Help!!! computer keeps restarting

Please Help! My computer crashes a few minutes into playing any game on my system? I get the file kmixer.sys caused a problem resulting in a PAGE_FAULT-IN_NONPAGED_AREA. I have reloaded my operating system, updated to the latest video drivers and latest bios update. And my computer still crashes. I even pulled out the video card and ram and reseated both. I built this machine back in September 2004 did not have any problems until mid January 2005 is when the problem started.

My specs:
mobo Asus P4C800-E Deluxe
cpu Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHZ 800FSB 1MB L2 Cache Prescott
video MSI GeForce FX 5900XT 128mb
Hard drive Maxtor 160GB SATA
Onboard Sound
OS windows xp
1GB ram ddr 333
450w psu

 

Not certain what's causing your problem but here's my two cents worth.

My first guess would be that you may have some defective RAM. It could have been fine for a long time and then gone bad. Do you have some other RAM you could install in place of your current RAM? Or could you borrow some compatible RAM from a friend's computer to try out and see if the problem still occurs with different RAM?

A second possible cause -- I see you're running WinXP. Have you recently installed SP2 (ServicePack 2) for WinXP? Many people have had a variety of problems after installing SP2 for WinXP, on various types of system configurations, but I'm by no means certain that installation of SP2 could cause this type of problem to occur. Similarly, did you download and install any other WinXP updates, besides SP2, just before the problem began occuring? If so and you can uninstall such updates (some Windows updates can be removed and some can't) that might be worth a try. But I'd check your RAM first before investigating/testing these possible causes.

There may be some free/shareware utilities on this site that will test your RAM. Or if you have some diagnostic utilities (such as Ontrack's FixIt utilities, or some similar suite of diagnostic software) they often include routines to test your system's RAM.

Good luck!

 

Thanks for trying to help Eezak, but I figured out my problem. What happened was that I had overclocked my processor from a 2.8ghz to 3.2ghz back in late november. I did not have a problem playing ut2004 and Doom 3 when my computer was overclocked. When I purchased Battle for Middle Earth thats when my computer would restart. So I tried BF vietam, and Farcry (which I think I had stop playing before I overclocked my computer) the computer would restart with these games. So last nite I ran my computer at 2.8ghz Normal clockspeed, left BF Vietnam running overnite. The computer did not restart or freeze. I guess I solved my problem. I just did not realize that some games can play with my processor overclocked and some cannot.

 

it sounds to me like you are having overheating issues. OCing really raises the temp and if you do not have sufficient cooling, your system will shut down (reboot) to protect the chip