Pc restarting

[ajm]

My friend is having a problem with his pc,it boots up and works fine but as soon as he starts a game the intro will play and then the pc will just crash and reboot itself.This has happened in several different games.He has a 400 psu,tried fresh install of windows and tried different drivers.The card is a geforce 5700.Anyone know why this is happening?

 

[ACPCUP]

Could be the Ram. If he has 2 sticks of ram tell him to take one out at a time and try again. Just trying with one stick.

 

[ajm]

Ok i will tell him to give it a try.Any other suggestions?

 

[Curio]

http://www.memtest86.com/

Most likely some dodgy RAM. Could also be a dodgy PSU. They're the most likely culprits.

 

[ACPCUP]

Could also be the Hard drive or the CPU!

 

[ajm]

Thanks for the replies i will get him to try and eliminate each one.I see no one has mentioned that it could be the card,is it not a possibility?

Curio
Is it best to use Memtest86 3.2 Release

 

[J.T]

Or could be the PSU not supplying enough constant power when the Graphics card tries to pull more power from it during game start/play...

Just a thought mind you

 

[Curio]

Curio
Is it best to use Memtest86 3.2 Release

Yeah - it doesn't really matter what version tho.....they all do the same thing Leave it running for at least a few passes. Although if the RAM is bad enough to crash games that quickly you'll probably get thousands of errors right from the get-go.

If the RAM passes then I would suspect the PSU isn't up to the job or is faulty. You might want to also grab MBM5 (or SiSoft Sandra if MBM doesn't support the board....it hasn't been updated for ages now) to monitor the voltages on the PSU. Make sure the 12v, 5v and 3.3v aren't fluctuating too much.
EDIT: Do you know what brand the PSU is?

It could be any number of other things, but they're the most likely

 

[ajm]

Thanks again,i will get him to check the mem first then check the psu voltages to make sure they are stable.Don't know what the psu is just that it it 400w,it is probably generic but i will ask.

 

[Lysander]

Thanks again,i will get him to check the mem first then check the psu voltages to make sure they are stable.Don't know what the psu is just that it it 400w,it is probably generic but i will ask.

I had exactly the same problem a couple of years ago with Painkiller. In the middle of playing it the PC would just restart without warning. It took me ages to work out what the problem was, I tried everything. Patching the game, Windows updates. In the end it was to do with the fact that the game put a lot of stress on the graphics card and my since my PSU was only 250W the system was at full load. When the system went over full load the PC would restart itself as a safeguard. I imagine that could be the problem here.

 

[ajm]

Thanks for the reply Lysander but i don't think it is the case in this instance because it happens quite quickly after the game starts meaning that the fan would have to be motionless for it to happen that quick.