Win 7 crashes with strange noise

[halendia]

Hello guys,

I've been experiencing this issue for a month or two now, but sometimes when I play games on my PC (Win 7 Home Premium 64bit) it just completely crashes down (not at start, but during the game after having it up and running for minutes and sometimes hours). I don't know what causes this, but it seems to only happen when I play games, the ones I play most frequently are Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age: 2 and Elder Scrolls: IV. Running multiple other programs, such as Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Internet browser, music etc does NOT cause this issue.

Anyway, the crashes come unexpectedly and my screen(s) become completely black and they stop recieveing signal from the PC (as if they were on but the computer was off) and at the same time there's an erratic "eeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrr"-ish sound playing (unchanging and not different from time to time) which means the computer is still on. I've so far been unable to solve this issue and the only way out from the lock is to reboot by holding in the power button or unplugging the power cord.

I'm not really a computer person, I'm grateful for advice and possible solutions, but please, make it as far from rocket-science as possible...

Issues I'm experiencing is on my uncustomized Acer Aspire M3400.

AMD Phenom II X6 1035T
6GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GT 320
Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit

Thank you,

Mickis

 

[halendia]

Update: I've installed the latest NVIDIA drivers for my graphic card AND Win 7 SP 1. My problems remain, however...

 

[leoncer]

Hey,

I wish I had an answer to your problem because I'm experiencing a similar problem where my computer actually reboots instead of just blacking out. The games include Dragon Age II, Darkspore, Portal 2, Rift (however I noticed when playing with a low quality render for Rift the crashing occur less frequently).

I've done some experimenting and although the crashing can occur at any time it generally occurs when zoomed up on some detailed ledge or during some scene(like dialogue in Dragon Age II).

I got this computer almost 2 years ago now and had no problems with Dragon Age I and Oblivion. I looked around on some other forums and found some guy having a similar issue and he was using the same Thermaltake cover as me, perhaps you happen to be using a Thermaltake?

God I hope someone helps us...

 

[halendia]

Hey leoncer,

The problem I was experiencing was graphics card overheating because of dust in the fans. Simplest and only solution is to open the PC up and clean it out manually. Did wonderworks on my PC.

Hal