Hi

My PC has been crashing consistantly for the past 4 months, while I'm playing games (Unreal tournament, World of Warcraft, all games cause the PC to crash).

I'm now in the process of talking to PC Service call technical guys (PC World) to try and see what the problem is.

They are taking me through a series of tests. This Memory diagnostic being the latest test. But I am having real trouble running it.

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

I've spoken to the PC tech line 4 times in the past hour and they will not take me through the process.

Can somebody please describe in simple terms what it is I have to do?

Help will be MUCH appreciated at this point as I can't face another long session of chatting with these supposedly technical helpline people. They are doing my head in!!

Well, to start with, can you tell us a little more on the hardware spec of your PC? Make, model if shop bought.

Is it, only 'games' that cause the system to crash?

I take it as read you are using XP

What other software do you run?

Are there any "error" messages when something crashes, if so, can you please post one, including all its text.

As for memory checking, I wouldn't bother just yet.

Does the pc crash when your not playing games? I ask because it maybe due to overheating.

In all fairness V_R a lot of PC's dont crash untill the game that is being run becomes fully active. The likes of WoW generates a lot more heat from the likes of GFX card because of the rendering needed where as a simple desktop wouldnt if you knw what I mean?

My memory often fails after drinking a few beer's

If you want to test your memory use Memtest

It's free and you boot into it from a CD, floppydisk or USB memory key.

Let it run for at least four hours although if you do have faulty memory it will usually show on the first series of tests.

However, I'm more inclined to think you have a heat problem.

My PC is an Advent 9107 2.8 Ghz 1GB Ram Radeon X550 Graphics card and was bought from PC world 4-5months ago.
The games i play are Dawn of War, WoW and Unreal tornament 2004 all should run easily in my opinion on a 4month old PC as they work on my sisters pc which is a year old and cost the same price and is of similar spec.
The PC crashes every 10mins or an hour, whenever it feels basically and the screen just goes blank and monitor button goes on standbye or sometimes the PC will just reboot.
Ive run all the tests with PC helpline for the graphics card and they say its fine.
Ive got speedfan software and the Temp doesnt go about 50.
All im left with to test is the Ram and its a struggle to get it working for me

Thanks again

So, er, you gonna try memtest then?

And when I said heat problem I meant with the graphics card.

Simple test: Take the side off the PC, run a household fan into the PC, run your game. If it crashes, it's likely not a heat problem.

Ill have a go at that then tonight fingers crossed its just a heat problem
and ill try figure out how to use the memtest im slightly crap at this type of stuff as you can see
Thanks

I think you misunderstood me.

That's exactly why i asked if it crashes when he's not playing games. We are reading from the same page mate.

Sorry if i didn't make myself clear.

I know what ya mean about temps when gaming though, I play RCT3 and temps barely raise. But if i play HL2 or GRAW temps go up a few degrees.