Grrr PC started to reboot during games recently

[Geosurface]

Y'know, I played a quite a lot of Need for Speed the other day... and that was pretty graphically intense, and it never crashed during that.

I wonder if this is just something with these two particular games (Witcher 2 and CS:GO) it actually seems like maybe it's stopped in CS:GO, although CS:GO switched to the game itself just closing. After I did a cache integrity verification (during which it redownloaded one file that had a problem)

Maybe I should delete and redownload Witcher 2.

 

[Juddog]

Y'know, I played a quite a lot of Need for Speed the other day... and that was pretty graphically intense, and it never crashed during that.

I wonder if this is just something with these two particular games (Witcher 2 and CS:GO) it actually seems like maybe it's stopped in CS:GO, although CS:GO switched to the game itself just closing. After I did a cache integrity verification (during which it redownloaded one file that had a problem)

Maybe I should delete and redownload Witcher 2.

Is your GPU overclocked? If so, one other thing to try is to set to factory settings for that card type (e.g. if the card is pre-overclocked, set it to the normal setting for that generic type of card).

When I play Bioshock Infinite, and the GPU is overclocked (at the settings it came to me as advertised, since it was "factory overclocked"), the game will crash. If I set the GPU to the default settings for that card, then the game never crashes at all. This was confirmed as happening to other people in the Bioshock forum as well.

 

[Geosurface]

Is your GPU overclocked? If so, one other thing to try is to set to factory settings for that card type (e.g. if the card is pre-overclocked, set it to the normal setting for that generic type of card).

When I play Bioshock Infinite, and the GPU is overclocked (at the settings it came to me as advertised, since it was "factory overclocked"), the game will crash. If I set the GPU to the default settings for that card, then the game never crashes at all. This was confirmed as happening to other people in the Bioshock forum as well.

Nah it's not overclocked. Nothing I have is.

 

[CuriousMike]

Swap out any hardware you can for old stuff you have laying around; old video card? Do you have onboard video ?

Take out a stick of memory. Still resets? Swap the other stick in and test again.

Can you get it to happen not in a game?
I don't know if you can game with Windows booting into safe mode.... try that if you can.

How about Furmark? That sucker is punishing.

 

[CuriousMike]

Also : If you have a spare, old harddisk -- make a clean Windows install on it and install Witcher 2 and run that and see if it still crashes.

The hard part here is determining if it's a software issue or a hardware issue.

 

[Juddog]

Also : If you have a spare, old harddisk -- make a clean Windows install on it and install Witcher 2 and run that and see if it still crashes.

The hard part here is determining if it's a software issue or a hardware issue.

Yeah from the conditions mentioned in the OP, it could really be a number of different hardware components; if you have old stuff laying around, it's a good way to eliminate what it is that is causing the issue, one component at a time.

 

[KeithTalent]

Did you run Memtest yet? A while back I had a bad stick and didn't realize it since every game I owned played perfectly except for two of them. I kept thinking it was the games causing me to crash, but after running Memtest found out one of my sticks was bad, or at least certain sectors were bad.

It was very strange as I'd never encountered that before. It's usually an all or nothing thing when I have bad hardware, but in this case the issues only came up in very specific situations with specific games.

KT

 

[Seba]

This rules out the GPU overheating.

No, it is not ruling out GPU overheating. Those are CPU temperatures, not GPU temperatures.

 

[UberNeuman]

Any of you running Firefox by chance? The last few versions have been eating memory like a babe with candy.

I'll run Firefox then start iTunes and my pc crashes and reboots.....

 

[AlexAL]

Repaste CPU?

 

[JeffMD]

geosurface, if you can get those bluescreen errors, it would pretty much answer your problem.

I belive while AMD processors still cause the motherboard to shut down (NOT REBOOT!) when criticle temps are reached, video cards and intel CPUs will down clock themselves causing performance issues, but will not shut down or reboot the computer. Also it seems like you are atleast comfortable about working inside your case so you seem like you should be able to tell if something changes and things are getting hotter. Chances are however if the same fans still work, temps have not changed.

So what does cause reboots? A number of things, but they all have errors and they all have tell tale signs.

PSU reboots, this is the trickiest because in most cases if a psu is failing, it powers down instead. However if the psu is simply not supplying enough or proper voltage, the motherboard will become unstable and reboot. You should probably be able to use a number of hardware monitors and look at your voltages to see if you can spot a number going way off signifying failing components.

Bad RAM, causes reboots and hangs with very little warning. Usually does not fail at idle but can fail during low or high activity. I've had bad memory sticks stay stable on memtest for over an hour and still be bad. These are the most annoying because you can't force them to cash out. Easily identifiable with a bluescreen error.

