Windows 7: Video Card Black Out

I'm playing my favorite game Medal of Honor Allied Assault when suddenly the screen goes black and the computer crashes. I have to do a reboot in order for the computer to come back on.

I have a Nvidia GEForce 210 video card
Windows 7 Home Premium
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6400 @ 2.13GHz, 2128 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)
2gig of RAM

The game has always had a problem with freezing from time to time but returns to being playable after about 10 seconds. This black out crashing problem has just started in the last few days.

Any ideas on what I should be trying.

Oh yeah I have updated the video card to the latest drivers.



TD

Is this a purchased game with a DVD installation directly onto your HD or a game through a service such as Steam or OnLive? Have you had issues with other games?

Also, what A/V software are you using? Finally, have you downloaded the latest drivers for your Graphics Card?

Downloaded the latest drivers the game is installed on my hard drive. My son now tells me it does the same blackout thing when he's watching videos on Youtube. So it's not just the game now.

You mentioned pauses you associated to a ram problem. You might actually have something wrong with the ram on your computer. I see you have a Dell. Is it under warranty? I've had a couple things go wrong on my computer and Dell replaced the parts very quickly and I did not have to pay any shipping at all.

It's a Dell about 5 years old now. I was actually leaning towards maybe a heat issue with the video card but this is the 2nd card I've had in it. The other being an ATI Radeon X300. The pausing happened with that video card as well but not the black outs.

Wow, we see a lot of Dells with 200 series nVidia cards on this forum with this behavior.

Are you getting any notifications on screen when the freezing behavior occurs? ("Display driver xxxx stopped responding and was recovered").

Are you getting a blue screen with a message when the computer crashes?

Navigate to your Event Viewer and look at any critical errors listed under System. Note any that have to do with video or that log about the time the behavior happens. There is an option to copy and paste the errors in a reply post.

No messages, no blue screen, just goes black and crashes. Only way to bring it back up is to reboot it. It's like the video card just shuts off.

Temperature issues can definitely be a problem, and you would not be the first person to have the problem you describe be caused by heat. After doing some searching, Speed Fan looks like it would be a good piece of software for monitoring the temperature of the GPU, CPU, and hard drive. If heat is the problem we might be able to help you find a fan or other cooling device for whatever it is that is getting hot. Anythings getting hot can potentially cause the shut down.

Like Petey says, get Speedfan to monitor your temps.

An easy test is to simply remove the side(s) from your case and run the computer. If the condition improves, you are definitely dealing with heat.

If you have a small house fan, you can set it up to blow into the open case for an even better test.

I installed speed fan and my temperature on video card is running between 69 - 75C. Not sure what the card should be running.