Wasnt sure where to put this....

[_slh_]

OK, My pc has been running perfectly for about a year now, everything works fine, no random crashes, etc etc until suddenly last weekend I boot it up and it goes all weird on me. AV and firewall software refuse to run on startup, games wont run, keep crashing to the desktop etc etc. So I decided to format the h/d and reinstall windows. That done, and xp pro all installed, I installed the same AV and firewall I had running before (norton 2003) and alls still good. Sorted. Install hitman 2, however, and everything goes to crap. The game would run, but only for about 5 minutes before it just froze completeley, coult alt-ctrl-del, nothing, had to hit the reset button. So I upgraded my vid card and sound card drivers to the latest ones. Now it runs, but randomly reboots the machine. Nothing in the rig is overclocked, everything is running at stock speeds. The exact specs:

ABIT KT7A m/b (non RAID model)
Athlon 1.4ghz with a thermaltake volcano7 hsf, thermistor removed so the fan spins at full speed all the time
Geforce 3 ti200 gfx card
Turtle beach santa cruz snd card
2 NICs (a realtek connected to my hub, networking to my g/fs pc, and a dlink connected to my motorola cable modem)
Adaptec SCSI card connected to a Plextor CDRom and a Yamaha CDRW
IDE DVDRom drive on ide channel 2
1 30gb (master) and 1 60gb (slave) hd on IDE chan 1
Antec 500w PSU in an Antec dragon case
3 intake fans, four exhausts

I cant figure out whats causing it to happen. The fact that things only go wrong when I play games seems to point to something to do with the gfx card. Im just about to install some more games that I know worked fine beofre I reinstalled windows, Ill post more when Ive tested it with those.

 

[_slh_]

Update:
The pc also has 512mb of pc133, forgot to put that in the specs.
Just installed Tony Hawk 3, and thats doing the exact same random reboot thing as hitman. Think Im going to try some older detonators for now and see it that fixes if...If not I havent got a clue why its doing this

 

[_slh_]

More news...The 30.82 dets made hitman 2 freeze the comp again, and tony hawk crashes to the desktop with them....downloading the 28.32s now, hopefully these will do a bit better

 

[_slh_]

Nope, 28.32s give the exact same problems...think Id better leave it alone for a bit now otherwise itll just get me stressed and angry....maybe another reinstall of windows tomorrow...not as if ive got anything better to do, im off owrk with a frozen shoulder, can only move the bottom half of my right arm.

 

[KLowD9x]

How long has it been since youve cleaned everything?

 

[_slh_]

reinstalled on saturday, only really had chance to do anything with it today (tuesday)

 

[Thelemac]

He meant, like, physcially cleaned out your computer.

Sounds to me like you're overheating.

 

[KLowD9x]

I mean taken everything out and blew the dust out of it? And what are ur temps? Also, do you have a therm. on ur vid. card?

 

[chittnp]

May want to consider flashin your bios, my computer was running fine with no problems when I developed a similar problem, (same OS) and kept getting the BSOD....flashed my bios and everthing is good to go again

 

[_slh_]

the comp is clean...the case is only a couple of months old, so everything got a good clean when it went into there. I also took the vid card out yesterday and cleaned the contacts on it, then gave the whole box a blow out with an air duster. I just installed the 27.50 dets and the 2 games I mentioned seem to be running ok, apart from the shadows sometimes going a bit weird in hitman 2. No crashes though. Temps are 45 on the cpu, and 29 system (thats after half an hour of tony hawk 3). Voltages are 3.48 on the 3.3 line, 5.18 on the 5v line and 12.54 on the 12v line. As far as I know my m/b bios is the latest one for that board (dated 01/31/2002) but ill check Abits site in a minute and see if theres a newer one. Vid card bios is version 3.20.0118. Not sure if theres a newer one available, but again, ill take a look in a moment.

 

[_slh_]

It seems its something to do with the detonator drivers....anything numbered 27.xx and below work fine, anything with a higher prefix than 27 causes the same problems...god knows why.