Cursed PC strikes again! Spontaneous shutdowns

HarudathHarudath Great Britain Icrontian
edited October 2007 in Hardware
Hello Icrontic,
recently, my cursed and foreverdomed to have low fps PC has been experiencing spontaneous freezes, followed by a noise that sounds like a remix gone wrong then completely restarts for no reason. My monitor has also been turning itself off after recieving no signal from the PC, although turning the monitor off then on again with the power button fixes that. I haven't a clue what's triggered it, or what may be causing it, and I'm even more clueless as to the solutions: Time to call in the big guns *points at Icrontic*. My only theory is, that could explain the monitor thing is that the graphics card has had a stroke or something.

I don't even know where to start, any suggestions? Or any information you require I'll do my best to supply you with it.

Comments

  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited October 2007
    Are you trying to play WoW and a video at the same time?
  • HarudathHarudath Great Britain Icrontian
    edited October 2007
    Well, WoW and media player are open, not a video, but could the Visualizaions be causing it?
  • Your-Amish-DaddyYour-Amish-Daddy The heart of Texas
    edited October 2007
    Not to sound insulting or anything, but I'm wondering why people with sub-par equipment try to do everything at once? If you already have problems playing a game on your computer, why slug more resource-eating things on at the same time?
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited October 2007
    Harudath wrote:
    Well, WoW and media player are open, not a video, but could the Visualizaions be causing it?

    I have a similar problem, and have had it on multiple nvidia cards. If any type of movie/graphical thing is going through a media player, particularly Media Player Classic and VLC, while WoW is going, I get a lockup. It's not immediate, it could be hours later. But eventually, and without fail, I lose signal to the monitor or the computer freezes into an audio loop that sounds like a machine gun.
  • HarudathHarudath Great Britain Icrontian
    edited October 2007
    Well, I'm not the only one then :P
    And it's not sub-par, the specs are decent, I'm just got getting the oomph I wanted, my PC doesn't get much of a difference in usual gameplay while media player is open, but admittedly I can't have it open during raids due to the fps struggling to get into double figures, even with "looks like mud" settings.

    3.07Ghz Celeron D processor
    2GB DDR 400MHz RAM (2x1GB modules)
    160GB Harddrive (partitioned)
    nvidia 7600GT (not overclocked, up-to-date)

    EDIT: And if Thrax is getting the same problem, with his system you can hardly call it sub par, or at least specs related.
  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
    edited October 2007
    That system should be capable of multi-tasking. Rather than criticize his habits, YAD, why don't you try to be helpful with the solution?

    Harudath, from the symptoms you and Thrax described, it sounds like there is a software or resource conflict causing the lockups. My guess is that you want to listen to music in the background while playing WoW? That really shouldn't be a performance problem on a system that is capable of running XP well...

    What motherboard do you have? Do you use the onboard sound card or a discrete sound card? If the sound card is discrete, what card is it?

    I'd suggest trying a media player that doesn't have any visualizations active - if it still locks up, I'd lean away from suspecting the video. In that case, I'd give updated sound drivers a try, and/or back down the slider for audio acceleration by one notch on DXDIAG and see if that makes a difference.
  • Your-Amish-DaddyYour-Amish-Daddy The heart of Texas
    edited October 2007
    Well the only solution I can think of is to install his system management drivers, if they're not installed already. And if other people are having problems with D3D and DirectDraw running together with Nvidia, Stop using Nvidia. Sure they've got the best card out right now, but my crappy old and damaged X1900GT can do winamp visualization with Milkdrop 2.0, and I can be working on a model in Milkshape 3d or Blender, and I even remember when I was debugging my first problem which turned out to be my power supply; I ran HL2 in a window with Milkdrop 2 in Desktop mode. That's Dx9 D3D, and DirectDraw at the same time. Didn't have any problems.

    Does he still have that Compaq/Dell/Emachines motherboard?
  • HarudathHarudath Great Britain Icrontian
    edited October 2007
    It's all very well saying "buy this, it's better" but I'm on a babysitting budget and have parents that never get round to letting me do anything with their creditcards :P, but I get my own soon, and I will be ordering new parts, but for now I've gotta patch up the holes instead of buy a new boat.

    It's integrated sound, and all the drivers are up to date, the motherboard, now that one's tricky :P It's a rare model unfortunately, but in my planned upgrade I'm getting a new motherboard that supports just about everything out there and a 2.67GHz Core 2 Duo processor :D

    The motherboard is a GA-8S649MF, It's the original motherboard that came with my Fujitsu-Siemens PC, but the RAM and the 7600GT are new.

    EDIT: MSN messenger has been causing ALOT of problems lately too, not sure if that's a recurring factor here, Thrax?
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