Random restarting during games.

[gucio69]

I just upgraded my comp not too long ago and now when i try to play Medieval: Total War my computer restarts a minute or two into the battle(a complete reboot). I have also experienced same thing while playing Delta Force:Black Hawk Down multiplayer although it is sporadic whereas if I try to play MTW the computer will restart EVERY time i try to play. I am using an Audigy sound card with latest drivers. I tried switching to onboard sound on my Epox EP-8RDA+ and the same thing happens. When I disabled the sound completely though, the restarts disappeared. I do get a message at the beggining of MTW about no Direct Sound being present but i can play with no restarts (and no sound which sucks). I am running an Athlon XP 2600 on Epox EP-8RDA+ with the latest bios. My vid card is Radeon 9500 Pro with Cat 4.3 I believe (the latest ones). All of this is on a new instal of Win XP Pro. The two games that I mentioned are the only ones that cause the random reboots. So far I played Tron, Elite Force, and Max Payne 2 with no problems at all. Any suggestions are appreciated on how to solve this problem and still retain sound during games. If additional information is needed please ask. Thank you all in advance.

P.S. I read somwhere about difficulties that Shogun: Total War (predecessor of Medieval) had with playing sound files. That problem caused CTDs or Reboots. It was attributed to some weird codec being used to encode sound files for the game, and the suggested solution (which a few people claimed that it worked) was to convert the files into wav's and then back into original format (mp.3 I believe). Could this be the reason for my problems ?? If so would there be any easier solutions than the one i described? Thx.

 

[jlr69t]

I had the same problem with Battlefield 1942 until updated the drivers on my video card and updated Direct X. Also with some games sound will tax the computer really bad, try turning the sound quality down a little.

 

[lobadobadingdong]

the two games you mention are very cpu and gpu intensive, what are you cpu temps under full load? my guess is your processor is doing the thermal shutdown on you, my system did that to me too on bf1942 once upon a time, found out some of my case fans where pointing the wrong way, cpu temps where running at 55C. got them below 50C and all was well.