After another week or so though, someone would enter the server, move to the sidelines, spec me and r1q2 would crash the next moment, leaving the PCI-e slot damaged. So I reset Win7 again, this time using the onboard GPU.
A week or two later, I called the 160 ping player an asshole while he was offline. Only minutes after that, he would enter, go straight into spectator mode, and the moment I had typed "players" and saw that he was spec'ing me, my system would crash, damaging the onboard GPU and the HDD, rendering a whole machine useless.

A coincident again? I decided to set up a new system and wait if this shit happens again. Which was yesterday, again only a few weeks after I had returned with a new system.
A 160 ping player entered and ran a version check, soon after that, a 140 player entered, changed his name and moved to the sidelines. The next moment the game would act sluggish, players, teleporters and items would disappear or appear kinda warped.
I guess the fact that I was only pretending to be on a Win system prevented the client from crashing the OS this time, for the signs were exactly the same as with former crashes. This time the game would not crash but act sluggish (not like lag, ping didn't change - more like someone was stuffing me with commands) for like half a minute, and IMMEDIATELY go back to normal after the guy in spectator mode had disconnected. Soon after that, the 160 ping player disconnected, too.
I disconnected, too, to see whether the internet traffic would stop - which it did.

I didn't find any connection to unknown IPs in my packet sniffer's log, just the vanilla IP. There were TCP,
UDP, a few HTTP, several unknown Bit-Torrent protocol packets and a whole lot of malformed packets via the Q2 ports.
Unfortunately, I don't know how to read this data and identify malicious stuff.

My question: Could it be there's something similar to the old "spectator-kill issue" where a spectator could kill a player by typing "kill"in console? Some command entered by a spectator, messing with video settings or the like and that might cause the player's client to crash, causing a buffer-overflow and / or compromise the system? Even damage it's hardware?

If not, what else could have caused these crashes and hardware damage on different systems within so short a period of time? Any ideas?

[yahoo]

try installing a fresh copy of q2 on a newly formatted pc.

[|iR|Focalor]

I would think it to be next to impossible for even an admin using rcon to be able to damage your hardware with any command. You might want to look at investing in a power conditioner to run your system from. Could be an issue with the AC power from the wall.

[yahoo]

btw did u try using a different hardware.. try also looking to memory issues

[quadz]

A week or two later, I called the 160 ping player an asshole while he was offline. Only minutes after that, he would enter, go straight into spectator mode, and the moment I had typed "players" and saw that he was spec'ing me, my system would crash, damaging the onboard GPU and the HDD, rendering a whole machine useless.

You can bet on this being impossible.  _{(Edit: for the readers' sake, Jman and I had discussed this generally on prior occasions.)}

But let's say it were indeed somehow possible for (a) non-admin players to obtain your IP in game; and (b) stuffing commands to a Q2 client could cause hardware damage.

Neither of these would seem to be the kind of exploits that would remain secret, known only by some random guy you have an in-game beef with.

We should expect to have been hearing numerous reports about either/both of these exploits over the years. And I know for damn sure there's more than a handful of disgruntled malcontents who would have used these against me as well.

If not, what else could have caused these crashes and hardware damage on different systems within so short a period of time? Any ideas?

Focalor brings up a good point re: AC line quality.

Also, when you've replaced motherboards and video cards, you haven't continued using the same old power supply I presume? And you're not buying really cheap-o power supplies? (Do you have a UPS installed?)

[Jman-CRU]

Hey guys,

thanks for your replies!

First off, I'm sorry for bothering again, especially if my questions and assumptions sound (=ARE!) stupid. :-(
I'm really no tech-guy; all this stuff is some kind of Black Magic for me and I do know that there are lots of guys who are experts - and some of them are bad guys.
I really don't know what's technically possible. Moreover, I'm no rich guy who can afford buying a new computer every 3 months, so these crashes are kind of getting to me. All I wanna do is relax and play Q2, not bother with having to take more and more extra efforts to secure my machine and
the like.

But back on topic. Okay, so it's impossible that some !#"§)&@ launched attacks on me causing these crashes and hardware damage. All right.

The power supply is indeed like the only thing I haven't checked, yet. No, I don't have a UPS - I was planning on getting one, but money was short. All I got is a surge protector.
And I in fact just replaced the defective hardware by a new set of the same models and continued using the same AC power supply, a BQT E5-600 Watt. I wouldn't call it cheap, but it's now outdated for sure (like the other components, hehe).
Only the last machine came with some cheap MaxSilent thing - and other cheap parts. And my recent machine is some Dell model with standard power supply.

And yeah, it could also be a problem with the power from the wall. This is an old house and my landlord doesn't spend much money on keeping it up to standards. Could as well be a problem with my power company.

I guess it would really be a good idea to spend some money on UPS/power conditioner, huh? :-o

Again, thanks for your help!

