Why do games crash ?

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Anyone know why games crash ,what is the cause and what can you do if anything !

Have tried ;
turning things off in msconfig
un-clocking my video card
downloading patches

I play all games on high settings and get stutter free game play but frequent game crashing ,my pc should be able to handle it any ideas !
 
If I can expand on Mr Grump's above comment...
Does the whole computer freeze? Or is it just the game and you are able to alt-tab out of the frozen game?

Also, what games do you play that crash?
 
Any sort of freaky artifacting in game? My 6800gt often packs up mid game and it looks like someone's spilled a rainbow all over my screen.
 
Have you tried opening your pc and cleaning any dust out? Sometimes dust build up can cause components to overheat and then cause crashes. Otherwise it's probably a driver issue or perhaps faulty hardware (although unlikely). Also, it can be a background process - try ending any tasks not needed when playing games.
 
I'm betting at least one of your RAM sticks is borked. Head over to the Memory section and see what they have to say. They should have some sort of program that tests out each of your RAM sticks.
Although it could also be your graphics card memory
 
I'm betting at least one of your RAM sticks is borked. Head over to the Memory section and see what they have to say. They should have some sort of program that tests out each of your RAM sticks.
Although it could also be your graphics card memory

Memtest86. Run it on a bootable CD.
 
i recently had this problem! turned out to be my gfx memory... went bad.

sorted now though :D worth a try, run ati tool and see if you get a lock up... i did when my mem was bad.

ags
 
Anyone know why games crash ,what is the cause and what can you do if anything !

Have tried ;
turning things off in msconfig
un-clocking my video card
downloading patches

I play all games on high settings and get stutter free game play but frequent game crashing ,my pc should be able to handle it any ideas !

Well from the detailed description of the crash...

Id say its a memory problem, either you have not enough RAM, or the module/s are corrupt, or your graphics card memory has a problem.
 
Have used memtest which run error free overnight 7 tests o errors
ATI tool scans for artifacts okay .
Whats the best way to test the memory on my 8800 gtx ?
thanks
 
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Anyone know why games crash ,what is the cause and what can you do if anything !

Have tried ;
turning things off in msconfig
un-clocking my video card
downloading patches

I play all games on high settings and get stutter free game play but frequent game crashing ,my pc should be able to handle it any ideas !

Because you toutch yourself at night! :p

I'll get my coat
 
The game either locks up ,or screen goes black or shuts down and goes into windows .Sometimes it will make a strange noise through the speakers until reboot .

Bioshock at the moment ,every 30 mins ,oblivion was similar !

oblivion is renowned for crashing :p lol
 
this may sound funny, but have you checked your system for a virus?
I had a similar thing a few years back and I checked out lots of hardware/software possibilities and it turned out to be a virus - it would crash my machine whenever I played a game for about 30mins, I admit it's unlikely to be this, but possible. You can even get a free virus scanner called AVG just google avg free
 
Yeah I did have a virus but its gone now ,still getting game crash ,"Sorry this program needs to shutdown"

Also tried un-clocking my cpu !

So dose anyone know how to test the video card memory ?
 
It's a memory leak. Go to your local pharmacist / supermarket, buy some plasters and affix them to your RAM and video memory to stop the leak!

But really, nTune (which adds into the nvidia control panel when installed) has some 'stability tests'
I haven't tried them but it does include the option to run a stability test on your gpu, as well as the rest of your system.
 
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