Games Freezing

[jdbceltics]

Hey everyone.

My PC has been freezing a lot during gaming lately. I did a fresh re-install of Windows 7, which did help somewhat, but I am still freezing sometimes during games.

I have been testing the freezing by playing Fallout 3 until I get the freeze, and troubleshooting by installing certain drivers and tinkering with BIOS and other settings per advice I receive from this forum.

What I ask is this; why, when my games freeze, does the system not show a blue screen? Nor does it reset. This leads me to believe that only the game freezes, but I am unable to see anything but the image of the frozen game. The keyboard sometimes still "functions" i.e. the Caps Lock and Num Lock lights go on and off when I touch the keys, but it won't do anything, CTRL ALT DELETE doesn't register. The power button usually won't shut the system down either, so I am forced to (reluctantly) hold the power button and force shut down.

Also, the audio from the game still sounds. The music will play like normal, or sometimes play on a short 1-2 second loop. Reasons?

AAARGHH this stuff can frustrate you to no end!

In any case, thanks for the help, in advance.

 

[simon12]

does the freezing seem random or always happens in the same place in games or always after X mins?

 

[jdbceltics]

does the freezing seem random or always happens in the same place in games or always after X mins?

It doesn't happen every time I play, but normally it does happen. Before I re-installed windows, it would crash within 5 minutes. After the re-install, it takes 15-20 minutes.

 

[jdbceltics]

check your overclocking, and make sure your rig is not overheating

Never overclocked.

Sounds dumb I know, I am just worried I would mess up and cause damage :/

 

[simon12]

I suggest you run memtest to check you RAM is stable and hwmonitor to check what temps you are getting.

 

[AntiZig]

Hello,
I'll advise you to check event viewer (admin tools) for any relevant clues, want for time stamps for when the computer froze, might be helpful.

Do you remember a point when this freezing started? Did you install any software/hardware that you're still using?

When you reinstalled win7, did you use the same harddrive? If yes, did you format it during the install?

Make sure your drivers, software and bios are up-to-date.

And as simon said, check your temps/clocks with a program like hwinfo or hwmonitor.

 

[bella123sara]

My guess for your freezing issues would be your computer's age. Recently, my computer died, but before then it would freeze a lot during games. It worked fine for an 8 year-old computer, but began to crash. It froze a lot. Therefore i believe a new computer maybe in order depending on the age but if it's not that old ignore my reply. Hope this helps.

 

[simon12]

A computer will not crash of freeze due to age it must have been something failing that could be solved.

 

[HEXiT]

to see your bsods boot the pc and press f8, when you see the boot menu theres and option there to turn off automatic restart. use this and the next time you crash you will see the bsod.
you can also use bluescreen viewer because even though your not seeing them the computer is logging them.
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html the DL link is about 3/4 down the page.