[Blacksmith*]

any time I go into a game (BF 2142, BF 2, Halo, need for speed, ect.) my computer within 5 minutes of starting the game freezes and sometimes the screen will go black and then go back to playing the game and sometimes it will just freeze and stay that way untill I either have to ALT + F4 or manually re-boot my computer but this just started about a week ago before that it was fine playing all of my games.

system specs are:
foxconn nVidia nForce4 SLI Intel Edition
Intel Pentium 4 3.2 GHz
RAM Corsair Ballistix 1024 MB (2 x 512 DDR2-SDRAM )
ATI Sapphire Radeon X1650 256mb
80 GB western digital
SAMSUNG DVD-ROM
NEC CD-ROM
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition with Service Pack 2

Edited by Blacksmith*, 03 October 2008 - 06:42 PM.

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Hi Blacksmith

It sounds like your computer may be overheating. I'm just wondering if something happened recently that caused it to happen. You may want to double-check inside your case that you can see all the fans are still in working order.

Perhaps download Speedfan (in my signature) and report back with the temperatures it gives you.

Cheers

Troy

[Troy]

Hi Blacksmith

It sounds like your computer may be overheating. I'm just wondering if something happened recently that caused it to happen. You may want to double-check inside your case that you can see all the fans are still in working order.

Perhaps download Speedfan (in my signature) and report back with the temperatures it gives you.

Cheers

Troy

[Blacksmith*]

I already have Speedfan installed on my computer and it has only reporting that it keeps around 43-50 C
and all of my fans are working perfectly
and I still dont know what has happened

thanks

Z

[Troy]

Are you running the latest drivers for your card? You could go to the ATI website and download them.

Those temperatures shouldn't be anything to worry about.

Troy

[Blacksmith*]

yes I have all of the current drivers for my video card and motherboard too. although I did start using speakers instead of the usb headphones I have. would that have done it I dont have a sound card I just use the onboard audio for now.

[Troy]

I'm sure there's an easy fix, but it's escaping me right now.

Is your computer connected to the internet when you game? Perhaps something is connecting in the background and causing hassles.

I don't think changing the speakers would do anything like that, although you could switch it back just to be doubly sure.

When was the last time you performed some maintenance on your computer? Windows Updates applied? Cleanout temporary files and defragment your hard drive? Applied patches and updates for each of your games?

Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling the games?

There's a whole bunch of thoughts for you.

Let me know what you try, and how it's going.

Troy

[Blacksmith*]

my computer was a few times I played but I had no problems with it playing the games while my computer was online.
I clean my computer about well kinda random times every week so i'm pretty sure thats not it.
and i've tried uninstalling and reinstalling all the games.
I did before this started happening do system restore because of something it did and I first installed BF 2142 after that but it would play flawlessly even on high settings now its just a pain to get to play for 5 minutes on low
and I have also tried jusing the headphones instead of the speakers and it still does the same thing

Z

[Troy]

So does the game play well at all, or it's choppy right from when you start it up?

Troy

[Blacksmith*]

sometimes the game will play almost perfectly (on low-medium settings) for a little bit and sometimes it stutters all the time up untill it crashes

[Troy]

But it used to play great on high settings, is that correct?

Edited by Troy, 06 October 2008 - 05:53 PM.

[Blacksmith*]

when I first bought my latest game BF 2142 yes and after that it went down hill but it started about a week after I first installed the game and played it

[Troy]

I'm just going to do some wondering aloud here...

I wonder if your hard drive DMA transfer speeds have slowed down. Because the game is installed on the hard drive, it's constantly accessing the data off the hard drive. If your hard drive speed has been slowed down, then it would explain why the game is pretty much unplayable at the moment. Other symptoms could include choppy audio if you're playing from a music file stored on the hard drive.

Here's a fun thread I had some time ago now, on my last computer. You can read it just for kicks if you like, but that's where I'm heading with this train of thought.

Download HD Tune in my signature and run a benchmark - post your results here.

Cheers

Troy

[Blacksmith*]

ok I downloaded the HD Tune and ran the error checking thing and got that I have 0.8% bad sectors out of 76 GB
and I tried reinstalling my game to my external hard drive and it still does the same thing excepy it froze for a little bit on the loading screen and then completely locked up about 1-3 minutes into gameplay

[Troy]

I have never seen bad sectors before, but this is definitely a problem.

While I think of it, make sure you have current backups of all your important data - do this immediately!

Did you run the quick test, or the extensive test for the error checking?

Have you run the benchmark yet? (First tab) What were the results? Please post them (do it if you haven't yet).

Cheers

Troy

[Blacksmith*]

I did the extensive test for the error checking. ive run various different benchmarks and on the HD Tune it told me it had some kind of error and it wouldnt finish so I dont have any results from the benchmarks.
i'll try it again after im finished backing up my data.

thanks again

Z