System hangs when playing games

[Ozpete]

I recently assembled a new desktop for a friend. Here are the relevant components...

CPU Intel Core2 Duo E8400 3GHz
M/B Gigabyte EP45-DS4P
Graphics Gigabyte 9600GT Turbo, 1GB PCI-E 2.0
RAM Team Xtreem 4GB 1066MHz.

After loading drivers for the graphics adapter, the system would hang during Windows boot. (OK with the generic graphics drivers). Loaded latest giga drivers and flashed latest graphics BIOS...same result. I had posted this problem previously.I then tried several other cards...7900GS, 7600GT and 9800GT with 512MB cache and all worked fine. My friend decided he would buy the 9800 GT...then my supplier agreed to provide the 9800GT with 1GB cache for the same price. With this new card, system boots fine and runs everything OK, except several games! After running the game for a few minutes the system hangs. On restart, it runs again for 2-3 minutes then hangs. After this has happened 3 or 4 times, it runs OK!

Removed 1GB, then 2GB of RAM. No change. System is definitely not running hot. As these games are played online, could it be a LAN adapter ot router prob? Any thought would be really appreciated.

Forgot to mention, O/S is XP Pro.

[Solaris]

Well, that is nothing, my computer crashes whenever i run a game. So i cannot play games anymore. I can see the end of my Computer near :( .

[Flubug]

Have you installed the latest drivers for your computer? Could you mention the games which will hang? Since this issue only happens to certain games, I strongly feel that it is a driver related issue. If you are running the latest driver, are they from the official site? Sometimes, certain versions of drivers released in tech sites are less stable for certain computer systems (Yes, even if they are WHQL signed). I don't refer to all of them. Only some of them, as every computer has different setups, so it's not surprising that certain drivers appear to be buggy.

[utkarsh30june]

Does the System hang on playing Games Offline (Single Player)?

If yes then there might be a Motherboard or a driver issue or even Misconfigured BIOS settings.
Download the latest Nvidia drivers and install them.
Also, check your Motherboard for misconfigured wires, etc

Do you have latest DirectX installed?
Download at- http://www.microsoft.com/directx

Check your PC for the above problems and Tell us what you got..... :D

[blackrose]

well done for assembling the new Powerful PC.

As there are no BSOD I think playing certain games hangs the PC. I think you should download the latest games Patches from the creator as these would solve many problems.

If you own the game than you should be able to download the new version of the games.

I Suggest updating the Graphics card driver from the manufacturers web site. Try to use the orginal drivers for your System. MS drivers works but they are incapable of getting the maximum benefit.

[Raymond]

Well I am not really good in this but I thought I should share this because I experienced similar problems before.

Few years ago I bought a really expensive and advanced motherboard but don't know why it was crashing on certain games. It's really frustrating when you have a powerful computer but crashing on new games which is suppose to support. Finally in the motherboard's forum, there were discussion on how to configure the BIOS properly which fixed the crashing problem and gave better stability.

[Ozpete]

Thanks guys. I just had a phone call from my friend who advised he has called into his local computer shop where he was convinced the problem was his OS. He BOUGHT Vista Home Premium and , surprisingly, after installation, his game-playing is fine! No hanging...all is well. I am at a loss to understand why it runs OK with Vista but not with XP Pro. Any ideas on this?

[utkarsh30june]

IT maybe because of the Motherboard drivers being incompatible and having bugs on old XP but are Vista ready(compatible).