Playing video games crashes the computer entirely...

[Hyudra]

My friend installed The Sims 2 and NHL 2005 on his Dell Inspiron 5150, and the computer crashes (stops completely) like 2 mins into the game. He can play NHL 2004 fine, but not 2005.

We've updated the BIOS and video card drivers to the latest versions, and the problems are still around. I remember this happening on my desktop computer with a GeForce 2 video card.

So how can he fix this problem?

 

[imported_Skorpio]

hmmm....I have a FX 5200 and what would happen is it would freeze my computer like every 2 minutes.

The soultion for me was upgrading the bios.....

HOWEVER....did u install the bios correctly? and did you assign the card to a different irq no?

 

[Hyudra]

Yup, we used Dell's flash bios. It updates everything automatically.

 

[1sikbITCH]

Other than NHL2004 still playing fine, I'd think it was a heat issue. As the videocard starts working hard, it overheats and crashes due to the fan on it breaking, or even just poor airflow in the case. This happened to me because the fan broke on my Ti4200, and then it happened to my wife's pc because I had an Athlon Thunderbird in a case with only one exhaust fan and no intake fans at all. That baby ran at 70C for years but when she started playing videogames I had to cut a bunch of fanholes to improve airflow.

 

[Hyudra]

That's exactly what I thought at first, that it was a heat issue. But when I feel the laptop case it's not hot at all, which is odd.

 

[CVSiN]

directx 9.0c
both of those games I know for a fact require the latest DX version...
make sure your drivers for all your devices are 9.0c compatible and install it.

 

[Hyudra]

Yup, directx 9.0c is installed. The CD said to install it before installing the game.

 

[tk149]

Update Sound Drivers? or Rollback sound drivers. I had this problem with Ghost Recon way back when...

 

[Hyudra]

nope didnt work

 

[YabbyU]

I had a similar problem with my old case. I opened the case and put a 10" fan blowing in there and had no more crashes.....my case didn't feel warm either. Eventually I bought a new case and added more fans

 

[Vegito]

I believe inspiron 5150 is a notebook, irq + heatsink does not apply

I had a 5150 before, it was a pos, very klunky.. return that and got a 8600 instead.. when i had it, it pauses like every 2-3 seconds.. keep accessing the HDD..