Games Causing Computer to Quit

[CerebralEcstasy]

World of Warcraft, and Guild Wars causes computer to crash. Used to work fine about a year ago.

 

Windows XP Home O/S

Video card is intel something (his words not mine LOL)

 

Any ideas as to why this might be doing this.

[Tormod]

Not enough to go by I think. You'd need to find more information. Crashes are usually RAM-related. If the video card is Intel, it is an "on-board" card. A dedicated graphics card might help with the game experience, but I don't think it causes the crashes.

 

BTW - how does it crash? Reboot? Blue screen? Any info you can provide would make it easier to locate the culprit. :)

[Zythryn]

As Tormod said, very difficult to diagnose without more info.

My initial guess would be ram or video as well. Any new programs added to the machine between the time the crashes weren't happening and when they started?

Does he happen to have a ram intensive program that isn't graphics intensive? If so try running that and see how it works.

Or, can he monitor the ram usage while playing the game?

Any log files of the crash?

How much ram?

[alexander]

Car burns oil and makes a weird noise, used to work fine when i bought it.

 

Nissan 4x4

Engine is a 4 cylinder

 

any ideas why this is happening?

 

(no i do not own a nissan 4x4, but this is just to simplify what you are asking us to diagnose)

[pgrmdave]

When it crashes, does it give an error message (either on a blue screen or on startup) ?

[CerebralEcstasy]

When it crashes, does it give an error message (either on a blue screen or on startup) ?

 

Please don't shoot the messenger. The guy said that he has 526 MB of Ram, and added another card. Didn't give me any error messages, only that it just would restart upon trying to load the game.

 

I will tell him to get his sorry carcass over here and type what is happening, because I've only got second hand information. Not to mention, it's not happening to me.

 

I did tell him though that you were a great bunch of guys, and that I was certain you'd answer and I was 100% correct on that.

 

//big kiss to all of you.

[Tormod]

We'll help in any way we can. He either has 256 or 512 MB of RAM. If it is 256 he will definitely need to upgrade it, if it's 512 he might want to but it should be tested first. Sounds to me like he needs more RAM and a dedicated graphics card, and that should be enough unless he is running some sort of resource hog software in the background.

[CerebralEcstasy]

We'll help in any way we can. He either has 256 or 512 MB of RAM. If it is 256 he will definitely need to upgrade it, if it's 512 he might want to but it should be tested first. Sounds to me like he needs more RAM and a dedicated graphics card, and that should be enough unless he is running some sort of resource hog software in the background.

 

Oops had a lysdexic moment there. It should have said 256, and that he'd added another card. I haven't talked to him yet, but will relay this information.

[Tormod]

only that it just would restart upon trying to load the game.

 

Okay. Is it a sudden reboot then? Just like the PC turns itself off and then reboots?

 

That sounds very much like a RAM problem, a graphics card problem - or a simple driver problem. If the game crashes while trying to display it's opening sequence it could be that simply a new set of drivers for the graphics card would solve this.

 

I'd need to know which motherboard the computer has (or the make/model of the computer if possible) to locate the necessary drivers for you.

[Cedars]

Something like this happened to me once. I dont remember if it was a new game or new graphics card that was the problem. What I had to do was reload dir X from the microsoft site and the rebooting stopped.

[GAHD]

if he installed a new card he'll likely have to load up the BIOS (usually dlete, or F1 key pressed on Post to acess it) and turn off the onboard function that he has replaced with the card. If it's a graphics card he may also have to set his aperature size to one his system is comfortable with.

 

If the game ran for a while with the new card in, likely it's a dirt or overheating issue with the system. Give everything a good clean-out with compressed air, or after unplugging it with a spray Isopropynol product. He may need to install an aftermarket fan if it crashes mid-game, as this is a sign of overheating issues more than RAM bugs.

[Qfwfq]

Oops had a lysdexic moment there. It should have said 256, and that he'd added another card.

With XP? A quarter gigabyte is hardly enough for the OS alone. For jazzy real-time graphics and all that, judging by how things go on this thing I'm typing into and its half giga of RAM, I'd say it would have trouble too in running games like that without even more RAM. Try a gigabyte and spank Uncle Bill's bum for pushing such a resource draining OS and making it a necessity for so many mod cons.

[GAHD]

also killing all TSRs might help with any ramspace issues, though that's something normally reserved for the more tweak-savy. If he's willing to risk it tell him to run "msconfig" in windows/system32/dllcache; it give you a decent amount of controll over the services running on your box without having to actually go into the registry ("regedit") manually.

 

Backup backup backup;)

 

and if it's a 256 video memory, it should be fine for most games, if it's 256 system ram I'd be surprised if they could run minesweeper with a decent sized feild.