Windows Crashing.

lo.

I recently bought an Athlon 2600+ with windows XP professional. It runs fine for long periods while not particularly doing anything. (i.e downloading e.t.c)

However, when playing games, particularly Quake 3 and Diablo 2 to mention a few, a blue screen of death appears and then my computer turns off with a message reading

"Computer will now be shut down to avoid damage ".

(The actual message is very long but it flicks off too quickly to be able to read it)

When I enter event viewer, 2 warnings flick up reading "Temperature event!" and "Fan event ". This could obviously explain the problem, except I live in an extremely cold house without central heating (and it's mid winter here) - and this error still occurs only seconds after turning on my machine.

The actual event viewer itself doesn't appear to list this error however.

This has rendered any gameplay futile - it typically crashes every 15 minutes or less while playing diablo (usually when entering or leaving games). Futhermore, I decided to defragment in the vague hope it might cure the problem, yet ironically after about 30 seconds this produced exactly the same error.

My knowledge of computers is somewhat limited - so any help would be appreciated.

Thanks alot.

-Peter

 

I would heed the warning and have a look at the fans. It doesn't take a processer long to warm up. If I boot mine and go straight into the bios setup it's already up to normal operating temp. This is a matter of maybe 5 seconds. If the cpu fan quits it'll be hot right now. You might have a look in your bios setup and see if there is some sort of control that slows down and speeds up your fans according to the temp. If there is and it's turned on, try turning it off. It could be that there's something not right with it. If it fixes the problem, leave it turned off. Another thing you could try would be to open up the case and set fan next to it so the air is blowing into the computer case and then try booting to windows and playing a game. If the problem goes away it's a sure bet something's wrong with the fan(s). To get into your bios setup watch the screen right when you first boot the computer. There'll probably be a message somewhere on the screen like "press delete to enter setup ". When you see the message start pressing whatever key it says.

 

Motherboard Monitor is a good tool for diagnosing heat issues.

Johanna

Prob should get moved to Hardware, Mr. Admin