Computer Restarts while gaming. GFX driver?

[mickeypo]

The set up is as below:

AMD 850 mHz
Asus A7V
3 sticks of ram (random brands 256, 2 x 128)
3d Prophet II GTS Hercules 32mb
Quantum 20g drive
Seagate 40g drive
WIN XP PRO
Other standard crap like network card, Cd-rom drive etc.


While playing games (specifically Warcraft III multiplayer, it crashes and either hangs, stalls or reboots)

BTW, I have reformated, Reinstalled windows, checked and changed gfx drivers.
After reformatting the first time, it worked fine but then the second time i reformatted,
it started happening again.


Any replies are very very much appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Hankysmoo]

try running memtest 86

 

[mickeypo]

Where do i get it from?

 

[PurePeon]

Check your temp of your CPU. Do a RAM test on your memory. Do a system board test and test the cache memory. I bet it is the RAM though. Do a search on Google for some mem test programs.

 

[specktre]

i had the same issue but only with quake 3 arena.....turns out it was my sound card driver. check your sound card driver and update it.

 

[mickeypo]

alright. My sound card is a Hercules Muse XL.
Since I last checked, there aren't any really
definite good drivers for this card that work
with XP.

Hercules Muse XL. I wish i could find a different
card. No money to buy a good one though. How
did you end up deciding it was the sound driver?

 

[BFG10K]

It could be heat, drivers, a weak power supply or a hardware conflict. Try a minimal boot and see if you can isolate when the problem starts happening.

 

[BZeto]

If your OCing your RAM, set it back to defaults or raise the voltage and see if you still get restarts.

 

[Rooster1865]

I had a problem once in an online game I used to play. My computer would reboot when I did a specific thing in the game, turned out it was a power supply issue. That may be something you want to check.

 

[magomago]

PSU....a lot of Athlon Users were b!tching about problems like this and its because of the PSU since older PSUs didn't concetrate power on the 12v rail.

Get one that has ample power on the 12v rail...atleast 14A

 

[mickeypo]

thanks for all the feedback guys. Here's the thing. I found out two things
1 > one stick of ram was bad. I chucked that so now there's 384 mb of ram in there. No errors.
2 > After removing the ram, i noticed the computer still restarts while playing WC3. Doesn't do
anything even remotely as bad when playing other games.

I heard the harddrive restart and spin up and slow down a couple of times. Could it be a harddrive
problem?

 

[Achilles97]

I am in the process of building a new computer because of this exact problem.

My system is/was:
Athlon TBird 700
FIC SD11 mobo
256 megs generic ram
SBLive!
Geforce2 MX400
Generic PSU w/14a on the 12v.



I tried every chipset driver I could find. I tried no sound drivers. Many video drivers. I checked for conflicting IRQ's, etc... I eventually discovered some bad ram, so I replaced it. It helped some, but I still cannot play any 3D games. The computer either locks up/reboots, or crashes to the desktop after 3-10 minutes of any 3D game. I've tried 3 different video cards too. I even tried another CPU.

Finally, after two years of that crap, I decided to build a new computer. I am selling this current computer for a Jack-n-the-Box ChiliCheeseBurger w/ no onions.

Well, good luck....

 

[mickeypo]

that doesn't hjelp me any. What the heck is wrong with this box of junk>?