Strange crashes during gaming.

After installing the most recent RC of Windows 7 and performing an upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 [I'm aware it's far better to do a fresh installation and if worse unfortunately comes to worse, that'll be my next step. =P] - but I've been running into a most unusual crashing issue.

My computer never crashes under normal circumstances, but as soon as you feed it sufficient stress [just about any game or even a fairly large number of concurrent downloads], it'll eventually crash without fail. Now rather than BSOD, it does something I've never experienced before: it'll give a quick sound distortion from whatever sound was last played [i.e. if you're in a game of Team Fortress 2 and someone was speaking over a microphone, you'll hear their last word stretch out in an eerie, almost demonic way-] and then the entire computer shuts off.

This PC has always ran games pretty decently, so this crashing hardly 6, 7 minutes into a gaming session's irritating to no end and I was hoping someone could offer some assistance. If at all possible, I'd heavily appreciate it. I've looked over the forums here for a bit trying to find a possible solution, to no avail unfortunately.

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Few examples of situations that trigger this crash:

• Team Fortress 2.
• Crysis.
• Multiple downloads [enough it would tax the PC.]
• Roughly any game that's even mildly intensive to run.

More information: OS is Windows 7 64-bit, I've the most recent drivers [that I'm aware of both by manually checking and by DriverMax] available, specifically for my 9800 GT and sound card. Not overclocked.

If there's any stability tests or what have you I need to run, I'll do so and update this post.

CPU-z: CPU-Z Validator 3.1



Again, appreciate any support offered.

Update on the matter-

I decided it'd be wise to do a fresh install, running the latest 7 RTM build. After updating my drivers and such to their most recent/7-compatible forms, I again ran the various things listed above [TF2 first,] and was again greeted with the same problem though not -quite- as quickly.

I'm sure you already have the latest realtek drivers for Win7. Some people are having problems with the Nvidia drivers for Win7 so you might want to try one of the older Vista drivers like the 182 or 185 series.

Also, when I went from Vista 64 to Win7 my overclock went unstable on me, or so I thought.

It was crashing while moving files with just general unstableness.

To get it stable again I needed to bump up the northbridge voltage a tad which has worked on a few other computers here.

Thats all I can think of for now.

After running the 185 driver, I lasted longer than usual during gameplay but eventually ended up crashing regardless.

I'm curious though, how exactly would I tweak the voltage? [I know to do so in very small amounts, but I mean where would I gain access to do so] - I've got MSI bios and I've not seen the ability to change it even with the hidden features key hit.

I also considered it could be temperatures, but the fans seem fairly clean [though I do need to nab myself some compressed air] - and I again from these bios don't have access to anything that may influence a "shut down when reaching (x) temperature" setting.

Heavily appreciate your support by the way, the driver downgrade did allow me more stable performance for a longer period of time. But for a guy who's used to long sessions in Photoshop CS4 and longer sessions in Call of Duty, 10 minute (roughly) before a shut down's just killing me. XD

Just an idea but I would check out the hardward on the machine. Memtest for starters and mabe another vid card if you got 1.

Haelstrom Fist said:

After running the 185 driver, I lasted longer than usual during gameplay but eventually ended up crashing regardless.

I'm curious though, how exactly would I tweak the voltage? [I know to do so in very small amounts, but I mean where would I gain access to do so] - I've got MSI bios and I've not seen the ability to change it even with the hidden features key hit.

I also considered it could be temperatures, but the fans seem fairly clean [though I do need to nab myself some compressed air] - and I again from these bios don't have access to anything that may influence a "shut down when reaching (x) temperature" setting.

Heavily appreciate your support by the way, the driver downgrade did allow me more stable performance for a longer period of time. But for a guy who's used to long sessions in Photoshop CS4 and longer sessions in Call of Duty, 10 minute (roughly) before a shut down's just killing me. XD

Yes ten minutes of use is not acceptable I would say. Did you check for any game patches for cod4?

I have a different bios than you so it's hard to say but most bios are fairly easy to figure out. For me it's the SPP voltage for you they might call it something else. It may just be using auto voltages for everything. Some boards don't allow you to adjust anything but that would drive me crazy.

If the problem is only during gaming it could just be a driver specific type of problem or overheating. Realtek has some new drivers for Win7 but you said you had those I think.

High Temps will do that sort of thing also so blowing out the case and cleaning all the fans might help. I have to blast out my rig every other month. My 5HP compressor comes in handy for that.

If all else fails you could run a memory test or some other type of stablity test.
I like this one for testing memory> http://hcidesign.com/memtest/download.html

Well, speaking of the fans- I actually opened up the case and took a flashlight out to get a good peek.. and I feel a tidbit silly, especially because I know the importance of good case cleaning habits.

The PSU fan wasn't looking great, but the fan directly above my motherboard and the one below were horrible. I can see where my cat left his mark in the form of fur adorning my GeForce 9800 GT. XD

I took a Q-Tip and carefully removed a good bit of it, and then I'll be taking some compressed air to the case soon as I get my debit card cleared in a few days. That, needless to say, had to've contributed to my problem.

I've a 450W PSU, model I'd have to check. I intend to replace it for something better. I only have one graphic card currently, unless I want to swap out my 9800 GT for a 9500 GT I've got somewhere in my old case [which would be a tragedy.]

The issue was occurring when doing anything relatively stressful, be it parallel downloads, Adobe Photoshop, or gaming of any sort beyond relatively lightweight games.

Damnable thing about the BIOS- [I wish this PC had an SD card slot so I could just take a photo of it]- there's no way that I've found to modify the voltages, the theoretical CPU shutdown temp, or.. really much of anything. Closest you get to overclocking options would be adjusting the FSB, and it doesn't even like the slightest changes in that.

Appreciate the support heavily, everyone - I'll see if the.. absurd state my fans are in was the problem [no doubt if it wasn't, it'd soon became a heavy problem] - and then if that doesn't strike the cord, run MemTest and some other diagnostics to get more information.

Well on the bright side, even with my half-assed cleaning job, I've not suffered a crash yet. One fan was bad off enough I highly doubted it could even turn. That combined with a less than stellar PSU easily could equal the fierce shut downs I was experiencing.

But, I'll definitely be nabbing some compressed air once I'm able 'ere, as well as looking into a new PSU- never actually replaced one before, it a fairly harmless or harrowing process?

Newegg.com - hec X-Power Pro 600 600W Continuous @ 40°C ATX12V V2.2 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Power Supply - Power Supplies

Thinking I might go with this. Then again, I'll read into it; I'm again, rather inexperienced with power supply units. All the best you guys, the constant crashing was driving me insane.