random rebooting inside games

[Tbird]

ok, a friend of mine is having a bit of trouble with his pc, like the topic says, the pc just reboots after +/- 1 hour whilst playing games... (like BF1942 / RTCW etc..) strange thing is.. he can work normally for about 2,5 hours straight doing photoshop / soundscape & stuff like that without having any problems whatsoever.

specs:

AMD Athlon 600 Mhz Slot A
512Mb PC100
15Gb HDD
Windows XP Professional + Service Pack 1 (fresh install, problem was there before SP1 also)
Nvidia drivers 41.09
DirectX 9 (fresh install, problem was there on Dx8.1 also)
newest Via 4in1 drivers

the XP install is about 1,5 month old, and he didn`t have any problems running those games for about 1 week ago when this problem suddenly occured.

any ideas or suggestions greatly appreciated,

[Ash]

I occasionally have this problem. The system specs you listed dont include a video card. I'm running a GeForce 256 (SDR), which tends to overheat (even when underclocked and with additional cooling) (read: its broke). When it does this, my system reboots. Seeing that your friend has an older processor, I'd guess he has an older video card as well.

[Mr-e-Man]

If your friend has pets that shed and a fan cooling his PC's innards, it could be that A. the fan is clogged by fur or B. the components are being insulated by pet dander.

I had this problem once. Took a swiffer to the PC and cleaned out the fan and it worked like new.

[Tbird]

- vid card:

it`s a Geforce 2 MX-200, i will check out if the fan is clogged with dust or something & try out another vid-card, but i know for sure its not overclocked or something like that, nor does he have any pets.

didn`t think about the card overheating being the problem, i hope it is :/


thx for the help guys, will post results later.

[Tbird]

ok it seems to work, i put in a new Geforce4 MX440 and everything seems to work great!
i guess the old mx200 was just broken for some odd reason.


many thx,

:joy: now he can improve his BF42 skills, cause he sucks at flying