restart during games

nikki89705 · #1 02-06-2006, 01:18 PM

my box got hit by lightning a few months ago, ever scince then when i play games it restarts itself.i can play for about an hour the first time b4 it restarts, then every 20-30 mins after that it restarts.
i play FF11, CoH, and the Sims. 2 mmorpgs, and an offline game. i have both XP home and 2000 Pro on seperate HD's, I put one new HD in, the new one is running a downloaded copy of XP (from a trusted source), the old one has been checked for errors and is running a legit version on 2000.i have a new ATI vid card. a new 64bit board and 64 bit AMD prosecer, it is compatible with the board. i have 512 of ram and it is the only thing that i have held over from the old box. best buy did diognostics on it and is fine, they also did a burn...came back normal. i have put a new 350 watt power supply, at first i thought it was a power issue, nothing changed, i put a second fan in, thought it was a heat issue, even ran the box with both sides off and a small unattached fan goin, not a heat issue. i am at my wits end with this, i even went so far as to call dell

i have never bought a full box and it makes me silightly sick that im thinking about it, especially after all the money i have put into this one, i hope it is a simple issue and i am just over looking it. pls help =(

ANZAC_ELITE · #2 02-06-2006, 03:15 PM

Can you give some more detail on your box e.g. vid card, drives etc ........ 350W is an awfully small psu these days, it may not be up to your demands, you probably would have been better to go 450W +

nikki89705 · #3 02-06-2006, 03:37 PM

im at work at the moment it was a 109$ ATI vid card, very cheap, also have an older nvidea gforce really old, like 4 yrs or so. the new hd is 60gigs, the old one is 120, would the psu cause it to shut down randomly?

nikki89705 · #4 02-07-2006, 01:15 PM

are there no more ideas out there??? =(

logarock · #5 02-08-2006, 02:25 PM

The idea that the thing was "Hit by lightning" should never leave your mind. Folks that are hit by the stuff may act fine save for the now and then "Fit". Your efforts to save the deal are note worthy however.

ANZAC_ELITE · #6 02-08-2006, 03:36 PM

Well ATi cards have had some weird driver problems lately (from reading ATi based forums) that may be your problem, as this only happens during games I would suspect the video card first. You've added a fan and a hdd so the psu would be my second suspect, thirdly I'd check the ram (run Memtest86 to ensure it's not faulty)

It's basically a process of elimination, try a different vid card, if the problem persists then it's not the card, unplug all extra devices you can safely and try the games again, if the problem persists it is more than likely the psu (how many amps on your 12v rail btw?), run memtest, if you get errors it is the ram and so on.