Freezing

[McSkittles]

 

So my computer, while playing any game(mainly Halo and COD4) will randomly freeze, and the audio will just continuosly repeat the last thing it registered, and it requires me to reset my computer to do anything. My video card is an ATI Radeon 4850 and I'm running on Windows Vista Home Premium. Any ideas on how to fix this thing before it becomes an expensive trash heap in a McDonalds dumpster?

[BFM_Kiwi]

Halo does that to me.  Or did anyway.  I had horrible text lag, and about once per map rotation it would say "Team Race" or whatever it says at map start, over and over, and it would freeze up.  I could Ctl-Alt-Del and kill halo.exe and restart.

I reinstalled halo completely, and those problems seemed to go away.  I then got a new computer, so I'm not 100% sure it was fixed.

So reinstall is one option.

If it's happening on other games, then maybe video card overheating?  Does it happen right away or after playing for awhile.  Maybe clean the fans, update the video drivers, or turn down the settings a bit. 

You could run a chkdsk /f on your hard drive, defrag the disk and do a full virus/malware scan, which never hurts, but I doubt would make a difference to your problem.

[McSkittles]

The video card is running between 40-42° according to the ATI Catalyst Control Center, with the fan at 60%. I've downloaded all the updates, defragged the disc yesterday, and scanned yesterday as well.

It depends. On Halo it occasionally will take a while, or sometimes won't do it at all. With COD4(demo) it usually freezes early, but I downloaded that today so havn't had much time with it. I also occasionally get text lag, but running at 260-340 fps usually works pretty well . I even tried turning all the settings down or off for Halo and it still did it . I may try a reinstall of Halo depending on what your response is to what I've told you as of now.

[BFM_Kiwi]

Well I'm not really sure.  I do know that reinstalling halo isn't going to help COD4 much!  But I think I would probably try it anyway

[McSkittles]

 

It helps if you disable anti-aliasing in the game when you have disabled it on your video card. It got a lot farther this time in COD4, so I'm going to try increasing the fan speed as well.

[Perfect]

Okay Okay OkaY! Everyone Stop.

This used to happen to me when I had a my old computer that was like 10 years old.

Your computer must be getting to the point where its using so much energy to run the game it can't take it and switching games on Halo can make it stall and repeat over and over.

The only way to fix it is to get a new computer. Or just keep going with how your going.

[McSkittles]

 

I just built this computer in November Perfect.

But I found half my problem; my monitor is HDMI, and so I had to get an HDMI to VGA converter to have it work.

So since I need a new monitor anyways I'm going to get one soon this month.

[Perfect]

lol Ooh >.< Then it must have been my 10 year old ancient computer doing the problems lol

[Taipan™]

and I'm running on Windows Vista Home Premium. Any ideas on how to fix this thing before it becomes an expensive trash heap in a McDonalds dumpster?

Install Windows 7 or XP might be an idea.

Perfect not sure what your trying to say. Computer hardware can only go to 100%, therefore cant consume anymore power after that. HOWEVER the power supply rating can degrade over time. This is called capacitor aging and is the reason why you have have a minimum of 500-550W power supplies in a computer. So powersupply rating to small is another cause of freezing. To check for that do some benchmarks with 3DMark06. If it crashes or freezes then it will probably be the PSU (unless u have a large rated PSU). What is your PSU rating?

Also make sure your graphics drivers are up to date (which I am sure you probably have already done).

HDMI to VGA converter? A HD4850 should have a DVI port on it. You should be going DVI to HDMI since they are both digital signals. VGA is analog. DVI and HDMI are the same quality except HDMI can carry audio. However this wouldnt be causing your problem since a card outputs on all ports anyway. Doesnt matter if you use HDMI or purple monkey port (PMP ) when a signal is out of the computer it is out of the computer and therefore can affect anything in the computer anymore.

So I think it will either be:

PSU underrated
Heat (CPU or video card)
Windows Vista
Graphics card drivers
then finally a dodgy graphics card

[McSkittles]

Yea, its actually a VGA to DVI converter
Took a look at it last night after wondering about that.

My PSU is 750W, not sure what the rating is

I'll give 3DMark06 a shot, and see how that goes. It may be a faulty graphics card, which does happen.

[Taipan™]

Yea, its actually a VGA to DVI converter
Took a look at it last night after wondering about that.

My PSU is 750W, not sure what the rating is

I'll give 3DMark06 a shot, and see how that goes. It may be a faulty graphics card, which does happen.

lol 750W is the rating

Nah that PSU is plenty so I doubt it will be that. If it was something like 300-500W then we might of investigated it further. However still run 3DMark06. Monitor temps for GPU and CPU and see if it does freeze under that load. Another program that stresses the CPU only is a program called Prime95 (program used to find prime numbers of really really really small numbers) it can max out any CPU.

If heat isnt a problem but it freezes then I would guess either Windows Vista hates you or that card is dodgy. Freezing can also be caused by dodgy RAM and CPU. Prime95 can test the RAM as well.