Complete games failure in XP

[Dogus1]

Sorry to sound like an idiot ...but I am. I recently made the mistake of trying to assemble my own computer. Everything seemed to go without a hitch, but now I'm suffering from some unidentifiable ailment. XP itself seems to run okay, but whenever I run a game, eventually they all lock up, usually taking the entire computer out with it and forcing a reset. I get occasional errors at the start of windows saying that it has recovered from a serious error and that the cause was an unidentfied device driver. Well, the only device driver I've installed from outside the automatic XP was the new GeForce detinator, which I've uninstalled and reinstalled since to see if that would help (it didn't). I also installed the newest drivers for my VIA chipset. So, perhaps one of the innumerable drivers that XP auto-installed for my hardware is to blame, but how could I find out which one?

I realize this is extremely broad, but I simply don't know what to do. The whole reason I bought this new rig was for games, and now they all seem unstable (except for Civ III). They all run perfectly smooth and pretty until they abruptly crash, so my hardware is working well up until the end.

Anyhow, so sorry for this huge mess, but if anyone has any ideas, I'm game ...I really have no idea what to do except throw it against the wall.

[ktkendall]

There is a place to go called event viewer that should clue you in to what exactly is causing the probs:
ControlPanel>administrative tools>EventViewer>System
See if you see the errors in there usually has the red circle with white x in it. Double click the error for a detailed description!

[ktkendall]

Hi ther Dogus1 and welcome to here:
You may well be looking at Bad memory or just settings for the memory improper in the BIOS. Bad memory will show up as all kind of errors, depends on what the PC was trying to do when it hit the bad spot of memory. Can you POST some specs for this new build, specifically the Motherboard, procesor, memory, and vid card type.

[darkmessenger03]

Always remember to post your specs if you want help with a custom built system.

[Spyda]

im guessing that by the detonator driver you have a Nvidia card, i have trouble with the Geforce driver aswell. im having the most luck with version 28.32 so far at the moment.

[doctorgonzo]

Lots of possibilities. Bad memory, overheating, bad PSU...the list goes on. I would start with temperature: how hot does your system get when gaming?

[Dogus1]

Sorry guys ...how do I find out my CPU temp so that I may post it? how can I tell if it gets way hot during gaming or not? And if the CPU got too hot, wouldn't that cause the whole system to crash, not just the game?

[Dogus1]

What about memory? I suspect this is the problem... my computer seems to run poorly, it is unstable, and after I quit a game (if it doens't crash), windows runs like utter crap! It seems like all the symptoms of having my memory eaten up -- but Christ, this isn't my old 16 meg machine on Windows 95! I would think 256megs of DDR could survive a trip into Civilization III. So, maybe this is the problem ,and if so, how do I confirm this -- I don't exactly have a lot of RAM just lying around to switch out.

[beef]

I'm experiencing the same problem as Dogus1 describes above. I have a g-force 4200ti DDR 128 MB videocard, a AMD athlon XP 2000+ processor, an EpoX 8K5A2+ KT333 moderboard, and a samsung DDR PC266 512MB memorycard. Why in the world is my darling computer treating me like this?

[Dogus1]

after some gaming, cPU temp at 62.5 Celcius ...what does that say?

[ktkendall]

That is getting a bit high. Check your CPU heatsink fan installation.