keeps crashing

[Thermo]

My pc occasionly crashes and goes to a blue screen saying that it will carry out a physical memory dump (and a load of other gobbeldy gook i dont understand) the only way to clear it is to unplug it and fire it up again. ANy ideas what could cause it.

being the child i am i have now bought call of duty 4 which is making it crash more than ever in a similar way.

 

[Igorian]

Could be a number of things. Check the event viewer for entries around the time of the crash.

It could be a rogue application, a bad bit of system or video RAM, or even a pending disk failure.

 

[Thermo]

could the video drivers being doing it?

 

[Trazor]

Have not found a better Tech forum than this for computer problems...


http://www.techsupportforum.com/

 

[marshman]

is your pc a year old or older ? if it is and its crashing more when playing a game
then take the panels off and blow it out with an air line
look for bed fluff that is stuck in heat sinks that have fans and blow out the power supply unit
don't wast your money on cans of compressed air from the likes of pc world they're crap
and don't touch any part inside with the air line nozzle
if you have a case fan look at the gauze-holed cover on the case and wipe the fluff of that.


is it a good game ? worth me buying a copy ?.

 

[Igorian]

could the video drivers being doing it?

Possibly, but from the information you have provided, it's only possible to give a broad range of possibilities. As I said, check the event viewer, it's probably the best chance you have unless you can post the contents of the BSOD, which might provide some clues.

 

[SMG]

You can download a hardware check program called PC Check. Put it on a floppy & boot from it. There you can do a check on your computers hardware, normally CPU, Mobo & Memory.

 

[Alison556]

I had a similar problem to this a little while ago and it was down to a graphics driver that shouldn't have been there. I was trying to be clever and update the drivers, but obviously updated the wrong one. Have you installed or updated any drivers recently?

 

[Deluks]

Being a gamer you probably update your vga card more often than most, if you've got an ATI card (as I have) you will have to jump through hoops to get the older drivers out before installing newer ones.

Blinding game though, I completed in on hardened and it took a few weeks. I don't recommend either of the first two difficulty settings as you'll find it too easy. I got the training level at the start down to about 24secs.

What memory do you have installed?

 

[gcol]

My money is on a failing graphics card.

 

[sarah1980]

Hi, you can find more information on how to fix system crash problems in this article.

http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=2233208

 

[madder]

I would suggest that you write down the 'stop number' that appears with your Blue screen of death and then google the results for it. It could be a number of things. I've had it a couple of times before, for me it was RAM sticks, Basically had to take each one out at a time and leave the other in and see if the BSOD appeared, until I figured out which stick was causing the problem. Then just replaced it and problem was solved. The other time it was a bad driver for a graphics card.