[VaeVictis]

power supply is the one thing you should NEVER skimp on...

always go for quality, ALWAYS!

it can take out every piece of hardware in your computer in series if you don't know it is a POS

also... surge protector should be fine, but you might still be getting dips in power which can make it appear your computer is unstable, a UPS is always suggested and I personally won't run a computer without one

[PANTONE 7717C]

Hi Schwuler J,
your story reminds me of something that happened maybe 5 years ago. I had a rather ancient Radeon9800pro card which even ran Q4 on basic settings, then more often it started to happen that my PC completely froze or rebooted without any indication or crash report. Sometimes it really looked like I accidentally hit the powerbutton, *click* screen went black and the system just rebooted. I suspected the videocard temperature was getting too high because this was during the summer. I would be playing Q2 (really besides the point as I'm playing that a lot so big chance that a crash happens during that game) and then suddenly the sound locked up and the screen displayed rainbow colored artifacts. Then it started to occur at random times, even when the system was still cool and had just been turned on. At that point I suspected the RAM memory because I knew from past experience that the strangest things can happen at random if memory is starting to go south. You'd be turning the system upside down, reinstalling your OS and looking for nifty software to help pinpoint the problem. But in the end those hard crashes did cost me my Radeon card and psu which got damaged beyond repair.

Atter all the precautions I could think of (replaced the psu with a solid Antec brand) things seemed back to normal. No more hard carshes during games no matter how long the system was up and running. Then after some time I was playing the game BrothersInArms:HH and out of nowhere the sound started to loop and the screen got stuck displaying vertical beams! At that moment the buttons of my keyboard started flying across the room because for a second I was raging like that fat youtube nerd kid.
Only possible thing I could think of was the AC power from the wall. I was already like okay fuck it, so with the PC powered on (!) I decided to fiddle with the cables and plugs but nothing happened. Then I tapped on the cover of a wall outlet near the floor with my foot and the PC rebooted....*gulp*...  so it just had to be related to the power and AC line quality. Took the power off and opened the outlet and found a contact wire that was barely touching the connector. This was no coincidence of course and fixing the wire totally fixed the problem and I may even have prevented a future house fire. Nevertheless I do think that with surge protector and a better psu at the time the old vid card would probably have survived the blows but that's impossible to prove.

[|iR|Focalor]

I'm not exactly a licensed electrician either, so I'll try to explain it in laymans terms. If the power coming in from the wall is not at a constant steady level, then it's going above or below it's expected level for momentary periods. Too much power can build up excessive heat in the components that weakens the materials in them and eventually shortens their lifespan and damages them beyond use. When you heat up metal, it becomes more flexible and eventually it can melt. When that happens, shit disconnects, and shit don't work no more, simple as that. It's actually pretty common that AC power from the wall experiences slight momentary changes in levels. Most of the time, it isn't going to effect any electrical appliance unless its a BIG change, like when lightning hits nearby power lines and blows out your old tube television set. But if it happens frequently enough, and especially in cases where you have components pieced together like in a PC tower, it can slowly over time weaken one small component after another, usually starting with the PSU first. Then one day, you get that final blow and it completely fries that weakened part. If you're lucky, the power will only make it as far as the PSU and only disable that one component. But often, it will travel past the PSU like a domino effect and take out several other parts in other components on down the line, like a capacitor on a video card, some chip on the motherboard, the RAM, you name it.

Problem with surge protectors is that they only protect against surges. They don't protect against drops in power flow. Drops can damage parts just like surges can by rapidly changing the temperature of the parts it contacts. If it's one of those "surge protectors" that is just a single strip of 5 or 6 outlets on it's own cord... those things are notorious for being completely useless. A lot of times they are sold as "surge protectors" when they really don't protect against ANYTHING.

Power conditioners keep the flow of power coming out of it at a constant level no matter what the AC power traveling into it does, which keeps all the components connected to it functioning at the same voltage all the time. This means no changes in line voltage and no changes in the operating temperature of small components, and an increased lifespan for the appliance.

[yahoo]

At first, only r1q2 crashed several times, later the crash of r1q2 would let the OS crash, too, while internet traffic went on.

You mean Blue screen?
What does the stop message says?

[The Happy Friar]

I'd also suggest the AC power.  If it were me, I'd also look at replacing your PSU.  One time I bought a cheap PSU (didn't think it matters) and it killed my MB & HD, same things you're saying.  Since then I've bought higher end PSU's (I consider a good PSU more important then MB, CPU & GPU now) and things like this don't happen again.

Did you try another Q2 client, by chance?  If it's a client issue then it won't crash.  If it's another issue it might.

do you have a loud speaker system?  A loud bass could shake the electrical lines in the wall/system.  Also, your PSU power cord could be loose/bad.

[Jman-CRU]

First some replies to your posts; after that, I'll deal with crashes not caused by electrical problems, but by some problem with the r1q2 client or maybe restrictive firewall settings.

@ Vae: There was a time when I thought that a high price indicated high quality of power supply and that one "good power supply" would guarantee long life of the other PC components. Which was obviously wrong. You live, you learn...

