Graphics card problem

[neillsmob]

I hope someone can help, here goes, every time that my kids play there games the internal fans start spinning and then the cpu spikess to 100% then i need to reboot the system, i think the fans that are spinning is the one that kicks in when u reboot for 1-2 seconds then stops because it sounds like that one cause my PC is usually quite, my specs are

WIN XP Home
AMD AthlonXP 2200+1.79Ghz
NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 420
256Mb memory
40Gb HD

ahy ideas would be appreciated

[elmers]

Why do you need to reboot after the fans start ? Does it crash ?When you play a game the cpu is at 100% and heats up. Then when you quit a game the cpu is still hot for a while and the fans will spin fast untill it cools down.

[neillsmob]

i need to reboot cuz everything just freezes up and cant even get the task manager up then need to reboot but somtimes it just reboots itself, everything is OK with everything else but as soon as the video or games goes on thats when my graphx card starts to jump and freeze cuz of the heat that it produces then it crashes ? ,at my wits end with this, dot now wot else to do, and the card has all updates to date

[DanGrease]

Do you have the latest driver for you video card? Sometimes this causes errors and problems and if you have it already installed uninstall it and install it again and see what happens.

dan

[neillsmob]

already tried that thx for ur response, any other ideas would be gratfull =)

[elmers]

It sound like your computer might be overheating ? I cant help you tho cause I dont know about fans and cooling. Also is the processor overclocked ?

Also what motherboard and ramfrequency ? Is it a new computer ?

[JayMan]

Is this a brand name PC or a custom build?

The fans should always be spinning... ut perhaps your video card has fans which throttle themself when the card is not being used for 3d... Altho i've never heard of any cards under the geforceFX series with this feature...

JayMan

[neillsmob]

@ jayman, my pc is a brand name "compaq" . inow its a compaq, it has inside it what it was bought with about 11 month ago, the games that get played is lego and the sims not alot off off 3d action,