machine re boots itself

Pro Member First Officer
abmukh80 First Officer

Hi guys,

There's problem which is happening these days when I'm flying FSX. My computer suddenly reboots on its own when I'm in game. However such a problem dosen't happen running any other program or software. This is happeing now for quite some time but the frequencyof problem has increased over the period of time. It crashes and reboots atleast once every three times.

What I'm not able to understand- is this a graphic card problem or a memory problem. I've never been too interested about SP1 and I never bothered installing it because many users had complaints about it. What do you suggest should I install SP1?

What could be the other issues?

Let me specify that I've not made any changes to any cfg file except the aircraft cfg. I'm also quite happy with the machine's performance at above medium settings.

My machine basic specs are:
Intel core2 Duo on D946ZIS motherboard
2 GB DDR- Ram 667 mhz
ATI Radeon 256 mb display card
running on windows xp home edition

Help would be appreciated

Cheers

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Pro Member First Officer
mdaskalos First Officer

Spontaneous reboots are often caused by an insuffiecient power supply.

Since it's happening in your (probably) most demanding graphics application (FSX), that is a likely cause.

You only specified the RAM and chip type of video card. If that is all you know, you have no way of knowing whether your power supply is sufficient.

You also did not state a detail one about your power supply.

If you can furnish those details, someone can give you a more informed reply.

mdaskalos

Pro Member Chief Captain
RadarMan Chief Captain

Also the possibility of overheating.
Be sure to clean the inside of your computer.
Get all the dust out of the fans and the heatsink.
If you don't have a fan on the back grid add one to blow out.
they are cheap and very easy to install.

Radar

Pro Member First Officer
abmukh80 First Officer

oh i'm sorry actually i've ati radeon x550 model. I've checked with ati website, my power supply seems to be matching.

Any other cause u have in mind? The problem is it does not reboot at a speciic time so it becomes very difficult to investigate the cause!

Cheers

Pro Member First Officer
mdaskalos First Officer

Check out what ther Radarman says.

That one on overheating reminds me of an odd one:

About a year ago, my ATI 9800 Pro went belly up because the heatsink on the GPU came loose. It was held on by some plastic push pins. One worked loose, and the heatsink backed away from the board.

I didn't know that at the time, though. All I knew was it gave me few spontaneous reboots, then the graphics went on the fritz shortly after every startup. While I was away from the computer for a few minutes while booting up one morning, I smelled the smoke.

The card was toast, and that was "only" after afew days of erratic operation.

The moral of the story: Clean out your computer's guts and check everything out pronto. You can eliminate the cause of an overheating problem, but the damage may still be done!

mdaskalos

Pro Member First Officer
abmukh80 First Officer

Thanks guys for all the information and possible solutions.

As days go by the frequency of the problem is increasing!!!! I will complete the check list suggested above.

One more thing I wanted to point out is --- when the machine did not have such problems the noise of the fan used to be quite high. Nowadays the noise has considerably decreased!!!!

Can this be because of the dust accumulated inside?

Cheers

Pro Member Chief Captain
RadarMan Chief Captain

Dust, heat that's what causes crashing and rebooting.
Clean out the case, the fans and the heatsink.
If you can put a extra fan on the back grid to blow out hot air that will help. Very cheap ($20) and easy to install.

Radar

Pro Member First Officer
mdaskalos First Officer

Radarman sez it's dust,
I sez it's a component getting ready to fail...

But it's no argument with the radarman, because the paradox IS:

Wait much longer to do something about it and we're BOTH gonna be right!
😉

mdaskalos

Pro Member Chief Captain
RadarMan Chief Captain

mdaskalos wrote:

Radarman sez it's dust,
I sez it's a component getting ready to fail...

But it's no argument with the radarman, because the paradox IS:

Wait much longer to do something about it and we're BOTH gonna be right!
😉

mdaskalos

😂 😂 Lets meet ½ way, dust caused a hardware failure.

Radar

Pro Member First Officer
abmukh80 First Officer

Guys I did a small experiment. I installed a software called speed fan to measure the cpu,hdd core temp.

Found out shocking results!!!!!

I start my pc at 33 degrees C After I boot up it pushes upto 38 degree C
As soon as I hit FSX icon and load the game in window mode so that I could see temp redings as well, The temp shoots up by 10 degrees C to 48 degrees!!!!

As I keep flying low altitude in an ultralight over kennedy intl(busy airport)
my frame rate goes on decreasing and the cpu temp rises to almost 57 deg C within ten min of flying!

I've absolutely confirmed this is due to overheating and will clean out the dust, add an additionsl fan and if possible get myself a better power supply as well!!!

Cheers

Pro Member First Officer
faust1200 First Officer

abmukh80 wrote:

Guys I did a small experiment. I installed a software called speed fan to measure the cpu,hdd core temp.

Found out shocking results!!!!!

I start my pc at 33 degrees C After I boot up it pushes upto 38 degree C
As soon as I hit FSX icon and load the game in window mode so that I could see temp redings as well, The temp shoots up by 10 degrees C to 48 degrees!!!!

As I keep flying low altitude in an ultralight over kennedy intl(busy airport)
my frame rate goes on decreasing and the cpu temp rises to almost 57 deg C within ten min of flying!

I've absolutely confirmed this is due to overheating and will clean out the dust, add an additionsl fan and if possible get myself a better power supply as well!!!

Cheers

You may also want to look into a good quality fan/heatsink. Zalman's are pretty good. Also arctic silver thermal paste can take 5-7c off the temp vs. generic paste.

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