Several games crash

[Wlmer77]

My system seems to crash every time i play certain games( doom3, planetside, bloodlines). Normally within the first ten minutes with doom3,
whereas planetside can last any where up to a hour and bloodlines normally
around half an hour. I thought it was cos my graphics card wasn't up to the job but now i have a new geforce 6600 it still follows the same pattern.
Recently read it could be an irq conflict but after disabling printer port, com 1 and com 2, making sure there were spare irqs ( although not sure it works that way) also disabling extra hard drive and floppy. So I tried doom 3 as i knew it would crash quite quickly, and well it did. So then i disabled the sound and it lasted about half an hour(about the amount of time it took me to die.). But unfortunately i still don't know why it does it as i tried another sound card and it crashes the same(with sound) with all windows updates, surely that means it isn't the driver?

[Hi Ho]

What are your complete system specs including the brand and wattage of the power supply? It's possible that your power supply isn't up to the job especially if it's a low quality one.

[Jester]

its the power supply. My friend had this issue a few weeks ago. It could also be a heat issue.

[rcvalencia9]

Check your temps if your system is overheating. But almost HEAT issues result to system restart. But how does it crash? It will freeze or just simply bring you back to the desktop?

[wolfie]

whens the last time you reformated your harddrive? if you play alot of computer games and add and delete them you leave extra files on your harddive and that will happen to me. i reformat and my puter runs fine.

[Wlmer77]

Yeah i thought the power supply might have been the problem with my old
system( the same as now just with a quadro nvidia) but i went to a web site that calculated the wattage and it came up with about 233 watts for my system. so i thought that wasn't the case. plus i've disconnected the extra hard drive, floppy and cdrom and the problems the same.
I got the new graphics card cos it has a fan plus is a damn sight better than my old. Also have three fans now, one at front and two at top at the back and i don't think the system temp ever gets more than 28 at the mo.
My system:
Athlon xp 1900
512mb Ram ( crucial and non branded one ) both 266mhz
aopen cdrw/dvdrom
20 gig samsung
6 gig backup hard drive( not supplied with power or ide cable at mo)
floppy( again not powered or connected)
PNY geforce 6600 , 128mb
v266b mobo( onboard sound)
voyager external modem
2 usb, on mobo
2 usb, case
300 watt psu( cheap one from ebuyer)-will check make later

Have tried separate sound card and a memtest86 for 5 complete tries,-no errors. have checked irq/memory conflicts- seems that there are several memory conflicts( with via something or other involved in several).
Cheers for replies will def get a new supply if acouple say this is it.

The thing with bloodlines is i thought i would get some sort of improvment with the new card but it still runs appaling with sound stutters even with every thing at its lowest ( have got the patch). Doom 3 lots great and runs super smooth until the crash. ( although only on medium and all specials)

Yeah any way the screen freezes when it crashes and nine times out of ten the sound is in a loop of say the last second or so. windows xp error sender says it is doom 3 fault. Although it is just a demo.
Planetside and masquerade are the full versions plus Unreal2003 is also crashing nowadays, although that could just be online.

Would def appreciate any more feedback, would several memory conflicts cause these probs?

[Wlmer77]

Have formatted the hard drive recently more times than i would want to mention. all clean installs with whole 20 gig formatted with NTSC.

[wolfie]

see you have 2 different sticks of mem, have you tried one at a time and see what happens?

[Wlmer77]

Power supply is an Encer atx 300 watt.
Yeah i'll try using just one memory stick and see if they still crash.

[Hi Ho]

I'd replace that power supply with a good quality brand name one from Enlight, Thermaltake, Antec, CoolerMaster, FortronSource, etc. 300w is barely enough for a GeForce 6600 and if it's a no name one it's probably inadequate and could be the cause of the problems you're having.

[Wlmer77]

I have tried both sticks of ram on there own and it crashes with both.
Checked out the voltage in the bios and got a little confused. I know they're meant to have 2.5V each, is there a possiblity it's supplying them with the incorrect voltage as it supports 2 sdram sticks also?
I will buy a better psu if needs be although decent brands seem expensive.
Any chance any one would recommend a decent ebuyer budget one?

[Hi Ho]

Thermaltake, Antec, Aopen, and Sparkle are all priced relatively low. The Thermaltake 420w (rebadged Enlight) is my normal recommendation.

EDIT: I just noticed that you wanted a recommendation from Ebuyer. I assume you're not in the US and cannot order from Newegg? If so I'd go with THIS one from Ebuyer's limited selection.

[Wlmer77]

I've spent ages trying to solve this prob so i will get a new psu and see whether it solves it. looked at the ebuyer one( yeah i live in UK), sounds good but a little confused about the S-ATA connector? (in other words i don't know what this means). Just wantin to know if I'll need any extra connectors or whether this will be fine for my v266b (jetway?) mobo? -

[Wlmer77]

Thought i'd check my hard drive for errors b4 I bought this new psu.
As it was second hand when I got it. Using a program called disc check n.
In normal windows mode it found 22 errors- said permission denied to these.
Contained some prob with system volume info and page.sys.
Also aout ten probs in system32.

Also tested in safe mode where it found 57 errors
All extra ones being path file accces errors.

Considering the games I use like planetside and bloodlines use up about 40% of my hardrive , is this where my prob is comin from?

[rcvalencia9]

Try to make a fresh install of everything. Your OS, Apllications, and your beloved games. Before you do that back-up everything important and check for BAD sectors on your HDD.

[Wlmer77]

did a clean install yesterday and used this hard drive tester, yeah there were 23 errors ,one extra all in exactly the same place so bad sectors must be the files where xp is installed some in network area and about ten in system. I'm guessing this isn't good ,plus an error occurred when finishing an install of zone alarm which I think it did last time i did a clean install.
And considering i never use to get errors after a clean install( whole main drive formatted). Will get a new hard drive and psu i think now, if anyone can confirm that this amount of bad sectors could be a problem?
I expect if i did it in safe i'd get about fifty again.

[David M]

You can't rely on a wattage calculation to determine if your graphics card voltage is adequate. What counts is the voltage at the card. Get a digital volt meter and check the voltage on the card itself when its under a load. Be very careful not to place a test lead across the pos and neg terminals on the card thus shorting it out. Use 3Dmark05 or another benchmark which places a load on the card.

Your card will have software on its website or software that came with the card to determine your GPU and graphics memory temps. Download this software and check your temps. I bet its either inadequate voltage or too hot a card. Inadequate voltage BTW can cause a card to run hot since you are drawing more amps to do the same amount of work.