When I play certain games, my computer crashes sometimes... even though my Radeon 9600 Pro should be able to handle them. Anyway, my question to you all is: are game crashes bad for my computer?

Sometimes they cause my PC to reboot itself and other times they just bring me back to my desktop. Do these crashes harm my system at all? I'd be willing to play my games and save often because the crashes aren't too frequent, but I don't want mess up my computer at all by letting it crash again and again.

Thanks!

I cant imagine it could cuase any harm to your Operating system nor hardware, there could be a posiblity of courupting some of your game files, I dont know for sure just a guess tho.

Biostar TForce6100-939
AMD Athlon 64 3200+
Corsair 2x 512MB DDR400
Dual Channel

Well, impromptu reboots can corrupt the OS possibly, but past that, I don't see crashes causing any other damage.

Still, it should be figured out why your games are crashing in the first place. If the problem were faulty hardware, the game could be exposing that fault. The faulty hardware, such as a poor power supply, could very well cause damage to your computer over time.

Corn chips are no place for a mighty warrior!

Hmm alright. Thanks.

Well I've got a Radeon 9600 Pro and Sim City 4 is making it reboot. But I've played The Sims 2 without a hitch. The game might not work with Radeon series cards as well as Nvidia ones (which is total BS, those programmers should work out everything before they release a game).

My computer is pretty much new. It's less than a year old and built from scratch. Where is the power supply? Is that a part of the motherboard or something separate? I've got a LanParty nF 3.

First off, have you updated your motherboard's chipset drivers?

Have you updated to the latest ATI Catalyst drivers?

Corn chips are no place for a mighty warrior!

Yeah, I went to DFI's page and checked if they had any newer drivers than the ones I have but it appears all my drivers are up to date.

I just installed my Radeon 9600 just a month ago and I updated my drivers after I installed it, so I think they are up to date too.

I read somewhere that Sim City 4 doesn't work good with some Radeon series cards. Also it could be that I downloaded the game, but I really doubt that's it.

"Yeah, I went to DFI's page and checked if they had any newer drivers than the ones I have but it appears all my drivers are up to date."

Go to Nvidia's website instead.

"I just installed my Radeon 9600 just a month ago and I updated my drivers after I installed it, so I think they are up to date too."

New Catalysts just came out (Version 6.3).

"Also it could be that I downloaded the game, but I really doubt that's it."

If you mean you pirated it, that's a very possible reason it isn't working.

Corn chips are no place for a mighty warrior!

Hey, I did all that and got the new Catalyst, thanks... but it still crashed on me. And then I checked out the official system requirements and under the "supported graphics cards" I don't see Radeon 9600 Pro listed. Would that mean my system just can't play SiM City 4?

I went into my events thing and I believe this is the error from the time of the crashes:

The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x100000d1 (0xf7cb3f8e, 0x00000002, 0x00000000, 0xeb8249b3). A dump was saved in: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini031906-03.dmp.

Any idea what that means? Thanks for all the advice.

Event ID and source would be nice.

Corn chips are no place for a mighty warrior!

My bad:

Event Type: Information
Event Source: Save Dump
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1001
Date: 3/20/2006
Time: 6:12:09 AM
User: N/A
Computer: HOME
Description:
The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x100000d1 (0xf7d07ce2, 0x00000002, 0x00000000, 0xebc0fb03). A dump was saved in: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini032006-02.dmp.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

And if you want to see my dianostic file:
clicky here.

If this info doesn't offer a solution or at least a culprit, I'll drop it. I just don't like when stuff doesn't work the way it supposed to. Thanks.