computer hardware problems - constantly issues

n88tr

So I've been playing PC games now for like 10 years. I've ALWAYS had crashes/freezes/BSODs but I figured that's part of the PC gaming territory. My older brother, a longer-time gamer says he rarely encounters problems with games and has no clue why I always have computer problems. We both have good knowledge of hardware/software so I know I'm not a moron but I made a mental list a while back of the Games I can play w/o Problems and then The Games I cannot Play due to an insane amount of Problems and thus Unplayable. The Unplayable games far outnumber the Playable games.

To put in in numbers I have about 20 games I like to play a lot

Oblivion
Fallout3
CNC3 Tib Wars
CNC3 KW
Borderlands
COD MW2
COD4
Left 4 dead
Left 4 dead 2
BF BC2
etc

Out of 20 games, I have 4 that can run consistently without any of the problems below. EVER. Which I find interesting and 2 out of the 4 are high-system intense games so they are making the computer work hard but not enough to crash/freeze/BSOD it.

I meet all system reqs for all my games but my main issues that prevent me from long-time play [more than 3 hours straight] are

1. DVI-D signal errors
2. Freeze, needs soft reset
3. CTD [crash to desktop]
4. BSOD [rare but it occurs]

My knowledge on these issues

1. DVI-D signal errors
I only have 1 plug on my monitor [viewsonic VP201b] that fits into my IO slot so that's that. All my Googling has resulted in 'ur using the wrong plug' or that the power supply is not constantly supplying the computer thus the error occurs. More on the power issue later...

2. Freeze, needs soft reset
Possible computer overheating which I consider unlikely because my room at home is cool with 2 fans going, one directly on the side of my case that I took off, and another one oscillating around the room. At college my room is even cooler, I have an AC unit in my dorm which keeps things super cool or even cold if I want it that way. The other possible reason is who the heck knows why, there are so many reasons why this happens ie no one knows why.


3. CTD [crash to desktop]
This mostly happens with modded games like Fallout 3, Oblivion. I attribute this to the mods with I assume cause instability as per that they just exist and that's one of their inherent side effects. Some games I have unmodded like Fallout 3 again, is just an unstable game period for me. I can't play for more than 30 mins without it CTDing. Constantly. Same for other games like STALKER, STALKER COP, etc.

4. BSOD -blue screen o' death
Mainly happens with my STALKER games. I personally blame the X-ray engine that it uses because I have all the STALKER games and they all sometimes BSOD or CTD/freeze but if it's gonna be an issue it's usually a BSOD. The last in the series of STALKER, COP [call of pripiyat] I cannot play for more than 20 mins without it doing this, randomly.

I want to say that I have 2 computers. My laptop here that I use internet, web design, modeling etc but not gaming because it's 5 years old.

My gaming tower I only use for gaming. I never connect to the internet directly for internet surfing. However I do connect to a hard line at college [a T3 I think] for gaming which on their connection is unbeatable. I mean that I do not download anything from firefox or any browser on my gaming tower. I do this so there is few little chance of virus/etc however unlikely that might be. I try to keep my tower as free of anything but gaming as I can due to my paranoia of it getting F'ed up. I back up my laptop and tower data once a month like clockwork.

I did a hard drive wipe and clean OS XP install 6 months ago on my gaming tower but I did not notice any decrease in gaming problems. I was sure this would fix things but it seems I was just wasting my time??

I might be tempted to wipe again but it takes Steam days to re-download my gaming library and that sucks plus I worry about leaving my tower on overnight to download, that's how I fried a previous PSU, leaving it on for too long. I cannot sleep if I leave electronics on overnight, I'm really OCD about that I know.

I have newest motherboard drivers, sound card and video drives for my tower and have even rolled back to some older video drivers but they don't seem to help any.

I recently upgraded from my 320 mb 8800 GTS [nvidia] to a ATI HD 4770 card, which was a steal for the price and a significant upgrade I believe. But now I wonder if my power supply is the culprit of all my problems, not supplying a constant supply of power and thus creating havok on all the parts in side my tower??

