Preventing spontaneous rebooting in WinXP

March 2, 2006 11:16 AM

How can I prevent my system from crashing when I have hardware acceleration set to 'full'?

I have a WinXP Pro desktop running on well-maintained hardware about 3 years old. The video adapter is an NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 with AGP8x. The drivers are up-to-date (and non-beta). I find that I need to set Desktop-Properties-Settings-Advanced-Troubleshoot-"Hardware acceleration" to one setting below "full". (The help text for this setting says it should be used "to correct problems with the mouse pointer, or to correct problems with corrupt images.") If I use the "full" setting, my system spontaneously reboots 3-4 times a day. Usually, though not always, this will happen when I'm watching a video -- the mouse pointer changes into a garbage bitmap, freezes, and then the whole systems tips over. At the 'one-down-from-full' setting, it's stable.

I've used Driver Detective to make sure none of my other drivers are out of date. I'd like to play Counter-Strike on this machine and it bugs me that I'm not able to set hardware acceleration to the max.

Can you give me some advice on how to troubleshoot this further? Thanks!

posted by 327.ca to computers & internet (4 comments total)

Check that you have the newest hardware drivers for you motherboard, especially if you have a VIA chipset. They've probably update the AGP IO since you purchased your computer.
posted by tiamat at 12:02 PM on March 2, 2006

This also sounds like it might be cooling-related. A few things to look into:
Is the fan on the video card running (if it has one)?
Once it happens, does it tend to happen again if you continue to do the same heavy-load activities?
Is your bios up-to-date as well?
posted by wzcx at 12:18 PM on March 2, 2006

Yup, my drivers and BIOS are all up-to-date. The idea that it might be cooling-related never occured to me. I'll check the fans. I've been thinking about replacing them with something quieter anyway. Thanks for the replies.
posted by 327.ca at 12:56 PM on March 2, 2006

Update: wzcx was right on the money. The fan on my graphics card died. When it was running with full acceleration, enough heat was being generated to cause it to fail.

Many thanks!!!
posted by 327.ca at 9:31 AM on March 4, 2006