Computer Crashing... HELP!

[uncle_jimbo]

One of our comps has begun crashing every time a 3D application is ran (ie, games).

Specs-
1Ghz Athlon (Tbird)
320Mb PC133
Asus A7LE MOBO
40Gb Seagate HD (speed unknown)
64Mb SiS Xabre 400
Windows XP Home (SP1 and all updates have been installed)
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Any help is appreciated, keep in mind that it does this on every videocard we threw at it.



-- uncle_jimbo

[VHockey86]

By crash do you mean a blue screen or just a lockup?

BSOD I would suspect RAM... however that normally doesnt just go bad on its own, normally an issue of defective from the start.

Another thing I would check into is the power supply. Based on the specs I presume the comp is a couple years old. Especially if its a generic power supply, it could be dying. I had freezes playing games like UT2003 and even Warcraft III that got progressively worse. Replaced my Codegen 350W (11 months old) with an Antec TruePower 430W and fixed the problems immediately.

But... before reverting to replacing hardware (mainly b/c it costs money) you might want to try a fresh format/install of windows XP

[edwin2002]

test your RAM ... i had a huge problem when trying to play movies on my machine this past year ... a simple RAM test (www.memtest86.com) should tell you if that's the prob ... good luck!

[uncle_jimbo]

By crash do you mean a blue screen or just a lockup?

Just a lockup.

But... before reverting to replacing hardware (mainly b/c it costs money) you might want to try a fresh format/install of windows XP

It is a fresh install, it began doing it under Windows ME, then i did a fresh install of Windows XP Home, problem persisted.