While I'm installing the gfx, should I get a new power supply or do you think something else is going on? I'm pretty desperate to keep playing my games and without games I have school work or the gym... that's it, that's my life.

Tower specs

XP Pro SPs installed
intel duo core, e339 or something, it's the fastest duo core out there
asus av8 motherboard
nvidia 8800 gts 320 mb video [soon to be upgraded]
2 gig corsair ddr2
320 gig primary hd [booting]
500 gig secondary hd [steam primary]
750 watt corsair PSU
viewsonic vp201b monitor 1600x1200 native

Do you think it's the video card, the power supply, or what? I want to play games without errors like my brother. Either he's lying or he did something special but he doesn't know what to tell me or help....

Thanks guys.

Calabi

Its hard to diagnose someone elses pc over the internet. But I doubt its the power supply thats more than enough power and from a relliable manufacturer(but then again it could be).

If it happens in games and not in normal use then its likely to do with graphics, or maybe its the audio, or it could be the hardrive? The only way to nail it down is to do heavy tests, and isolate things. Test the cpu memory graphics(everything), etc for a while.

breakneck

i've had to replace my powersupply on account it was causing all kinds of weird problems. I have more shit plugged into my new power supply than you do and its only 620 watts. if it is your p/s causing problems, maybe its just broken? I had to replace my old one after only 6-9 months of use before it crapped out on me.

Also, I would highly recommend upgrading to windows 7. its a hundred times more stable than xp.

haiddasalami

Possibly your power supply's rails are just dying. Though you say its a 250W Corsair which leads me to believe its a 750TX but could have been a bad one/batch. Also when you need to wipe your HD and want to save the trouble of downloading all your steam games do this:

- go to your steam install location
- Look for your username
- copy the steamapps folder to an external/backup drive
- Format away
- Install Steam
- Close Steam and paste back the steamapps folder from your external/backup drive
- Run Steam and just start clicking all the games, and it'll re-sync up.

Been using this since ever and saved me a tonne of time.

Artifice

Temperature and power are the first things that spring to mind looking at your list. As Calabi says, this is an imperfect science at best over the internet, you'll ultimately have to do your own research and draw your own conclusions.

The weird thing here is that you say there are a couple of games that don't exhibit these problems. If you've got bad power or high temps, it shouldn't matter which games you're playing...if your components are under load, they're under load. Still, my first guess would be the PSU. The best way to find out is to toss another one in there and see if you still have issues. After that, I'd look at case/component temps. Also going to mirror breakneck's suggestion of moving to Win7 64-bit, specifically Professional or better. I loved loved loved my XP partitions for years, and only moved over to Win7 a few months ago, but it's been nothing but stable for me, both in 3D and gaming.

haiddasalami

OP Try running Prime95. What it does is max out the cpu which should max out your load, Also run a temperature program (everest or any other free one) and if your PSU can't handle it, it should BSOD (unless you overclock). Also check your ram...broken ram does the weirdest shit sometimes.

SnowInChina

here a nice programm to check your temperature

http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

i had some similar prolems in the past where i couldnt run some programs/games dues to heat, but some worked fine
a friend of mine told me also that some ram is causing problems with some specific mainboards and i should avoid putting them together under any circumstances

often you find threads about this by googleing your mainboard

and thats about all i know about hardware =(

n88tr

ah well it's not the PSU but thanks anyway. trying to get help here.
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=177783&st=20&gopid=1111691&#entry1111691
I think I'm in way over my head now.

nekked

I had a pc with those exact issues. I tried everything. Turned out it was a bad stick of ram. Prime95 would run forever and no errors ever showed up in memtest, but this one stick of ram would always cause random crash,bsods, etc, especially while gaming or running gaming benchmarks. Sent it back and they replaced it, comp runs fine now.

I see you only have two gigs, which is pretty low to start with, but I'd try swapping them out, one at a time, and see if it makes any difference.