Games Crashing

I really don't know if anyone can help here, as this post is going to be rather vague. Still, I'll give all the information that I can. I've checked and from what I can tell, all my drivers are up-to-date, as are my Windows updates. I haven't installed much, but I did uninstall a software firewall I had to see if that may have been the problem, and it didn't change anything.

Every game I've played for a decent length of time on this 2-week old PC has crashed at some point. Some more than others. Firstly, I'll give my specs.


OS: Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400
Motherboard: Asus P5Q Pro
RAM: 4 GB (4 x 1 GB) Geil 'Black Dragon'
Graphics card: ATI Radeon HD 4870
HD: Segate Barracuda 500GB
Case: Antec 300
PSU: OCZ 600w StealthXStreme
Peripherals: Razer DeathAdder mouse and bog standard old emachines keyboard

Now, the list of games I've tried.

The Sims 2 - The main culprit. Usually it would start up fine and dandy, and then as soon as I went onto the 'create a character' area, it would crash within a few minutes. the crashing involved the screen sort of being divided into squares and misaligned, and the sound in my speakers repeating the last note of the music that had happened as it crashed. No response whatsoever from my computer and as a result me being forced to manually shut it down.

I tried this game again today and it lasted much longer. About an hour, maybe. Everything was going fine, and then the same thing happened again, during actual game-play this time.

Counterstrike: Source - It has only happened once with this game, but it proves that it's not a problem unique to The Sims 2. Played for hours with it being absolutely fine, and then once during a somewhat graphically intensive moment it did the same problem that happened with The Sims 2. It hasn't happened since this time, though.

Team Fortress 2 - This game has been running perfectly, and so I thought it was an issue isolated to older games. However, just now a similar problem has happened but without the square division.

Other games I've tried include Warhammer Online and World In Conflict, neither of which have encountered this problem. But I put that down to not having played either for very long.

As I said originally, it is rather vague. I'd just like to know the processes I should go through to find out the problem. Another question: forcefully shutting down your PC by holding the on/off button damages it right? How much? Is there any other way to deal with a crashed, unresponsive PC?

Thanks, and sorry for the wall of text.

 

Run a memory test on your RAM you might have gotten a bad chip

 

do the memory test and download Speedfan or Everest and check the temps when the crashes occur and post them here, if the problems are with the old games give "run in compatibility mode" a go

 

I don't really know how to do the memory test. I can't see any instructions on the site the sticky links to. And burning it and configuring my PC to use it properly etc sounds complicated as well - any easier solutions?

In Everest, I run a full report and it makes no mention of temps. And since when my games crash it crashes the whole PC, forcing me to turn it off manually, I can't find temps when it crashes.

 

alright, there is a way... i just cant remember go ahead and download speedfan and check the temperatures as the computer goes to full load (during gaming) and observe the heat, post back here with the hottest temperatures the computer reaches

 

Alright. Downloaded Speedfan. How do I see it in-game? Or do I have to quickly alt-tab out and check the temperatures?

Here are the temps at normal usage with only a few things running. That look normal?

 

looks fine so far, just alt-tab out of the game

 

Sorry for late response. It hasn't been doing it but has started yet again now. Really annoying...

http://i35.tinypic.com/zwnae0.png

Temps I have when quickly alt-tabbing out of Sims 2. I haven't played Sims 2 since I posted this thread, it crashed on Team Fortress 2 just now the same way I mentioned before.

After turning my PC back on I did the thing where it searches for the problem and it returned this: "This problem was caused by ATI Graphics Driver, which was created by ATI Technologies, Inc.. There is no solution for this problem at this time." and recommends updating the driver. However, as I've said, I'm pretty sure my driver is up-to-date, and it is according to the device manager and when I try to install the latest Catalyst version.

 

Hate it when vista says that, well its not the temps, so by the sounds of that maybe you've gotten a bad driver, get rid off the current driver (even if its the newest) and use Driver cleaner (i think ) to get rid of all the left overs, then get the up to date one again and see if it makes a difference