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Computer restarts/windows crashes on start of a game

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I have just recently bought Saints Row the third off of steam and have encountered a problem. When I try to run the game it asks me to play the game in DirectX 10 and 11 or play in DirectX9. I've tried both already. It just makes the screen go black for about 15 seconds and then the computer restarts. It once displayed a blue screen that said it shut down to protect windows or something like that. I don't understand why it's doing it. My specs are way above recommended and I've done a lot of steam troubleshooting to find the problem. I have turned off things in the properties that are supposed to help in some way but have done nothing. My gpu's are up to date and I'm sure I have directX 11.

Just some specs
Windows 7
Processor: AMD FX(tm)- 6100 Six-Core Processor 3.30 GHz
RAM: 16 GB
System type: 64-bit Operating System
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3
Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 6850 crossfire to another 6850
BIOS: Award Software International, INC. F5, 10/13/2011

I only put the BIOS because I've read in a couple areas that maybe a newer BIOS is required but I would rather leave it alone if I don't have to mess with it because I have heard flashing the BIOS can be dangerous.

I have tried a bunch of things like turning off the firewall, turning off crossfire in case it was something wrong with my gpu, I have checked cache files for errors(there were 6 but it fixed them), and I unchecked some options that were supposed to make it faster, I also used Microsoft Fix It to turn off a bunch of programs that would start up at boot up because I thought maybe they were stopping it. Nothing has worked and I'm going to discontinue trying to run the game until I get a qualified explanation because I would rather not ruin my computer or my OS. I can run other games on steam as well.

More about : computer restarts windows crashes start game

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Does it do it only in this game or other games as will? If it is just this game you need to verify iniegrity of game cache.

To do this while in Steam go to your game right click on it and then left click on properties then left click on local files then left click on verify. You might have to do it a couple of times.

Give that a try and see if it fix's the problem. If not let us know and we will go to the next step. Good luck.

what drivers version do you have right now?

it would also help to know what was the error code on those BSODs

disable automatic restart (system > advanced settings > advanced > start up and recovery > settings > uncheck "restart on critical failure"

check that you're still not bsoding when PC restarts. What other games have you tried to run? Do they run ok?

DM186 said:
Does it do it only in this game or other games as will? If it is just this game you need to verify iniegrity of game cache.

To do this while in Steam go to your game right click on it and then left click on properties then left click on local files then left click on verify. You might have to do it a couple of times.

Give that a try and see if it fix's the problem. If not let us know and we will go to the next step. Good luck.


No other games work like Dirt 3, Dead Island, and Just Cause 2. I have already verified the game cache and it found 6 errors but it fixed them. It still continues to restart my computer.
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AntiZig said:
what drivers version do you have right now?

it would also help to know what was the error code on those BSODs

disable automatic restart (system > advanced settings > advanced > start up and recovery > settings > uncheck "restart on critical failure"

check that you're still not bsoding when PC restarts. What other games have you tried to run? Do they run ok?


My gpu drivers are up to date. What will happen if it doesn't restart, will it mess up windows? Also out of the 12 times that it restarted I only saw the BSOD once. It only happens with this game and I have Just Cause 2, Dead Island, and Dirt 3 on Steam and can also play Fallout 3 straight from my computer.

if you disable automatic restart? nothing will happen, it will stop all function and display the BSOD until you manually turn it off and back on.

Alternatively, get the program called bluescreenview it will find the logs of the blue screens and you can read the error codes from there.

Telling me that your GPU drivers are up-to-date doesn't answer my question... If you are not sure where/how to check the driver version, let me know, I'll give you step by step.

Have you checked game file integrity after the said 6 errors have been fixed? In other words did you get the message telling you there were zero errors after the check?

Also, I'd like you to check what the temperatures are for your hardware right before it restarts.

And what make and model PSU do you have?

I would second what Antizig said about temps and driver version. I experienced a restart issue that plagued me for over a year and finally determined that I had a bad video card (bought off eBay for SLI).

If you are still having problems I would test each of your cards individually. Don't just disable crossfire, but remove the link and swap out each of the cards. If it fails with one card in there, swap it out with the other and test. If it still fails then at least you can assume it's not a bad video card.

Best of luck!

My PSU is a ModXStream-Pro 600w PSU. My GPU temperatures were 57C and 36C with GPU-Z. I don't know how to check the cpu temperature. I did a couple driver checker programs and the only things outdated were Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller, ATI HDMI Audio, Realtek High Definition Audio, and AMD SATA Controller. I haven't done the critical restart thing yet.

