another suggestion would to just set motherboard back to defaults, and see if problems stop.

Yeah, the motherboard's flashed up with the latest BIOS.

I'll have a look at the RAM timings and voltages and see whether they make any difference. I left the computer on overnight with the internet / Messenger / etc.. running and it didn't crash, so perhaps that crash before was a one off.. I'll go play some Half Life 2 / leave Half Life 2 running for a bit and see what happens.

Thanks for all the help, I'll get back to you. If you have any other ideas, let me know.

J

I know it seems inconsequential, but BF2 crashed continuously on me at 2/3/3/6 1T. Benchmarks and everything ran fine a those settings so I discounted the RAMas a problem. Tried drivers and tweaks. Still crashing. Rolled my RAM back to 2.5/3/3/6 1T and boom, BF2 runs solid as a rock! These high end systems are very sensitive to the slightest things. So give it a shot. It doesn't cost anything but time.

System just crashed again, after a good hour or so of playing HL2. It wasn't doing anything graphically intensive at the time, I was just in a small room, so not outside / processing lots of enemies / etc..

I left it this time, pressed no buttons at all. It restarted itself after about 10-15 seconds, but no error messages when it booted back up into Win XP. Checked the temperature of the graphics card - A rather warm 64 degrees C - But as I say.. I figure this is normal.

Guess it's back to tweaking some more. I'll go play with the RAM settings a bit.

J

i would suggest turning off the automatic restart features so you can see what BSOD codes you are producing. heres how to do it, right click on "My Computer" icon, click on "Properties", click on "Advanced" tab, under "Startup and Recovery" title click on "Settings" button, under "System Failure" title uncheck "Automatically restart" box, also uncheck "Send an administrative alert". (it requires a certain service running to work properly, unless if the specific service is running leave it on otherwise) After that click the "OK" button then click the "Apply" button then click the "OK" button. Also a major suggestion would to turn off your Screen Saver and turn off the monitor shut off feature, when playing games or running benchmarks.

Screensaver / Monitor - Already set to never off. Same with system suspend.

Automatic restart - Turned this off before, but the error report was still on. How can I view these BSOD messages? I've checked all the logs I can find and found no errors in them relating to the times the restart has happened.

J

Oh, hang on - You mean blue screen of death? I don't get this, and haven't seen it for years now. The system freezes and the screen becomes frozen on whatever I was looking at in the game at the point it crashed.

J

Finally! Just had HL2 running for several hours without a crash - Something it couldn't achieve before. Changing the CAS setting to 2.5, seems to have fixed it. Will just have to see how things go now I guess!

Thanks for all the help guys, it's greatly appreciated.

J

Damn I'm good! LOL Hope it stays stable now. Good luck.

lol thanks Merc, and thanks everyone else!

And off we go again..

Crashed a couple of times now, just sitting around turned on downloading stuff from the internet. Admittedly, this is kinda concerning now.. the RAM adjustments seemed to fix it, but it's started again.

I guess I'll have to keep monitoring it and try and work out what's causing it. Could it be some piece of software / a dodgy driver?

Hope someone can help (again.. sorry! Damn computer..)

J

Well I'm not as smart as most ,but when my computer was doing the samething
I put a small fan directly hitting the mobo,to see if it ran longer without crashing.
In my case it worked as long as I had that fan there.Then a friend came over with
a spare PSU and we plugged it into the vedio card and it worked.

Just an Idea

Josh. I believe there was a patch put out by microsoft regarding dual core CPU's and how the task mange within windows. I don't have a dual core so am notwell versed in their idiosyncracies but check out this link. http://www.amdzone.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&am...p;sid=3951

Thanks for the replies.

I'm not sure how you mean, plugged in another PSU? I've already got a fan blowing from the side directly onto the mobo, and a large 120mm one blowing through the front, so I know the cooling shouldn't be a problem. Also not overclocked at all.

Thanks for the advice Merc, but I'm just on a single core CPU here . Just the good old Socket 939 Athlon 64 Venice!

Any other ideas out there?

Thanks

J

Sorry Josh, posted on the wrong thread.