games crashing to desktop or rebooting

[dave.king]

hi
I have a problem that has just started.
When i play a game [any game] after a couple of mins it crashes back to desktop or re-boots.
I also have a very small squar in middle of screen view on first post when i start pc,
this is the bit wher it tells you what drives and so on.
I have tried another graphics card but still the same.
I have two drives both bootable,the size is ok on the second drive but still have the crash.
I have tried the latest drivers for card and mobo.
System spec is....
epox 8k3a+ mobo
nvidia geforce 440mmx
512 ddr ram
amd athlon 2400
Also when i boot up and get to the desktop im have to wait about 3-4 mins
before i can select any thing.
I did do a format last week cause of this,ok for a while but then the problem came back.
any ideas.
dave king

[{film_man}]

have you got the new drivers for your vid card ect

[dave.king]

i have updated mobo and vid drivers.
dave king

[Leeum]

What sort of temperatures are you getting in it? I still have similar problems with my ECS K7S5A with it's overheating SiS 753 Chipset when the case has eccessive cooling.

[dave.king]

Hi Leeum
I am runnoing cpu temp between 70 & 78.
Case temp is 30 to 32.
The cpu as all ways run at this temp.
I used to have a k7s5a,,,binned it as it was such a bad board.
There is a ecs k7s5a forum about ,i cannot remember the url,but there is page after page of s5a problems.
thanks
for your reply.
dave king

[Leeum]

Is that 'C or 'F? If 'C you could be looking at some better cooling, urgently.

[TwoPlAnKs]

the temp isnt gonna cause those probs - although it should be colder as leeum said

that sounds like dodgy ram - i had that prob and fortunatly linux came out with some sort of helpful error message to the effect of "Your RAM is ****iedoeed" whilst window just rebooted and crashed to desktop all the time

what you need to do is take out all your ram except one stick, and see if pc boots. try all the sticks. if none of them make it beep (one of mine did - pc wouldnt even boot) then it cant be all that broken but odds are it is broken enough so go and google memtest and put it on a floppy. boot off the floppy and test ram sticks on by one until you get more than 5 errors on one of them. take that stick out and bin it - job done.

you might want to buy new ram since removing one stick of it will obviosuly majorly effect performance (and if you remove all of it then i cant imagine your pc being very useful with only the 64k built in!) so buy new decent ram that outperforms your system slightly

if you only have one ram stick dont both removing it, just run the memtest and see what happens.

[dave.king]

Hi
thanks for your reply's.
The problem was cpu temp.
tried every thing but temp so i downloaded a couple of cpu monitor
programs.
found it running over 90degc under load [that explaned why i got a crash when
i tried to encode movies].
After checking i found that the cpu fan and sinc were blocked withy dog hair and dust.
Also the power supply was the same.
A Mcdonalds straw taped to the hoover hose sorted it out a treat.
Now its running at 29 idle and 31 to 37 under load.
thanks again.
dave king

[dave.king]

Another problem i sorted at the same time was screen size when playing games.
It was directx 9b.
uninstalled it now it works fine.
dave king