Computer help

[albinoblackbear]

Hi, I've had my computer for quite a long time now, but every once in a while, a blue screen will pop up for a split second and my computer will crash. Here are my specs:

Windows XP Pro
2 Gigs of RAM
eVGA 7800GT
AMD Athlon 64 3700+

It gets really annoying when I'm playing games. Any ideas?

 

[brady]

That could honestly be caused by several things...

Is there any simularities when the machine crashes?

Ex:

Only crashes when gaming.
Only crashes when coming out of standby?

Anything like that?

It could be caused by anything from a faulty driver to heat issues.

There are logs in your OS that capture information when the machines crash...

These logs can be found by :

Right clicking your My Computer Icon.
Select Manage.
Select Event Viewer
Select "System"

Look for Red X's...

You may see multiple red X'd icons around the time of the crashes...
See if you can find any information that would be relevant in this situation.

 

[albinoblackbear]

There are lots of red X's. For the source it either says System Error or Service Control Manager. For the Category it either says None or (102).

 

[brady]

How often does this happen?

What are you "usually" doing when this happens?

 

[albinoblackbear]

Most of the time it happens when I'm playing games. Since that's what I'm doing usually when I'm on the computer, but it does happen when I'm not playing a game quite alot also.

 

[brady]

A good test :

If you crash again... Check the temps in your Bios...
You might be over heating...

The machine crashing is actually saving you.

 

[albinoblackbear]

How do I check the temp. in my BIOS?

And another thing, there's a thermometer on the front on my computer, and it never goes over 30C, at least that's what it says.

 

[brady]

Thats weird... Whens the last time you updated your video drivers?

 

[albinoblackbear]

A couple weeks ago? But the crashes started months ago.

 

[brady]

Do you have an OS disk?

You can repair the OS to rule out OS issues.

Random crashing while playing games is difficult to troubleshoot... especially when it doesn't happen "every" time you play.