lock-ups every 4 hours of gaming

Okay, so it all started yesterday night while I was playing Wolfenstein Enemy Territory. I played for about 4 hours, then my computer froze up on me, and i had to do a hard reset. After restarting, it got stuck at the POST while searching for IDE devices. I shut it down, and it still had trouble. So I shut it off, unplug it, reset the BIOS, and start it back up again. Detects IDE devices, but my USB hub wasn't getting any power, my mouse wasn't, and I couldn't get into the BIOS because the keyboard didn't work either. So I flip the power switch on my Antec SmartPower 400 WATT, wait for the squeal and the mobo power LED to go off, then I count to five and turn it back on and everything works fine!

Now, tonight I was playing Wolf ET again, and after 4 hours of gaming, it locks up, and I hard reset, but it works fine from the start!


Some of you are probably thinking it's a heat issue, but I'm doubting it. I can play for about four hours, it'll freeze, I restart, then I can play for another 4 hours without any problems until 4 hours rolls around again.

I'm thinking it MIGHT be because of running my RAM in dual channel (I don't see how though), or it's this motherboard, because I never had problems with it before I ran the RAM in dual channel. I'm doubting it's the power supply, it's less than a month old.

Please help me....I'd hate for this to happen at a LAN party (ones with computer problems get laughed at).

Thanks,
~C.P.

...just my "never at all humble onion" here, but if this is occuring every four hours, I doubt it has anything whatsoever to do with RAM/hardware. Sounds to me like every four hours something is overwhelming your system, is the Task Manager doing a cleanup/defrag while you're gaming, every four hours? I mean, if it's a consistent "4 hours", something is scheduled, and if it isn't the Task manager, I'd be lookin for a virus...

...just a shot in the dark here, but if it is every four hours, something is scheduled, hopefully it's just a Task Manager brainfart...

Celeron_Phreak said:

I'm doubting it's the power supply, it's less than a month old.

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Is this the first time in this month you've gamed more than 4 consecutive hours? Farcry used to crash on my after every hour till I put a new PSU in. Try puting your old one back in, the new one may be defective.

Nope, my old PSU was more unstable than this one. Can't be the task manager, since I don't have anything scheduled, and I ran spybot, hijack this, AVG, NAV, ad-aware and trojan hunter, none of which found anything.

Any other ideas?


EDIT: do you think maybe rurnning Prime 95 for four or five hours could help determin what's wrong?

It's a good idea to run Prime95 to test it too. It would be a good way to definitely rule out heat, and to watch and see what's going on when things lock up if they still do.

definately try Prime95, and watch your temps...
Process of elimination my friend.

Well I ran Prime95 for 4 hours before I left to work, then I went to work for 8 hours, and let Prime95 run for another 5 hours. I got home and nothing had happened. No lockups, no restarts, no errors, it passed the Prime95 tests just fine.

Something that came to mind while I was at work though, was maybe it's the network card. I mean, Wolf ET is multiplayer only, so maybe it COULD be the net card. What good program is there to test the network card?

A few other programs I'm looking for are RAM testing programs, hard drive testing programs, and video card testing programs, that are similar to what Prime95 does.

As far as testing your videocard, the 3D Mark tests work fine. Grab 05 or 03 and loop it until your brain bleeds or it locks up. If your videocard is overclocked, crank it down some if you get artifacting or lockups.

There's a program called memtest86 that'll create a bootdisk to check out your RAM, but if Prime95 runs fine then it's fine.

Oh, also, on Prime95, did you run the in place test? That's the one you should run (and run 2 seperate copies if you've got a P4 with HT)

But, sounds like your videocard to me.

I actually have had my card running at 520/1.05 lately instead of 530. I can run it fine at 530, just I don't need it right now. I ran the tourture test of Prime95 all day. Guess I'll run the in place test tonight. I'll let you know how it goes.

Celeron_Phreak said:

...What good program is there to test the network card?

Click to expand...

Sisoft Sandra has a networking burn-in test. Give it a go!

Well so far I've benched the CPU, RAM, and network card. I've still got the video card left, but I'll do that this afternoon while I'm at work. Any other ideas you guys can think of while I'm not testing anything else?

Hmm, well I played for 6 hours tonight and didn't have a problem at all. Still wondering what was causing it. Video test didn't come up with any errors either BTW.

Haven't had lock ups since I finished running all the tests. I wonder what it was that was causing soo much trouble. Oh well, at least it works now