Games freeze / crash on new PC

[Ellaren]

Right, so I finally got my new computer.. Installed steam, Day of Defeat and various other games. Ten to five minutes into games, or when pressing ready to begin play (after loading the map and such), I get a wonderful crash. I've installed both XP home edition, professional and vista home premium, and the problem persists throughout them all. Currently I'm using XP home edition 32bit.

"HL2.exe has stopped responding/working and will quit".

Sometimes it also freezes completely, forcing a reboot.

My specs:
# Corsair Powersupply 550W Bulk, black, ATX/EPS, 120mm fan, 4xSATA, SLI
# 1 Asus P5K, P35, Socket-775, DDR2, ATX, GbLAN, PCI-Ex16
# 1 Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3.0GHz 1333Mhz Socket LGA775, 4MB, BOXED m/vifte
# 1 Corsair TWIN2X 6400 DDR2, 4096MB CL5, Kit w/two matched CM2X2048-6400
# 1 Western Digital Caviar SE16 750GB SATA2 16MB 7200RPM
# 1 EVGA GeForce 8800GTS 512MB GDDR3, PCI-Express 2.0, 2xDVI-I, with CRYSIS
# 1 USB2 multikortleser 3.5" sort for CF I/II,SM,MMC/SD/microSD,MS,xD (bulk)
# 1 NEC DVD-brenner AD-7200S Black OEM SATA
# 1 Creative SB X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Fatal1ty Professional, 64MB, EAX® ADVANCED HD

I've tried both the newest nVidia drivers and the ones on the eVGA disk, to no avail. Chipset drivers are installed. Also installed vista twice, XP prof once, and xp home edition once, in the hopes that it was just some driver error. Also installed the brand new creative drivers for the soundcard


This is making me really sad, there's no point in using this PC if I can't even play on it. Then I could've just stuck to the old one on which games worked.

 

[Ellaren]

Installed VISTA again, first thing that happens after inserting my Asus P5 motherboard driver CD is a bluescreen....

 

[Ellaren]

Is it worth trying to install SP1?

 

[ohiou_grad_06]

Since you've got vista, boot from your cd, go to the repair options, and tell it to test your memory. See if you get any errors from that. If not, you may want to try memtest 86. But if you get errors from your memory, then test it one stick at a time until you find the stick that is giving you errors. Then return it. May or may not be your memory, but that's where I'd start.

 

[ohiou_grad_06]

Also, pull out the creative soundcard if the memory tests good. Could be something there as well. If so, then maybe consider returning the soundcard or just using onboard sound as that's getting better all the time.

 

[Ellaren]

Vista itself, after several funny bluescreens following a re-install, suggested memory errors. So I rebooted to take the windows memory diagnostic tool thing, which did not detect any. I really don't want to pull anything out, I am prone to breaking stuff (not out of anger, I just can't seem to do anything right).

 

[Ellaren]

Bluescreens (three of them) appeared, respectively, when starting the Asus motherboard driver CD setup, when installing updates and when I tapped win key + E after restarting... sigh.

 

[Ellaren]

Really tempted to return this computer as I've had nothing but troubles with it..
Gonna see what SP1 does.

 

[dokk2]

you said "i finally got my new computer" is it a prebuilt?? if so can you take to where you bought it??is it still under warranty??let the supplier fool with it,because if you feel uneasy fooling with it and you're not sure you will almost certainly make a bad situation worse,besides who needs the static,eh what??
p.s., if you have another source get a copy of memtest,put it on a floppy at let 'er rip ,,,it's self booting..g'luck...

 

[ohiou_grad_06]

Judging by the parts I assumed you'd built it. If you are having problems, and you just bought it, definitely return it.