My comp has been crashing to desktop randomly during games, I have searched this fourm and found a lot of people with this problem and a lot of theorys, but not a single working solution. People have said they thought it was sp1, ram, vid cards, mobos, cpus, installations of windows, and power supplys. I can tell you its not sp1. I have had this sort of problem for a long time and the service packs really had nothing to do with it, I have gone through 3 versions of xp and countless reformats and reinstalls so its not software. From what I have seen it looks like a problem with athlons, that is the one common thread I have seen with this type of crash. I dont think it could be RAM, because my ram went bad one time a few months ago and nothing changed with the replacements. It could be video ram, I guess I'll know when I upgrade my card in a few weeks (for hl2) but it seems unlikely. In other words: I have no idea but it could be athlons. specs: xp2000, gf4ti4200 64mb, 512 ddr333 fortissimo2(has been problematic from day one, but I dont see how it could be doing this) the games it happens with seems to be anything that uses directx, that and the athlon is all I have been able to find in common between most of the cases so far. Thank god I'm upgrading for halflife 2, cuz I cant get a decent 20 minutes in anymore.

There is no single solution as there are soooo many things that could be wrong, without more specific information on the error our hands are tied. It's no good just coming here and saying your pc crashes, we need more info, have a look in the event viewer, with enough searching you should be able to narrow the problem down (more than likely it is a driver problem). There's no way it has anything to do with your CPU, the XP chips were specifically designed with Windows Xp in mind, and were therefore tested exstensively throughout the design of both Windows Xp and the XP chips themselves, they are likely to be more stable than Pentiums.

Overheating may be another thing to look into, sounds like you have the symptoms. I play Medal Of Honor online, and that used to freeze up after an hour or so, so I opened my case and pointed a house fan in there. Problem solved. I really must get round to buying a system fan, lol.

there is nothing in the event viewer refering to these crashes. its like the games had never been run, and the crashes are instant.

heh, I got about 5 fans in there. I'm running good and cool. I dont think its a running in athlons, but it could be something that typically goes with them. power issues or something, I dunno. But all of the cases I have seen of this have involved athlons, and that is still the only common thread. except xp of course.

oh, and its NOT drivers. I have gone over and over my drivers, I assure you its not them.

Hi It still sounds like overheating to me Read this post Here BOB