Games Randomly Crashing to Desktop

[Cuse]

Lately I've been having problems with games crashing to the desktop. The problem affects all games and the time the crashes take place appear to be completely random. Sometimes I can play for hours uninterrupted, while other times, a game will crash after only playing for a few minutes. The crashes take me straight to my desktop and I am never presented with any sort of error message.

My PC Specs:

• AMD Athlon 64 3500+, ~2.2GHz
• 1 Gig Ram (2 Sticks, Kingston PC3200 400MHz DDR 512mb)
• Western Digital 200 GB IDE HD
• ASUS A8V-E SE Motherboard
• 450 Watt Power Supply
• Nvidia 6600 GT PCI-e 256mb (Latest Drivers)
• DirectX 9.0c
• Microsoft XP Home Edition OS

I've done a virus scan and another for spyware and everything seems to be clean. The only programs I keep running in the background are a wireless lan config tool and AVG Anti-Virus. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Bluefish]

Hey Cuse!
Welcome to PC Helpforum!

Have you got a clue how this started to happen?

Have you got all your other drivers updated too? Like sound and mainboard drivers?

Blue

[GaRHaR]

Greetings Cuse! Welcome to the PCHF

I actually used to have a similar problem. I used to believe it was power supply related, as I was running about 5 watts over the limit of my power supply...whoops

Unfortunatly, as you're not getting any error messages, it's not going to be the same solution

First thing to try is to update your drivers (as Blue has already touched on).
You've got an nForce4 board, which you should be able to get WHQL or modified drivers from here (nVIDIA Geforce 7900 7800 7600 7300 6600 6800 GT GTX ATi Radeon x850 x1900 x1800 1600 1300 XT Pro - Guru of 3D: PC Hardware Reviews) and you'll also be able to pick up video card drivers.
2nd thing you want to check, is temperatures. Right click on your desktop, select Properties -> Settings -> Advanced -> GeForce 6600 GT -> Temperature Settings

This will let you know how hot your card is running...if it's over 60degC...then you've got ap roblem with this, and you should clean out your case of all dust (DO NOT USE A VACCUUM CLEANER!).

If you've tried all this previously, let me know

[Cuse]

No clue how the problem started. It's been happening for quite some time now, I've just had to get into the habit of using the quicksave hotkeys.

The temperature of my vid card stays around 52degC when im not playing anything and it's at about 62degC when it crashes. I've just cleaned all the dust out a few days ago and also just recently installed a case fan.

I tried a different driver for the video card from the site you linked to, to no avail, but I seem to be having trouble installing the WHQL drivers. When I run the setup it goes through the process of preparing the InstallShield Wizard and then once it does that the actual installer never pops up.

[GaRHaR]

the temp looks fine to me...most video cards can handle well over 62deg...did you also try the chipset drive (nForce4)???

It's most likely going to be a problem relating to that

[Cuse]

I've looked into it but my board doesn't seem to be an nforce4. It uses the VIA K8T890 chipset. Other than that I think I've got all of my mainboard drivers up to date. Also ran a memory test, no problems there. Games are still crashing though.

[GaRHaR]

ah my apologies then...

You'll need to grab the VIA 4in1 drivers (if this is what they're still called)..whic apparntly they're not...

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