Games crashing my pc

[Chameleon]

Hi
One of the things which prompted my recent 'Another new computer!' thread, was my current pc going bonkers for no good reason. I might wait a few months for the upgrade and in the mean time would like to play games still, so was hoping for some help with the problem .....

Yesterday the pc just started crashing about 30 seconds into any online game of quake3. The screen just suddenly freezes within q3 and I get this horrible 'stuck record' kind of noise screeching out my headphones. Ctrl-Alt-Del, Alt-Enter (q3 doesn't like alt-tab) or any other combination of key strokes, etc will not do anything. It appears to me that the whole pc has crashed. My only option at this point is to reset the pc. I'm pretty sure it can't be q3, as it's been installed and played for years, with no recent changes made to it, other than updating punkbuster at the evenbalance.com webby. It seemed to let me play offline single player ok last night, but maybe I was just lucky. It crashed on baseq3, osp and 3w servers, but seemed ok in ra3. Iirc the others all use pb but ra3 doesn't? Could it be pb maybe? Anyone had problems with it also?
I tried CoD and this played ok for a few hours, then it crashed and brought up the microsoft error reporting thingy. CoD has been known to do this in the past, but hadn't done so for a long time, so I don't know if this is related or not.
I checked the cpu temperature in the bios and it said 60 oC. Dunno if that's good or bad tbh and I'm not certain whether I can tell the temperature of the gfx card. I do have mbm5, but haven't had it on when the problem has occurred, as yet.
The pc has been slowly getting really sluggish over the last year tbh.
PC is a Athlon 2400xp, GF4 ti 4800se, latest certified nvidia drivers, 512mb 2100ddr ram, winxp.
Only thing odd I noticed was that after the crashes, the monitor refresh rate had changed from the usual 85hz, to other things, including 60hz and 72hz. Weird!
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[old.user4556]

Christ, one of 'those' random crashes.

Motherboard manufacturer?

60 degrees is quite high for the 2400+ (the 2400 is my old processor, and i found the thoroughbred to be quite cool) but my guess is that shouldn't really be causing the problem. Have you tried running a CPU intensive programme like CPU Burn in?

Does it crash in anything else other than Q3 and COD such as applications like Photoshop, or IRC open with iTunes running (basic normal PC use), or is it just under gaming load? What about CS?

My other suggestion is that the whole PC may not be crashing, just the game. Because you're running it in a full screen mode, it'll be nigh on impossible to kill it off if it crashes (as you mentioned, alt-tab not working). Try running it in a window (can you do that with Q3? can with cs etc) as you will be able to alt-tab / kill task without a hitch unless the whole PC really has died.

G

 

[Gurnox]

latest certified nvidia drivers

I recently upgraded my Nvidia drivers (I have a GeForce 4200Ti) and have noticed some rather odd problems since.

Upon exiting any 3D game, I am seeing screen corruption and having the odd system crash. Seems too much of a coincidence for it not to be a driver issue by the sounds of it.

Might be an idea to see if we are using the exact same driver (From what you've said, our system builds are very similar). From device manager, I am seeing:

Driver date: 17/11/2003
Version: 5.3.0.3

Can you check to see what you have? If you have the same driver date/version we may have solved a mutual problem.

 

[Chameleon]

Christ, one of 'those' random crashes.

Motherboard manufacturer?

60 degrees is quite high for the 2400+ (the 2400 is my old processor, and i found the thoroughbred to be quite cool) but my guess is that shouldn't really be causing the problem. Have you tried running a CPU intensive programme like CPU Burn in?

Does it crash in anything else other than Q3 and COD such as applications like Photoshop, or IRC open with iTunes running (basic normal PC use), or is it just under gaming load? What about CS?

My other suggestion is that the whole PC may not be crashing, just the game. Because you're running it in a full screen mode, it'll be nigh on impossible to kill it off if it crashes (as you mentioned, alt-tab not working). Try running it in a window (can you do that with Q3? can with cs etc) as you will be able to alt-tab / kill task without a hitch unless the whole PC really has died.

G

The mobo is an Abit KG7 RAID. I updated the bios probably about 2 months ago iirc, so it's fairly up-to-date I suppose.
I will try CPU burn-in to test the cpu, thanks. I assume it's this one.
I haven't seen it crash in anything other than Q3 in this way, although CoD does crash sometimes too, albeit just the programme rather than the whole pc. Not got cs installed any more. The only games I've tried since the problems have been q3 and cod. I could try ET, RTCW or NWN I suppose.
Good point about the full screen mode, I will definately try running it windowed in the background and see if it's just q3 or indeed the whole pc.

Ta Big G

Gurnox - I'll post that info when I get home later m8.

 

[old.user4556]

From planetquake3.net, posted on 25th of December 2003:

Second, there is currently a bug with the new Nvidia drivers and the latest punkbuster; this bug results in the crashing of quake3 pretty consistantly. It is advised all nVidia users use the 45.23 drivers in order to be able to play Quake 3 or FE without any difficulties.

Something to bear in mind? You mentioned you've updated punkbuster and you're running nvidia hardware - clearly there is a known issue here.

G

 

[Chameleon]

Ah ha! Big G, you were one step ahead of me there I had that copied to clip board from some team fortress site and was about to post it here heheh
I reckon it must be this. Thank F' I remembered I'd updated pb at the time the problems started occuring or I'd have probably been surrounded by dismantled hardware parts by about 8 o'clock tonight
Cheers mate. Fingers crossed here.

 

[Chameleon]

I've now installed the 45.23 drivers and Quake3 is no longer crashing

Thanks again for the help.

Gurnox - I was also running:

Driver date: 17/11/2003
Version: 5.3.0.3

prior to reverting back to the 45.23 drivers.

 

[Gurnox]

I've now installed the 45.23 drivers and Quake3 is no longer crashing

Thanks again for the help.

Gurnox - I was also running:

Driver date: 17/11/2003
Version: 5.3.0.3

prior to reverting back to the 45.23 drivers.

Thanks for that. Looks like your problem has solved mine. Nice when it all works out

 

[Gurnox]

Thanks for that. Looks like your problem has solved mine. Nice when it all works out

Well, it would have been. The driver thing was coincidental and my gfx card is, in fact, b0rked..

Aaaaaargh.