Hard crashes galore!

Metal Gear Solid 2 Demo

Alright, so...

I've been having this issue where I'll be playing a game, or it will be loading. All of a sudden my headphones will break out into this really loud static. The static will stop, and my computer will hard crash. Like nothing moves on the screen, harddrive light stops, it's dead. Have to do a reset to start it again

It began sometime ago periodically with Tf2. It wasn't frequent enough to be an issue, so I grazed it off hoping I was damaging my computer with all the resets


But now with Warhammer it's been happening a lot more frequently. Sometimes it does it right when I'm logging into a character, sometimes I can play for multiple hours and it will hit in the middle of me just running somewhere. It seems random, but I'm not sure

The static could be a clue to something, but I don't know what. My headphones are dieing on me, I can only hear out of the right ear unless I mess around with the cord (push it in, fold it, etc.) But I don't think the headphones are causing the crash

Not getting an errors or anything, running Windows XP SP3. It's been happening since before I went to SP3 so that's not the issue

Radeon1950XT card, AMD 64bit 3200+, 2 gigs of ram

PeregrineFalcon

Heat or power related are my first two guesses. Check for dust in your fans (all of them) and try popping the side of your case and carefully checking the temperatue of your CPU/GPU heatsink. (Careful - you can burn yourself nicely doing this if something's malfunctioning.)

Of course your headphone jack could be shorting out somehow.

GrimReaper

Definitely seems graphics card related. If your computer was crashing normally you'd bluescreen or just reboot (depending on whether you disabled reboot on bluescreen setting)

If I were you i'd take out the graphics card and try it with a different card. This assumes you have a spare to hand or a friend who does. (you could buy a cheapo £10 card to purely test) Then if the same happens you know it isn't the card but something motherboard related, that or the graphics card isn't getting enough juice from the PSU.

What's the spec of the pc? Like the graphics card, PSU etc. (ah just noticed you posted part of the spec) You should post what PSU you have. (like it's a 550 watt Antec, model if possible)

Metal Gear Solid 2 Demo

Ah...yea I was suspecting heat.

I have had a lot of heat issues lately (texture stretching, monitor shutting off, etc.) These happened mainly in Neverwinter Nights 2 and sometimes TF2, but not Warhammer

So much so I put a fan under my desk blaring into the side of my computer

I'm just not sure how to resolve a heat issue, I should get a new case because the one I have is some shitty third-party thing. Any ideas on that?

Graphics card again is ATI Radeon 1950XT, PSU is made for crossfire/SLI, not 100% sure the wattage but it should be fine

PeregrineFalcon

Metal Gear Solid 2 Demo wrote: »

Ah...yea I was suspecting heat.

I have had a lot of heat issues lately (texture stretching, monitor shutting off, etc.) These happened mainly in Neverwinter Nights 2 and sometimes TF2, but not Warhammer

So much so I put a fan under my desk blaring into the side of my computer

I'm just not sure how to resolve a heat issue, I should get a new case because the one I have is some shitty third-party thing. Any ideas on that?

Graphics card again is ATI Radeon 1950XT, PSU is made for crossfire/SLI, not 100% sure the wattage but it should be fine

Check for dust. Other than that, you'll want a better, more ventilated case - since you're bringing your own PSU to the party, I'd suggest an Antec Three Hundred. Cheap, relatively spacious, and nice airflow.