My computer is being gay?

[Dark Crusade]

Hey guys. Having a dilemma which I seem unable to pinpoint the cause of. Was wondering if any of you had an idea.

Firstly, heres my system specs.

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (3.00Ghz)
Asus P5E-DELUXE S775, X48, FSB1600, DDR2
Corsair 2 x 2Gb DDR2 800Mhz
ATI Sapphire Radeon HD4850 **NOW RADEON 5770**
Thermaltake VG6000BWS Soprano RS 100 **NOW COOLERMASTER HAF FULL TOWER**
Western Digital 620GB Black Edition - OS
Samsung 300GB - Secondary
Toughpower 600W **NOW COSAIR 900W**
Windows Vista Home Premium 64Bit
Asus 22" LCD
IBM 19" LCD

And here's the problem-

As of recent (past fortnight or so); my computer decides to randomly crash every once in a while. Sometimes it freezes, and the music glitches (loops the last 1ms), and my mouse doesn't respond, nor does anything else. Sometimes it just restarts instantly, and other times, I get a white screen. It happens rarely when my computer is merely idling, however; I am unable to play any 3d Game at all. I've tried Mass effect 2, Doom 3, Dragon Age, and some others. As soon as I load my game, or get into actual gameplay, it crashes or freezes.

What Have I done/ ruled out?

Well I've tried two harddrives, so I assume that rules out corrupt system registry or drivers? (I had to reinstall _most_ drivers on the new HDD)
I've got a new video card. Radeon 5770.
I've got a new PSU - 900 Watt, and a new case with rainbow of fans and airflow.
I've monitored CPU fan, temperature and voltage. Noticed nothing at all even slightly wrong.
Monitored GFX card. The first ran really hot, but thats no longer a problem with the new one, yet the problem is persistent.

No idea what caused it to start. I tried a system restore, although I'm not sure if the oldest restore I had was long ago enough, but regardless it didn't fix the problem.

Help guys. I'll continue to look into it too

[Dark Crusade]

My only suspicions left were the BIOS, and Sound Card. I disabled all sound drivers and sound and tested a few games, same problem. All my drivers are also up to date, so I'm thinking perhaps I need to flash my BIOS. I want to upgrade to 7 nonetheless, so I'll do that first; after formatting my HDD. If it still persists then I'll look into flashing my BIOS.

[ddunit]

No idea what it is, but I have a similar problem. If I start playing games, my computer crashes after around 30 minutes. And when I idle my computer, it freezes. Lol

It's a piece of crap.

On-Topic:
Did you try to restore to factory settings?

[Robin]

Ask around on /g/ on 4chan. They've managed to fix most of the problems I've had with computers.

[In7el3ct]

I took a course on troubleshooting computers… it wasn't that great. Here's what they recommend:
1)Update all drivers
2)Replace Video Card
3)Replace RAM
4)Reformat
5)Get someone else to do it

On a side note: you do know that Windows Vista and 7 ignore sound cards, right? Unless programs give you the specific option to use your sound card, windows will automatically process it with on-board sound, then just send the data to the sound card. I can't remember if XP does it as well, don't think so.

[Dark Crusade]

As mentioned I've ruled out those possibilities. I have two steps left.

1\. Format and update to W7 (doing this regardless)
2\. Flash BIOS.

[Kusy]

When I realised my PC was gay I threw it thru the window… I'm a homophobe.

[Dark Crusade]

Tried flashing my BIOS. Successfully reset settings, since I new the default ones worked fine. However; didnt fix the crashes. I'll obtain Windows 7 soon, format and install it.

[Eviltyphoon]

I've had similar problems with my previous laptop. An upgrade to W7 did fix the problem for me.

[demon xxx x]

dude, remember when I had that problem? You said something melted into the heatsink, check it..

[Dark Crusade]

@Dezire:

> dude, remember when I had that problem? You said something melted into the heatsink, check it..

I don't remember you having the same problem. One thing I'm sure of is I didn't say something 'melted' into the heatsink. Besides, I've monitored CPU temperature and voltage, nothing even slightly out of whack.

[Gwen]

Kreator… have you tried removing everything you can except for what is absolute to make the computer run?

Try running it with only the os hd, video, and 1 stick of ram. See if it will crash. Ive had some computers that behaved kind of like that and i had to readd each part seperately.

All tho to me it does seem like some sort of heat issue. either on the video card or the mb. I dont always trust those heat programs. Maybe your heat is normal until the cpu is really needed then it spikes and kills your pc before it can register the temp?....

[Dark Crusade]

I've replaced the video card as mentioned, and there is no way in the world with the case i'm running, and fans that it would be a heat issue. Not to mention the issue arose out of nowhere.

My entire Operating System is playing up lately, so I'm hoping when Windows 7 arrives (ordered it yesterday); it will fix it. Although it doesn't make sense why the problem persisted on my XP HDD. Recently, a lot of random things have gone wrong, such as windows not minimizing, thumbnails displaying correctly, and other weird behavior. If by any chance the HDD format and OS upgrade doesn't work, I'll be sure it's likely my motherboard…

[Gwen]

Hmm good luck! Hopefully a fresh install will clean it up for you.