Bad GPU/GPU memory. Easiest to spot because you should be noticing corruption in your games shortly before the reboot. Also once the damage gets bad it should show up on your system text/boot screens.

Bad hard drive. Kind of like RAM, you won't see things happen at idle but you will see reboots at low and high use. Copy several gigs of data which should not stress memory or gpu and see if this crashes the system. This one is also pretty easy to identify by bluescreen error.

 

[Geosurface]

Thank you JeffMD,

There really are no blue screen errors, it's just a straight up reboot. These BSOD analyzers show I haven't had a Bluescreen since over a month ago...

I was just running Bioshock Infinite for quite a while and it never did the reboot... so I'm wondering if it's issues with particular games. I've definitely had it in Witcher 2 and CS:GO... hmm

 

[JeffMD]

If there is no bluescreen yet then either the psu is causing the motherboard to downright crash before the OS crashes, or the motherboard itself is defective and resetting before the OS crashes.

 

[Geosurface]

I found this thread and it seems like a lot of people who had problems with no other games had this same problem (exactly) with Witcher 2.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1893879&page=7

A lot of people are adamant it is a hardware thing, but I really believe there's something with that game. I think my issue with CS:GO is a coincidence. I believe Bioshock Infinite would have triggered this too, if it was hardware. I also think Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit would have.

I'm going to try other games, like Crysis 3 probably.

I've also just updated my Nvidia drivers and am using their new "GeForce experience" program to optimize Witcher 2 to see if that helps.

I believe I've had this issue with CS:GO before and then it resolved itself... I'm reinstalling it.

 

[Seba]

In your first post you said that it happens in any game:

Seems like any amount of time spent in Windows 7 won't do it, but pretty much any game is starting to do it...

If this is not happening in all (graphics-demanding) games, just on some games, then probably it is not a hardware issue.

But still, did you check the GPU temperatures?

 

[Geosurface]

In your first post you said that it happens in any game:

I think I was too sloppy with my language. I'm going to run more tests on other games.

But still, did you check the GPU temperatures?

I'll do that now.

UPDATE: Just downloaded GPU-Z, 52 c in Windows

 

[Dankk]

UPDATE: Just downloaded GPU-Z, 52 c in Windows

If that's your idle temperature (without any games running), then that's way too hot.

Now run GPU-Z side-by-side with a graphically-demanding game, and tell us what the temperature goes up to.

 

[Geosurface]

In MechWarrior Online it fluctuates between 77° and 78° C

That's taken during Hitman: Absolution which has played for quite a while without triggering a reboot.

 

[StinkyPinky]

My PC crashes to a red screen sometimes during a Civ 5 session which is weird. Only in Civ 5 (since the expansion) so must be something to do with the game rather than the hardware.

 

[chadashcroft22]

Have you tried to verify the download with cs:go in steam? You can right click game go to properties and hit verify integrity of game cache. Not sure on witcher since I have never played that.

Next what I would do is a sfc/scannow command in an administrator cmd line prompt to check your windows install for any corrupted files.

After that I would run a memory scan your best bet is to run this overnight as it can sometimes take a bit for memory errors to pop up. Memtest86 is the one i like to use all you have to do is burn it to cd then go into bios and make ur cd the default boot option and restart. http://www.memtest.org/

 

[Geosurface]

I had verified the download on CS:GO and that didn't help.

But I just got done playing a good chunk of CS:GO after deleting all local content and redownloading it.

No reboot.

Can't say for sure, but it was a pretty long session... a lot longer than it took for it to reboot the previous times, I think. I'll play a longer session in the coming days.

And research I've done online seems to indicate a lot of people have the Witcher 2 reboot issue... ugh, I was finally ready to play through a big single player game again and chose that one... and then I run into this problem.

 

[Jodell88]

I'm betting that it's the nvidia drivers that are buggy. Good luck, because people with the 500 series have the same problems and there's no fix as of yet...

 

[blackened23]

Might be time to just bite the bullet and re-install windows 7. For a 670 your temps are fine.

 

[Geosurface]

Might be time to just bite the bullet and re-install windows 7. For a 670 your temps are fine.

I just got a larger SSD for my C: drive a couple of months ago, so my Windows 7 install is not very old at all.

All my games are on other drives, too.

 

[zinfamous]

last time this happened to me consistently, it turned out to be a bad DIMM. I think I had 2x 1gb DIMMS at the time (OCZ, I believe), ran memtest, and yep--one of them was shit.

and you know...that is what prompted me to create this damn AT account after lurking for a few years to finally diagnose this problem. OCZ rep saw my post and hooked me up with a free replacement (memory was about 1.5 years old at the time)

EDIT: also, a few years prior to that, video corruption (vertical lines) leading to system crash during any kind of visual stress ended up being a failing GPU fan. That one was easy to diagnose...I could smell it