Playing on Vista, Monitor crashes/Computer restarts help?

[mykanoble]

So I recently started playing DDO and have been having an issue with it constantly crashing and my Monitor going dark while my tower is still active, either that or my entire system crashes and reboots.

This only seems to be an issue with DDO as all of my other games and programs run fine and haven't caused me any problems, I've never had anything like this happen before and am at a bit of a loss.

The other strange thing is that it only happens some of the time and has become more frequent in the past couple days, usually the problem manifests quicker on higher graphics settings but my Graphics card should be able to run it easily even for an older card.

I'm fairly tech illiterate might I add so I have to ask which DxDiag info would be needed as I saved it and it certainly seems like a LOT of data to display?

Maybe you can pinpoint the problem and I can continue to enjoy the game.

Thanks and any help is greatly appreciated

[Maxelcat]

how old is the computer?

are you getting any blue screens or errors?

was it working fine before and this is a new thing?

Have you changed ANYTHING? (this includes anything that auto updates.)

i have other questions but I'll start there.

[mykanoble]

The computer is only about two years old, and it's had a few upgrades (RAM, Graphics card)

No blue screens or errors, just complete and total shut down.

My screen either goes completely black as if I had disconnected the monitor from the tower OR it completely restarts without any of the typical hard shut down "Windows safemode" options etc, it simply decides to restart, mostly the former of the two problems however.

I haven't changed anything other than adding AVG and RegRun to the computer but this problem was happening before I downloaded those programs as well.

As for the game causing this problem, it's been happening since I downloaded it, I first downloaded the high res version, that was where the problem started so i completely removed and uninstalled it and DL'ed the low res version and it didn't help the problem any so I've just been letting it happen until now.

[Maxelcat]

go to your computer's System Properties (a shortcut is to right-click My Computer and click Properties). In the "Advanced" tab, click "Settings" under "Startup and Recovery". Under "System failure" it is specified there what will happen in case of a crash. Normally, the "Automatic restart" is checked, which is the reason why your computer reboots automatically. Under the "Write debugging information" is the option for the physical memory dump.

The blue screen can initially provide a clue on the cause of the crash. If you're able to log in to your computer after the crash, you can check the Application event logs found in "Event Viewer" properties. Find any application that had an error close to the time of the crash. If there are none, the dump file generated by Windows shows the file at fault during the crash.

That will give you more of an idea of whats causing the crash.

DXDiag is a great tool, but I prefer to get to the meat of the matter with out trying to read the TL;DR DXDiag.

It could be a number of things at this point, I have a suspicion of what but i'll need more data.

[mykanoble]

"Under "System failure" it is specified there what will happen in case of a crash. Normally, the "Automatic restart" is checked"

Yep it is, that explains why that's happening at least, haha.
Should I uncheck that or leave as is?

"Under the "Write debugging information" is the option for the physical memory dump."

Okay I found the system properties and the "write debugging info" section, it has a drop down menu, which has "Kernal memory dump, small memory dump(64kb), None" and then it says "Dump File %SystemRoot%\MEMORY.DMP" under that with an option to "overwrite any existing file"

I'm not very good at this computer stuff, so I hope you'll bear with me when I say that I have no idea what to do next, i appreciate the help a lot because computer issues are like trying to speak another language for me.

How do i go about grabbing the info you need to get a better idea as to what's going on?

[mykanoble]

OKAY, I found the event viewer haha.

It says that there are a LOT of errors and warnings, mostly for something called "atimdag" apparently my graphics card is "overheating"?

The other warnings are pretty standard things like me shutting programs down before they're finished doing what they're doing the only one I don't understand is this...
~~~~~~~~~~~
Log Name: System
Source: Tcpip
TCP/IP has reached the security limit imposed on the number of concurrent TCP connect attempts.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So I'm assuming I need to find a way to stop the damned graphics card from overheating...Any suggestions?

Thanks again for any help you can give me.

[Maxelcat]

Its:

1) the card having a issue.
2) the card driver having a issue.
3) your power supply is getting flakey.
4) your memory getting flakey.
5) your motherboard/cpu is reaching end of life.

I had the same thing happen to me. so far I've gotten it trouble shot to the Mother Board.

I got it working by putting in a new video card, new power supply, and going to less and slower ram.

as you are not really tech orientated I would suggest taking it into the shop and get a new system or getting some upgrades.

as for the TCP/IP thing, that's prolly not causing the restarts.

sorry for the bad news, but that same thing crippled my machine as i tried to figure it out for close to 3 weeks.

[Impaqt]

Taker the side of the PC off.. Clean out your fans. Make sure they all spin freely and are running.