Hello all, This is my first post here. I'm having problems with my computer spontaneously restarting during several graphically-intensive games. It seems to happen fairly randomly, sometimes after a few minutes of the computer being on, sometimes after hours. These games worked fine without any problems up until recently. Sometimes, when the pc comes back on it will give me extremely vague Microsoft errors that reveal no information whatsoever. They say more or less that a driver on a newly-installed piece of hardware is their best guess and to send them the "error reporting message". I have not installed any new hardware, except for a new video card, which was after the problem developed (see below). My troubleshooting steps, thus far have been to diagnose, in order: video card drivers, RAM, video card overheating, DirectX. I uninstalled the old video card drivers and installed more recent ones from Nvidia's website. As far as I can tell, the RAM is fine. I used a utility called memtest.exe to test all available RAM, and it ran for 24 hours straight without any errors found. Presumably, if one of the RAM sticks was bad, this utility would give me some indication. I think (and please correct me) that this eliminates RAM as a possiblity. Since I wanted to upgrade my video card anyway, I went out and bought a newer one today, praying that this in itself might fix the problem. And please note that this required upgrading the drivers for the motherboard, so that's fresh too. After installing the new video card drivers I ran a utility that with the suite that told me there was a problem with DirectX (again, without being specific). Thinking this a clue, I used a utility to uninstall DirectX and restore to the default version that came with WinXp. This went smoothly, thankfully, but did nothing to resolve the issue. I'm not sure what else to check. Any suggestions? I'm leaning towards reinstalling Windows, but if it is a hardware issue this is unlikely to solve anything. Thanks in advance for any support you can offer me. Cheers, WES

First off, reinstall the latest version of DirectX (I believe it's 9c). Then (sorry but, this is if you're using the classic start menu only) go to Start>Control Panel>DirectX. Then in that first tab click the button that says DXDiag. Another window will pop up. Give it a second to load (there is a blue bar that goes across the bottom left) then go over to the display tab. You'll then see two test buttons (Test something, then under it Test something else). Go ahead and run through these. If it find any errors or what not it will give you a lot more information to work with. It seems that this has mostly to do with your video card but just in case, run through the tests on the next few tabs just to see if everything checks out. Also, is there anything that you can pick out that you might be doing in the games (the games you're playing might help, too) that might cause it to crash? This may or may not be obvious to you, but go ahead and close down other programs that are running before starting a game. That's all I can think of...good luck. P.S. Another thing I just thought of. Depending on where you live, it might be starting to get warmer and if you don't have AC in your house then your computer might start running less stably (meaning not just your video card might be overheating). Check Motherboard Monitor to check out temps in your case. Alert me after you respond otherwise I'll forget to come back.

Hello, I had the same problem running games like Halo Combat Evolved and others. In my case it was an issue with DirectX C. I had to update my drivers. Nvidia updated their Forceware driver on March 11 to version 71.84. Here's the release highlight, look at the last point: Windows XP/2000 Version: 71.84 Release Date: March 11, 2005 WHQL Certified U.S. English Release Highlights: * Support for the GeForce 6200 with TurboCache™, NVIDIA PureVideo™, and NVIDIA SLI™ * SLI support for over 60 top games * A CoolBits applet to allow users to easily add their own SLI application profiles for games that are not SLI certified * Robust HDTV Display Setup and adjustments * Multi-Display support for Windows Remote Desktop * Improved compatibility with Windows Remote Desktop in multi-display modes * Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0c and OpenGL® 1.5 support AMD 64 3200+ 754 Abit KV8 Pro 1go 2x512 DDR 400 Kingston FX5700LE 160 gb SATA Maxtor 80 gb WD

Thank you both for your prompt replies. As noted in my original message, this has been a problem with *two* different video cards. The first was a Nvidia GeForce MX420 and the new one is an ATI Radeon 9550. The new video card did not seem to make a bit of difference, nor did updated drivers. I tried running the dxdiag tests and they do seem to indicate that DirectX is not working as it should, but only for Directsound. I am currently using the latest version (9.0c, I think it is), so I'm not sure what to do next. Is it likely that DirectX even could force a pc to reboot? I don't really know... As for temperature where I live (SW Ontario)... while it has been getting warmer, it is not noticeably so. The problem started in about the same temperature as it was when everything was working. And the temperature now is pretty much the same. So, it's an interesting suggestion, but another false lead, I think. Could this be the power supply? As I understand it, the power supplied to the CPU remains constant, regardless of what programs are running. Is that correct? So, is there any reason to suspect that a graphics-intensive game would call on more power than, say, checking email? Again, I'm not really sure.

---If you have solved this problem please post how you have done so.....------- Hello there.. I am currently experiencing the same problem with my games. It is correct that almost any intense video game will seem to crash randomly. The power supply is not the problem. I have tested this myself with a new power supply I have just bought. Here is what you didn't know, I have been working on this problem for a couple of days and scoured the internet for answers. What is quite interesting is that there are numerous cases of people having exactly the same problem, this being posted on a number of forums. This leads me to believe that it might be a recent update Microsoft issued. I advise trying to uninstall any updates installed during March as this seems the time where all these cases appeared. You can do this by going to add/remove programs, clicking the updates box at the top and removing any hot updates installed during or after March. I have so far tried: Uninstalling video drivers :NVIDIA Forceware Reinstalling video drivers Reinstalling .NET framework Reinstalling DirectX Check if components overheating: all is A-OK Nothing above seemed to solve the problem. Again if you have already solved the problem please please please post how you did so!

Having already delt with the same problem (including upgrading video cards, though I went ATI to nVidia) I can tell you without any doubt what is wrong. You need a better sound card. Basicly your sound card is most likley not DirectX 9 compatible. There are a few steps to try. You might try upgrading your drivers for your sound card for starters. The second is lower the hardware exceleration on the card (right-click the little sound icon by your clock, left-click "adjust audio properties", left click the advance button near the bottom of the new window, left-click the performance tab, and the rest you should be able to figure out). If neather works, and you still get the directX error, it's the sound card. I gamed for 18 hours without a crash or reboot once I borrowed a friend's card. Now if only I could afford to buy one for myself..........anyway Hope this helps you and if you see AceODeth online playing Halo or UT, sorry for kicking your butt. >) Peace!