I need Help Please (All games crashing)

[o0LoRdHyPnOs0o]

Everytime i try to play a game (morrowind,TOCA racer,DOD (half-life),Vietcong,MVP Baseball,Unreal 2,GTA vice,RavenShield,etc)my computer either re-boots itself or more often dumps me to desktop 15 mins into a game.I've tried nearly everything to fix it.The problem originated while i was using the same set up i have now except for a ECS K7S5A motherboard which i replaced in hoped my problem would be fixed.I have tried different mobo,different video card,different ram,different harddrive,different operating system(prob started on win2kpro and continues on winxppro),removing cd roms,burners,and floppy,differnt IDE cables,etc.I find no major errors in the event viewer And I dont think heat is the issue,I have my case off and temps are;Mobo around 25C and CPU 45-60C Under Load.I have all the latest drivers for my motherboard,video card and sound card and all the rest of my hardware.The only thing i can think of i didnt try was my PSU.Its a generic 300W.I just know with my luck,i'll drop $100 on the antec true 480W and that wont fix shit.Everything was fine 3 weeks ago and i didnt change a thing.I hope someone can help.......

 

[imported_Phil]

Have you done a full virus scan with an up-to-date program? Sounds like that might be the cause if you've eliminated everything else...
Plus, 60C is a little high for a 2400+ AMD, mine gives 60C flat-out and it's a 3000+ (a little hot, I know, but there's not a lot I can do about it given the size of my case :-/ ).
I'd check that, plus video card and VIA Hyperion drivers, go get DirectX 9a (waits for flames), etc. Get all the updated patches etc for your machine, see if that sorts it.
Oh, and try opening the case, putting a large fan next to it and leaving it running to really bring the temperature down temporarily to see if it's really overheating. A desk fan will suffice.

Lastly, have a look at Prime95 Linky, run the Torture Test and see if it falls over. If so, you have either a heat problem or RAM/Motherboard issues.

Hope this helps,
Dopefiend

 

[Maggotry]

Check your voltages in the bios. It's not a great way to validate a psu, but check and see if anything jumps out at you...like a 12v rail bouncing around from 10.8 to 12.5.

And try DopeFiend's fan trick.

 

[dunkster]

If it runs stable when not playing games, but crashes 15 minutes into a game, that's a pretty classic symptom of heat problems. All's fine until inside-case temperature increases enough to crash the system.

45C to 60C cpu temp under load? 60C cpu temp will crash a lot of systems, including mine.

I'd focus on improving air flow through the case - displacing warm air in the case with cooler ambient room air. Leaving case door open just lets the cat in.

Hope this helps!

 

[pelikan]

I bet its your power supply. That 9500 pro pulls a lot of extra power. A generic psu is a bad idea anyway. I would recommend the Fortron FSP-350W. It's $38. and the quality is as good as the antec you mentioned. I have the Fortron on my heavily overclocked system and it doesn't even break a sweat. The temperature sensitive fan doesn't even go full speed when I'm gaming.

 

[cptCuervo]

I also think it may be a temp or power problem... Since it only happens when you are playing graphic intensive games, then all your components are working overtime. A generic power supply is probably not giving you the power that it says it is, and that is a high temp as well (and it is probably higher while your playing a game).

 

[Jeff7181]

Dude, you play Morrowind? What level are you? =) Your the first person I've seen who plays that too... my uncle gave it to me, it's the only RPG I've ever been able to get into.

Morrowind seems to be pretty demanding... I like to use it to test overclocking stability. Sometimes PCMark, SoF2, 3DMark, Prime95 will all do fine, but Morrowind will show me any instabilities after an hour of gaming.

 

[o0LoRdHyPnOs0o]

lol well jeff the problem is that i cant play.But when i was playing i was up to around level 15.So anyway i ran prime95 before i went to work,got home and it had aborted after 6 hours due to a "hardware failure".I still dont believe its heat thats messing up,if it was heat my system wouldnt be so nice as to just dump me to desktop or abort a program.Im pretty sure it would hardlock or reset.that has only a happned a few times,maybe once in the last 2 weeks.I am gonna try that fan trick although,but otherwise i really dont know what to do.Please keep the tips comming,i really appreciate it.

