pc turning off and on in game

sweinhart3 · #1 09-05-2007, 10:41 AM

i can not figure out why my pc turns off then backo nby itself i have flashed the hard drive and reinstalled eq2. it only happens when i am in game. i have a 7800 gforce nvidia vidio card, intel quad core proccesor, and a 2 month old mother board and a a 500watt power supply. please help me

Brorim · #2 09-05-2007, 10:50 AM

Like what operating system do you use.
What drivers for your card
Do you have cooling enough
All power connecters attached to your adapter

Overheating will commonly freeze your comp
To little or faulty power can do reboots or device failures
Connecters to your adpapter might be wrong causing odd problems too
Operating system and driver issues are common too. Ie. youre using a quad core on what operating system.. Xp home/pro/64, Vista, w2k .. ???

Yours
Brorim

sweinhart3 · #3 09-05-2007, 10:58 AM

the operaiting system is windows xp. i have like 6 fans on it lol everything is connected. the weird thing is that is only in game a friend said it may be the sound card could that be possible? i am using the reltek hd audio... it does not freeze the pc it just shuts off and turns back on i am so confused and dont understand. so i think that is what u are asking for

nightwo|f · #4 09-05-2007, 12:35 PM

if it is powering down and then up again, i would suspect either a faulty power supply, or too much draw on the power supply. May also be a thermal issue, might want to monitor the cpu temperature if possible. If it gets too hot the motherboard may be doing an emergency shutoff.

sweinhart3 · #5 09-05-2007, 12:45 PM

i have been watchin the temp it has been normal. and like i said have 5 or 6 fans on it and i just bought the new power supply 2 months ago, was a 480 watt and kept kicking me from game, and then i bought the 500 watt one and now it is shutting dwn and then re powering i tup so i am running out of options... so where i am at what should i do i have monitored all and i have wiped the hard drive there is nothing on it other than the game and operating system... before there was a lot of stuff so i dont see how it is being over loaded

michsageman242 · #6 09-05-2007, 01:04 PM

I had the exact same problem with my wife's pc. Turned out to be the power supply. Replaced that and problem went bye bye. Did a lot of research at the time and did find that memory and hardware issues can cause. To narrow down a bit more go to your control panel, system, and click the advanced tab. Then click on start up and recovery. There you want to switch off the "automatically restart" check box under the errors title. You may get the dreaded blue screen but at least then you will also get an error code with which you can google and get a more accurate assessment. You can also check your event viewer and see what was running at the time. Anything with an exclamation point is something to look at. More than likely you are having a power issue but hardware faults in you graphics card can do this too. If you have an ATI card you can run the diagnostic to help rule this out. You can also try turning down your settings and see if it still happens. Any recently added hardware is subject to more investigation as well. If you have not added anything new then this is probably not the issue. The cpu could be overheating but with six fans I don't foresee this as the issue. You could google for a temp. checker though. There are a lot of freebie ones out there. MSI posts one for there customers on their website. It monitors fan speeds too. It's not likely that this is your problem though just because of the fact you have so many fans and your system did not do this previously. A burn in test can eliminate this possibility. A burn in test is just a cpu intensive program that tests the cpu's ability to process info and retain adequate temps. You can do a similar test on your memory too. I did have a computer that the memory was bad after a power surge. It may be easier to take memory out and take up to a place to have tested as the device they use is much better at testing memory than a simple program test. Usually they will do it for free to get you business.

I know this is a lot of info and several things that you need to check out. Do the first thing I mentioned so you get an error code and check the event viewer. This will help in narrowing down your search. Good luck to ya. It's no fun I will tell ya. That's why a lot of people just pay for it but it really is easy enough to diagnosis yourself if you follow these steps. If you have an extra power supply around plug that in and see if it helps. What wattage PS do you have btw? You really need atleast 500watts these days. Tiger Direct sells some really good ones at great prices. I just bought five for under a hundred bucks (500w) by Orion which are great. They don't look fancy but they are good quality and I now have a spare after replacing the four in my computers that I use currently.

Sage

Just saw your new post. I still wouldn't rule out the PS. I have had new ones out of the box not work. I have also had ones that were only a few weeks old go bad. They have warranties so if it turns out that yours is bad then I would seek warranty replacement. What brand is it??? Is it a heavy PS or really light??? The name brand PS are all heavy due to the quality transformers they use. This makes a big difference.

nightwo|f · #7 09-05-2007, 01:05 PM

if it is powering down and up on its own, it isn't a software problem (or at least very slim chance). Even if the PS is rated at 500W, doesn't mean it is supplying everything your system requires. If you had a problem with a 480 not being enough, 20 additional watts is negligible. I would check the power requirements for your video card, it should state what watt/amps it needs on the lines it uses (you have 3.3v, 5v, and 12v lines within a power supply). Your power supply only needs to not supply enough on one of those lines to be insufficient.

**gm9** · #8 09-05-2007, 01:17 PM

I agree, seeing as it only happens when the system is under heavy load this is likely a hardware issue, and I would agree with the assessment that it's either overheating or your power supply. Overheating can be simple things like just your memory sticks overheating, and you may not have fans blowing on those. And even if you have a 1000W power supply it may still be a bad one that delivers fluctuating power levels which will cause general system instability. If you can just swap the power supply out for testing purposes and see if it helps. If that is not an option start disconnecting hardware like optical drives, PCI(e) cards, etc., to reduce power consumption and see if it runs stabler. If that helps you will still need to get a new PSU though.

Brorim · #9 09-06-2007, 08:56 AM

ironical enough the fans you have installed could draw to much power from your psu ..
I would agree on the powersupply as the culprit..

yours
brorim

**lordebon** · #10 09-06-2007, 10:43 AM

Actually I disagree that this is a hardware issue.

I think it's a video driver issue. Update your drivers.

The thing is, by default WindowsXP skips the BSOD and just restarts you. To make sure your windows XP isn't doing this, do the following (takes from a M$ KB article):

1. Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.

2. Click the Advanced tab.

3. Under Startup and Recovery, click Settings to open the Startup and Recovery dialog box.

4. Clear the Automatically restart check box, and click OK the necessary number of times.

5. Restart your computer for the settings to take effect.

Then when EQ2 does this again you'll get a BSOD and can take down the error message and see what it means.

That is, of course, only if my suspicion is correct and it isn't a hardware issue. But I had experienced a similar thing quite some time ago.