Problems with my PC crashing and rebooting

[Cerek the Barbaric]

It started several weeks ago when my home PC would FREEZE while playing BGII. I took it to the shop and upgraded almost every component (bigger HD, faster processor, etc). But after getting the machine back, I STILL have the same problem. The machine will suddenly freeze, then crash and completely reboot. While this usually happens when I'm trying to play BGII, it also occures at other times.

It has crashed while I was trying to connect to the internet. It has even crashed and rebooted as soon as the desktop appeared immediately after it had just crashed and rebooted! I have asked for help in the BGII forum, and I've un-installed all the Mods I have in the game, then re-installed them in a specific order. I've UN-installed certain components that seem to be causing a problem, yet the PC continues to crash and reboot on a regular basis.

I've downloaded the latest version of DirectX (9b) and I even took it BACK to the PC shop today. They also thought it was a problem of software incompatability, but didn't have a chance to actually look at it today. I decided to just bring it home and try a few more things myself before taking it back. I just spent a substantial amount of money on the various upgrades and I'm really not too thrilled with the idea of spending any more money with them since their "improvements" did nothing to help the original problem.

So now I'm coming to G.D. to see if anybody HERE has any suggestions. One thing I've noticed is that my BGII games that are still in Chateau Irenicus seem to cause much less problems than those that I've played further into the game. But I also had the same problem when I installed Divine Divinity and tried to play it the first few times. I downloaded the official patch for DD and that seems to have helped - although I haven't played the game very much since downloading the patch.

So - again - the problem doesn't seem to be exclusive to BGII.

Any help, ideas, suggestions, tips, or advice wuld be greatly appreciated.

[VulcanRider]

Sounds like the problem isn't specific to BG. I'd guess it's not software related. You said you upgraded almost every component. How about:
1. Power supply? If it can't keep up with the load, that can cause the PC to reboot.
2. Cooling fan(s)? If a component overheats, especially the CPU, the box could freeze up (pardon the pun) from time to time. Wait a few minutes for it to cool down again & it seems to work ok...
EDIT: I've heard of programs to monitor the CPU temperature, but haven't worked with any. Maybe someone could recommend a good one?
3. Did you make any changes BEFORE noticing the problem? That could provide a clue...

[ 06-23-2004, 10:28 PM: Message edited by: VulcanRider ]

[Harkoliar]

yeah.. if you have a heat sensor software installed.. you should use it if it overheats and such. thats the only hardware thingie i can think of freezing your computer

also.. did you upgradae as well your mobo? i think your hardware problem could be that one.

[Stormymystic]

did you make sure you unchecked the reboot randomly box in the system properties? seriously I think someone else just had the same problem, not sure if it was fixed or not though it had to do with fatal errors happening i think

[Gardner]

The temperature is the most comum problem in frezze cases.
But, if you would like to try something else, try to find the latests drives to you equipament (video card mainly), update your windows, or both. =)

Apps to look at your pc temperature:
Sandra SisSoft
Everest Home Edition
And others benckmarks apps.
Sandra is easy to use.

Some motherboards have a utility to look at the temperature in(on) setup.

[Animal]

Did you upgrade the Power Supply?

If not, there's a very good posibility that's the culprit. If you're running a dx8+ vid card, 2GHZ+ cpu, multiple drives and 512MB+ you need a minimum 450W quality power supply.

I suggest you turn off automatic reboots under system properties -->advanced -->start up and recovery and record the error message that is displayed upon crash.

This will tell you exactly what the problem is.

[Cerek the Barbaric]

Thanks for the advice, everyone. I'm not sure what a "mobo" is, but I DID get a new motherboard (if that's what you're asking). To my knowledge, the power supply was NOT upgraded - but I trust the guys that did the upgrade and I'm sure they would have told me if I needed to do that.

As for the error message, the only thing I get is a pop-up window that says "The system has recovered from a serious error". It gives me the option to Send the Report, but since it has rebooted the PC, I'm no longer connected to the internet (still have dial-up)

I DID actually "Send the Report" to Microsoft when I had taken the PC to work with me to work on it there. We have DSL at work so I was able to Send the Report. Unfortunately, Microsoft had no idea how to solve the problem - so they weren't any help at all.

Arrrggghhh. This is SOOOOOOO frustrating! All I want to do is play some BGII, and my machine has better specs than many of the members in the BGII forum that are regularly posting their latest exploits.

I'm probably going to take it BACK to the PC Store and have a talk with the owner. When we discuss the charge to troubleshoot the PC, I'm going to explain that it was NOT crashing and rebooting BEFORE the upgrade. Then it just kept FREEZING and I had to manually reboot.

[Ronn_Bman]

It definately sounds like a trip back to the store is in order. Maybe they just checked to see that it rebooted and didn't leave it on long enough for the error to repeat(which would be kind of sorry on their part). There is some number crunching program out there my buddy used to test his machine. Before upgrading his cooling system, the program would crash his system in less than 10 minutes every time, but after installing the new fan and heat sink, it runs it for days on end. I'll check with him to see what the program is.

[Raistlin Majere]

You might also want to make sure you have the latest drivers for you graphics card...also, just check that your powersupply is around 300W. That should be enough

[ 06-24-2004, 08:29 AM: Message edited by: Raistlin Majere ]

[Cerek the Barbaric]

A coworker whose son just graduated from a college with a degree in computer engineering thinks it's a virus - maybe a "Sasser" virus. I get "kicked off" the internet if I'm not active for more than a few minutes. In fact, it kicked me off while I was typing this message.

I know now that it is NOT a problem with BGII, because my wife was trying to play a game of Scrabble and it did the exact same thing.

After each crash and reboot, I get a popup window that says "The system has recovered from a serious error".

So now I'm more convinced it has something to do with what was done at the PC store - so I'm going to be more insistent that they find the problem and FIX it.