 

[shud]

This frequently happened to my friend's old 1.2ghz Alienware. It was finally fixed, I'm not quite sure how. He replaced DMA cables that AW cheaped out on, added some ram, and he too took off the case and used a desk fan to cool his computer. I think he runs games fine now.

 

[Kartajan]

retail hsf?
how many fans are cooling the case?

** you are pushing the abilities of most "el- cheapo" power supplies. And you can't have too good of a power supply..
(I would get the antec ps, even if you got a 300w one. it's all about the rails..)
if i can find it, I saw a ps lineup on the web..
psu lineup at tom's

edit: **added link **

 

[o0LoRdHyPnOs0o]

i got a vantec heatsink and fan on the cpu,and a sunnon high power blowing in,then just the PSU fan blowing out,plus the box fan i got blowing onto my open case as i run 3dmark2001 while im out playing with my friends.I also looked in my bios at the voltages and saw nothing to weird goin on.there was very minor fluctuation ona couple of items IE; 3.25-3.27.3.24.

 

[andyfasthands]

Sounds like powersupply to me.

 

[Insidious]

sure sounds like heat to me.

Since you have replaced every component in the system to no avail.... I have to believe your system temperature (the air inside the case) is just not
getting circulated well enough to cool your components adequately.

Please tell us what happened when you removed the case cover and blew a fan (like a table-top oscillating fan or a window (Box) fan) on it.

If you have replaced all the components (and your post says you have) and you have tried running with the cover removed under a big fan and the system is still failing, you are going to have to accept that you missed something in the directions when you installed your OS, drivers, or applications.

-Sid

edit: the power supply is also a very good place to consider a change (as has been mentioned above). It's internal components get hotter under load
too and this could easily give the same symptoms you describe. I don't think it is so much that you have too small a PSU, but maybe just one that needs replaced.

 

[Jeff7181]

My guess is that Generic 300 watt PSU is a problem. Get a nice Antec or Enermax PSU, 350 watt should be enough... may way to get a 400 or 420 if you ever plan on upgrading processors and video cards and hard drives. I use to have that problem with an old motherboard... whenever I fired up the GeForce4, the PSU couldn't hack it, and voltage all across the board would drop, and the CPU voltage is the lowest, so a .5 volt drop on that is severe... enough to cause it to reboot.

 

[Vonkhan]

I agree ... power supply or cooling. i've had the power supply issue, nearly drove me nuts - now happy with an Antec 400w. Cooling is still an issue with my case ... everything goes to hell if i play for over an hour. Gonna add a few fans, but till then ... helloooooooooo naked inside of computer

 

[TronX]

Looking at the hardware you have with an AMD2400 I'd say 300watts is not enough power.
Even a 350watt name brand would be cutting it close with all those drives and I'm sure extra fans.

Working as a repair tech for FSU I've run into all sort of computer related problems like yours.
Of those there are 2 big killers of gaming systems, Heat and Power... Heat is easy to figure out.
All you need to do is make sure the CPU heatsink is running. That you have good ArticSilver3 on
the heatsink. And be sure to clean any dust from your fans such as those on the videocards.

Sometimes you have videocards that have bad caps and to find those out you just point a hairdryer
at the caps.

Power problems can be a little more tricky to figure out. Odds are if you have a cheap
PSU that came free with a case that has no brand name then it's worthless junk.

With your setup I've even run into problems using an Enermax 350 whisper. What you should get is a nice
Truepower Antec 550watt and your problems should end there.

If you still have problems then there could be a power issue outside the case. Some people have very poor
power lines and are subjected to brown-outs that drop the power just enough to lock the computer. To avoid those
outside power problems you should make sure there is nothing else on the same circuit in that part of the house.
Having an window AC unit on the same line as your Computer is also a big NO NO, but people do it every year.

Also get yourself a good UPS. I've used the brand APC just fine and never had any problems with those.
They don't cost very much 45$ ~ 250$ and will make your power to the computer clean and stable.

 

[Jeff7181]

You don't need 550 watts of power unless you plan on running like 8 hard drives in a RAID array. Quality is more important than quantity. Get a quality 350 or 400 and you'll be set.

 

[snidy1]

Originally posted by: cptCuervo
I also think it may be a temp or power problem... Since it only happens when you are playing graphic intensive games, then all your components are working overtime. A generic power supply is probably not giving you the power that it says it is, and that is a high temp as well (and it is probably higher while your playing a game).

