[byrddawg]

Hello, Sorry for the massive letter. I tried to inform whoever's reading with the most I could up front to make this easier for all parties. I appreciate your time and advice.

I have 3 monitors on my PC. An 8600gts displays a Vizio 37", and a 8500gt displays a 19" and a 20" Samsung. I use the 8600gts and Vizio as my main display where Start menu is and games are played. My two smaller displays work fine with internet searching and media, like watching m-pegs and mp3s. But if I move my ATI TV tuner window to one of the smaller monitors to watch TV, a few seconds later the PC suddenly shuts off.

After this has gone on for a while, I reformatted and re-installed everything. I tried to get all the newest drivers I could while ignoring Beta versions.

It still does it, and now I can't play Crysis either on my main, Vizio monitor. After a few seconds of Crysis my PC shuts off. Before the reformat Crysis ran fine. I have Direct X installed, and my PCI-E power cable is plugged into the card. Assasins Creed Plays Fine.

My PC only crashes (and does it every time) during these two instances only.

I have an Antec 650w "80% efficient PSU" and read the 8600gts pulls 70watts, and the 8500gt pulls 40watts, my processor pulls 125watts. That leaves 285 watts at 80% efficiency to push my TV tuner, harddrives, DVD and Floppy drive, and fans.

Device manger says everything is working properly.
I run XP service pack 2, Norton Anti-Virus (which I turn off when installing programs), and Aston Desktop, which has never given me problems in the past (and i even get these errors when I turn Aston off)

The only thing I can think of is my DVD drive. It doesn't seem to be spinning when I play Crysis. I uninstalled Crysis and now when I try to re-install it, the process hangs and drags out for hours, with the PC occasionally stopping installation to say it "can't find an installation file."

Maybe my TV tuner card just crashes the system when I move it to the smaller screens because my 8500gt card is on a PCI-E x 1 slot and the TV tuner needs more bandwith?

And maybe Crysis won't install or play right because my DVD drive might be going out?

Any Suggestions or advice is very appreciated.

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You can always go to run -> eventvwr and this can sometimes give you an idea why your pc crashed. Just check out for red error icons and I guess it will give an idea to what you can ask here as well.

[prasharry2k5]

You can always go to run -> eventvwr and this can sometimes give you an idea why your pc crashed. Just check out for red error icons and I guess it will give an idea to what you can ask here as well.

[byrddawg]

I appreciate your reply. I think I found the culprit. I read in another forum that a CPU heatsink clogged with dust may cause problems. I shined a flashlight. And It was pretty darn clean. After playing with other stuff like RAM, I still had the problem. So I decided to go ahead and take it off. It was very clean actually. I didn't even blow on it. I just put it back on, (After reapplying thermal compound) and wiggled it around to get a good seal. I haven't had a problem since. My temps were good before. I have a utility with my MOBO that is always on and monitors temps. I was never going above 50DEG C (At full load). I have no Idea what was going on. I haven't taken the Heatsink off since I first install the CPU months ago. So anywhose... I thought I'd share in case someone else has a problem close to this. Pulling a Heatsink off, cleaning it, and sticking it back on is free, so at least try it before you start swapping parts.