Can't work out what's broken

[CrashGate3]

*sigh*

..and the crashing's started again...

Its been fine ever since the reformat - no crashes, no matter how long I play and no matter how detailed the game.

And then I come to play Quake 4 today and it crashed after about 15 minutes. I reset and started the game again, and it crashed after a few seconds.

I tried Lost Coast, which always crashed it before the reformat, and worked perfectly after it, and this also crashed after a few seconds.

Both these games were perfectly stable a few days ago - I've not changed or moved anything inside, and if anything the room is slightly colder than usual.

What's happening....?

 

[gonaads]

I'm tellin ya it's that 80 GB IDE Hard Drive.


Here's a thought, why not pull the IDE drive out (and leave it out for this experiment) set one of the SATA drives as primary reformat and reinstall XP. then see if it gets cockeyed again. Couldn't hurt.

 

[CrashGate3]

I suppose so...

How easy is it to remove the installation of XP from one of my other HDs if it turns out not to be that?

I'm running scandisk on my Primary now - Am I right in thinking that if it finds no bad sectors or anything then its not the drive at fault, and if it does (especially only a week after reformatting) then theres something pretty fundamentally wrong with it?

 

[Not Bman]

You can remove any XP installation by right clicking on it "format" with in windows, or using a bootdisk, and typing Format C: or drive letter.

 

[CrashGate3]

Ah, so I'm going to have to format to get rid of it - theres no way of just uninstalling or deleting things if I go back to my original primary installation?

 

[dave holbon]

It may be worth looking at the Smart status of your hard drive/s to see if any oddities are present.

But I take the view that it’s you graphics card causing the problem possibly a heat issue as the symptoms fit.

 

[mlakrid]

It seems to be working fine now

It must have been drivers not uninstalling properly (or I missed one) as I've not had a crash yet and have been playing HL2 for an hour or so. I feel a bit of a tit for not reformatting in the first place, but hey-ho - its a learning curve. Big thanks to everyone who helped point me in the right direction

Just remember using ccleaner like LeeJend normally gets rid of all old drivers and or registry changes which you dont need...
It is common place to have a need for a format/reinstall after major hardware changes, which in your case were HUGE....
Glad you got it fixed... EDIT: ok so you didnt fix it KEEEP READING....

EDIT: DO NOT Format your IDE drive... use some software to set up partitions on another drive, it does not need to be your other hard drive, it could be another old IDE Drive... Or just use the SATA Drive, Provided it has very little information on it yet... I have to agree with Gonaads it is most likely your old IDE Drive... check with the manufacturer of your drive most of them have hard drive diagnostics

1) Use manufacturer hard drive diagnostics, if it doesn't show any problems proceed...
2) Format the drive, provided it has little to no information, or copy that info off to a cd/dvd etc...
3) Repartition the "new" drive whether that be your SATA drive or another IDE Drive...
4) Install XP (AGAIN) sorry
5) Now comes the BIG check, reinstall your game(s) and try running the scenario again...

If the same problem persists even on another drive, THEN I would suspect over-heating issues... use Mobo temperature meters, make sure they do not exceed the reccomended temps for: the Mobo, the video card, or CPU!

Post back soo and let us know how it went...