Computer won't let me game!

[Kogaya]

Just got an old rig up and running. Whenever I try to play a game, as it turns on the screen goes blank and the computer resets. What's going on? Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

 

[Proximon]

Would need far more info.

Is the game compatible with the OS?

 

[rtfm]

Could be lots of things, heat, power supply, bad ram/cpu/gfx card yada yada yada... Like Proximon said, how about some more info:

What mobo, cpu, ram, gfx card, psu etc
What software, game, os etc
Does it reset doing anything else

Also try prime95 stress test, find out your temps for gfx and cpu

Try mem test to check your ram

Run Dxdiag (on xp - start menu > run and type "dxdiag", I'm not sure about earlier versions) and try all the tests.

 

[Kogaya]

Thanks for the response guys. So like I said this is an old rig, never the less i'd like to get it fixed up... so here are some of the specs:

Epox EP-8VTAI
Asus Radeon A9800
Crucial 512 mb ddr ram
AMD XP 1800


So after doing some more research I realized it could be a myriad of different things. If you guys could provide some more tests that I could run to isolate the problem I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.

 

[rtfm]

Check your temps in hardware monitor:
http://www.cpuid.com/hwmonitor.php

Check your ram with memtest86:
http://www.memtest86.com/

run a stress test (good for testing cpu and general system stability) using prime95:
http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm

See if you can run this (for gpu stress test):

http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/rthdribl/

Did you pass the dxdiag tests?

Are you sure your power supply is ok (test with another or psu tester)?

 

[llama_man]

Could be that the old graphics card doesn't support the Direct X version required by the game?

 

[rtfm]

Could be that the old graphics card doesn't support the Direct X version required by the game?

That would just crash the game, or produce a windows error, wouldn't reset the pc, would it?

 

[llama_man]

Sorry, missed the bit about the computer resetting as well! That suggests a hardware fault to me.