Semi-Random Shutdowns in most 3d Games

[Westy]

First off my System stats when the problem first started happening :

1.2Ghz AMD Thunderbird
256Mb PC-133 RAM
MSI K7T Pro 2-A Motherboard
PowerColor Geforce 2 GTS
Creative Sound Blaster Live! Value
20Gb IBM Deskstar 7200Rpm HDD

2d games (age of empires etc) and Half-Life worked fine, but while playing Warcraft 3 or GTA 3 my system would seem to put itself in standby mode randomly, sometimes after only being in the game minutes but sometimes up to an hour. My monitor would switch to no signal, i would lose sound, the reset button on my case (which normally works fine) has no effect and no keyboard or mouse activity works. The only thing that seems to get my computer booted again is the power button :(

After i got my new Leadtek Geforce3 ti200 it appeared to work fine, problem solved - but has started happening again.

Im running WinXP Pro v2002, have the latest Detonator drivers for my video card, latest soundcard drivers etc.

Any help anyone could offer would be appreciated.

[SecretSquirrel]

Thats sounds more like hard locking, than standby mode.

Are you overclocking anything? Video card specifically? If so, you've gone TOO FAR! Slow it down a little and you should see that it wont lock up so much.

[KingJackal]

What sort of cooling do you have in your case, on your CPU, and on your graphics card? And what temp's are you running?

( sounds like it could be a temperature thing )

[Solid Snake]

You could have heating problems and your computer bios or whatever is forcing a shut down of your computer. Make sure our temperatures are good, if your unsure about it, try downloading some programs which check the heat of your processor.

Other possible problem could be your power supply unit. Check that your power supply unit has ample power to power your computer. A good rule of thumb could be that, a 300 watt PSU is the minimum for a Athlon 1.4 Ghz.

Check, check and re-check your hardware again and again. If you think your hardware is fine, then reformat and reinstall a naked OS. Then install in this order, OS Updates, Motherboard drivers, Video card drivers, Sound Card drivers and Direct X last. Benchmark the heck out of it by running 3D Mark 2001 on full settings including Anti Ailising and everything to the maximum and run it for about 10 loops. If it passes that, your computer should be ok, but if your wanting perfect stability I recommend running that infinitely and go to sleep and if you wake up in the morning or night and it has run for 6-8 hours without stalling up it should be pretty good.

[Deviant]

Have a read of this post about a problem with DirectX 8.1 and AMD processors, and see if that may be the cause.

http://forums.overclockers.co.nz/showthread.php?s=&postid=16584#post16584

[Westy]

Well, the temps were about 42 in windows, and went up to 50 in a game of warcraft 3, at which time it shutoff.

I checked my bios and the shutdown temperature was 80 degree's, rebooted and it didnt post....

checked the diagnostic LED's and it wasnt getting past video card detection, so i pulled out the geforce 3 and put in the gf2 GTS.. still wouldnt post, tried an old TNT PCI card, posted.

So yeah, guess i get that upgrade i always wanted :| good game mr AGP port :(

oh well thanks for all your help on the issue guys, guess my motherboard realised id get it working eventually and took itself out :(