Restart on own.

[VampBlades]

My friend's computer keeps restarting whenever he plays a 3D game. We have tried many things. we do not beleive his video card is overheating because he has a fan blowing straight onto it. He has checked for viruses... he has checked his capacitors... and he has done everything everyone has said it might be. DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT MIGHT BE GOING ON!!!!!!! thank you in advance.



-Vamp

[lilpinkflower]

I hope I'm not stating something obvious... if i am, forgive me

... there may be something causing an error in the game? if the OS is XP then it can be set to automatically restart when a system crash is about to/has ocurred (can't spell that lol)

Goto Control panel/Advanced... and then Startup and Recovery/Settings and see if the 'automatic restart' is checked

lilpink x

[VampBlades]

Thats the thing... its not just 1 game.... its a lot of them.... he is running windows ME... its been happening for about 1 year now and we just cant take it anymore. i heard that there was a motherboard that had faulty capacitors.... would it have happened to have been asus motherboards? thx for your help everyone

[Geekgirl]

Hi VampBlades,

Have him make sure his O.S. is up-to-date by visiting the and downloading all of the Critical Updates and Service Packs.
Also any updated drivers for his video card and of course any updates or patches for the games.

[VampBlades]

Its still restarting. its really starting to get on our nerves. any other suggestions?

[hue_jass]

There is one thing.......Win ME doesn't run 3d games, or quite frankly ANY games all that well. It has happened to crash MANY peoples computers in the past yrs....... so I'd reccomend looking for a copy of windows that is DESIGNED for the gamer.....like for example Windows 2000 which is really stable and better than ME @ lots ......or just Upgrade to Win XP b/c xp doesn't crash all that often. Just my few points of thought.

*** Are all these games designed to use 'plug and play' features or any certain aspects of your graphics card that might affect the resolutions, cuz that would do it

http://www.jmu.edu/computing/info-secur ... inme.shtml

^^ maybe this will help....not sure but its worth a look

~hue

[Geekgirl]

Sorry for the double post

First of all, I kno everyone does it but computers are not for playing games. Thats what The XBox, Playstation and Gamecube consols are for.
Drives me totally nuts when people complain about games not playing on their computer.

Anyhow.........
What have you done so far?
Are you comfortable with opening the case?
Try reseating the processor. Take it out, reapply some thermal compound or a thermal pad and replace the heat sink.

[Cactus]

Hehe...double post removed...

I would definitely make sure ALL fans are working,including the fan on the Graphic card(if it has one).
Make sure the case and all the Fans are Dust Bunnie free...
Re-seating the CPU and applying new thermal paste like Geekgirl said isn't that hard of a job,and will certainly improve your CPU cooling.(BTW--thermal paste is inexpensive).
Let us know what you've done so far and if you need more help.


Cactus

[hue_jass]

many people have been rebooted from 3d games lately...... due to overclocking issues.....


From TweakXP.com...

"I'm running an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro, and I've noticed that I would get reboots in almost every 3d applications. I would even get bluescreens 0x8E, etc. saying IRQ screwup. I have found that lowering the AGP Apature Size in your bios to its lowest setting helps a ton for stability. The AGP Apature Size basicly allocates system ram as video ram... System ram isn't as reliable as video ram. On my 128MB video card which has ram WAY faster than my DDR333, using the video cards ram not only speeds up your framerate, but also stabilizes your system. For not-so-great video cards you might notice a slight slowdown with this -- better slow than randomly rebooting."


The problem is caused by system instability due to overclocking:

1. Overclocking the graphic card's core speed too high without sufficient cooling will cause "...reboots in almost every 3d applications. I would even get bluescreens...."

2. The radeon 9700 series are sensitive to AGP Bus overclocking and thus are advised to lock it at 66mhz if the BIOS supports.


If the graphic card is not overclocked at all, then the aboved point 2 is likely:

a. Most motherboard's FSB and PCI/AGP Bus speed are LOCKED synchronously and thus overclocking the FSB also raises the AGP bus speed, resulting in point 2.

b. Reducing the AGP aperture size will results in paging the textures to the hard disk instead when the vcard's 128mb + AGP aperture are filled up. This is in fact SLOWER than "..using the video cards ram not only speeds up your framerate...." since the most recent games can eat up more than 128mb of texture memory.

c. If the writer thinks that 128mb of VRam is sufficient, then AGP Aperture will not be used. Therefore adjusting it will not matter AT ALL and thus;

d. Since reducing the use of system memory by lowering the AGP Aperture helped him/her, there can only be 2 reasons:

1. DDR frequency is overclocked too high due to FSB overclocking causing instabilty when the system is stressed (3d apps); or

2. The RAM is, or are getting defective.


Resolution:

Try resetting all Bus/clock speed (FSB/PCI/AGP/DDR/Vcard's CORE & MEM) to default i.e. absolutely 0 overclocking and see if the problem is solved.

If the problem still persist, check motherboard manufacturer for latest BIOS updates especially if AGP is 8x (very common problem).

or

The PSU is either not sufficient (if user has a lot of hardware devices in his/her computer) or low quality (fluctuating 12v, "dirty line". Which the 9700 is known to be very sensitive to that). Consider upgrading to a better or higher power PSU.

or

The 9700 is defective, RMA it. (Could be a Manufacturing QC problem but if there have been no graphic glitches or on-screen artifacts, then it is not likely this way).

OR

The motherboard (AGP bus) is defective/damaged.





hmmmmmm sorry if that doesn't help


~hue

[Jay Smith]

I may have a suggestion but i dont know if its still going? the sasa.worm maybe??

Doesnt sound like it but its worth a try? hope this helps

Jay