Please help with computer crashes :)

Hello all, I am new to this forum and thank each and every one of you in advance for your knowledge and time. OK here’s my story, I have an Alienware Area 51 which is about 4 years old now. I have been playing World of Warcraft online for over 8 months without a single hiccup until 2-3 weeks ago. It began with random crashes and reboots every few hours and has increased in frequency to every 10 mins or so now. The crashes are a mix of soft where I am left at my desktop and can log back into the game to hard where the computer reboots on its own. Sometimes on the hard crashes I will receive a message that windows has recovered form a serious error and started in safe mode. And finally sometimes it crashes to a black screen and will not reboot unless I physically press the reset button.

OK, another piece of info, I played the game for 6-7 months without a hiccup but I suffered dreadfully form LAG until I installed another 2 sticks of 256 mb each PC 1066 RDRAM made by Samsung because Kingston told me they stopped making that Ram years ago. My computer originally had 2 sticks of 256 mb each PC 1066 RDRAM made by Kingston. After the new RAM was installed on Aug 28 the game ran flawlessly and I no longer suffered LAG issues. Well that lasted for about 6-7 weeks and that pretty much takes me up to the last 2 weeks and the crashes. The WoW crashes usually come with an error #132 generated by the game which to WoW tech support is they’re most elusive type of crash but it is attributed to memory problems for the majority of the times.

So far I have ensured my drivers are all up to date to include video, sound, and network card ( now running OMEGA drivers for my vid card as well as reduced settings. Cleaned out the inside of the case and checked all fans to be working to include the power sup, grphx card, and cpu fan. Installed a new case fan for added airflow and cooling, played with the case open to aid even more with cooling, swapped the Kingston and Samsung RAM sticks to each others position. Ensured all windows updates are up to date to incl SP1 and SP2. Uninstalled the game and reinstalled it. And I tried to remove the new RAM and replace the original RAM place holder sticks that were originally in there but it would not reboot and after re-installing the new RAM sticks upon startup I was immediately directed to the BIOS setup utility which said the computer failed to boot up because the CPU speed was not correct and to ensure it was showing the correct setting which it was.

Phew, sorry this is so long but the read before posting said to post as much info as possible. Now for my specs.

Manufacture: Alienware
Model: Area-51
Mobo: ASUS P4T533-3
Processor: Intel P4 2.53 533 FSB
RAM 2x256mb sticks of Kingston PC-1066 RDRAM / 2x256mb sticks Samsung PC-1066 RDRAM
GFX Card: ATI RAEDON 9700 PRO 128 DDR
HD: Western Digital 80 GB (recently replaced because last one died)
Sound card: Sound Blaster Audigy w/1394
Network card: Intel PRO/1000 MT GIGABIT Desktop adapter
Plextor Plexwriter 40/12/40 CDR-W
KOOLMAX cooling system

Please help me as I am dying to play this game again J Thank you again for your time and help.

Zach Kirby

 

have you checked your system for viruses and malware.

Also if you have many programs set to autostart when you boot windows you will notice performance degradation.