Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations strongm on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

My computer freezes

Status
Not open for further replies.

snidy

Technical User
Mar 25, 2001
3
US
I just built a computer.
Asus A7V133, Thunderbierd 1 ghz, 256 mb crucial, 3D prophet 2 Ultra.
While playing 3D games my computer freezes up about every half hour, after reseting, it plays fine for another half hour or so. any ideas?
 
i am not sure if that mainboard is capable of monitoring temperature. i have the intel based asus board, & it does. If yours is capable, log the temperature & voltage of all the key elements (CPU, mainboard etc), & when it freezes look to the log. If one of the temperatures are too high you can then look into what is making that element overheat at any given time. if it is not running hot, try working out exactly what triggers the freeze & post that here. It is much easier to solve if you can isolate the problem...... James Goodman
j.goodman00@btinternet.com
 
Try monitoring the resources on the PC. You can use the stuff in the system tools folder in accessories (provided you have them installed) If the resources are being taken by the games, the the computer will freeze. Also try the temp monitor. Like John said ", try working out exactly what triggers the freeze & post that here. It is much easier to solve if you can isolate the problem...... "
 
ok, you say it happens when you are playing games. does it happen when you are on the internet, word processing...etc etc. maybe try downloading an updated driver for your videocard.
 
I like Nikonbys answer if you're running Windows 4.x. The system resources are still a very crucial factor. They were the single most common reason Windows 3.11 used to lock up. System resources have very little to do with physical memory. Two programs, user.exe and gdi.exe set a stack in memory of a certain size. In Windows 3.11 that stack, if memory serves, 46K. Once either of those two stacks got filled it generated a GPF, or general protection fault, which means, I believe, that a program was trying to write to memory above the size of the stack. Since all 16 bit Windows programs ran in one address space that's verboten, the memory might contain program data and could be corrupted. According to Microsoft that problem was history because 32 bit programs run in their own memory space, plus the size of the stack was increased. I haven't been able to find out just how big that stack is, but Windows 4.x allocates memory very strangely. It allocates to itself the first TWO gigabytes of RAM and releases only a certain percent for program use. If more user memory is required it frees more memory by swapping part of the OS to disk. With the speed of your computer and the memory requirements of 3D stuff you may be generating GPF, but you aren't informed of this because they, according to MS, are a thing of the past. Forgive the lengthy explaination, but it explains why I support Nikotnby

Don Swayser
 
Does the freeze only happen in games?

Your system looks like an "overclockers" set up - are you overclocking the chip or the geforce? If so, heat is probably your problem. Get a copy of Motherboard Monitor from one of the overclockers web sites and watch your temperatures. If the case gets hot, it could well be your card overheating.
 
can you tell us what your power supply watts is.for a system like this you should have at least a 300 watts.
 
I have about the same problem as he.

I have a 1.2 athlon with asus a7a266 mobo, 256 DDR and asus v7700 64 Mo with all the most recent drivers, bios, and utilities. Exactly like he, my comp freezes every 30 minutes or so. I play tribes 2 and keep the smart doctor running in the meantime. My card reaches around 60 at its peak. I know it is high but there is no way in the whole wide world i can lower that. My case is open and i have my room fan blowing in there. Plus, if nothing is running except for winamp, my system eventually crashes too so i doubt it has anything to do with video card.
thx in advance
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top