My thoughts exactly

 

[TronX]

The price range for an ANTEC from www.newegg would be like this below.

Antec 380W Power Supply TRUE380
$71.99
Antec 430W Power Supply TRUE430
$82.99
Antec 480W Power Supply TRUE480
$92.99
Antec 550W Power Supply For TRUE550
$118.99


72$ ~ 120$
380watt ~ 550watt

As Jeff7181 put in words, "Quality is more important than quantity."

The 400watt+ units have better quality parts than 300watts PSU's that tend
to handle those stress loads. Anyone of those Antecs is fine and should work
for this system. But I like to say it's always better to spend a little more and get
the bigger guns even if it's not 100% needed at the time.

You never know.. some day he might upgrade again with an AMD 3200 that
needs even more juice?

At least no one can say there is not enough power with a 550watts.
Even though WATTS is not the everything that makes a PSU a good PSU.

 

[pelikan]

My favorite power supply. It's the basically the same as the Fortron I mentioned above, but Sparkle brand and a silent 120mm fan. Fortron and Sparkle are the same psu. You'll notice if you read the review at Tom's mentioned above that they ran the 300 watt version to 450W output without any problems. Not many psu's are that overbuilt.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: TronX
The price range for an ANTEC from www.newegg would be like this below.

Antec 380W Power Supply TRUE380
$71.99
Antec 430W Power Supply TRUE430
$82.99
Antec 480W Power Supply TRUE480
$92.99
Antec 550W Power Supply For TRUE550
$118.99


72$ ~ 120$
380watt ~ 550watt

As Jeff7181 put in words, "Quality is more important than quantity."

The 400watt+ units have better quality parts than 300watts PSU's that tend
to handle those stress loads. Anyone of those Antecs is fine and should work
for this system. But I like to say it's always better to spend a little more and get
the bigger guns even if it's not 100% needed at the time.

You never know.. some day he might upgrade again with an AMD 3200 that
needs even more juice?

At least no one can say there is not enough power with a 550watts.
Even though WATTS is not the everything that makes a PSU a good PSU.

I think you misinterpreted what I meant... I meant to say, all you need is 350-400 watts unless you've got multiple hard drives. And by quality over quantity, I meant it's better to get an Antec 350 watt, than a Bob's PC 600 watt.

 

[o0LoRdHyPnOs0o]

I think i might be ready to rule heat as an issue.I ran a huge box fan on high and ran 3dmark2001 looping while i was at a friends house,came home and ofcouse it had dumped me to desktop while i was away.So i ran it again so i could catch the system temps when it actually crashed,and it did.The motherboard was at 27C and the cpu was at 47C.I really dont think its heat because i used to run much hotter back when my computer actually worked right.I wouldnt be suprised to see it at 62C after a few solid hours of gaming and i never had problems then.So Im gonna hang on this forum for antoher day or two then most likely order myself the ANTEC 480W True from newegg.Thanks for the help


EDIT : Im browsing through the event viewer and im noticing that everytime my computer boots me to DT or crashes prime 95 (hardware error it says) There is a system service of some type starting or a number of system services ones like "ati hotkey poller" "SSDP serverce" "fast user switching service" "terminal service",there is like 10 of them all starting at 12:58:57.Thats the exact time my comp crashed.It has this pattern through out many crash times.I never noticed before because it just listed under "information" not "error' or nothing.But it looks suspicious comparing it to my brothers event logs.He has hardly anything in there,mine has a bunch for every day.

 

[Atlantean]

I would say that it is either a temperature problem, or a problem with your power supply, or it could even be a problem with your install of windows. That happened to me once and I just reformatted and reinstalled and it fixed everything, but it was a bit of a pain in the ass. I would recommend trying a new psu and seeing if that fixes the problem.

 

[o0LoRdHyPnOs0o]

well last night before i went to bed i was messing around with the windows services and i noticed that one called "smard card" that was disabled.I enabled that and one called "ati smart" then turned on 3dmark.It actually ran for 12 straight hours.So im gonna keep testing but maybe that was the problem the whole time.

 

[o0LoRdHyPnOs0o]

ya i need a new PSU.....