HP Pavillion shuts down immediately when launching games.

I have a problem that is really bothering me. Recently my PC froze up randomly at the desktop. It wasnt doing anything in particular that would make it overheat or anything.

When I restarted the PC, it made a loud continuous beeping noise and left a blank screen. I immediately turned it back off and waited 30 minutes or so. When I started it 30 minutes later it started fine. Got all the way to the desktop and it seemed to work fine. Everything looked in order. So I decided to launch a game up and see how that went. So I launched up Battlefield Bad Company 2 and it loaded up perfectly fine to the title screen. I selected single player game and it immediately shut down and made another loud continuous beeping noise.

I then decided to try a different game. So I launched up Lord of the Rings Online. It started perfectly fine. Played the opening cinematic flawlessly. But as soon as it came to character select screen (first place 3d graphics are rendered) it shut down again.

Every time it shuts down, it shuts down at the EXACT same time. It's never off. It's always as soon as any 3d graphics are rendered. Does this sound like the power supply to anyone else? I'm using a Geforce 9600GT gfx card and have a 550watt PSU.

I'm not on my PC now as it wont start so i dont know all the exact specs. I know it has 4gb of ram, intel dual core 2.4ghz processor, Geforce9600GT, 550w PSU etc.

Anyone have any advice?

It's weird because it shuts down at the EXACT same spot for every single game I play. Right as soon as 3d graphics are rendered. It just blanks out before even seeing any graphics.

I hope it's not my video card

Another edit: Now the computer wont even start up, it just makes loud continuous beeping noise with a blank screen.

I find it hard to think the gfx card is fried simply because absolutely nothing else is effected. Everything else works perfectly fine. It's just on games as soon as 3d graphics are rendered. Instantly shuts down before the graphics even appear on screen

 

Could you be overheating your video card? 3D graphics demand a lot of processing power. If the heat sink is filthy and/or the fan has failed, you would have problems when you ran GPU intensive programs like 3D games while less demanding programs might not cause issues. Of course, your edit suggests your card might now have bit the dust. You could try it in another PC or switch it with another card/onboard GPU if equipped for testing purposes.

 

Hmm, would it really overheat the instant any graphics are rendered? Wouldnt that happen shortly after rendering the graphics?

 

I just tried replacing the ram with brand new ram from a 5 day old computer. When all the ram was removed it made different beeping noises. But then when i put the brand new memory sticks in it did the same loooooong beep.

 

Do you have access to another graphics card you can borrow? In that case, you can switch and see if the problem goes away or not.

EDIT:
Ignore that. The looong single beep implies that some piece of vital hardware is dead, most likely your CPU.

 

Is there no chance it's the PSU?