First Post - Boy do I need help

Greetings All.

I have come to Major Geeks many times to lurk, love your forums!

I now have come across a problem, and need some advice pretty please.

In a nutshell, I bought a new rig not too long ago. It had been working fantastic for about 2 to 3 months. Not one problem.

All of a sudden, during some Rome:TW games, it would just flat lock up, make a screeching noise, and go completely comatose. The monitor would show these funny colors on the screen. CNTL-ALT-DEL did nothing. Only a RESET button "reboot" would work. Then, after multiple more crashes with that game, I did a reinstall of windows thinking I downloaded something bad. I was then watching videos on Launch.com.... and bam! Happened again.

I then thought maybe it was the video card (9800pro - not overclocked), and a potential heat issue. I installed my older video card, which never gave me any problems (9500pro) - but today, while playing Kohan II, same thing, without the major screaching noise. Only this time it just flat crashed to desktop. Never had any problems with Kohan II before this mysterious problem.

Someone from another forum suggested buying a can of that compressed air and blowing out what he thought sounded like a potential dust problem. Is that possible?

My internal temperature reads anywhere from 80 degrees (with the 9500pro) to 91 degrees (with the 9800pro). That doesn't seem all that hot to me.

Athlon 64 - 3000+ with 1 gig of ram. Audigy 2zs. Windows xp. Tried both Service Pack 1 and 2, didn't make a difference. Let me know if you need more info.

Any help or thoughts would be much appreciated.

Leaper

 

Hi,

Yes you can buy compressed air and clean dust out of your system, becareful and don't over do it.

I don't think that is your problem though.

When you say 80 degrees you mean 80f or 80 c?

What is your cpu temp?

What mobo are you using?

Try downloading prime95 and run its torture test, it won't test the video card but will test cpu, ram,psu,mobo,and heat issues,

Also download and run memtest86.

Post back with your results.

Rick