@ Panschwul: Your story sounds exactly like some of the shit I've been experiencing last year (including rage damage of hardware - I beat the shit out of the metal side cover of my minitower). Especially with
those reboots or shutdowns out of nowhere and looping sound. I've tracked that problem down to a loose contact with the mainboard power plug / power cord. After I started using the second cord that came with my power supply, it stopped. Or so I thought...
Man, it really sucks loosing good hardware because of shit like this! For my part, I won't be able to use good old sabayon 3.4f live cd anymore. That really sucks, for playing Q2 on a mini live system with Geforce 7950 GX2 card was FUN as hell. Best game performance I've ever experienced. That was when
people would start thinking I was walling/hacking.

@ Foc: Thanks for the explanation; I guess your advice will save me time and money, since I would have started looking for a decent PSU next. Looks like it's better to get some decent power conditioner first,
aye?
Since you seem to have experience, is there any good model you can tell me? Maybe one of decent quality at a reasonable price? What model have you got?

@ cowie: I only recall a bluescreen when the last crash killed the onboard GPU of my last system. I have written the message down somewhere, but don't recall where. I think it had something to do with hyberfil.sys.

@ Happy Friar: I got a pair of Heco Celan XT301 with quite a nice bass. It never occurred to me to waste a thought on loud bass affecting electrical lines before, though. It makes sense, but I'm still surprised
this could actually matter.
Regarding another client - yes, I have been using aprq2 prior to r1q2, mostly on linux systems. It was the only client to compile without problems.
On Win7, I was having trouble with weird mouse acceleration when using aprq2 and m_filter set to 1, so I used r1q2 instead. I'd try another one, but I'm running out of clients, hehe!

Now to a problem with the r1q2 client crashing. Since I keep having problems with mouse acceleration when using aprq2, I'm using r1ch's client. But it keeps crashing with an error message
"WSAEHOSTUNREACH host unreachable".

Yesterday there were like 3 of these crashes; they don't happen when I'm using aprq2.
I noticed there was a bt-utp utorrent "FrameReload" packet coming in when the first crash occured - don't know if that has anything to do with the crash, but I thought I'd mention it, since it happened almost simultaneously.
Any ideas what to do?

BTW, what are these bt-utp utorrent packets? I keep getting quite a lot of 'em, like Syn, Ack, State, Reset, Data, Fin... No need to explain the meaning of syn, ack etc., but are they related to map downloads or the like? Just wondering.

[|iR|Focalor]

@ Foc: Thanks for the explanation; I guess your advice will save me time and money, since I would have started looking for a decent PSU next. Looks like it's better to get some decent power conditioner first,
aye?
Since you seem to have experience, is there any good model you can tell me? Maybe one of decent quality at a reasonable price? What model have you got?

Eeeeugh. Hehe. Funny story there... You see, I'm learned enough to know that a power conditioner is good to use for sensitive and important electronics, but I'm just dumb enough not to fuckin' use one. I should, especially with my rack system guitar amp, but I've never gotten around to getting one. From what I've heard, rackmount power conditioners intended to be used with rackmount audio equipment are better than the ones you'd get at some office supply warehouse that are intended to be used with computers. I used to have a big fat battery backup/power conditioner/surge protector thingymajigger that I used on my old PC. It didn't work all that long. Had it maybe a year before the battery wouldn't keep a charge on it. The power would go out, and the computer would immediately lose power and whatever files I had open that weren't saved were just gone with the wind. Towards the end there, every so often the thing would start beeping in the middle of the night and scare the shit out of me, because it was loud as fuck. Ended up just unplugging it and tossing it in the basement. But now that I think about it... I bet that damn thing is the entire reason why my last PC turned to shit. I dunno if anyone else would have a recommendation about whether or not to use a power conditioner with battery backup, but I personally wouldn't use one again. Just one more thing to go wrong. I've known a few people who use Furman power conditioners with their pro-audio equipment. They've had them for years and never had a single problem with them. They're really good, but the more bells and whistles you get on them, the more they cost. Some of the better models can run you as much as 700 bucks or more.

Anyway, I don't have any specific recommendation for what power conditioner would be good to use, but I can tell you that if you have any of the same shit in that computer from when you were having reboot problems... you can probably expect to start experiencing MORE problems later down the road with the parts that are original because they've probably suffered gradual damage from before you solved the power issue. Might be a good idea to set aside some funds to replace MORE shit in case it happens.

[VaeVictis]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16842101343

not powerful enough to keep you running during a power outage, but good enough to function as a line conditioner, and possibly powerful enough to give you a chance to shut down if the power drops

had those hold me up through very short power outages before, computer didn't even flinch

http://www.newegg.com/Power-Supplies/Category/ID-32

that should get you started on a power supply, corsair or thermaltake would be my suggestion, antec can be okay but they are very hit and miss where only certain models are good just due to their manufacturing methods... ocz and coollermaster can be good, but dig a little more than you would to see if there is any problems with a specific model... stay away from rosewill and other no-name manufacturers, some times you can get lucky, but i personally don't feel it is worth the risk

take reviews with a grain of salt, but if you go one one of the good brands you should be fine

[yahoo]

@ cowie: I only recall a bluescreen when the last crash killed the onboard GPU of my last system. I have written the message down somewhere, but don't recall where. I think it had something to do with hyberfil.sys.

thats odd. Seems a memory leak issue.