Alright so I turned off automatic restart on critical failure and downloaded the bluescreenviewer. I ran the game and it did the same thing except this time before restarting it showed a red bar at the very top of the screen that ran all the way across. I checked blue screen viewer and it seems that every time besides once has been because of some ntoskrnl.exe and the one other time was dump_amdsata.sys but I'm not sure if that one happened because of the game.

I have a couple of questions. How long have you been getting this problem? Is it something that just started for has been going on for a long time? If it just started what did you change or do or down load etc?

Because you have ruled out a lot of stuff so now we need to rethink this problem. If you can think of anything that might have happened or even something small.

I already tried running it without crossfire. I can play other games just not this one. I haven't changed anything. A couple other issues that MIGHT have something to do with it. The game download was interrupted and I had to resume it. I had re installed windows previously because whenever I played a game for a while the screen would go black and the fans would get really loud and I would have to restart. My virus protection hadn't been working for a week and I felt like I had viruses and whenever I tried restarting the monitor wouldn't come back on so I just did a full re install. When I re installed I tried updating my gpu's with the disc but it would freeze every single time when it started flipping the screen around. I eventually got it to work when I unplugged and plugged my monitor back in. I've played games since then and the restarting problem isn't happening anymore.

Okay, have you disabled anti-virus? Also, I would verify cache integrity one more time just in case any errors popped up again.

There is a possible issue with 12.4 catalyst drivers, if you have older drivers if possible such as 12.2 or 12.3

I finally got it up to 12.4 though and before that I had 11. something haha and I'll try to verify cache again. And I've tried running it without the firewall that's it.

I'm a bit interested to see BSOD pointing at AMDsata driver and one of your driver programs telling you that your SATA controller driver is outdated, might want to check that out.

^+1
I have to agree with AntiZig on this one. And I agree with fantastik250 on verify iniegrity of game cache. When I was down loading Shogun 2 I had to stop and leave off where it stoped.

When I would play the game about 10 turns in it would freeze up and crash to desktop. I ended up reinstalling the game 3 times and verifying cache iniegrity about 5 times in a row.

For some odd reason the longer the down load the more problems with the games I have found out with Steam so if you have a slow internet speed which I do and each time it took almost 9 hours to down load.

But I finally got it to play beyond and have had not a problem since. But this probably won't work for you since you have check the cache iniegrity 6 times. Good luck to you and I hope you get this figured out.

Well everytime I verify cache it says there is one file that is bad and it says it fixes it and then I verify it again and it is the same exact thing over and over again and I know it is the same problem because the download size for the fix is 83MB I have already tried reinstalling and it does the same thing still.

Yeah I agree go to Steam's forum and see if anybody else has the same problem and then if you can't then or save the time send Steam a message. I don't think you can call them or at least I have never seen a number.

I will link you to this uninstaller. It will uninstall everything that has to do with the game all the files that it uses only the game files nothing else. I had to use it on Age of Empires III.

Because under normal uninstall from control panel doesn't get all the deep files and that one error is probabley one of those files. So when you reinstall the game probabley doesn's write over it.

It is worth a shot. But when you reinstall the game do not let anything stop the downloading or you might be right back to the same spot. Let us know what has happened. Good luck.

http://download.cnet.com/Revo-Uninstaller/3000-2096_4-1...

Xoyo said:
I have no idea how to flash the BIOS and know that it is risky. I will need some assistance going through the process if you know how.


Here are a few sites that will help you if you need to flash your BIOS. These are good programs to help you if you have to do it. Hope it helps and good luck.

http://www.ehow.com/how_5011164_flash-bios.html

http://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?p=how+to+fla...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxpE1N4xB4s

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1605

http://www.pcworld.com/article/187437/how_to_update_you...

eitanrub3 said:
dude..forget about it...di you have by chance AMD FX CPU?
IF YOU DO AN DONT WANT TO MESS AROUNG WITH FLASHING BIOS AND *** LIKE THAT...SEARCH GOOGLE FOR OROCHI-CEG
EVERY TIME YOU WANT TO PLAY THE GAME RUN THIS PROGRAM AND THEN LAUNCH THE GAME..... :bounce:  :pt1cable:  I HAD THE SAME PROBLEM...

THIS IS OROCHI CEG:


http://www.mediafire.com/?opl1ra9o2ntac86


FYI you are not allowed to respond ot old threads you should PM them or use this as a reference.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/283384-33-read-first
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