I have an Athlon XP 2700+ 2.2 Ghz. system with Windows XP Pro. It has a Gigabyte GA-7vaxp motherboard, SB Audigy 2 sound card, ATI Radeon 9700 Pro, 1 GB Ram, IBM and Western Digital HD, Creative DVD-ROM drive, and LG DVD-Rom/CD-RW drive. In general the computer works fine, but whenever i want to play a game on it (doesn't matter what game it is), a few minutes after ive played the screen freezes then the whole computer locks up. Games include Baldurs Gate II Shadows of Amn, demos of the Tom Clancy series of games, Lionhead Studios Black and White & Black and White: Creature Isle to name a few. I cant even do a soft reboot, I have to power down. Sometimes i get a blue screen saying the ati device driver crashed. I have the lastest drivers for all my devices. I've performed a thorough memory diagnostic and it checks out fine. Any suggestions?
Is there program to monitor system temp for windows? My bios has hardware monitoring. Also what should the system temp be? and cpu temp?
I also have a self-built system. Generally if your problems occur after starting a game its going to be one of two problems. Heat or Video Drivers. Because you're having problems on all games and not just one or two in particular, I would guess that its a heat issue. Generally an outdated driver won't affect all games in the same manner. However, playing games are usually the most resource intensive applications and generate more heat on the CPU and GPU. One way to test the heat issue is to open the case and find a big portable house fan and blow it directly on the computer and see if you can play for longer. Also verify all the case fans are running properly and are installed properly. Since you built the computer yourself verify that you have at least two intake fans in the front of the case pulling cool air in and two exhaust fans blowing out the back.
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