Hello!

My computer is crahing during game playing after around 10-20 minutes on any game (ones that worked fine when i first got the computer). The screen freezes completely ctrl-alt-del doesnt work and the computer has to be turned off at the power....does this sound like it could be my graphics card overheating and if so what should i do??

Thanks

Try installing monitoring software. Mother board monitor can be run in real time in the tray. This will give you case and CPU temps and voltages. This won't rule out card overheating, but the cards are designed to cool properly, assuming case temps are OK.

Try this & see if it makes a difference:

Next time, before you start a game, shut down all the background programs associated with "username"...hit Crtl-Alt-Del to bring up the Task Manager, then click on the "Processes" tab, then click on the word "User Name" at the top of the column...that will put the processes in order...then, highlite & hit "End Task" on all the processes that have your username next to them, except for "taskmgr" & "explorer". Now try playing your game & see what happens...

thanks for the response guys...further to my question i just checked my system information and rather than the 512mb of memory i thought i had its says that there is a total physical memory of 256mb and that the availiable physical is only 83.64...do u think that this could be the cause of the problems??

p.s. i will try both monitoring and end other programs!

thanks

You need to do some diagnostic work. First monitor temps and voltages. Download and run memtest386 on a floppy from a command prompt to test your memory. You could stand to have more memory also. Hard lockups can be difficult to diagnose. Eliminate the easy stuff first.