Windows 7: Problems with Games recently

I've just run into occasional problems recently. Not sure if its the OS, Win 7 conflict or what.

Started about a month ago with steam games, Mafia 2, SR 3..occasionally, maybe once a day or once every other day, screen would freeze/lockup totally. To the point that mouse pointer would freeze, alt/con/delete wouldn't word and I had to do a hard restart by holding in the PC button. It seemed to happen mainly when character was in motion, running, driving etc..

First I thought it was a Steam conflict but it happened occasionally too on Dragon Age 2 and every once in a while while surfing the net on safe, reliable pages..you'd switch pages and move your mouse pointer from one side of the page to the other and then it would freeze.

This only happens occasionally..



Its a Dell quad core bought in Feb 2011, ATI card 5700 series, 1gb ram..

Wondered if this sounds like a dusty video card, mouse or keyboard problem, or the OS/Win 7 needs to be reinstalled totally?

Hasn't happened in a couple of days but I guess if it continues, maybe I should reinstall the OS?

Reinstalling is a pain naturally but I'd rather do that then do these hard restarts.

Of course, I'd hate to reinstall and find out it was meaningless to do so, that something else was causing this...

Any thoughts or tips on this issue? Thanks!

I think reinstalling is a safe bet, try it. But unfortunatly this seems to be ither a hdd problem(bad sector or faulty hardiive all together) or it may be a reg-edit error that comes up(I say this because you say it comes up even when surfing the net) I had a similar problem once,that only happened when gaming and the game needed to load a sector, turned out the hard drive was failing.

Hope I helped or atleast game some ideas. And hopefully someone can help you better. Good luck

I would try 1 or 2 things before a HDD wipe. If you have a fresh OS, chances are things will run a lot smoother. The underlying issue might be caused by something completely different, however.
1st, run Mafia 2 or another game that you've been having problems with. On the keyboard, press ctrl+alt+delete. Now, at the top, click the 'performance' tab, and see how your physical memory usage is. You didn't list your system specs, and you mentioned 1gb of RAM, which I'm assuming is the size of your video memory. Nonetheless, it wouldn't hurt to check to see just how many resources are being used up by these games.
2nd, download a temperature monitor online. I know of 2 right off the top of my head. There's hardware monitor, from the same developers as cpuid: CPUID - System & hardware benchmark, monitoring, reporting There's also realtemp: Real Temp - CPU temperature monitoring
Once you've downloaded either one, install and run it. Jot down the temps that it reads and report back with your findings.

Hello rogbrez,

Firstly, help us help you better by filling up your system specs completely as per this tutorial:-

System Info - See Your System Specs

Next, try this exhaustive list of steps in our very own sevenforums tutorial about troubleshooting games, one at a time:-

Tips on Troubleshooting Game Issues

Provide us feedback as you go along these steps, thanks in advance!