All Games Crash.. Tried Just About Everything

[Messiah89]

All of my games freeze and crash with a sound stutter within 20 minutes of playing.
I can't do Ctrl+Alt+Del or minimize them, the whole system stops responding and I have to do a hard reboot.

My system specs:
-AMD Athlon 64 3000+ S939 CPU
-Gigabyte GA-K8NSC-939 Motherboard
-Corsair 1GB PC3200 DDR RAM
-Maxtor 120GB 7200RPM IDE Hard Drive
-nVidia GeForce 6600GT 128MB AGP8x Video Card
-Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 2 Value Sound Card

What I've tried:
-Rolling back nVidia video driver to 66.81.
-Updating nVidia video driver to 81.98.
-Reseating video card.
-Disabling sound drivers.
-Updating sound drivers.
-Disabling network drivers.
-Updating network drivers.
-Updating motherboard drivers.
-Set all BIOS options to factory default.
-Disabling Norton Antivirus 2005.

Nothing works!
Please help, the last thing I'd like to do is reformat, because I really don't think that would fix it.

[Messiah89]

I've discovered if I use the very lowest video settings in-game at the lowest resolution available, the game does not crash.

So does this narrow it down to be a video issue?

[EXreaction]

First, take a house fan, and have it blow into the side of your case(with the side off of coarse), and see if it still happens...
Next run your computer with only 1 stick of ram in it at a time, and see if it only crashes with one of the sticks installed...

What power supply are you using to power this computer?

[Messiah89]

First, take a house fan, and have it blow into the side of your case(with the side off of coarse), and see if it still happens...
Next run your computer with only 1 stick of ram in it at a time, and see if it only crashes with one of the sticks installed...

What power supply are you using to power this computer?

I'll try that.
And, it's a 450W Allied PSU, and I've had absolutely no problems with it.

[Chuckiechan]

Make sure your desktop resoultion isn't the same as your game resoulition.

Also, try it without the sound card.

And look in device manager to see that you don't have any duplicate hardware installs showingt.

Also, try a distrubuted computing program to see if it crashes the computer. I run Folding@home.

It's easy on memory, but runs 100% cpu. So if you crash, you have cpu heat problems.

[Messiah89]

Make sure your desktop resoultion isn't the same as your game resoulition.

Also, try it without the sound card.

And look in device manager to see that you don't have any duplicate hardware installs showingt.

Also, try a distrubuted computing program to see if it crashes the computer. I run Folding@home.

It's easy on memory, but runs 100% cpu. So if you crash, you have cpu heat problems.

My desktop resolution is is the same resolution as my game, what's wrong with that?
I've previously tried without sound, that didn't help.

I'll try everyone's suggestions right now, and see how it goes...

[Messiah89]

Took out my 2nd stick of RAM.
Added a fan blowing into the comp, with the side off.
And with a resolution of 1024x768/72Hz, desktop resolution at 1024x768/85Hz, it did NOT crash.

Now, I just need to find out which is causing the issue.
-The RAM.
-The heat.
-The resolution.

[sweeper2]

possible Heat issue .... try the fan only with everything else like you had it..


how is the air flow in your case ??

[Messiah89]

It didn't crash at 1024x768/85Hz either.

So now it's either the RAM or the heat.

Current idle temps:

Motherboard: 25C
CPU: 33C
GPU: 49C
GPU Ambient: 38C
Hard Drive: 35C

Before I added the fan and took the side off, my GPU idled about 57C, could that have been an issue?

I'll now try putting the other RAM stick back in and see how it goes.
Oh, and my case airflow...

1x 80mm side-case fan (out)
1x 80mm rear-case fan (out)
1x 80mm top-case vent
(I'm guessing I should switch the side-case fan to the other direction pushing air in instead of out, and I should be could, if indeed this is a heat issue)

[Chuckiechan]

My desktop resolution is is the same resolution as my game, what's wrong with that?

I have no idea, except it is a frequent tech support solution. Try it.

Actually, the way it was explained to me, your desktop resoution is running in the background while the game is running (thus the Microsoft key). This causes your video card to transfer video instructions to both the desktop and the game using the same "channel". Game instructions are changing rapidly while desktop data is static. If game data is misdirected to the the desktop file, your game comes up short critical data and crashes.

Regarding heat, get "Cpu fan" or something with on screen temperature monitoring and then run your distributed computing program while watching the temp. It should rise to it maximim within a minute.

EDIT: It's CPU COOL... and here's a linky:
http://mitglied.lycos.de/podien/

[Messiah89]

I'll try that program out...

Anyway, I added in the 2nd stick of RAM and played for awhile and no crashes.
So it could have been my RAM stick was loose, or it is indeed the heat.
I'll spend some money on some better cooling fans and switch my side fan to blow in, instead of out...

[EXreaction]

Whats wrong with running the same resolution? I always run my games at 1280x1024 and always have my desktop resolution at 1280x1024...and I have had zero problems that started from that...

Ya, sounds like it probably is heat...I would just test it for a while with the fan blowing in it...and see if it does it again.

[jokostel]

id lean twoards power supply....
dosent sound like it takes load well for too long.

[Messiah89]

So far it's seeming like the video card has been overheating.
Right now I still have that fan blowing into the case and everything's good.

I decided trying a different game awhile ago, so I played Doom 3 for a bit.
I switched the AA to 8x, and I was getting loads of artifacts and weird pixel corruption. I'm thinking it's the video card.

(This could have been an entirely different issue altogether though)

[EXreaction]

Well, I would think about RMAing the card...